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Home My WebLink About2017-01-23 City Council Summary MinutesCITY OF PALO ALTO CITY COUNCIL TRANSCRIPT Page 1 of 122 Special Meeting January 23, 2017 The City Council of the City of Palo Alto met on this date in the Council Chambers at 5:03 P.M. Present: DuBois, Filseth, Fine, Holman, Kniss, Kou, Scharff, Tanaka, Wolbach Absent: Closed Session 1. CONFERENCE WITH REAL PROPERTY NEGOTIATORS Authority: Government Code Section 54956.8 Property: Plum Tree Apartments, 3020-3038 Emerson Street, Palo Alto, CA Agency Negotiators: James Keene, Lalo Perez, Hamid Ghaemmaghami, Hillary Gitelman Negotiating Parties: Palo Alto Housing and City of Palo Alto Under Negotiation: Option to Purchase – Price, Affordability Restrictions and Terms of Payment. Mayor Scharff: Now, we'll (inaudible) into Closed Session. I need a Motion. Council Member DuBois: So moved. Council Member Kou: Second. MOTION: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Council Member Kou to go into Closed Session. Mayor Scharff: That passes unanimously. MOTION PASSED: 9-0 Council went into Closed Session at 5:03 P.M. Council returned from Closed Session at 5:39 P.M. Mayor Scharff: We were in Closed Session. There's no reportable Action. TRANSCRIPT Page 2 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Study Session 2. Presentation by the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) Regarding the Next Network Initiative and its Impacts on Bus Service in Palo Alto. Mayor Scharff: Our first is a Study Session with the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority regarding the Next Network Initiative and its impact on bus service in Palo Alto. Do we have a presentation? Adam Burger, VTA Senior Transportation Planner: Hi, good evening. I'm Adam Burger. I'm a senior transportation planner with the Valley Transportation Authority. With me is Jay Tyree, senior project manager, and collectively we are the managers of the Next Network project. This is a redesign of VTA's transit system. Before we dive into discussing about the project, I wanted to thank the Council for having us tonight, thank Staff for bringing this to the Council's attention. This is a lot more attention than we're getting at other cities, and we really appreciate the input. I'd also like to thank Penny Ellson and Arthur Keller; some super citizens who have been helping us get the word out on this project and even collecting data for us. We had 55 members of the public turn out to a public meeting in these chambers on Thursday night, which is an incredible turnout for us for this project. We very much appreciate that. This is a redesign of VTA's transit network. This is a from-scratch redesign, much more than the standard adjustments we make every two years to our system. We're talking about where the bus routes go, when they operate, how frequently they operate and which days of the week they operate on. This is not a capital project, so we're not proposing to build anything through this. My objectives tonight are to inform the Council of what we are proposing, to let them know why we're doing this, some of the pressures that we're under as staff to put this together, but then also to collect your feedback for how we can make this Draft Plan better. For some background, we have three big goals for this project. The first is to increase transit ridership in our system. This is a chart of VTA transit ridership over the past 15 years. You can see that we've fallen 23 percent since 2000, at a time when the population has been rising 12 percent over that period. You would think that more residents would mean more riders for VTA, but it's gone the other direction. Part of that is that VTA does not offer as many hours of service as we used to. That's a result of increasing labor costs and increasing healthcare costs. VTA's transit spending hasn't really increased; it's just kept pace with inflation over that time. Higher costs and no new money has led to less service, and that's led to less ridership. Another of our goals is to improve the efficiency of our system. This is a chart of fare box recovery rates for major cities on the western half of the United States. VTA is at the bottom. We are about TRANSCRIPT Page 3 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 the lowest nationally for an agency our size. This chart only goes up to 2014, but presently we are closer to 10 percent. We've been in decline for five years. Ridership that's falling and fare revenue that's falling is not a sustainable combination. That's part of the reason why our Board of Directors is asking us to redesign our transit network. I know this won't be a popular slide here, but we also have to redesign our system to connect all parts of the county with BART and vice versa. We're projecting 23,000 trips coming through the Milpitas and various gateways when the project opens. Our system is currently inadequate to handle that. The good news is we do know how to increase ridership in designing transit networks. This is a formula that works across the country. It works on other planets, as our consultant says. That is to install frequent, all-day service in areas that have transit-supportive land-use patterns. Those are places that are dense; places that are walkable, meaning there are many destinations within walking distance of the transit stop; places where transit routes can be linear, that they are not squiggly, they are not taking unnecessary detours that slow down the trip and increase our operating cost; places where land uses, origins and destinations are nearby; and also places that have mixes of land use so that there is all-day bidirectional demand on those services. One of the fundamental questions we're asking in this redesign is what is the purpose of public transit. It's seemingly a simple question, but it's one that gets very complicated to answer because transit agencies are asked to do two things that are completely in contradiction with each other. The first is to achieve ridership. That is thinking like a business. In the same way that airlines will prefer to fly into major cities than smaller cities, this outlook has us putting service where the areas that are likely to bring a high return to ridership are. That tends to be fewer transit routes system-wide but also more frequent service on those routes. The other goal of public transit is the coverage goal. This is thinking like a government agency, putting as many routes to as many places as possible so that as many people as possible have access to transit service. When you design a system with this objective, you tend to have many more routes, but the frequency of those routes tends to be lower. Now, these are both good things that transit does. The difficulty is we can't do more of one and more of the other at the same time. They come at the expense of each other. We look at this in terms of how should VTA balance its spending toward these two objectives. In our present system, we spend about 70 percent of our Operating Funds toward the ridership goal and about 30 percent toward the coverage goal. When thinking about increasing transit ridership, there's a question here about should we adjust the balance between spending on these two goals. We launched a 5-month public outreach campaign in the summer of 2016. We put forward three different network concepts. We called them Network 70, Network 80 and Network 90. Those correlated with the percentage of funding spent on ridership. As you go through those networks, you would TRANSCRIPT Page 4 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 see how the closer you get to 90 the less coverage services there are, the more people there are without access to transit but at the same time the more frequent the services are the more places that have access to frequent transit. We received over 5,000 points of input from the public. Many of them votes on where VTA should be on this spectrum. The public landed at about 85/15. We turned that into a recommendation to our Board of Directors, which they affirmed. The draft Network that we'll talk about tonight is an 85/15 balance. Another thing we did over the summer was ask the public to step into our shoes and make decisions that we grapple with. A lot of these are tradeoff decisions. What type of good do you want to spend your limited funds on? Some of these questions were do you focus more on the peak period than the midday, do you offer the same service levels on weekends as weekdays. What we heard from the public is that in some ways many elements of our current system are just how they want. They told us three things that suggest they're ready for a change. That is, they're willing to walk farther to faster service, farther to frequent service, and that they're willing to put up with transfers if shorter waits mean they get to their destination faster in the end. Some examples of how our system has changed. This is a map of our current frequent services. These are services that run 15 minutes or better all day. You'll see that for the western part of the county there's very few options, just El Camino, just Stevens Creek. That's great if you have an origin and destination on one of those streets. If you're traveling between them, you're going to have to connect to a 30- minute route or a 60-minute route. That's not reliable enough. If you miss your bus, you're going to be waiting a long time. It's just not conducive to good, frequent transit usage. Here's our proposal in the Draft Plan. It's to really enhance the frequent network, especially westward, with new frequent service on Mathilda in De Anza and Sunnyvale, Bowers, Great American, Winchester and Bascom as well as in east San Jose and also bringing major portions of our light rail system up to 15-minute frequency. We're also proposing to increase our rapid services. Right now our 522 is our only rapid service. That's 15 minutes or better all day with wide stop spacing, about a mile apart. We're proposing to add two more rapid routes. Route 523 would be on Stevens Creek and extend up to Lockheed Martin in Sunnyvale as well to Berryessa, a BART station on the east side, as well as Route 500 which would be an upgrade of our DASH shuttle Downtown, 15 minutes or better all-day service. For BART, the number of buses and trains that would connect at Milpitas and Berryessa increase substantially from virtually nothing today up to 42 at Milpitas per hour and 28 at Berryessa. We're also proposing enhancements to our light rail system, bringing the entire system up to 15 minutes all day—there are some portions that are 30 minutes in the midday—as well as adding a new line from Alum Rock to Mountain View that would give the northwestern portion of the county a one- seat ride between Mountain View and the Milpitas BART connection. TRANSCRIPT Page 5 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Presently, those riders would have to transfer at Tasman today. In all, what we accomplish with this redesign is we increase the number of residents that have access to frequent transit service by 160,000 and we increase the number of jobs that are within access of frequent transit by 150,000. These are things that we know work to increase transit ridership. We've seen them be successful at other agencies that have attempted these strategies. In terms of what that means for our current riders, about one percent of our riders would no longer have access to transit service in this plan. That's about 1,300 people who would go from generally poor access to no access. On the other hand, we're able to increase those who have access to frequent transit. Going from about moderate transit levels to good transit levels increases by about 13,000 people, 12 percent overall. With the increases in access for jobs and housing as well as those who currently use frequent transit, we expect this will result in a ridership increase, but we do note the tradeoff to those who would be without transit. We're also proposing to increase service on the weekends. We know that folks who look to transit as a travel option tend not to be 9:00 to 5:00, Monday through Friday commuters. They travel at all times of the day and at all days of the week. Many of them work in restaurant and retail sectors. We know that those folks need travel options on Saturdays and Sundays. In the places where those land uses exist, we proposed increasing service on weekends. To focus on Palo Alto. First, I want to point out the services that VTA operates in Palo Alto. We have the 22 and 522 on El Camino Real. The 22 is our local service, stopping about every quarter mile to third mile. It operates five times an hour, so every 12 minutes. The 522 operates on the same alignment, operating every 15 minutes with wide stops about a mile apart. We also operate Route 35 along Middlefield, connecting the Stanford area to the San Antonio Transit Center as well as Route 89 connecting California to the VA Hospital and the Gunn High School area and Route 88 which connects the neighborhoods in northern Palo Alto to Gunn High School. We operate two variants of Route 88 during school bell times; those are the 88L and the 88M. Other services also operate in this time, the Palo Alto shuttle and the Marguerite shuttle in Palo Alto. What we are proposing is to flip-flop the 22 and 522 frequency, to go from five per hour on 22 to four per hour and then from four per hour to five per hour on the 522. We're proposing to combine Route 31 with Route 32, which goes from the San Antonio Transit Center down to the Santa Clara Transit Center. One of our objectives in this redesign is to build more of a grid network across the county. Connecting small, locally serving routes together allows folks to travel farther without having to transfer on other routes. That's the objective there. That route would be renamed the 21. We are proposing to discontinue Route 89. It is partially duplicated by the Marguerite shuttle in that area. We're proposing to scale back the trips on Route 88 to be school times only and renaming that the 288 route because it is a specifically school bell time service. I TRANSCRIPT Page 6 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 wanted to speak a little bit about why we're proposing the reduction on the 88. It was an issue that we heard a lot about in our public comments. We heard a lot about it on Thursday night when 55 folks came here to tell us about it. The reasoning is because Route 88 is a coverage service. It's in areas that have low density, and it tends to have low demand throughout the day except for periods of very high demand when children are arriving to Gunn High School and leaving Gunn High School in the afternoon. This is morning peak. When we get over 30 boardings per hour, that is a great market to be in. That's a great service, and VTA wants to be there providing that service. It's the other parts of the day when ridership is so low that we have difficulty justifying operating that service when there are many compelling needs at other places in the county. Similarly, here's what it looks like in the evening. The school peaks there in red are much higher than the rest of the day. We have proposed—I believe you have handouts of this—revising the 88L, 88 and 88M into a 288A and a 288B, which would roughly operate in the same parts of town. This is something that we have further refinement to work on, working with the City, working with the PTA. I mentioned before that your citizens, Keller and Ellson, have conducted a survey with the school that will be very informative in how we design these routes. We're looking forward to working on them with them. We'd like to help folks understand what all these changes mean in terms of mobility, what it means for how far you can travel. We use these maps called isochron maps. What they show is how far you can travel using transit and walking only in a certain amount of time. In Palo Alto, it does not change very much with the current plan versus the proposed plan. The green is areas that are served in common in both plans. The yellow, which doesn't appear on this map, would be access lost. The blue, which barely makes an appearance, would be access gained. We're projecting that, with all the services in Palo Alto, Caltrain included, there would be an increase of 2.1 percent for people access, about 2,000, and a similar increase for jobs. Looking at the 8:00 a.m. period, at midday there's a little bit more access that is gained, but roughly a very similar transit situation for Palo Alto residents. I'd like to mention some other efforts that VTA is working on and that should be considered in the context of this redesign. One of them is Measure B. In November, voters passed Measure B, a half-cent sales tax in Santa Clara County. There are nine eligible categories for funding, one of which is public transit. Within that public transit category, there are four options bulleted on the slide that we can spend that money on. It would be about $17 million per year. One of those bullets, enhance frequent core bus network, would increase Operations Funding. That would be funds we could put back into the network. Based on the recent passage of this and the turnover on our Board of Directors, they have yet to make a decision about how much funding they want to commit to each of those eligible uses. They should be making that decision shortly. We'll have that additional funding to TRANSCRIPT Page 7 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 consider when we design the final plan in the coming months. I note that paratransit is something that's very important to a lot of residents of Palo Alto. The Federal ADA law requires that transit agencies provide paratransit service to areas within three-quarters of a mile of a fixed transit route while that route is in operation. VTA's current paratransit policy exceeds that three-quarter mile minimum, offering service for an additional one mile beyond the fixed route. However, there is a premium fare for being in that expanded zone. That is $16 compared to $4 if you are in the three-quarter mile zone. Under that current policy and based on the changes that we are proposing, which decrease the size of the transit network, there would be some residents who would no longer have access to paratransit in their current location or who would be bumped to an increased price point under our current policy. Our general manager and our Board of Directors have made strong statements not wanting to negatively impact any current users, so they are currently working on an update to our paratransit policy to make sure that current residents who use paratransit in Santa Clara County are not negatively affected. In February, that will go to our committees for consideration and later to our Board of Directors to be adopted alongside the draft transit network. The proposals that are being considered are either freezing the transit service area as it exists today or grandfathering in existing clients. Our committee for transit accessibility, which includes many paratransit users, will be the starting place for developing these policy recommendations. Keep an eye on that at VTA. I also want to talk about a parallel project that we're doing, called Core Connectivity. This is thinking about how VTA can provide mobility services for parts of the county where a fixed-route bus simply isn't a good option. Can we contribute to City shuttle programs or can we provide subsidies or vouchers for on-demand services like taxis, Uber and Lyft? We're looking into our options. We're talking to cities to see about what sort of solutions they like. That's something we're looking to implement probably later this year, once we get a better handle on how this program comes together. We're also giving our fares a new look. One of the things that's been pointed out to us is that since our transit network encourages transfers—our Draft Plan does so even more—it doesn't make any sense for VTA not to offer free transfers. Why have a fare policy that discourages transferring if your network design encourages it? We're looking at how we can implement free transfers in our system but do it in a way that doesn't take VTA's fare box any lower than it is now. Our Board of Directors and our fiscal group are looking at free transfers, perhaps changing our base fare, evaluating youth fare passes—presently our youth fares are higher than our neighboring agencies—as well as perhaps restructuring our Eco Pass program. It's designed to be revenue neutral in line with our average fare taken in across the system, but it's coming in much lower and is one of the reasons why our fare box is low. We'll be looking at our low- income passes as well as simplifying our service classes. We would no TRANSCRIPT Page 8 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 longer have a community bus and no longer have a community bus fare. To give you a sense for our project schedule, we are in our second round of outreach now. We have changed our focus from how can we make transit better and are now asking how can we improve the Draft Plan. We'll be in this mode through February 20th. We hope to have all of your input by then for how we can make this better. In March of 2017, we will take our final plan through VTA's Committees and then in April to VTA's Board of Directors for their approval. This plan would go into effect in the fall of 2017, coinciding with the start of BART service. If you'd like to learn more or if you'd like to see the specifics of all the routes, we have a project website set up especially for this at nextnetwork.vta.org. There's a lot more detail, a lot more depth than I've been able to cover tonight. I hope folks go there and comment through the website. That's it for me. I'd be happy to take any questions. Mayor Scharff: I'll take the public comment first. First we have Rosemary Walczak, to be followed by Bonnie Packer. Rosemary Walczak: My name is Rosemary Walczak. I live at the corner of San Antonio and Charleston Road. I use the 32 and the 35 quite often. I walk probably 3 to 4 blocks to get to the buses, which I can do, but not everybody can walk that far. I am concerned about the 32 as I do ride that. I get on at San Antonio and Middlefield and take it to the light rail at Middlefield. I will admit the bus is not filled, but many of these people, I feel, are probably going for housekeeping, nannies. There's a group of them that go to Hope Services, that work there at Whisman and Middlefield. Maybe the answer is to run a bus like the 32, a couple in the morning and some later in the afternoon when they would be leaving. Run it clear down because I know there's people that ride the bus, that go to school along Middlefield, along there. I have ridden it clear so I can get the 60. There's a lot of them that go to Santa Clara High School. I don't know if you ran it like that, if it would be possible. The people that ride the 35, you talk about walking further to get—many of the people that I see, that ride the bus, could not walk further. Many of them have their carts because they're doing the grocery shopping and stuff. As long as you keep the 35 that gets to the San Antonio Transit Center for them to shop and on down Middlefield, those that go along Middlefield, along Colorado, if we can keep them so that they can do their traveling, it would be good. I guess what I'm fighting for is in particular the 32 and then the 35, that people have access to it. It doesn't have to be every 15 minutes, but 30-45 minutes. Please think about the 32. These are people that can't come here or wouldn't be able to come and talk to you. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Bonnie Packer to be followed by Penny Ellson. TRANSCRIPT Page 9 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Bonnie Packer: Good evening, Mayor Scharff and City Council Members. My name is Bonnie Packer; I'm president of the League of Women Voters of Palo Alto. The League of Women Voters supports a transportation system that offers viable alternatives to single occupancy vehicle use, that is multimodal, efficient, convenient, reliable, cost-effective, accessible to people with disabilities and other issues regarding mobility, equitable and safe. Accordingly, the League is pleased that VTA has made an effort, through the proposed Next Network Initiative, to attempt to achieve these goals for many areas of Santa Clara County. However, the League is deeply concerned that by proposing to drastically cut existing bus routes in Palo Alto, the Next Network Initiative falls far short of these goals. The League concurs with the concerns that were raised in letters to the VTA from the Palo Alto City Manager, the Palo Alto Council of PTAs, the Gunn High School PTSA, Stevenson House and Palo Alto Housing, which are attached to the Staff Report on this Study Session. These concerns were repeated at VTA's community meeting last week on January 19th. The League believes that a well-connected transit system that offers effective and efficient options for the transportation needs of all residents and employees is essential to reduce traffic congestion and to improve our environment. Such a system must provide coverage, frequency, flexibility and must be effectively coordinated with other public and private transit services, and have an equitable fare structure. While we acknowledge there can be difficult tradeoffs between routes that reduce congestion and improve revenues with routes that provide basic, essential service for vulnerable groups, we would hope that VTA would maintain a few critical bus lines we now have for those groups while increasing service to our employment centers. However, in the event VTA turns a deaf ear to our citizens' concerns and proceeds with these proposed cuts, we urge the City of Palo Alto to begin considering options now to enhance and improve our local transit services to provide coverage, frequency and convenience for all and which would be integrated with county and regional systems. Most importantly, the City must ensure there is no gap in transit services in Palo Alto while any changes are being planned. Thank you for considering our comments. Mayor Scharff: Penny Ellson to be followed by Phyllis Cassel. Penny Ellson: Good evening. I'm Penny Ellson, representing Gunn PTSA tonight, to ask VTA to collaborate with City Staff and community stakeholders in a working meeting to identify how changes to the 88 bus service might improve ridership and service for Gunn students and south Palo Alto. VTA's Next Network project analyzed broad-based regional needs, but locally VTA has only studied existing bus ridership to understand local needs. Potential riders who are not using the bus today are not included in VTA's analysis as far as we know. We've been gathering information that TRANSCRIPT Page 10 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 may help VTA understand Palo Alto's needs better. Last week, Gunn PTSA circulated a student survey to learn how the existing 88 and proposed 288 might serve student needs better. Early responses reveal new information that could help us create route and schedule improvements to support stronger ridership. It's urgent that we do so. The 88 eliminates about 100 trips per day from the morning bell time surge of school commuters who mix with commuter congestion heading to local jobs. Our new survey tells us that the proposed 288 will negatively impact student ridership, because it's schedule will not serve students' afterschool academic and extracurricular commute needs. The PTA's concerned that the proposed 288 will erode student ridership and lead VTA to completely cut transit to Gunn. Let's use this new data on student needs to identify a better plan. This morning the School District provided a new pin map with approximate locations of Gunn students' homes. Let's use this information to identify routes that might be more convenient for potential users, not just the kids who use the bus today. VTA 88 is not only a school bus. We've been gathering information about facilities on the bus route whose residents and clients might make better use of a bus if it were scheduled and promoted more effectively as services are promoted at Gunn high School. We could do this elsewhere. I just lost my place; sorry. These facilities include hundreds of affordable and senior apartments and services for the disabled at Abilities United, Cubberley, the VA Hospital, where the 88 bus has not really been marketed. VTA may not know that the City is investing in improvements to approach streets to Gunn and other nearby schools to improve safety for walking and biking students and to increase use of alternative transportation including transit. It's ironic that bus cuts are proposed just when the Complete Streets hardscape improvements are slated to be constructed on the bus route. VTA enjoys strong sales tax revenues generated in Palo Alto. The City has relieved VTA of coverage responsibility by providing shuttles to complement VTA routes without impacting ridership. Loss of the 88 would pose a significant problem for south Palo Alto to transit-dependent residents and high school students who rely on the bus every day. Let's work together to identify a bus route and schedule—almost there—that serves VTA's regional plan and Palo Alto's needs. Please schedule a working meeting with Staff and stakeholders. We value this service, and we ask VTA to work with us as we did in 2009. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Phyllis Cassel to be followed by Herb Borock. Phyllis Cassel: I'm Phyllis Cassel speaking for me tonight. I've been reading this report. I want to bring up two areas that I'm concerned with this evening. One is the coverage for paratransit and the cost of it. If they reduce the number of vehicles moving around town and routes in town, then the coverage for paratransit is reduced. Unless they confirm that they're TRANSCRIPT Page 11 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 really going to pick people up at the same fare rates that they do now, people may be picked up, but the rate goes from $4 to $16. That's one way, not both ways. If you need a roundtrip—most of go someplace, we return— you're talking about $32. If your income is low or very low, that's very limited coverage that you can afford and maybe not at all. One, the cost is too high for people who are low and very low incomes, unless you have something I don't know about that reduces that rate for those people. Two, you're apt to bump a lot of people into a more expensive service. Even if they come, as I can read the material, from a low-rate area and go into a high-rate area, they end up having to pay a higher rate is my understanding. If you need to get from a low-rate area to the high-rate area, your fees go up. The other concern I have is that we have an integrated system, that we're working with VTA, with our shuttle, with the Marguerite, so that all these services work together and are timed well and that the publication of that material and those runs are available together so that we are able to figure out, if you have to make a transfer, how you would make a transfer to the Marguerite from the public transit, etc. A mile and a half can be a very long way when you're an older person. Mayor Scharff: Herb Borock is our last speaker. Herb Borock: Good evening, Mayor Scharff, Vice Mayor Kniss, and new and continuing Council Members. VTA frames the issues as making a choice between coverage and ridership. I believe with the information provided we can do both of them. The VTA Staff Report is Attachment G to your Staff Report at Packet Pages 17-26. At Packet Page 19, in boldface type it says "this reallocation of coverage-oriented service to ridership-oriented service is how the plan can offer significant benefits while not increasing the total cost of service." It doesn't say anything about revenue or define cost of service. However, on Packet Page 26 which is the last Page of the VTA Staff Report, under the first paragraph on the Budget, it says that the Draft Service Plan is anticipated to be cost neutral, i.e., no increase in annual operating expenses directly related to the number of service hours. In the first sentence, it says that the plan was based on guidance from the VTA Board to have the same number of annual services that we currently have. If the expenses are the same, but we're increasing the ridership, that means there's more money coming in from the bus service in the Draft Plan. It would seem that that could be used to help restore the service and coverage that would be planned to be cut. Maybe there might have to be joint cost- sharing between the County and local government, but there clearly is additional money coming in that's not going towards bus expenses. In the second paragraph on the Budget, it gives the amount of money for light rail extension, but it doesn't compare the fare box recovery for the new light rail service compared to the existing fare box recovery for light rail service. TRANSCRIPT Page 12 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Presumably, this is services being extended on light rail to increase ridership and probably have a higher fare box recovery. If there's more money coming in from the bus service with the same bus expenses and they don't tell you about it in the Staff Report, maybe they plan to use it for light rail. It seems to me it makes more sense to take that money and restore the coverage on the routes that are proposed to be reduced or eliminated. Since I don't know what the total amount of money is or how much that restoration would cost, it might require a contribution from local agencies as well as VTA, but there clearly is some extra money coming in. It will continue to increase as ridership increases on those new routes. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. We have one late addition, Dan Logan. Dan Logan: Good evening. My name is Dan Logan. For the past 14 years, I have relied on the paratransit we knew as Outreach until a few weeks ago. I have relied on paratransit while I was working, before I retired. It is essential to me both in maintaining my medical appointments, being able to use the facilities of YMCA and Abilities United to maintain my strength and my ability to use my upper body as well as my legs as they are partially paralyzed. I also rely on paratransit to maintain programs over at Stanford and other sources of being a knowledgeable and well-informed individual. I understand that, even though the reduction in bus service to which the paratransit is tied, they indicate that they will let existing passengers, paratransit users, that they will be able to continue that service. I've got to believe that there must be some limitations to that, and I'd like to see how they expect to do that and what limitations there would be. Of course, that's fine for those of us who would be in that existing category. I really wonder about the equitability of having two classes of people, those who are current users and those in the future who will have the same needs that I've had. Thank you for making it possible for us to use this vital service. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Now, we return to Council. Before we return to Council, I just wanted to ask VTA staff if they wanted to respond to any comments that the public may have made. Mr. Burger: I really appreciate all the comments. This is exactly the kind of feedback that we're looking for. Much of what I heard is very touching. I myself am transit dependent; I'm unable to drive a car, so I rely on transit to get around. I took my first transit ride in 1997 to get to high school. I'm both customer and designer of the service here. I'm just very glad to hear that. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. TRANSCRIPT Page 13 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Jay Tyree: If I could just add. We also look forward to working with Penny Ellson. I do want to thank her again. She's been very helpful providing information for us in the student survey. We're looking forward to seeing the results from that. Mayor Scharff: Thanks. Vice Mayor Kniss. Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you for being here. A reminder also that your final comments are going to be taken by February 20th. Is that correct? Mr. Burger: Correct. Vice Mayor Kniss: A couple of things. One of the last speakers was Herb Borock, who spoke about cost and about any amount that may be set aside. Can you address his questions? Mr. Burger: Certainly. The currency that we operate in when we design our service plans is service hours. We're using the same service hours in our current plan as we are in this Draft Plan, absent any additions that come from Measure B. I, like Herb, very much hope that this additional ridership brings in additional fare revenue that we can reinvest into service. We just haven't counted our chickens before they've hatched in terms of planning ahead on how that revenue can be used. Vice Mayor Kniss: In the meantime, you could potentially have cut the service, correct? Mr. Burger: The plan that we're proposing is to keep the same number of service hours system-wide. It would in our proposal change the number of service hours allocated to many of the routes in our system. Vice Mayor Kniss: What you're hearing, in particular from the Gunn community, is their concern about you have enough buses at the heavy hours but not at those lighter hours, especially after—whatever it was—4:00 in the afternoon. Could you comment on that? I know that's been a big concern to that community. They've really been dependent on the bus. Mr. Burger: I'd say that this is the ridership coverage tradeoff in action. I don't mean to sound heartless about that. VTA lacks sufficient resources to do all the good that we would like to be able to do countywide in providing transportation and mobility. When we're in this position, we have to make difficult choices. While I know it would be great to provide access to those students—I recall walking a long way after my special student bus no longer operated in the evenings—we would use that funding to carry many more people on other routes. Is it more important to carry a Gunn student at TRANSCRIPT Page 14 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 5:00 or use that same cost to carry three, four, five other people in other parts of the county? It's a difficult tradeoff. This is where we've landed. If we're in error here, if the community wants to see a different balance, we're happy to take that feedback and reevaluate it for the development of the final plan. Vice Mayor Kniss: I don't think we're bad at sharing. I can't remember a time when VTA has come to us at this end of the county and said, "We really need to increase your bus service." Do you recall that? I don't know how long you've been with VTA. My recollection is, as far back as I can recall, the tendency has been to cut especially at either end of the county and on the edges. Do you want to talk about the community buses for a minute? By the way, a community bus is not a small bus. What we're talking about is the same bus with a different fare. Correct? Mr. Burger: Right. One of VTA's many classes of service is a community bus. These are buses that are typically operated at 60-minute frequency on weekdays only. These buses carry a lower fare of $1.25 compared to VTA's $2 base fare. That was arranged at a time when VTA placed trainee operators on community bus routes; therefore, having a lower pay rate, the lower fare was justified. VTA no longer places those operators on those routes, so the fares taken in on them are lower than other routes while having the same cost per hour to operate. That's the reason why VTA is proposing to no longer carry that fare. Vice Mayor Kniss: One last question, and it's one that I probably should direct to Josh. We have a shuttle of our own, and Stanford has their own shuttle, which is the Marguerite. Do you have any idea what our cost per mile is to operate the shuttle that we operate on a private basis, on a daily basis? Joshuah Mello, Chief Transportation Official: Joshuah Mello, Chief Transportation Official with the City of Palo Alto. Our shuttle service roughly costs about $300,000 per route per year. We run it about half hour headways throughout the day. It would all depend on the length of the route and how many vehicles were assigned to the route. Generally, we are using about a $300,000 per year per route number, when we're doing our shuttle planning. Vice Mayor Kniss: Do we have that per mile or not? Mr. Mello: No, it's per vehicle. It depends on how long the route is and how many vehicles it takes to serve that route at a 30-minute headway. Our two routes would be different in that aspect. TRANSCRIPT Page 15 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Vice Mayor Kniss: I appreciate that. Let me just make the rest of the comment now. My comment is I'm not sure that we're doing the job we should be doing of integration between the shuttle and Marguerite and between VTA. I don't know. Have you spent time talking to our shuttle people? Do you think this is well integrated? Mr. Burger: The present arrangement between VTA services and City shuttle service is to not be duplicative, serving different markets to make sure we maximize the places that are served. As we get closer to developing the final plan, we'll meet with Josh and Rachica [phonetic] and those on your Staff who develop the City service to make sure that they're integrated as well as we can. Do you have anything to add? Vice Mayor Kniss: I don't know but, Josh, maybe you can find out. I'm going to guess that operating our shuttle is cheaper than VTA's whatever per mile it would be. Mr. Burger: Typically contracted services have a lower cost than VTA services, which employ union labor. Vice Mayor Kniss: Many years ago, after the shuttle started, we had hoped that VTA might be willing to share in that cost. That's never happened. Jay Tyree, VTA: I think that's a great point, and it's very timely. Like Adam was saying, in Measure B there's the Core Connectivity Study that we're proposing along the same timeline here, where we are looking at exactly those kind of arrangements, where maybe VTA funnels some money to a local operator. For example, if Palo Alto wants to create a new route to fill a gap that a 40-foot VTA bus maybe can't serve, maybe it's a better fit for a local shuttle operator if we can cost-share in that. That's why we are looking at the Core Connectivity money to help in that kind of strategy. Mr. Mello: If I could just add. We have been working fairly closely with VTA on our ongoing Shuttle Study, which we kicked off last year. We actually put our study on hold, awaiting the outcome of the Next Network Initiative. We'll be coming to you in March, most likely, with a plan on enhancing our shuttle service and better integrating it with what VTA has proposed under the Next Network, assuming that stays static. Vice Mayor Kniss: Thanks. I think that's probably the most important thing we can do, try to integrate this in such a way that it's not duplicative and also it's the most reasonable cost for our residents. Given that, I still wish that we could not make those cuts on the 88 in particular. Thanks. Mayor Scharff: Council Member DuBois. TRANSCRIPT Page 16 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Council Member DuBois: First of all, thanks for coming tonight. That was a really good presentation. I appreciated it. I do want to say I was kind of shocked about seeing your fare recovery rate compared to other agencies. I really support the idea of becoming more profitable and understand where you're coming from in terms of focusing on more profitable routes. I didn't understand the comment about BART. I think a lot of us actually support BART. There's been a lot of discussion about dealing with congestion in north county and wanting VTA to focus on some of those issues as well, but I don't think there's anti-BART sentiment up here. Mr. Burger: Apologies on that. I got a few heckles on Thursday when I showed those slides, so I wanted to head those off. Council Member DuBois: I did have a couple of questions. I saw the proposal for one of the new routes to run down Charleston instead of past some of the other schools, like JLS Middle School. I was wondering why that switch. There are several schools on Meadow. Mr. Tyree: I believe you're talking about the proposal for the 288, turning the school trips of the 88L and 88M into 288A and 288B. Our current proposal would, like you mention, provide service on Charleston, Fabian and Louis, and then the other part would be Loma Verde and Waverley and Middlefield. I think this is an example where we want to work with Penny Ellson and the PTA and Gunn High School and work out what's exactly right for the students. This is based on the best data that we have. If there's better data out there or if there's a better routing, we would want to look into that. You're right. The Meadow portion is the portion that's the lowest ridership for us. That's the portion that we would propose to discontinue service on. Council Member DuBois: If you did stop—there's a school in front of there on Charleston called Hoover that actually connects in the back. If there was a stop there, I guess kids could walk to JLS and Fairmeadow. Also, kind of curious about the focus on job centers. Did you guys give consideration to routes that would connect to the Mountain View Transit Center? It was hard to tell. Does the 21 do that? Mr. Tyree: The 21 would be a connection directly to the Mountain View Transit Center via California and the San Antonio shopping center first. Also, I just wanted to do a quick mention. This Study, we did not look at our express route network. All of the express routes at the Stanford Research Park, for example, would stay the same, and they exist. We'll do a separate Study for that later, after BART opens. TRANSCRIPT Page 17 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Council Member DuBois: You hit my next question. I saw they weren't changing. I was curious how those routes are going. Are they highly used, not highly used? Mr. Tyree: Most of the Stanford Research Park ones do very well. It's typically some of the lower productivity express routes and ones that go along some of our expressways. Generally the Stanford Research Park ones do well, though. Council Member DuBois: It'd be great to see some increased coverage there if possible. I think you've heard from the community. The school runs to Gunn are a big concern. If it was possible to add even one later run so that kids that were doing extracurricular maybe have one more shot at—they could hang out at the library or something and catch one bus back. The other big issue is the paratransit, which you're hearing about as well from the community. When you say you're going to maintain with existing customers, do you mean individuals or do you mean buildings like senior centers? Mr. Tyree: That refers to where people board today. Those 99 percent of the boardings would maintain service. It's kind of location based, where people are using the service today; we'd maintain service at that spot. Council Member DuBois: It's not tied to an individual who happened to be using that spot. If it's like a senior housing facility, you would continue? Mr. Tyree: No, it's not. It's tied to locations. Council Member DuBois: I was really glad to hear about your Core Connectivity program with on-demand. I'd really like to hear more about that; I'm very supportive of that. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: Thanks very much for this presentation. A lot of it is overlap with what I heard at the Policy Advisory Committee meeting just several days ago. The first thing I was going to mention was the last thing that Council Member DuBois mentioned, which is I'm also really supportive of things like the Core Connectivity Study. You guys have heard me at the Policy Advisory Committee, where Vice Mayor Kniss is alternate, whenever I'm there talking about the importance of being thoughtful and being innovative in how we get people mobility. That's really what public transit is about. It's about making sure people get where they need to go when they need to get there. The model of focusing on coverage versus ridership and fare box recovery, I'm actually not sure are the only essential core TRANSCRIPT Page 18 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 questions. For me, it's a question of can people get where they need to go, do they have mobility, and are we reducing traffic, congestion management. For me, those are the two primary drivers. You look at fare box recovery for Palo Alto shuttle; it's zero because it's free. Look at fare box recovery for the Marguerite, which I think we should look to as Josh and others in our Planning Department are looking to improve our Palo Alto City shuttle. We can look to the Marguerite as a very effective, successful, essentially local bus program, local shuttle program. It's fare box recovery is zero because it's free. Again, I'm not sure that fare box recovery is the most important metric. Of course, you do need to get the money somewhere. I understand. The goals with the Marguerite and the Palo Alto shuttle are mobility and congestion management. Those remain my primary concerns and interests for VTA as well. As VTA continues to explore things like the Core Connectivity Study and like the flex program that you've launched in north San Jose, which is another example of good innovation and good experimentation, if the funding model needs to change so that you can continue moving in a direction of supporting mobility, especially for people who are on fixed incomes or transit-dependent and improving congestion management, if you need to change the funding model, let us know how we can continue to help. We were obviously very supportive of the recent ballot measure. If there is other things we need to do, let us know. You talked about how you have these inherent tradeoffs and how you can't do one more and do the other more. The caveat to that is you can't do one more and the other more at the current funding. This goes both ways. Let us know and give us feedback how we can support you as you continue to focus on things like that Core Connectivity Study. I will say it'll be good to hear that as that comes back, and that along with this will inform our decisions on our local City shuttle and how we improve that, rebrand that, etc. I want to reiterate for members of the public and for my colleagues the date that was mentioned by you and reiterated by Vice Mayor Kniss. February 20th is the last date. Do you need comments on the 20th or before the 20th. Mr. Burger: We'll accept comments on the 20th. Council Member Wolbach: Get them in soon. As you guys mentioned at the Policy Advisory Committee meeting, I just want to implore everybody to get your comments in. I do appreciate that you are taking those comments. I trust that you are taking them very seriously. I'll also add my voice to those pointing out that potential riders have not really been studied. I hope that changes in the future. When we're looking at the numbers of increased access, increased ridership, decreased access, etc., the numbers that we're looking at right now are among current ridership. The demand for mobility and the demand for congestion management are much, much higher than the current pool of VTA riders. I know you guys acknowledge that, so I TRANSCRIPT Page 19 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 don't think you're trying to hide anything. I just want to again make sure that everybody understands that that's what we're looking at here. Hopefully we can continue to bring in additional data and additional surveys to make sure that we're looking at the real potential that's out there. The proposed 288—just looking at the (inaudible) model for Palo Alto, I am also really concerned about reduced student mobility options, particularly for the many Gunn High School students who do remain on campus for athletics, theater or music, other extracurriculars. That is centrally important especially for the Gunn High School culture and student body. I'm also very concerned about reduced access for VA patients. I'm very concerned about the likely or possible reduction in service for paratransit, so I do appreciate hearing what you told us tonight about the interest of the VTA Board and leadership in finding some kind of work-around to avoid reducing paratransit service. I hope concordant with that is not increasing the fares for any current users of paratransit, especially a four-fold increase. I think a 400- percent increase is pretty tough, especially for people who might be on a fixed income. I would also implore you to work with those other organizations and facilities along current or near current routes who contacted you, like Palo Alto Housing, Stevenson House, etc. You've gotten their letters, and I hope that you'll have a two-way conversation with them because their input is important. We've had some comments suggesting additional stops on El Camino Real for the 522, especially if the 22 is swapping frequency with the 522. A couple more stops on El Camino Real might be very useful. You've received letters identifying a couple of potential locations including from Robert Neff. I would suggest looking at his communications regarding that. When it comes to, again, coordination with the Palo Alto shuttle, with the Marguerite, etc., and in neighboring Mountain View with their community shuttles funded by their TMA just for future—it's not the primary focus of tonight, but on this question of Core Connectivity and how we collaborate—this is also important for our side and our Staff and for us to work with you—making sure that when somebody is looking at a schedule or they're looking at a map of local mobility options, that marguerite routes and Palo Alto shuttle routes and VTA routes and Mountain View community shuttle routes will all be on the same map. When they're looking at a local schedule, all of those options will be listed together, whether they're getting it on our website or on your website. I think that's very important so people can comprehend the full options. I would also say, of course, your express routes as well need to be on there too. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: Thank you. As others have said, thank you for coming and for the presentation and for the community workshops. I'm going to be briefer than others probably, because I think a lot has been said TRANSCRIPT Page 20 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 and I think the public has done a really good job of expressing some of the issues that represent the broader community's concerns, paratransit certainly and school access. Paratransit because we're an aging population, not just in Palo Alto or Santa Clara County but the area as a whole. We're an aging population so paratransit gets to be a more and more critical component. I'll just go ahead and say this. I guess a frustration that I— maybe I'll be less diplomatic than some others will say. It's really frustrating to have been supportive of Measure B, which is a funding mechanism, and then to these cuts come across to reduce service to our Palo Alto residents. For us to be able to represent to our voting population that we support a VTA measure and then VTA comes along with cuts of service to our residents is frustrating, it's embarrassing and it makes—I'll just say for myself—me feel like I've been gamed a little bit. That's putting it bluntly, but it's not pleasant. I think surely you can understand that. I'm glad that you'll be paying attention to Penny Ellson and the PTSA input. I have a question for Josh Mello. How the timing correlates between the Palo Alto Shuttle Study and the VTA input deadline, can you comment about how those two dates correlate? It seems like our Study is coming post their input deadline. Mr. Mello: We're estimating that we'll be able to bring you a Study Session or an Action Item in March related to the Shuttle Study. I think our assumption now, moving forward, is that we need to be able to react to fill the service gaps that are in the Draft Plan that was released by VTA. We will certainly have the flexibility built into the Shuttle Study to adapt to any changes that are made by VTA before the final plan is adopted by the Board. I don't think we can wait until the Board makes their decision, because we need to be ready to fill in those service gaps as soon as service changes are implemented by VTA. Council Member Holman: I wouldn't want us to wait until those recommendations are made. It sounds like there's not necessarily a good transition and coordination. It sounds like we're maybe thinking of being a little bit more reactive to depending on what they cut we'll fill in. I'm not sure that's a position we want to take. Mr. Mello: I don't think that's our first position, but I do think we need to be ready to fill in service gaps that may come out of the ultimate plan. I certainly don't think that should be our first position. Council Member Holman: Maybe Vice Mayor Kniss would have a better handle on this as well as the VTA staff. If there are service cuts to Palo Alto and our shuttle can run the routes more effectively, more efficiently as was stated previously in response to somebody else's question, does VTA have a TRANSCRIPT Page 21 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 mechanism by which funds could just be transferred to Palo Alto to fill in those gaps and fund our shuttle? Mr. Tyree: That would exactly fall under the purview of the Core Connectivity Study. There is funding, like I said, delineated in Measure B for exactly those kind of services. That's a discussion that we would have as it goes through the Policy Advisory Committees and the Technical Advisory Committees. Council Member Holman: There is money in Measure B that could apply to that. I'm looking at this maybe being a bit separate from that because it relates to cuts. I think the money in Measure B is mostly enhancements and improvements, so I'm looking at this as a different, potential pot of money. That's my question back to you then. Mr. Tyree: There is no program outside of Measure B to do what you described. Council Member Holman: Perhaps we ought to lobby for that. Also in the connectivities, I don't see reference to SamTrans. As we talk a great deal about how it's a region, it's not just county-by-county, it's not just city-by- city, I see no connectivity comments to SamTrans. Can you all respond to how the VTA revised plan, as you propose it now, makes access and best use of connectivity to SamTrans? Mr. Burger: One of the things that's very difficult for VTA to justify is operating service in a county that is not providing its sales tax to operate that service. We connect to SamTrans at the Palo Alto Transit Center, but we do not go into Menlo Park as we once did. We stay within our County border at this end of the County. Council Member Holman: I know you stay within the County, but that doesn't mean you can't connect with or coordinate with SamTrans schedules. Mr. Burger: I think we do to the extent possible. Do you know more Jay? Mr. Tyree: I think that's one of the big reasons why we're putting more frequency in the 522. We've heard from riders making longer trips, especially across the County border. The rapid services are more valuable for that kind of thing. That's one of the reasons why we're putting more service on the 522, which make connections with SamTrans. One of the things also that we've learned is it's very difficult to coordinate schedules with limited frequencies, like for example we do at a Caltrain. Whenever Caltrain changes their schedule, we have to react and try to best change our TRANSCRIPT Page 22 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 schedule, which then may break something at the other end of the route. I think the better answer is more frequency. Coming every 12 minutes, it's not that big of a deal if you miss one connection. The next bus is not far behind. That's the idea. I'd prefer to put the money into frequency rather than trying to coordinate all the schedules. Council Member Holman: I think other colleagues have made very good comments as well as the public. One other comment. While it's understandable that any entity wants to operate as a business and not operate at a loss, something like VTA just as a city also provides services. Not all services can be operated at a profit or even break even. I would ask that VTA take a look at what services are really necessary to provide good service and balance that with the profitability of VTA. I think that's it for me right now. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Kou. Council Member Kou: I just want to say thank you very much, again, for the presentation. Also, I want to extend a thank you to Penny Ellson for all the work that she's doing with the schools and making sure the kids have their rides. Also to Arthur Keller as well for all that he's done. All my Council colleagues actually have expressed everything that I wanted to say, so I'm not going to say all of it. However, I do want to say that we in Palo Alto are also taxpayers. I don't actually think that cutting back services or working to fill the gaps is something that we should be doing. You should be putting every effort in terms of ensuring that we retain as much services, especially for our vulnerable population. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Fine. Council Member Fine: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you very much for coming tonight and presenting all this information to us. I think it's pretty clear. You've heard from Council and from the public that folks are concerned about our school and transit-dependent communities, particularly in south Palo Alto. A few things I want to echo. As Council Member Wolbach brought up, if you are focusing more on frequent service routes, it may be helpful for the 522 to make a few more stops in Palo Alto. One of our public comment emails mentions a few locations, which would be helpful to the system. In terms of the Core Connectivity program, I think you've got a lot of support here. There may be an opportunity to test or bridge the gap as VTA makes changes here in Palo Alto, particularly along the 35, 32 or 88. I think we would probably be interested in being a pilot case for that. If you are going to draw down service in those areas, is there a way for the Core Connectivity program to make transfers to our shuttle program where we TRANSCRIPT Page 23 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 can cover them for some interim and see if that helps our City going forward? A few separate questions. In terms of paratransit coverage, do you know the shift in number of folks who are moving from the $4 shed to the $16 shed roughly, how many residences? Mr. Burger: I do not know offhand. I believe that—it's 222 actually that would make the shift in the proposed Draft Plan if VTA does not update its service plan. The other relevant number is that 95 current clients would fall outside the service area if VTA keeps the current plan. Council Member Fine: Ninety-five folks would move from $4 a ride to $16. Mr. Burger: Two hundred twenty-two would make the price jump; 95 would be without service entirely. Council Member Fine: I hope everyone heard that. That's pretty significant. I think it would be helpful for us to see those maps actually and see what the current area is and then what the future would be under these different ridership plans. My guess is they disproportionately affect certain areas in south Palo Alto. The last question is about the ridership of midday riders on the 88. I used to take the 88 from Gunn High back to College Terrace. As many of my colleagues mentioned, it was for afterschool curricular activities; although, I wasn't in any sports or music things. I was just hanging out with friends. It was nice to take the bus at 4:00 or 4:30 to get back home. I'm wondering if you have any data on the midday riders of the 88. My guess is it might be some of our low-income seniors, people using the VA Hospital, some midday workers who that might affect, kind of those troughs in the ridership. Mr. Tyree: It's a good question. I don't think we have data on the exact demographics of those riders. We know how many of them there are. We just don't know too much about them, and we could probably speculate like you just did. That's probably pretty accurate. Again, those are the trips that tend to be pretty low ridership for us. That's why the proposal. Council Member Fine: I guess just a comment there. The new 288A and B are more folks on the school bell schedules. That's nice in a way, but we're missing those midday riders. We're also not providing opportunities for students to get to school if it's early or a little bit later or come home early or later. Those are issues of concern to our community. I think that's about it for my comments. Thank you very much. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Filseth. TRANSCRIPT Page 24 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Council Member Filseth: Thanks. I just want to throw one more coin in the fountain. All our mission as a group, us, you, everybody in the County, is to provide the best possible bus and shuttle service in and to the County. I realize there's a lot of constraints and only so many sides on this polygon. If you look at the aggregate, we've got so much countywide sales tax and we've got a variety of modes between shuttles and buses and operators and geographies. They have different costs and capacities and so forth. Within all those constraints in that polygon, I would hope we could find a way to globally optimize and fund and keep full service on 88. Thanks. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Tanaka. Council Member Tanaka: I think you've heard a lot of feedback already. There are a lot of folks that are concerned about the coverage here in Palo Alto. I wanted to ask you for the amount of tax revenue that you guys get from Palo Alto and the amount that you're spending in Palo Alto. How is that percentage different in terms of are you guys collecting more from Palo Alto than you're providing as a percentage of your expenses? Mr. Tyree: We haven't done that analysis. I could do that and get back to you. Council Member Tanaka: I think that would be really good to know. If we're, let's say, funding twice the amount that we're getting back into Palo Alto, that doesn't seem quite right. More specifically, I know that you have a lot of constituents trying to pull you in many different directions and you're trying to make a global optimization for the County. I'm trying to understand the political process. How do you actually finally decide where you're going to keep, where you're going to cut, where you're going to add? Do you do it based on fairness in terms of where you get the money or do you do it based on who yells the loudest? What's the process for figuring out—maybe the City Manager can answer this. I think the Vice Mayor said it very well. It seems like Palo Alto gets cut and cut and cut. Yet, I know that we provide quite a bit of revenue for VTA. It doesn't seem to quite balance. I want to understand how does this happen. How can you guys collect more money from Palo Alto and yet provide less service? Maybe the City Manager could tell us how we fix that problem. It doesn't seem quite right. James Keene, City Manager: We just get them to spend more money in Palo Alto. Actually, I can give you some general numbers; I can't speak exactly to the VTA piece of it. When we just look at sales tax in general on a countywide basis, we have about 3 1/2 percent of the County population, and we generate about 7 percent of the sales tax. There's a 2:1 ratio as far as what our proportion of population is to what we contribute generally in TRANSCRIPT Page 25 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 sales tax. That's not the same as what happens just with VTA and how much they're spending. Council Member Tanaka: Do you know what percentage of your budget you're spending in Palo Alto? Mr. Tyree: I don't know off the top of my head. We could find out and get back to you on that as well. Council Member Tanaka: Is it less than seven percent? Mr. Tyree: I don't know. Council Member Tanaka: If it is, you guys should spend more here. I guess more—it's one thing for us to complain about it, which we've all done. It's another thing for us to do something about it. I don't know if the City Manager can answer. It seems like this has happened a lot. The Vice Mayor has said it before. I've seen it happen quite a bit. How do we change this? We could sit here and complain about it more, and that's not going to help. How do we change this? How do we get our fair share, so to speak? Mr. Keene: I don't have the answer to that, Council Member. I think it's a more complicated conversation than that as far as how we get the assessment of what we're paying and what we're receiving. Certainly, as we've talked about it as it relates to the Measure B transportation dollars of late, of course we've clearly talked about the ability to fund the backfilling of some of our own services if VTA has to make cuts or make readjustments due to their system-wide goals. I think that's an ongoing conversation we're going to have to have. Council Member Tanaka: For us, we have to understand, not just give you feedback that you listen to sometimes and don't listen to. We need to know how to actually affect this, how to actually affect the process. You look at the map and the routes in Palo Alto get chopped away and get chopped away and get chopped away. We are a relatively small amount of population even though we fund a lot of it. How do we stop that from happening because it keeps on happening? We have a lot of people out here who are deeply impact by it. It can't keep going like this. It has to stop. I would like to know. I think the other thing is on Council we only have so much time to spend on issues like this. One of the recommendations would be to utilize our Planning and Transportation Commission to dive into this deep and try to see if there's a more optimal way of doing it. At the highest level, we have to understand politically how to affect this more impactfully other than coming before us, you guys listening kind of, and then doing whatever you feel like it. I don't know the answer, but I think that's important for us TRANSCRIPT Page 26 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 to figure out. Otherwise, we'll be here again next year thinking, "We got another one chopped off." That's not going to be good. Mayor Scharff: On that note, first of all I'd like to thank you guys for coming. We really do appreciate it, and we appreciate the community outreach you've done in the community. I think that was really helpful, the meeting you had the other night and your willingness to take all the comments. I wanted to say we really do appreciate it. Don't take my next comment too badly. I really picked it up from you. What I took out of this was that—I'd had this sense frankly—VTA is a failed transit system. You have the lowest fare box recovery. You have the lowest ridership. Those are really the two metrics. It's not just fare box recovery; it's ridership. Fare box recovery indicates how much ridership you have. When you looked at all those cities, it was really clear how poorly VTA was doing. Your comments regarding costs are going up, labor costs primarily, which is leading to what I would consider to be the death spiral of an agency. What you have is labor costs and all your costs go up, and so you cut service because you have a limited amount of money. The more service you cut, the less ridership you have, which means the next time costs go up you have to cut service again. You have to do something. The fact that you're doing this is a really good thing. What I hear you coming to us and saying is "We have a problem here. We have the lowest ridership. Our system's not working. We need to increase ridership." I actually agree with what you guys are doing. I agree that the 85 percent/15 percent is the right way to go. I think that the overall picture is absolutely correct. I'm glad you're moving in that direction. The devil, as it always is, is in the details. I think you're hearing from us on our school routes. I think one of the Council Members said maybe a later pickup for the Gunn students. I think if you aggregate some of that ridership and it all comes together instead of over three times, you then have one at 5:00, you may actually have the ridership to justify that. I would ask that you definitely work closely with our Transportation Staff and our community members who know this the best to see how we aggregate that ridership where we still have it, especially with kids and that kind of stuff, where they have a strong need. I also wanted to make a push for the Research Park. I know we have the express stuff. I just wanted to ask Josh. Wasn't there some discussion about having the— was it the 522—go into the Research Park? Were we talking about that as something that would actually pick up a bunch of ridership and reduce congestion? Mr. Mello: One of the things we did discuss with VTA staff at our meeting a couple of weeks back was whether there was an opportunity to divert either the 22 or the 522 into the Research Park on its way to the Transit Center to TRANSCRIPT Page 27 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 maybe fill in the service gap that's left from the discontinuation of the 89 and the cutback on the 88. Mayor Scharff: I would ask that you guys really do look at that. The Research Park is obviously a huge job center. It would be great if we could reduce congestion and frankly get your ridership up at the same time. I think that's a win-win for everybody. To me there are a lot of technical questions. If you do that, will you get the ridership? I would hope you would. It is pretty clear we spend 7 percent of the sales tax. I would be shocked if we get even three percent of the money spent up here. I do think there is some fairness issues there, especially if there are opportunities to reduce congestion. You just have to drive down Oregon Expressway and Page Mill Road out from the Research Park to get a fairly good sense that there's a lot of congestion relief that could occur on that road. I would definitely encourage that. Obviously the Core Connectivity things that Council Members have talked about, the Core Connectivity money are all really important. I also would be a strong advocate for integration with other transportation. I see you're integrating with BART. You had a slide on that, how important it is. Obviously with our Marguerite shuttle, our other shuttles, we are here at the end with SamTrans at our Transit Center as much as possible. Also, I don't know where those buses come or where they stop, but I do see all the Dumbarton express buses. I know that a lot of people who live in the East Bay come work in the area here. The more we can integrate and make that convenient for people would be really helpful. What I'm looking for is a convenient, easy-to-use transportation system. The headway stuff is really important, so I'm glad you're moving in that direction. That increases ridership, which is a win-win, and reduces congestion for everyone while protecting the most vulnerable on the paratransit, which you've talked about. With that, I wanted to thank you very much. I did have one question on the light rail. You briefly mentioned that you were looking at revamping the light rail. Did I miss that? There was something you said about light rail. Mr. Burger: There was a new route proposed. The orange line would go across the top of the system as well as bringing the entire system up to 15- minute frequent service all day. Currently, some portions of the system— the green line that goes from Mountain View to Vasona—is at 30 minutes in the midday. Mayor Scharff: We had a presentation at the Cities Association on the light rail not that long ago, by Nuria [phonetic]. It also looked like light rail was not working. It looked like it was one of the least ridership systems in the country, that it was a failed transit system. I was thinking we need to revamp that as well. Anyway, thank you very much. TRANSCRIPT Page 28 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Special Orders of the Day 3. Proclamation Expressing Appreciation to Annie Folger for Outstanding Public Service on her Retirement. Mayor Scharff: The next order of the day is a Special Order of the Day, which is a Proclamation expressing appreciation to Annie Folger for outstanding public service on her retirement. I've asked Council Member DuBois to read that Resolution. Annie, are you here somewhere? There you are. Why don't you come on up to the podium? Council Member DuBois read the proclamation into the record. I'd like to just say a few words. The importance of local media and having media skills and video should not be underestimated. The press is the fourth estate of government, and local cable access plays a role in that. I wanted to thank you. We definitely have a Media Center that we can be proud of. I hope you enjoy your retirement. I hope maybe you'll come back and produce a TV show. Thank you. Annie Folger: Thank you. Mayor Scharff: We also … Ms. Folger: Mayor Scharff and Vice Mayor Kniss and City Council Members, I would like to take just a moment to thank you for your support over the years. I'm usually pretty comfortable with public speaking, but this is a very emotional moment for me. I have just a few notes. I promise to be brief. I would like to make just a few comments, if I could. Thank you. First of all, I'm really touched that you would take the time to acknowledge the work of the Media Center. It really means a great deal. I wanted to point out that back on October 16, 1989, from that corner of the room there was a video booth. I was in that booth operating the camera so that the very first Palo Alto City Council meeting could go live on cable television. The Media Center had no staff; we had no office. We were trying to get our funding in order, and we had two founding Board Members. I was one of them operating the cameras that night. It was really a wonderful experience. I'm so glad to be here tonight to feel the importance of the work that we've been able to do with your help. It's a great honor to receive your recognition, and it's a responsibility that I've taken very seriously over the years. There are media centers all over the country that are struggling financially. Our Media Center has been so incredibly lucky thanks to the Cable Co-op and the legacy grant that they put in place, the Legacy Fund, whose purpose was to fund our building and equipment in perpetuity throughout the years. That has sustained us. We were very, very lucky for that. I would like to thank our Board of Directors, the wonderful staff, the dedicated volunteers and crew TRANSCRIPT Page 29 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 members, and especially the community organizations who have used the Media Center over the years. I'm overwhelmed by all of their support over the years and really pleased to see so many of them here tonight. I would like to ask them to stand and receive this recognition with me. I'm so proud of what we've built together, and I'm really excited for what the future has in store. Cable Co-op had a vision of two-way communication when they started up. I'm so thrilled at the possibilities of us moving forward into the future and carrying on that vision. I see a day when our Media Center platform can be married to the emerging interactive technologies and presenting an interactive, two-way citizen communication that will enliven our democracy at a time when we really need it and take citizen engagement to new heights. I'm really excited about the future that all of these folks who are so talented and wonderful will be able to create in the future. Thank you so much for this honor. Mayor Scharff: Don't go anywhere. We have a couple of Council Members that wish to speak. We have one member of the public, and then I need to give you the Proclamation, so don't go anywhere. Ms. Folger: Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: Annie, I've known you for a good long time at this point. Just want to thank you personally for all the effort that you've put into this, all the professionalism you've added to this and for making Palo Alto's public meetings public and for all the other access. I see Doug Kreitz in the back; I know he teaches classes at the Media Center. All of the access that you make available to people, which is referenced in the Proclamation, but youth especially, making these kinds of facilities and this kind of learning ability and capabilities available to a broad range of Palo Altans, I really appreciate it. Elliott has been with the Media Center, I think, for quite a long time now, so really appreciate his service as well. This kind of collection of good, strong people and dedicated people happens with good leadership. I look to you as being the reason for a lot of this leadership coming together. Thank you very much for all your years of service. Ms. Folger: Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Vice Mayor Kniss. Vice Mayor Kniss: I don't know what the Nielsen ratings will be tonight, but I'm sure they'll be good. Commendations on the number of times, too, that you have arranged to have the campaign election results broadcast live, and what fun that was and how great for the public. I know that every time we TRANSCRIPT Page 30 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 meet, someone will say or text "We're watching you. Great to see what's going on." It makes a huge difference. You're right. Other media centers struggle, and this one has really done well. You're leaving it in good hands. Is that right? Ms. Folger: Very good hands. Thank you. Vice Mayor Kniss: Thanks again from all of us. It makes a big difference. Ms. Folger: Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Fine. Council Member Fine: Annie, we haven't met before, but I just want to thank you from me as a citizen. Here in Palo Alto sometimes we take for granted that all of this stuff is online and archived and we can see what's going on in our City government. That's not the case everywhere. You really do a service to our City. While we have quite a good turnout tonight, there are many more people who you've given access to. You've made this room that much larger. As our Vice Mayor mentioned, we all get texts. Occasionally I get screen captures from my family telling me to fix my hair or something like that. It really does make this room and this process much larger, and that makes us a healthier City. Thank you. Ms. Folger: Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Now, we have a member of the public. Let's let Jeff McMinnis come up and speak. Jeff McGinnis: I swear this is not to take away attention from Annie. My name is Jeff McGinnis. I'm here with my daughter, Lucia. I’m a former employee of the Media Center. I started there as an intern in 1999, learned to cut my chops doing videography and editing and have grown up in the world. My wife is Lupita. She's currently an employee. As you may have gathered, we met at the Media Center and ultimately brought along this little girl. She's definitely very thankful for Annie and all (inaudible). In addition to all the good work she did, I just want to attest to what a good person she is and how much she's done to make us look up to her. I can't think of one real fault with Annie. She's been there all along; she was even there as she married me and Lupita. That's true. We live in a time when we've elevated some of the worst aspects of humanity to our highest offices. I'm just grateful that I have someone like Annie right here to say, "Lucia, this is a person you can admire and emulate." I really hope she does. Ms. Folger: Thank you. TRANSCRIPT Page 31 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Thanks again, Annie, for all your service. Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions Mayor Scharff: Now, we'll move onto Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions. I don't believe we have any. Then, we're onto City Manager Comments. City Manager Comments James Keene, City Manager: Thank you, Mr. Mayor and members of the Council. A few matters to report. First of all, just a little update on the spate of storms that we had this past weekend. In the good news category, we didn't have any calls related to flooding as a result of blocked storm drains. We were notified about a mudslide on Page Mill Road between Skyline and Foothills Parks, which our street crew was clearing earlier today. We responded to trees down in SF Creek between the Hale well station and Chaucer Bridge yesterday. Other tree-related issues included a tree that fell in the road at Philz Coffee on Middlefield on Friday night. On Sunday, we responded to a call at Oregon at St. Francis involving a County tree that fell on a City tree and also a call for other debris on roadways. Caltrans was called out over the weekend to clear moderate debris within the trash rack at West Bayshore. All the sandbag stations will be inspected today and restocked. We've had a total of more than 23 inches this season as measured at Foothill Park. That's good news for the drought. Of course, as you can tell, we've been pretty fortunate to have these rains spaced out just enough that the creek levels have really worked with us for a change. Cool Smart City experiments. This year in addition to our planned Smart City projects in areas including sustainability, transportation and energy, we have a small set of four Smart City experiments. The first is the installation and evaluation of smart lighting poles around City Hall. You can see in the picture slide there the installation going up last week. Ultimately, the lighting and the technology with these poles will let us be able to do things such as counting cars that enter or exit the garage, being able to better detect available parking spaces, and to be able to share that information. We'll also be able to evaluate motion detection that will turn on a light or brighten it based upon movement. Second experiment is we'll be deploying four no-cost pilot project digital kiosks, actually called Palo. My understanding is they're going to be rolled out at the Super Bowl this year. They've been picked up by Verizon. It's, I think, a startup here originally, hence the name Palo. We'll be deploying one in the lobby of City Hall, one on Lytton Plaza, one near Caltrain and one on Cal. Avenue. The kiosks will be visual centers where our community can both interact and get information on things that are happening around town, where appropriate TRANSCRIPT Page 32 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 check out the train schedules, provide feedback to the City on issues. Keep posted on that. The third experiment is evaluation of a web-based dashboard that shows real-time information on our Smart City technologies such as smart lighting and traffic signal and flow information. That will be launched online for the public to be able to look at it. Lastly, we're doing a small experiment with Stanford University students and post docs, deploying air quality sensors on University Avenue to capture air quality measures. All of these are in the early stages of planning and preparation. They certainly follow appropriate approvals and consultations with stakeholders. We'll provide Council more detail via a Study Session in the first half of 2017 or an Information Report. Applications for Boards and Commissions are still open. Friday is the deadline for citizens interested to apply for the Historic Resources Board, the Parks and Recreation Commission and the Planning and Transportation Commission. Applications are available on the City Clerk's webpage, cityofpaloalto.org/clerk. Again, the application deadline is Friday, January 27th at 4:30 p.m. Just a reminder that this Saturday, January 28th, from 8:30 a.m. until 1:30 p.m. is the City Council annual Retreat. It will be held this year at the Art Center auditorium just off Newell Road and Embarcadero. The Council will decide what it's Priorities for the year will be. We'll also look at progress made on last year's projects as well as get an update on the Annual Citizen Survey. The public is also invited to attend the City's Office of Emergency Services seventh annual community partnership awards ceremony this Thursday, January 26th, from 6:45 to 9:00 p.m. here in the City Council Chambers. Five individuals will be recognized for their outstanding service in emergency preparedness activities. There will be a timely keynote presentation on cyber terrorism by FBI Supervisory Agent Elvis Chan following the awards ceremony. There will also be an event celebrating and thanking Police Chief Dennis Burns and Assistant Chief Bob Beacom for their service at City of Palo Alto as they retire from the City. This is an invitation only event. It will be held on Wednesday, where Mayor Scharff will present Chief Burns and subsequently Assistant Chief Beacom with their retirement Resolutions along with other community-related recognition. Finally, please join Mayor Scharff on Thursday, January 26, as Canopy hosts the 21st annual Mayor tree planting ceremony from 5:15 to 7:00 p.m., which will take place near the Magical Bridge Playground at Mitchell Park. In addition to the Mayor tree planting, this year's event will include a special tree planting tribute to newly retired Police Chief Dennis Burns. That's all I have to report. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. TRANSCRIPT Page 33 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Oral Communications Mayor Scharff: Now, we have Oral Communications. We have a number of speakers, and we have a number of speakers on Consent today. We're only going to have two minutes unfortunately. On Oral Communications, our first speaker is Darlene Yaplee, to be followed by Mark Landesmann. Darlene Yaplee, Sky Posse: Good evening, Council. Thank you for your time and continued support for the jet noise problem in Palo Alto. I'm Darlene Yaplee; I live in University South. I'm part of the Sky Posse group. I am here tonight to cover one of the topics in a letter we sent you recently. I'm here to urge you to take the single most important action that can help resolve the jet noise problem for Palo Alto residents, that is to make sure that Palo Alto is a member of the appointed new Committee of Local Government Officials that's expected to be established soon to work with the FAA on a regional solution. This is going to be called the Ad Hoc Committee. A FAA rep recently at the San Francisco Roundtable, January 12th, saying that they would be replying back to the Congressional reps mid-February. Things could be moving quickly. The exact makeup of the Committee is to be determined. Palo Alto must secure a membership on this Committee to get a voice on this important topic. It was previously believed that this was the jurisdiction of the FAA, which is understandable, but this is not the case any longer. It's important that we pivot and understand that cities will have representation and will be part of the solution. We need to step up to that. In the words of the Hamilton musical, we need to be in the room where it happens. I'd like to ask you to please take action on this immediately. Again, the response is coming back mid-February, so things are moving along. One possibility is that Mayor Scharff sends a letter on behalf of the entire City Council to the three reps that were actively involved, Eshoo, Speier and Panetta and additionally that each of you make an outreach phone call to advocate on behalf of the City to be involved in this solution process. Thank you for time and consideration. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Mark Landesmann to be followed by Sea Reddy. Mark Landesmann, Sky Posse: Good evening, Council. There's reason for optimism on this. The Select Committee recommendations contain solid options to fix nighttime flights to address arrivals from the north to the Bay and to address the San Jose reverse flow problem. The most important reason we need a seat on the Ad Hoc Committee is that the Select Committee recommendations prescribe as part of Section 2.5 the assessment of new and far better waypoints for the arrivals from the south and southeast. The relevant item in the Select Committee Report also does in fact include evaluating the route via the waypoint Faith, which is the route TRANSCRIPT Page 34 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 that goes over the full length of the Bay. This route will eliminate noise and emissions in our region entirely, applying the Federal definitions and standards. The City has an excellent opportunity to make sure this gets done right for three reasons. First, the evaluation of the routes relative to the proposed alternatives is mandated by law as a first step for any significant change to flight procedures. Number two, assessing the new waypoint for 1,000 arrivals will yield procedures far superior to the SERFR and BSR alternatives as the published report performed by the City's expert consultants, the Freytag team, demonstrates. The third is that Council has a dream team of attorneys at hand, Mrs. Molly Stump and Mr. Peter Kirsch, the City's external aviation attorney. We are at a critical juncture. You have a critical opportunity, and that opportunity is now. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Sea Reddy to be followed by Mark Petersen- Perez. Sea Reddy: Good evening. It's refreshing to see the new City Council, the new Mayor, the new Vice Mayor. I don't know what someone was talking about, we need more experience. This is the perfect experience. You're the greatest of the team that I've seen in a few years. Congratulations. I'm sure you'll do well for us. Two or three things to think about for this year is slow growth. We like what we are. We don't need too many more buildings, too many more tall buildings, too many more anything. Less traffic, less airplane noise and keep us all safe. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Mark Petersen-Perez to be followed by Rita Vrhel. Mark Petersen-Perez: Life in Nicaragua is so much different. It's a lot warmer too. If I could describe my career in finance of over 30 years, I'd sum it up in one word. It has been excellent. I retired at the age of 49; I'm 65. I decided to go to work for REI just simply because I've never worked in the retail industry. Jim Keene would come in there, and he would see how bubbly I was and enthusiastic I was. Then, I took off on my Land Rover and made six trips to Panama in my Land Rover. It was an awesome time. One of the things that I have enjoyed coming here is I kind of view myself as a standup comic. The sad thing is that all of you here in attendance have kind of treated what I have said over the years as one big joke. That's okay because I have been financially solvent, which is awesome. I've never needed to—I haven't experienced not being without cash in the bank. I'll talk a little bit about that, I think, on Agenda Number 5. Anyway, this is probably going to be one of my last public presentations here. Palo Alto Free Press operates here in Palo Alto as a Google virtual office. We also have an international office in Nicaragua, in Ticuantepe, Nicaragua. I would TRANSCRIPT Page 35 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 encourage everyone to visit Nicaragua because it is an awesome country. I'll be talking a little bit more on ROR because I've had incredible investments down there. I have a few things to say about Nicaragua later on as well. Thank you very much. I've really enjoyed coming before the City Council. Congratulations, Greg. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Mr. Petersen-Perez: I really appreciate that. Mayor Scharff: Congratulations to you too. Rita Vrhel to be followed by Brent Han. Rita Vrhel: Good evening. I wanted to also speak to the City Council Retreat this Saturday. I believe the City website has it starting at 9:00. Perhaps that could be corrected. The Agenda is not up yet per the City Clerk. I do invite everyone to come and voice their concerns to the City Council. The other thing I wanted to say was that the Public Works recommendations for dewatering for 2017 and '18 have been moved to February 23rd. Last week, I announced that it was on February 13th, but it's now on February 23rd. Please check the City website to find out the time. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Brent Han to be followed by Kerry Yarkin. James Keene, City Manager: Mr. Mayor, while they're coming up, I'll just clarify that the 8:30 start time is just the assembly and coffee and that sort of thing. The actual meeting will kick off at 9:00. Thanks. Brent Han: I'd just like to introduce myself. My name is Brent. I'm a member of the Gunn High Investigative Medicine or IMED club. The reason we are here today is to present our work on the issue of groundwater contamination here in Palo Alto. As some of you may know, Palo Alto is home to many, many different companies, which have used different chemicals such as TCE, for industrial solvents. The only problem is TCE is an established carcinogen according to the EPA. Our worry is that these VOCs or volatile organic compounds can actually expand beyond the current testing areas established by agencies. To reiterate, my name is Brent. I'm here on behalf of the Gunn IMED club. We're here to present our work on trichloroethylene or TCE. We are here to lobby the City Council to adopt a vapor intrusion policy, which will require testing over buildings that are being built on top of these toxic plumes. We have released a petition on change.org asking the City Council to adopt a vapor intrusion policy as quickly as possible. I would like to take a moment to thank the CTRE today, which have agreed to support our petition. If they could please just stand TRANSCRIPT Page 36 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 up. Thank you. The work that we have done has been working with City Staff, working with Mr. Wolbach in drafting this policy, but we need further action. That is why I'm here today. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Kerry Yarkin, Sky Posse: Good evening, Mayor and City Council persons. I'm here to lobby you so that we can secure a seat on the Ad Hoc Subcommittee for regional flight paths into SFO. I hope you can represent our interests so that we will have a way to stop the dumping of planes over Palo Alto which has occurred very much so in the last 2-3 years. Also, I'd like to say to the City Manager, you can put a monitor for air quality over my home. I have over 100 planes a day, and I'm very concerned about the fine particulate pollution, which is caused by all the planes over my home and my neighborhood. The second thing is I think there's some history that you should know. This is just airplane history about the SF Roundtable. In 1998, the Mayor who was Joe Huber tried to get a seat on the SFO Roundtable. We've tried many times since then. I know Nancy Shepherd in 2014, three years ago, tried to get a seat on the SFO Roundtable and was rebuffed. I think there was another attempt to get a seat on the Roundtable. The Roundtable representing San Mateo County has done a very good job of protecting their neighborhoods, their quality of life. The City of Atherton, Belmont, Burlingame, Foster City, Hillsboro, Menlo Park, Millbrae, Redwood City, San Carlos, San Mateo, Woodside and then the Supervisors from San Mateo County, Supervisor at San Francisco, the Mayor's Office, they have all worked very hard to protect their quality of life in San Mateo County. If you look at the three-page—all the data that we sent you, the traffic has moved south. It used to be in San Mateo County; they've been moving it all south. We now have 60 percent of all the arrivals into SFO flying over Palo Alto. I'm very, very much disturbed by this and the quality of life. I also went through the Select Committee hearings here in the City Council building. Seize the day; show leadership; represent us so we can have peace and quiet once again over Palo Alto. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Nelson Buchanan to be followed by Mark Mollineaux. Neilson Buchanan: Mayor Scharff, I'd like to just take a couple of your minutes and the rest of the Council to point out that you're going to be considering two items later tonight without the benefit of the 2016 Citizen Survey. I've been to the Council several times before to suggest that holding this information back is not going to help your decision-making tonight or in future Council meetings. You're going to consider a traffic safety issue later tonight. You're going to consider a parking versus TRANSCRIPT Page 37 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 commerce issue later tonight. You're doing that without the benefit of the context of a scientific, linear survey that's done every year. It's done in mid-summer. The nanosecond speed of the City survey comes out not yet. I presented you with an abstract of your own survey that is now public information. I just wanted to read one paragraph that in a way illustrates how you can make decisions in better context. I'm pulling out one paragraph that's particularly pertinent to Adrian and Greg. The average rating for all the quality of life questions is 79 percent, primarily because only 50 percent of the respondents rated Palo Alto as an excellent or good place to retire. This is the first year that the average fell below 80 percent, primarily because the average in Area 5 declined significantly from an average rating of 84 percent to 69 percent. If you don't know what Area 5 is, I did give you five or six copies. My printer ran out of ink, so I didn't finish. You're going to do a little bit of sharing. The third page in this abstract is dog-eared so you can find out who Area 5 is. It's not area 51, but it's something you need to consider. The issue is not this particular paragraph. The issue is that the scientific information has been sequestered for months. It's only going to come out for Council review in another month. This makes no sense. Mayor Scharff: Mark Mollineaux. Mark Mollineaux: Hello there. My name is Mark Mollineaux. I graduated from—we're already on the one-minute warning. Is it one minute now? I live in Redwood City. This is a small point; I just wanted to respond to it. This was in public comment. Last month, a member of the public said, "Some cities don't have any fees." It's just so shocking to me. It's like when I was in Cincinnati, visiting cousins once. I discovered that the entire City of Cincinnati has no recycling. It has no program. It's so shocking to me. I grew up in Cincinnati, so I can vouch for it personally. Our family had curbside recycling since 1993 and possibly earlier. I've seen references to curbside recycling in 1989. This is a minor point, but I think it's important that if we're trying to judge the success of Palo Alto versus other cities that we have accurate information, and we don't simply say things that aren't true. Just to keep time going, I'll leave with that. Thank you for your time. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Minutes Approval 4. Approval of Action Minutes for the January 3 and 9, 2017 Council Meetings. Mayor Scharff: Now, we're onto the Minutes. I need a Motion to approve the Minutes. So moved from Adrian. I need a second. From Lydia. TRANSCRIPT Page 38 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 MOTION: Council Member Fine moved, seconded by Council Member Kou to approve the Action Minutes for the January 3 and 9, 2017 Council Meetings. Mayor Scharff: If we could vote on the board. That passes unanimously despite Vice Mayor Kniss' opposition. MOTION PASSED: 8-0-1 Kniss abstain Consent Calendar Mayor Scharff: Now, we're onto the Consent Calendar. We have a number of speakers on the Consent Calendar, so we'll move to that. We're going to have two minutes on the Consent Calendar as well. Our first speaker is Bill Ross. That'll be followed by Patrick Cashmore. Bill Ross, speaking regarding Agenda Item Number 5: Council Members, I'm a taxpayer, and I'm addressing you on Consent Number 5. It's really an effort dealing with reduction of your unfunded pension liability contrary to the notice. It's a big ticket Item. If there's a cancer in your Agenda that affects all of your Agendas, whether you want to spend money for acquisition of parks, affordable housing, it's this one. This should not be on Consent. It should be monitored like cancer, to make sure that you address all the possible solutions there are to reducing this unfunded liability. I would respectfully note that the very agency that controls it, PERS, hasn't updated its information to you for 19 months. Why isn't it a legislative priority like has been raised before the League of California Cities to get legislation to require PERS to be timely on their financial obligations of your unfunded pension liability? That's a good question. In this Report, I think there are things that are missing, that are critical to this obligation. In your own CAFR, which is only 7 months old, the total pension liability is approaching $700 million. Certainly there are ways that you could address this on a periodic basis. Mr. Bartel is one of the outstanding experts in the field. Regardless, it should not be on Consent. This is something that furthers every one of your political agendas because whatever you wanted to spend money on, this takes money away from it. Also, if you're going to have a Staff Report on this and you make a reference to the PERS site, it should not come back with page not found when you're talking about monitoring liabilities that are this great. Also, the Report leaves out the existing litigation that's still current in the First District Court of Appeal that challenges the 2013 pension reforms. I would suggest again this is something that affects you all. It should not be buried on Consent. It should be more forthright. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Patrick … TRANSCRIPT Page 39 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Patrick Cashmore: (Inaudible) relinquishing my time to Beatrix Cashmore. Mayor Scharff: We don't really do that, so you can't do that. You can speak, but Beatrix is up next if you want to not speak and Beatrix. Mr. Cashmore: (Inaudible) we had three minutes, but now we're down to two. Mayor Scharff: We are down to two. Mr. Cashmore: That's why I wanted to give my wife another two minutes. Mayor Scharff: I know. We don't do that. Mr. Cashmore: (Inaudible). Mayor Scharff: We don't do that. Do you want to speak? Cashmore: No. Mayor Scharff: Beatrix Cashmore to be followed by Keith Bennett. Beatrix Cashmore, speaking regarding Agenda Item Number 11: Good evening. The neighboring residents to Item Number 11, 900 North California Avenue, request that the Council remove this Item from the Consent Calendar and reschedule it for full discussion. We feel the project is not ready, and we have two very strong reasons. One is a public hearing with the Architectural Review Board held last September 15th was not attended by any local residents by default, as we never received the mailed notices of the meeting. I've personally spoken with dozens of my neighbors. Not one received the much-expected and looked-for notification. This was a process failure, but it can be remedied by rescheduling the public hearing. We have other substantial concerns, none of which have been addressed. One of these is regarding the planned dewatering of three basements simultaneously using broad area dewatering. We know now that this can drop the groundwater level by 6-10 feet throughout the neighborhood. Although, this level will slowly replenish, it's during this interim time, several weeks at least, when ground settling is a significant risk. I've been advised by a local and knowledgeable architect that, because many of the homes in this neighborhood were built in the 1950s and 1960s, they're quite vulnerable to subsidence. My homeowner’s insurance agent has flatly stated that no insurance company will cover damage from ground movement. I ask you what evidence do we have that dewatering three basements all at once in close proximity will not result in ground settling, what responsibility will the City take to monitor the progress and effects of the dewatering. If TRANSCRIPT Page 40 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 subsidence happens, will the burden of proof rest with the owners of damaged buildings? Does that mean my two minutes is up? Mayor Scharff: It does. Thank you. Ms. Cashmore: Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Keith Bennett to be followed by Jim Wong. Keith Bennett, speaking regarding Agenda Item Number 11: I'm just going to give you some data based on other dewatering. I'm going to leave it to the Council to decide whether or not this 900 North California project has significant risks. This is actual data for a dewatering project in 2016. The groundwater level was 10 feet below ground surface. The top line is the pull-down of the water table at the next-door house, 45 feet away. The lower line is for the water table pull-down two doors away, 115 feet. You can see that the water table at those locations were pulled down four or five feet respectively. This particular place, they stopped pumping; it came up. They started pumping again. The total amount of water pumped at this property was 31 million gallons. This is another example. In this case, this graph is 220 feet away from the property. Again, the water table started at 10 feet below ground surface, and it was pulled down about 2 1/2 feet. The City has the requirement in 2016 for an enhanced Geotechnical Report. They did an enhanced Report for the second site. The water pumping rate predicted from that Report—I've copied the Report done by Mr. Dan Hinkle in Bonner, Montana. The water pumping prediction rate was less than 20 gallons per minute of flow. The actual measurement over the entire project was 102 gallons per minute. They also did a drawing of the water table pull- down. It's hard to see at this Resolution. The prediction was that the water table would be lowered less than 1 foot at a distance of 50 feet from the dewatering boundary. The actual measurement was 2-2 1/2 feet at a distance of 220 feet. I think this Geotechnical Report is not even close. This 900 North California site, the starting water table will be between 4-6 feet. I'll stop it. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Jim Wong to be followed by Rita Vrhel. Male: (Inaudible) my time? Mayor Scharff: No. Jim Wong, do you want to speak? Male: (Inaudible) my time. Mayor Scharff: Rita Vrhel. TRANSCRIPT Page 41 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Rita Vrhel, speaking regarding Agenda Item Number 11: I'll try to pull it all together here. I think the slide is really important. If you look at the numbers on it, they're pretty dramatic. Keith went over on 121 and dug a hole in the property next to 900 California Avenue. The water right now is at four feet. You can see that, if they're going to dig out three basements and dewater, the amount of water that is going to be extracted if they use conventional construction methods is going to be considerable. We estimate it anywhere from 50-120 million gallons. I've made a handout for you. I hope you will look at this, because it really took me a couple of hours to put this together and I'm not going to be able to say it all. If you use local dewatering methods, which were presented to the Policy and Services Committee by Dan Garber, the amount of water extracted will be significantly less, and the risks posed to the adjacent properties will be significantly less. One of the slides that Keith did not get to show you was a map of the 46 properties around the 900 North California Avenue, which could be affected by this dewatering project. This will require an enhanced Geotechnical Report, no matter which way you do the dewatering. I think that using local firms, which are respected by our local architectural community, is really important. I'm not sure that somebody in Bozeman, Montana, can look at the map and do a good job. Actually, Keith was closer to predicting the rates per minute and the total flow than the Geotechnical Report was. In medicine, we have a saying, do no harm. I think that this is a huge project. It's probably the largest dewatering project of a residential area in Palo Alto. I would hope that you would take time to consider the possible harms from the dewatering and allow the neighbors the time to meet with the architect and the Planning Commission or the Architectural Review Board. I hope that you will pull this off the Consent Calendar tonight. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Ester Nigenda to be followed by Peter Underhill. Ester Nigenda, speaking regarding Agenda Item Number 11: Good evening, Council Members and members of the public. I joined Save Palo Alto's Groundwater because as a resident, scientist and emergency services volunteer, water security for all of us and for future generations is an issue that greatly matters to me. In a time of climate change, the millennium old method of pumping out groundwater for underground construction and then discarding it is not sustainable. Estimates vary, but vary conservatively. Based on the results from Palo Alto's 2016 dewatering season we expect no less than 50 million gallons of groundwater will be pumped out for the construction of three adjacent basements on 900 North California. For comparison, 2-10 million gallons of water are needed for a fracking well. Fifty million gallons of groundwater is also greater than the reported 43 million gallons of groundwater pumped for the San Mateo commercial TRANSCRIPT Page 42 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 construction near Highway 101 that resulted in severe subsidence of several nearby businesses and the ongoing losses against the developer. All of you received a link to that article in the newspaper. Not only is more than 50 million gallons of groundwater a very large amount of water to waste, as our research has shown, the proposed construction at 900 North California has the potential to impact about 46 or even more residential properties. The neighbors are not against developing the properties at 900 North California, but they would like some confidence that their properties are not negatively impacted. Neither the current nor proposed 2017 regulations, which will be presented on February 27th, not 23rd, to the City Council address the impacts of the magnitude of this residential dewatering on nearby properties and on our aquifer. In view of the risks involved, I respectfully request that the City Council withdraw this Item from the Consent Calendar. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Peter Underhill to be followed by Mark Petersen- Perez. Peter Underhill, speaking regarding Agenda Item Number 11: I reside at 920 North California, and my lot directly abuts the project. I was encouraged to read on the bottom of Page 7 of Staff Report 7655 "evolving policies will ensure that dewatering impacts will be minimized." However, in this one regard I believe the process is still too vague. Since the 2017 groundwater pumping season is fast approaching, the prospect of benefiting from still evolving policy seems minimal at best. I suggest a more prudent stance would be to explicitly require a method that without question reduces the amount of groundwater removal necessary. Given the current absence of a detailed policy, I request in the interim that the Council require the developer to implement the alternative cutoff wall solution proposed by Dan Garber last December. By requiring cutoff wall methods, the Council can significantly lower the volume of groundwater needed to be removed, lower the risk of potential harm to existing structures from settlement as well as lower the growing tension amongst the citizenry over the bewildering process of broad-area dewatering. It is time for the applicant, the neighbors and the Council to join in reviewing the 900 California project as a test case opportunity to save groundwater, reduce risk while gathering enhanced geotechnical information to help frame 2018 policy. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Mark Petersen-Perez. Mark, I noticed you're speaking on three items. Do you think it's possible you could do it in four minutes or do you need a little bit more time or less maybe? Mark Petersen-Perez, speaking regarding Agenda Item Numbers 5, 9, 10: We'll give it a shot. How about that? TRANSCRIPT Page 43 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Mayor Scharff: Thank you. I'd appreciate it. Mr. Petersen-Perez: Number 5, just a little background. I was the pension analyst and administrator for AT&T, so I think I know what I talk about when it comes to financing pensions and things of this nature. This is a recipe for disaster, because in reality I have projected that CalPERS is going to implode. All of that responsibility for this huge liability is going to fall on the shoulders of the taxpayers. It's nasty, let me tell you. However, there are ways that we can lessen the burden, but I tell you as an accountant you need to kind of look at things that perhaps can lessen the burden. Cutting expenses would be one thing. Back in 2011, I looked at the overtime just for police officers, and that was $1.2 million, $1.2 million. That's a lot of money as far as overtime is concerned. I would think that, Jim, you would talk to whoever the Police Chief is and look at these expenses, because that's really a big expense on your P&L, as far as I'm concerned. Onto Dennis Burns and Bob Beacom. As the Police Chief, I think that he did a remarkable job. He really did. At the same time, I think the press had glowing remarks with respect to Dennis Burns. In reality, Martin Luther King said this, it's not where you stand in times of comfort; it's where you stand in times of controversy. Dennis Burns didn't address controversy at Khan and Lee, the beating of Albert Hopkins, the coerced false confession of Jorge Hernandez. He didn't talk about that. The one that just really got to me was Louis Verbea [phonetic], and he was the sex detective that pulled over unsuspecting female drivers here in the City of Palo Alto and raped them in the back seat of his car. You know what? He got a $250 fine, six months in jail. The sentencing judge was his motorcycle buddy. He didn't allow members of the press to interview Louis. By the way, he's a registered sex offender for life, but he's not on Megan's List. He got out of that. What really bothers me is Bob Beacom and Dennis Burns didn't talk about these controversial issues. It's important to each and every one of us. That's what is truly tragic. I'm hoping that the new Police Chief will really address issues here at City Council, have meetings with the public to talk about crime trends in our community, because it's important. I'm hoping that City Council will take that into consideration and really hold everyone that's on the police force accountable for their actions. It's important. It develops trust in all of us as members of the community. Thanks. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Roger Kohler to be followed by Nicholas Kaposhilin. Roger Kohler, speaking regarding Agenda Item Number 11: Good evening, Council Members. I'm Roger Kohler, the architect working with the owners for the Louis Road/California Avenue coverage. There's been a lot of talk about the basements and how much they are going to be to the neighbors. TRANSCRIPT Page 44 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 First off, we're planning on constructing each home individually, and not all three homes at the same time. There will not be three houses pumping water out at the same time. There's also a system that's come to our attention, the secant pile, putting piles which you see around all the commercial buildings in town that go down 20, 25 feet. They first put in piers, and then they drop in either piers or wood posts. They create a wall around the property. When they dig, the water is kept from coming in that way. That's an option, but it's something new to us. We haven't done any analysis of the cost and what impact that would be on the overall project. I've been fortunate to have been working in Palo Alto a long time. I started fourth grade here. I think we've done between 70 and 80 basements in Palo Alto. We've had one or two problems with basements that I can think of. The water table hasn't changed in 20 or 30 years, so I'm not quite sure I understand the huge concerns. As the (inaudible) Director of Public Works pointed out, the water all goes to the Bay either underground or on the surface. It didn't seem, for him, to be an issue. I think Wade (inaudible) is going to come up with some other comments about it. Basements are very common. I would hope that you could support our proposal. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Nicholas Kaposhilin followed by Bob Smith, who's our final speaker. Nicholas Kaposhilin, speaking regarding Agenda Item Number 11: I'm also here to talk about 900 North California. Can I just get everyone to stand up who's here for that issue? This shouldn't be on the Consent Calendar; we need more discussion. It's a commercial-size project. It's an R-1, but it somehow slipped through the cracks. It shouldn't be an R-1. It's a 33,000- square-foot project. All the details about the dewatering isn't something that we can cover as a Consent Item. It's something that clearly the residents are pretty concerned about for a myriad of reasons. We, for whatever reasons, didn't get the notifications that we should have. We were all waiting for them; summer went by. We have an opportunity to have the discussion that we need to have. I think it's pretty clear from the turnout today and the letters that you've received over the last couple of weeks that this is not something that should just be consented to. We need more discussion. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Now, we return to Council. Vice Mayor Kniss: I would move the Consent Calendar. Mayor Scharff: Second. MOTION: Vice Mayor Kniss moved, seconded by Mayor Scharff to approve Agenda Item Numbers 5-11. TRANSCRIPT Page 45 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Mayor Scharff: Council Member Filseth. Council Member Holman, I see your light on. Council Member Holman: I'll be lodging a no vote on Item Number 11. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: I'd like to pull Item 11 from the Consent Calendar. Council Member Holman: I'll second. Council Member DuBois: I'll third that. MOTION: Council Member Wolbach moved, seconded by Council Member Holman, third by Council Member DuBois to pull Agenda Item Number 11- 900 N. California Avenue [15PLN-00155]… to be heard on a date uncertain. Mayor Scharff: That Item is pulled, and we'll need to reschedule that. James Keene, City Manager: That would be to a date uncertain. Mayor Scharff: To a date uncertain. 5. Resolution 9676 Entitled, “Resolution of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Authorization to Establish a Supplemental Pension Trust With the Public Agency Retirement Service (PARS) and Approve Budget Amendments in the General Fund and the General Benefits Fund.” 6. Approval of a Contract With Altec Industries Inc., in the Amount of $335,213 for the Purchase of an Altec Hydraulic Telescoping Crane and Approval of a Budget Amendment in Various Funds. 7. Approval of Amendment Number Two to Contract Number C14153485 With Canopy, for an Additional Amount of $81,552 for a Total Amount Not-to-exceed $481,182 to Administer a Crowdsourced Tree Data Platform to Advance Programmatic Initiatives in the Urban Forest Master Plan, and Continue Basic Contract Services Through a Three- month Extension to June 30, 2017. 8. Approval of a Contract With Altec Industries Inc., in the Amount of $496,278 for the Purchase of Three 40-Foot Altec Aerial Trucks and Approval of Budget Appropriation Amendments in the Electric Utility Fund and the Vehicle Replacement and Maintenance Fund. TRANSCRIPT Page 46 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 9. Resolution 9661 Entitled, “Resolution of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Expressing Appreciation to Dennis Burns Upon His Retirement.” 10. Resolution 9662 Entitled, “Resolution of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Expressing Appreciation to Bob Beacom Upon His Retirement.” 11. 900 N. California Avenue [15PLN-00155]: Denial of the Appeal of the Planning and Community Environment Director's Architectural Review Approval of Three new Single-Family Homes, one With a Second Unit. Environmental Review: Categorically Exempt per California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) Guidelines Section 15303(a) (New Construction or Conversion of Small Structures), Zoning District: R-1 (Continued From January 9, 2017). Mayor Scharff: Now, we will vote on the Consent Calendar without Item Number 11. If you could vote on the board. That passes unanimously. MOTION FOR AGENDA ITEM NUMBERS 5-10 PASSED: 9-0 Action Items 12. Discussion and Direction to Staff to Implement a One-year Traffic Safety Pilot Project Along Middlefield Road Between the Menlo Park City Limits and Forest Avenue, Find the Project Exempt From the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and Approve a Budget Amendment in the General Fund. Mayor Scharff: Now, we're moving onto Item Number 12. Council Member Holman: Mr. Mayor? Mayor Scharff: Yes. Council Member Holman: I did have conversation today with the City Attorney about a recusal issue. While it's possible that I could participate in this Item at least potentially as there isn't an anticipated impact on my property one way or another, I'm really uncomfortable with participating because Forest Avenue is mentioned repeatedly in this Item, and prominently. Since that's just a bit more than a block away from my house, I feel with an abundance of caution it's the prudent thing to do, to recuse myself from this Item. James Keene, City Manager: Mr. Mayor? Mayor Scharff: Yes. TRANSCRIPT Page 47 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Mr. Keene: I also in my role as City Manager need to recuse myself on this Item as I live within 500 feet of the proposed location under study and have a real property interest there and need to recuse myself. I've asked the City Attorney to text me when the next Item comes up. Council Member Holman and James Keene left the meeting at 8:05 P.M. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. If we have a Staff presentation. Joshuah Mello, Chief Transportation Official: Thank you, Mayor, members of Council. I am Josh Mello; I'm the City's Chief Transportation Official. I'm joined this evening by Rafael Rius, who is our Traffic Engineering Lead and performed much of the analysis work on this as related to the different alternatives. I will jump right in. First, I want to set the tone on this presentation by bringing your attention to the fact that Middlefield Road is designated as a residential arterial in our currently adopted Comprehensive Plan. The Comprehensive Plan really recognizes the balance that we need to find on these residential arterials between mobility and quality of life. Other residential arterials include Charleston Road, Arastradero Road. These are roads that provide mobility both locally and regionally, but they also pass through residential neighborhoods and, in a lot of cases, also have residential properties actually abutting the corridors. This particular segment of Middlefield Road that we're going to discuss this evening has a northern terminus of the Menlo Park city limits and a southern terminus of Forest Avenue. This section is four travel lanes with no shoulders, no bicycle lanes, no median and no two-way left turn-lane; therefore, very narrow travel lanes. South of Channing Avenue, Middlefield Road is already reduced to two travel lanes with parking on both sides. In Menlo Park, there's a short four-lane section between the Menlo Park city limits and Willow Road, and then Menlo Park is two lanes north of Willow Road. This project kicked off back in June of 2015 when residents approached City Staff and brought to our attention a pattern they saw of collisions happening along the corridor and also some impacts that they identified related to noise, perceived safety walking along the corridor and crossing the corridor. In reaction to that back in June of 2015, City Staff commissioned a Report that's in your Agenda from Stantec Consulting. That looked at different options along the corridor and came out with a recommendation for interim improvements, which included turn restrictions at the intersections of Everett and Hawthorne Avenue. Those turn restriction signs were installed in June of 2015. We continued to make observations as far as compliance and any identified safety issues beginning in June 2015. In May 2016, residents of the Middlefield North corridor came to City Council and delivered a petition for a road diet to City Council. We had already been planning to conduct a more comprehensive study after the conclusion of the one-year pilot of the TRANSCRIPT Page 48 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 turn restriction signage, but this petition generated much more interest in this project. We decided to move forward in July with an evaluation of the time of day turn restrictions and also move directly into a more comprehensive Traffic Safety Study. Throughout July and August, we collected traffic data, which I'll talk a little bit about on the following slides. We also collected speed and collision data for this corridor. Throughout August and October, we worked jointly with the neighborhood stakeholders to develop several alternative configurations for this corridor. That culminated with a public meeting in August. We have gotten to the point where we've refined these alternatives, and we've brought two to you this evening for you to consider directing us to implement one as a preferred alternative. The data that we collected following the conclusion of the turn restriction pilot, which lasted for one year, found several things. The first is we found that the existing time of day turn restrictions are ineffective. We actually found more people making left turns after they were made illegal than before. We also found that the 85th percentile speed on the roadway, which is signed at 25 miles an hour, was 34 miles per hour. That's a speed at which 85 percent of motorists travel at or below. We found one interesting tidbit. We found that there were more collisions occurring at Everett Avenue and Middlefield even though the volume was lower than Hawthorne Avenue and Middlefield. We went out and did some field investigation after this. We think that's related to the fact that the sightlines at Everett Avenue and Middlefield are severely compromised by a row of street trees on the west side of Middlefield road, just north of Everett. There's very little visibility when you're pulling out of Everett Avenue, crossing Middlefield. The bulk of those collisions were related to right-of- way violations. Right-of-way violations are when one motorist pulls in front of another motorist who has the right-of-way and does not respect the right- of-way. Those typically occur when vehicles are on existing side streets and crossing a main street or making a left onto that main street. That confirms what we think is happening at Everett Avenue. The bulk of the collisions are likely people making a left out of Everett or crossing Middlefield on Everett. That's confirmed by the fact that broadside collisions are the most common type of collision at Everett Avenue. Broadside collisions are also known as T-bone collisions; that's where one vehicle strikes the side of another vehicle. After we collected this data, we held two stakeholder meetings with a group—I think many of them are in the audience this evening—that lives mostly along Middlefield Road on both the east and west side. We reviewed the collision data, the speed and volume data, and then we talked at a higher level about what some of the project goals should be, recognizing that this is a corridor that a lot of folks depend on for mobility but does have abutting residential properties and people that need to walk their dog, cross the street, check their mail, pull in and out of driveways. It's not a traditional arterial street that's usually abutted by commercial properties. TRANSCRIPT Page 49 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 We also talked a lot about proven safety countermeasures. These are measures that are widely accepted in the traffic engineering field to combat some of the types of collisions that we were seeing along this corridor, mainly the right-of-way violation and the left-turn broadsides and the cross- traffic broadsides. We began to assemble preliminary concept plans, and then we outlined a public engagement strategy with this group. We developed initially five preliminary alternative concept plans. I won't go into detail about these, but I do have more detail in the back if you want to get more specific as to these five preliminary alternatives. Some of them preserve two southbound travel lanes, while others reduce both directions to one travel lane. Some include medians; others include two-way left turn- lanes in lieu of a median. One actually includes adding parking on both sides of the street. We brought these five initial alternatives to a community workshop at the library across the street on October 6th of 2016. We presented boards that explained the pros and cons of each alternative. We also included cross-sections as well as photo simulations for each alternative. We did have over 20 attendees. Despite doing some outreach to the broader community, the bulk of those attendees were residents directly abutting Middlefield Road. We didn't get a lot of input from commuters who use the road; it was primarily people who live or walk or travel along the corridor locally. The bulk of the attendees at that meeting supported the addition of bicycle lanes. There was very little support for the addition of on-street parking. There was significant concern about a continuous median, specifically as to how it would relate to access to and from driveways for residential properties. Following that community meeting, we created two revised alternative concept plans, 6A and 6B. 6A, which you see before you, is a traditional road diet. That's what we call a traditional road diet, where a four-lane road is reduced to two travel lanes and a two-way left turn-lane. The space that's remaining is either used for bicycle lanes or paved shoulders on the outside of the travel lanes. In this case, we introduced a couple of different elements to the traditional road diet. You can see departing Lytton Avenue going northbound, we maintained two travel lanes. That's to preserve the capacity of the Lytton Avenue intersection; that was our original intent because Lytton Avenue has a left turn-lane and through left turn-lane. There's two lanes of traffic turning left off of Lytton Avenue. In order to continue that movement, we retained two travel lanes heading north. The other thing you'll see here is what's called a leftover treatment. This is an S-shaped median, and you can see that at Everett Avenue. This prevents left turns out of Everett Avenue and prevents vehicles from traveling across Middlefield Road on Everett Avenue. However, the benefit of a leftover is that it preserves people's ability to turn left into the side street. People could still turn left into Everett, which is a safer maneuver. You have more visibility because you're in the middle of the road, and you can see a decent distance north down the TRANSCRIPT Page 50 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 road. However, people would no longer be able to turn left out of Everett or travel straight across Middlefield. Alternative 6B is very similar to 6A except that it retains two travel lanes going southbound. The northbound travel lane drops already at Hawthorne, so it's kind of false capacity, if you will. We don't have two lanes going north that go all the way to Willow. However, going southbound, there are two travel lanes that begin at Willow, and they currently end at Channing. This alternative would keep those two southbound travel lanes and the associated motor vehicle capacity that comes with those two travel lanes. However, it would reduce the northbound travel lanes to one immediately following Lytton, which is exactly what Alternative 6A would propose. This also includes the leftover treatments as well as the lane drop going north from Lytton Avenue. We followed up the development of Concept Plans 6A and 6B with an additional stakeholder meeting. We presented the two alternatives, discussed the pros and cons of each. In general, there was very little support for these alternatives, particularly 6A—sorry, 6B, which has four travel lanes in front of the homes that are just north of Lytton Avenue. The folks who lived in those homes felt that they weren't really getting the benefit of the project because there were still four travel lanes in front of their properties, where further north there were only three travel lanes with a two-way left turn- lane. A lot of the stakeholders didn't feel that those alternatives really met the goals that they had around quality of life and reducing noise and congestion and improving the perceived safety of the corridor. We agreed to go back and reanalyze the operation of the intersection of Lytton and Middlefield and see if we could come up with some additional alternatives that might get us a little bit closer to where the community wanted us to be. What we came up with were final Alternative Concept Plans 7A and 7B. It turns out that when we went back and analyzed the intersection of Middlefield Road and Lytton Avenue, those two northbound departure lanes were actually not needed to maintain the operation of the intersection. What is needed is two southbound travel lanes on Middlefield approaching Lytton. Without those two southbound travel lanes, the level of service of the intersection drops to a point where we would need to do a full environmental analysis, which would delay the implementation of the project and may or may not require mitigation measures or other steps. Alternative 7A is a traditional road diet with leftovers at Everett and Hawthorne. You can see heading southbound, approaching Lytton, the paved shoulders narrow and a second southbound travel lane begins. This provides storage for motorists that are heading south, approaching the Lytton intersection. Concept 7B retains the two-way left turn-lane, the leftovers; however, Concept 7B does not include paved shoulders. It has a second southbound travel lane that goes all the way from Willow Road to Channing Avenue, which is the current configuration. This one doesn't quite get us to where I think the stakeholders want us to be, but it does preserve the southbound TRANSCRIPT Page 51 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 motor vehicle capacity on Middlefield Road. This is a table that we developed to compare the different alternatives. We're presenting 7A and 7B here tonight. You can see none of the alternatives get us all the way there, but 7A and 7B are pretty close. I think you'll hear some comments from some of the stakeholders on the differences between Concepts 7A and 7B later this evening. Our recommended next steps. This is assuming that a CEQA exemption applies and that we do not have to do a full environmental impact analysis. Between February and March, we would finalize the design of the preferred alternative concept. In the spring we would install the concept using temporary materials. We would not be constructing concrete medians; we would be using rubber curbing and other things that could be removed if the pilot is not effective. In fall of 2017 and spring of 2018, we would evaluate the project. We would collect many, many data points on speeds, volumes, how many people are diverting off of Middlefield Road into neighborhood streets. We would collect counts on all of the surrounding neighborhood streets. We would also collect speed data on the neighborhood streets. We would use a decibel meter to collect noise data and see if there's actually a reduction in noise. Of course, we would continue to monitor collisions and crashes, both reported crashes and the unreported crashes, which the neighbors have been very helpful in documenting. Our goal would be to return to City Council in the summer of 2018 with the results of the one-year pilot, and then we would offer a recommendation for either retention, modification or removal of the one- year pilot. Additional information on this project is available on the project webpage. All of the materials are also available there for anybody in the audience that would like to follow-up on this project. With that, I'll be glad to take questions. Female: (Inaudible). Mr. Mello: If you go to the transportation Page, there's a projects link, and you'll find the project underneath that list of projects. Mayor Scharff: We'll come back to Council for questions and comments. Do we have any speaker cards, because I don't have any? Vice Mayor Kniss: Do you want to hear from the public first? Mayor Scharff: Yeah, sure. Since we do have speaker cards … Vice Mayor Kniss: How many is it, Beth? Beth Minor, City Clerk: (Inaudible). TRANSCRIPT Page 52 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Mayor Scharff: We'll have two minutes each. I'll call the public speakers first. Alan Luntz to be followed by Danielle—Bonnie Henkels-Luntz. Alan Luntz: Thank you very much. I want to say that I am a stakeholder but don't live on Middlefield Avenue. We live on the corner of Guinda and Palo Alto Avenue. I sympathize with our neighbors on Middlefield, but we're all facing increased traffic and speed problems and so forth like that. Where we live there's also a blind intersection, a stop sign which people avoid or don't stop at and so forth. We have near misses and crashes and so forth. One of the things, as far as I can understand 7A and 7B, they will put turn lanes onto Everett Avenue and, I guess, Forest or Hawthorne. What that will do, we believe, is to divert a lot of traffic down Everett and, in our case, to Palo Alto Avenue and Guinda Street. Let me just say that I sympathize with them, but nevertheless we're going to have increased traffic from this. I would like to say one thing. I assume the Council has not memorized the Comprehensive Plan. Let me just read a few sentences from it. Policy T-30, reduce the impacts of through traffic on residential areas by designated certain streets as residential arterials. It says the City has designated some streets as residential arterials to recognize that they carry larger volumes of through traffic, but also have residential uses both sides of the street. The City's objective is to address the desires of residents of these streets, who would like to have slower speeds, safer conditions for bicycles and pedestrians and aesthetic improvements. This is the point I want to read. This must be done economically and without appreciably reducing traffic capacity or diverting traffic onto local neighborhood streets. I don't see how having left turn-lanes is going to achieve that latter part. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Bonnie to be followed by Katherine Abu-Romia. Danielle Henkels-Luntz: Thank you, Mayor and Council Members. I think Palo Alto is well known for its efforts to include stakeholders. In this planning, a lot of stakeholders were left out. I think it's shortsighted to move to the final stages of this planning and to make a decision on these alternatives when at least as many households, possibly more, along Guinda, Everett and Palo Alto Avenue down to let's say Chaucer, have been left out of this planning process. We do not know of these community meetings that were held apparently in October and November. We received no notice that there were alternatives that were seriously being considered. I think really it's very important to include input and give a chance for the rest of the neighbors to consult with this planning before final steps or even year trials are initiated. It just requires us to start complaining to the Council and get a movement going to the Council about how it's affecting our neighborhoods after this is done. I'd really like to ask you to consider TRANSCRIPT Page 53 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 allowing more time at this stage of the process and getting more input from the rest of the neighbors. Thank you. That don't live on Middlefield. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Katherine to be followed by Katherine Bazak. Katherine Abu-Romia: I'm on Hawthorne and been there for—I've been on Hawthorne, living there with my family for 40 years. I would consider myself a stakeholder in the fact that we're just considered a little side street for Middlefield. I agree with the previous speaker. Since a lot of that's been said, back last year when all this traffic became so horrible and those turns on Hawthorne, no right turn and no right turn coming from Middlefield onto Hawthorne, no one paid any attention to the—they just drove right through. I talked to the Police Department, and they said they weren't having any traffic officers any more. There were no traffic officers; they were being eliminated from their positions. Then, I was told that I could call a certain number, and there were patrol cars. They may come or they may not be able. They said they would try. We were talking about maybe we could stand, block the street with our bodies or put a sign up saying, "Welcome to Palo Alto." This is true. "Welcome to Palo Alto. You will never be given a citation for a traffic violation." Eight out of ten of the cars that come down Hawthorne pass our houses; they make a left turn during those restricted times onto Middlefield Road. They make their left turn. They put their signals on to tell us that they're making that left turn, but no one has done anything about it. When the cars are coming down, making a turn onto Hawthorne, they just all come down. What's happening here? How can you have this Study when you haven't even looked at enforcing those signs? Also, there's a rush hour at noon, there's a rush hour at 3:00, and there's even one at 9:00 at night. No one will count the cars. Mayor Scharff: Katherine Bazak to be followed by John Guislin. Katherine Bazak: Council Members, I'm one of the people that lives at the intersection of Everett, Palo Alto Avenue and Guinda Street. I've backed out of my driveway for 40 years in that location. It's becoming really increasingly difficult with the increased traffic that's coming north on Middlefield, turning onto Everett, making a right-hand turn to a well-known cut-through to avoid the intersection of Middlefield and Willow. They are coming down Everett, turning onto Palo Alto Avenue to Chaucer Bridge, over to Willow to get onto Willow to 101. The whole thing is kind of a convoluted mess anyway. Or they'll be turning on Chaucer to get onto University Avenue farther up. I know the speakers have addressed the other issues. We didn't have any input into this. My son and my daughter's boyfriend have parked their cars in front of the house. In the last couple of months, they've lost mirrors off of their cars because nobody respects the stop signs TRANSCRIPT Page 54 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 on Palo Alto Avenue. There is no stop sign coming around Palo Alto Avenue to Everett going north. They just (inaudible) around. There is a stop sign at Guinda, and people don't stop there either. Backing out of my driveway, which is right there, is really difficult. You drive defensively. Making this right-hand turn onto Everett just increases the desire to do that. It just makes the traffic go along, because we're in an area that has very narrow streets. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. John Guislin to be followed by Beth Guislin. John Guislin: Good evening, Mayor and Council. My name is John Guislin; I live on Middlefield. Most of you may know that I've been working on this traffic issue for 3 1/2 years. I'm sorry that all my neighbors were not included in the discussions. We tried to reach as broadly as we could. I think people who may not live right on Middlefield don't understand the magnitude of the issues we face. In the past three years, the traffic volume on Middlefield has doubled from 8,500 to 18,500, in three years. That means the traffic is backed up for hours each day. We have a mini carmageddon like we experienced in December every afternoon and many mornings during the weekdays. All of this traffic causes all kinds of problems including the accidents that we've documented. I think you probably have seen some of the emails I've sent containing photos of cars ending up on our sidewalks and even on our front lawns. That's because people are going too fast. The four narrow lanes of Middlefield encourage people to race or speed or try to get ahead of the car beside them. The lanes don't support the large vehicles that travel on them now. The lanes are about 10 feet wide. The Dumbarton bus is 11 1/2 feet wide, counting the mirrors. The trucks and things cannot make turns or corners safely on Middlefield. At the light at Lytton, there is no large vehicle that can turn coming down Lytton, turn left on Middlefield without taking both lanes. We've done a lot of homework, talking to the CHP and the California Office of Transportation and Safety, collecting data. In a sense, we did our homework and we got the attention of the City. We wish to thank Josh Mello and his Staff for doing an outstanding job of engaging with us and involving us, looking at potential solutions. Of the proposals in front of you tonight, only 7A addresses both safety and residential quality of life. Tonight's meeting on Middlefield and the one coming up on RPP is going to be a baseline for people to judge you and how you rate the importance of residential quality of life going forward. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Beth Guislin to be followed by Tim Lindholm. Beth Guislin: I'm Beth Guislin. I really request seriously that the Middlefield Road be reconfigured to Option 7A with one lane in each direction and a TRANSCRIPT Page 55 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 center turn-lane. Because there's only one lane going north on the bridge, it's already one lane going north. It's not like we're somehow smashing it down. In case you aren't aware, traffic on Middlefield is generally bimodal. It goes slow during rush hours and unsafe speeding during nonpeak hours. During nonpeak hours, northbound drivers often race to see who can be first where the two lanes merge into one, right where our house is. Sometimes it's a Maserati versus a Porsche, sometimes it's two old clunkers, but it's a problem. Nearly every day I walk our dog around the block, not crossing any streets, just on Middlefield, going around. Every time we approach Everett and Middlefield, I look carefully at the traffic coming from all directions. Will a car speeding south on Middlefield turn left and crash into a northbound car and end on the sidewalk? Will the driver of a car heading north have a driver who veers into the sidewalk to avoid a car who's out of the lane? Will the driver be texting and crash on the sidewalk? That happened two years ago. Fortunately, he ran into a large street tree, which prevented him from coming fully onto the sidewalk. Also about a year ago in another accident at Everett and Middlefield, someone ran into the light pole so hard it nearly knocked it over and had to be replaced at the City's expense. When it was replaced, it was moved further north on Middlefield so it would be less likely to be hit again. I assume you've seen photos of the other accidents where cars have ended up actually on lawns. It's a little frightening, and I'm kind of tired of it. I don't think it's too much to ask to feel safe just actually being on the sidewalk, much less trying to cross Middlefield. I really appreciate the work that Josh and Rafael have done with the open engagement. The models were great. Thank you very much. Please support 7A. Tim Lindholm: Hi. I'm Tim Lindholm from Middlefield. I've lived on Middlefield North for 8 1/2 years now, 26 years on Middlefield Downtown overall. I've been working with the neighbors and the City on this project for about three years. As a residential arterial, we expect that Middlefield is going to have challenges with traffic. University Avenue is another residential arterial that handles a comparable amount of traffic, but it performs very differently from Middlefield. Whereas, Middlefield has traffic from curb to curb, University has one lane in each direction, dedicated turn areas and wide shoulders that provide driveway access and cross-traffic visibility. Commuters share with residents more equitably. Yes, University does have problems, but if you spend any time standing on these streets and watching what happens, you'd certainly prefer to live along University. Yet again, it's a comparable road with comparable traffic. Mitigation to traffic problems are often counterintuitive. A (inaudible) configuration along Middlefield that includes lane reductions might seem like it would reduce traffic through-put, but that's not necessarily so given the traffic north is constrained by the single lane across the San Francisquito Bridge, as Beth TRANSCRIPT Page 56 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Guislin said. To the south, you're constrained by the stop lights at Lytton and University, which are basically always going to hit. You're always going to stop there. At high loads, traffic is going to back-up no matter what we do, no matter how many lanes we provide along Middlefield North. The question is only about the shape of what I call the parking lot when it does backup and the cost in terms of safety and quality of life that happen as a result of this parking lot. Don't be mistaken in thinking that Alternatives 7A and 7B are just variants on a theme. 7A meets residents' requirements; 7B basically doesn't change anything of any consequence. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Annie Ashton to be followed by Andrea Lichter. Amie Ashton: Hi. My name's Amie Ashton. I am a resident. I've lived there for about 10 years, and I am a daily commute cyclist. I bike everywhere I possibly can. I have a bike trailer that I have to pull out onto the sidewalk to use whenever I want to use it, which is almost every day. I'm so excited for this project because 7A introduces a bike lane in a place that doesn't have one and provides an actual, potential solution to traffic in the area by giving people an alternative, the possibility of riding their bike through here. I'm very excited. I'll be using it every day. I won't have to ride on the sidewalk anymore where I'm constantly running into pedestrians or other cyclists who are afraid to ride on Middlefield. It's a daily, hourly occurrence that I run into people who are doing that. Thank you and go 7A. Mayor Scharff: Andrea Lichter followed by Bob Smith. Andrea Lichter: Good evening, Council and Mayor. My name is Andrea Lichter. I also live on Middlefield Road, and I've lived there for almost 20 years and have seen traffic evolve to place where I'm constantly dealing with the sounds of near crashes. My neighbors and I are frequently running out with our cameras to take photographs. As you know, we've been working for over three years, collecting a lot of data. Working with Josh and his team has been a wonderful collaborative effort. We've really examined several different models. 7A is the model that really best suits our needs and is worthy of a pilot for one year. It'll slow traffic in both directions. It'll improve driveway access and allow us to exit safely. It's going to move traffic away from the sidewalk. I did have a car come through my front yard, knock down our fence. We're just lucky that my husband or I were not working in the garden, because we would have been seriously injured. It is scary, walking on the sidewalk. Especially 7A improves the sightlines and safety from cross streets, because those intersections at Everett and Middlefield and Hawthorne are super dangerous. I just want you to know that some of the studies have shown that road diets actually increase safety for all. They increase the use of other modes of transportation. They TRANSCRIPT Page 57 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 reduce speed. They can cut crashes in half. The Federal Highway Administration says that road diets do not cause congestion on roads that have fewer than 20,000 cars daily. I feel we fit that bill. I really think it's worth a try to try and address the safety and quality of life for us on Middlefield Road. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Bob Smith to be followed by Neeraj Penose. Bob Smith: Good evening. Bob Smith, and I live on Greer. I do consider myself a stakeholder in these matters, being someone who uses Middlefield more than we might like to. A quick story. A few years ago on Greer, there was a process with people wanting changes on their street. A huge amount of traffic on Greer. If you want to go over there at the rush hours, you'll see it. I was surprised how many people actually wanted to shut the street down. Just give us our street; it belongs to us. Why are all these people cutting through? If you look at the map, you see why. The end result was that they put two speed bumps into play. The theory of unintended consequences here, I think the street is much more dangerous now than it was before. We have people slowing down and speeding up to get by the speed bumps. We have a huge number of people that come up onto the sidewalk. What I'm noticing in general in town is the amount of traffic has gone up. People are responding by trying to work around the problem. They know they're being manipulated. They know the City is shutting things down and closing lanes and putting up signs and circles and everything. They are trying to find a way around this so they can get to their jobs. It's as simple as that. Middlefield is an important street. It shows up on maps back over 100 years ago, down through the middle of the Stanford farm is the way I understand it. Also, these problems of traffic and roads and parking are very complicated things. It's not just so easy to say we're going to take away lanes and not provide parking and people will do something else, because it doesn't work that way. We end up with a problem. I'm not involved in the process as I should have been, but it looks to me like you have some ideas. Think carefully before you do anything. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Neeraj to be followed by Mark Eden. Neeraj Penose: Hello. My name is Neeraj Penose, and I live on Middlefield. I've met many of you, and I've been working about 3 1/2 years on the Middlefield North safety project along with John and several others. Our street bares an unfair burden on accidents. Living on it has become very difficult. We can't get out of our driveways on our block. We feel like someone will take off our toes when you're trying to stand at an intersection to cross the streets. What Josh and Rafael have come up with right now is a set of viable options. Other than applauding them, I also wanted to say that TRANSCRIPT Page 58 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 through our multiple meetings with Josh and the rest of the traffic team we knew that they were balancing capacity impact of the interior neighborhoods together with the safety and quality of life which were our concerns. I heard the call today about more discussion and more time, but you have to understand how bad it is right now on the Middlefield Road. You have to see it. You have to see the buses that can't fit in lanes and how they turn and what the real capacity is. You see four lanes; there aren't four lanes. There really is only two lanes. What Josh has come up with, I support Option 7A. When you think about voting today, I appeal to you to take a timely action because safety is a major issue and vote based on three things that I think are important to balance, safety, capacity and quality of life. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Mark to be followed by David Hirsch. Mark Eden: Good evening, Council. I also live on Middlefield, so I'm at the junction of Hawthorne. I've lived there about 14 years. Traffic has gotten significantly worse. Just to be clear, I don't think any of us are under any illusions about reducing the volume of traffic. That's not really the goal of this. The goal really is primarily safety and quality of life. There's been occasions where we've had the frequency of accidents at a rate of about one every week. It's almost, as Andrea said, you're almost awaiting the next accident. Fortunately, I don't think anybody has been seriously injured, but it's only a matter of time when that's going to happen. I do think that Option 7A, that Josh came up with, addresses the safety issue, and it also provides the residents in this stretch with some improved quality of life. I also heartily back Option 7A. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. David Hirsch to be followed by Stephanie Munoz. David Hirsch: Good evening, Council. My wife and I live on Palo Alto Avenue, between Everett and Lytton. We appreciate that the present traffic improvements will both improve safety on Middlefield and the concerns of the residents of Middlefield. However, we want to note a problem that will negatively impact the entire Crescent Park area to the east. Present traffic problems in this area result when the traffic lights on Lytton and University are red and cars begin to queue up. Those drivers not wanting to wait for the light to turn green will short cut their path to University onto Everett, Palo Alto, Guinda and the rest of the streets in the neighborhood to the east. It happens constantly now and will increase substantially. Please request the traffic department to redesign these intersections to prevent this situation. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Stephanie Munoz. TRANSCRIPT Page 59 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Stephanie Munoz: Good evening, Mayor Scharff and Council Members. There were four words that I didn't hear in that involved and very hard- worked, sophisticated analysis of what needed to be done in the opinion of the traffic people on Middlefield. The four words were Guinda, Fulton, Webster, Cowper. The traffic on Middlefield has to go someplace. People go that way every single day. It's not just once in a while, a whole lot of accumulation. It's their route that they take going to or from work. You have got to allow for that. Remember Maybell? You know how infuriated the people on Maybell were when you gave Arastradero Road that road diet. I have no expertise, but I would like to see some signs and some driver education. If you have lights, cameras on an intersection to catch cars as they cross on a yellow, which turns out to be a red a few feet away from where the picture is being taken for a $400 fine, you can have cameras on Everett, Hawthorne and Palo Alto Avenue with big warning signs, "Do you want Middlefield to be reduced to three lanes? No? Then slow down. Don't turn right. Don't turn left." If you're going to turn right, make a full stop. I see those intersections frequently because I live on Palo Alto Avenue and Alma. In order to get to East Palo Alto at 4:00 in the afternoon, I have to curve around and go down Woodland, so I have to go from and to Palo Alto Avenue. I have a lot of sympathy for the people. I think driver education is worth a try. Thanks very much. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Now, we return to Council for questions, comments and Motions. Council Member Filseth. Council Member Filseth: Thanks very much, and thanks very much for doing this, guys. I've got a few questions, but hopefully they'll go fast. It looks to me that between Options 7A and 7B, you're basically making three changes. One is to put the leftovers in. The second one is to take one of the northbound lanes and turn it into a two-way left turn-lane. In the case of 7A, the third one is to reduce two lanes southbound into one. Is that an accurate … I understand what the leftovers do. Basically they get rid of the T-bone collisions. I'm assuming that the second one, where you turn one of the northbound lanes into a two-way left turn-lane, is it a good assumption that's actually probably going to have minimal impact because it's already one lane between Hawthorne Avenue and Willow basically going over the bridge? If you make two blocks more of it one lane, it's not going to have that much impact. Mr. Mello: That's correct. The two-way left turn-lane would likely reduce rear-end collisions and also make it easier for people to pull in and out of the side streets and their driveways because they would have a refuge when turning left to stop in. Through the analysis, Rafael can talk a little more about this. The constraint on the capacity was actually going southbound on TRANSCRIPT Page 60 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Middlefield approaching Lytton. If we reduce that approach to one lane, then we would have major impacts to the signalized intersection at Lytton and Middlefield. The northbound departure from Lytton is not the constraint on the capacity, because that lane drops at the bridge anyway. Council Member Filseth: That was my question. Some folks talked about the potential diversion onto Guinda going north. I'm assuming that it's probably not a huge impact because it's already one lane. Anybody that's going to do that is already doing that. Mr. Mello: I believe some of the concerns around diversions were going southbound on Middlefield, people … Council Member Filseth: (Crosstalk). Mr. Mello: … turning left onto Everett and then south on Guinda. Council Member Filseth: I heard a couple of those too. The third act basically reduces the southbound to one lane and uses the space to make bike lanes on both sides. Could you do a quick summary of what the benefits of that one are? Does it slow down traffic? Is it going to reduce collisions? By the way, does it widen—if there's one lane instead of two, does that lane get wider? Mr. Mello: We're actually not recommending bike lanes. We're recommending paved shoulders, which would essentially look like a bike lane, but it wouldn't be marked for bicycle travel, because it would need to drop approaching Lytton. It would be between the bridge—the point at which the southbound lane drops after the bridge all the way to a point roughly midway between Everett and Lytton would be paved shoulders, so there would be an area of the roadway outside of the travel way. Those do several things. They allow us to widen the remaining travel lanes a little bit. We'd like to get them to 11 feet at least, because there are Dumbarton express buses that use that corridor. The other really benefits of paved shoulders is they move the travel lane away from the curb. A lot of the collisions we're seeing out there are because there's a lack of visibility when you're pulling out of the side street. If you push the travel lane away from the curb, you're improving your sightline. When you pull out and you're looking left to pull out, the travel lane would be away from the trees and further. The third benefit of a paved shoulder—some of the folks mentioned it—is when you're walking along the sidewalk, the travel lane would be 2-5 feet further from you, so you wouldn't feel vulnerable when you're walking along the sidewalk, because the travel lane would be further away from you. TRANSCRIPT Page 61 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Council Member Filseth: I understand. I walk my dog on that sidewalk sometimes. If I understand what you said, basically it's not just T-bone collisions we're worried about. You think that 7A will actually reduce collisions over 7B because of the wider shoulder and the sight of line, the paved shoulder and the line of sight. Mr. Mello: I wouldn't hazard a guess on that, but I would say that sightlines—people pulling out of cross streets and looking north would have much better sightlines towards southbound traffic that's approaching them. That could lead to a … Council Member Filseth: There aren't going to be any of those anyway because you've got the leftovers in. Mr. Mello: No, no, no. Motorists that are coming eastbound on Everett or Hawthorne, either making a left or crossing Middlefield, would have better sightlines looking north. Council Member Filseth: You can't cross Middlefield (inaudible). Mr. Mello: You are correct. It also improves sightlines for right-turning motorists as well. Council Member Filseth: I was going to say with the leftovers in you can't turn left or go straight across. You're only talking about right turns, right? Mr. Mello: I think Everett has a clear, documented history of T-bones and broadside collisions. Hawthorne, we don't necessarily have that same documented history. In the Staff Report, we do make a notation that the leftover at Hawthorne could be optional, but we think that might relocate all of the left-turners to Hawthorne, and then we could see a crash pattern develop there too. We're not as concerned with the collision history at Hawthorne as we are with the collision history at Everett. Council Member Filseth: One of the speakers, actually a couple of them, expressed concern that if you do the road diet southbound, it will divert traffic onto Palo Alto Avenue and Guinda. Have you guys looked at that? Mr. Mello: On Page 15 of the Staff Report under trial implementation and monitoring, we have a list of streets that we would monitor, Fulton, Lytton, Palo Alto Avenue, Guinda, Webster, Byron. All of the adjacent streets and parallel streets would be monitored for both increases in traffic, increases in speed and increases in volume. At our check-in points, 6 months and 12 months, we would see if there was in fact spillover traffic occurring. TRANSCRIPT Page 62 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Council Member Filseth: Thanks very much. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Fine. Council Member Fine: Thank you very much for this project. It looks like you've done a lot of hard work with the public, and they seem to be happy working with you. That's nice to hear. A few small questions. One, do you have kind of a guestimate about which alternative has less of an impact on some of the side streets around there? I know it's a general, broad question. Mr. Mello: Concept 7B preserves all of the existing southbound capacity, so there would be very little added delay or queuing going southbound. Alternative 7A reduces the number of lanes in both directions. That northbound lane does drop immediately after Hawthorne, so you're really only reducing it for another block and a half. Council Member Fine: A number of speakers commented on the inability or danger of backing out of their driveways. This is something that we talked about when it came to PTC. Do you guys have any suggestions there about protecting people backing out of their driveway, whether it's painted, curb cuts? I'm just looking for some solution there. Mr. Mello: I know a lot of the difficulty is especially during the period where the traffic is stopped. Some of the residents anecdotally described situations where they've had to put cones in the road to stop the travel lane as they went back to their car and maneuvered out. I think Concept 7A, you'd only be backing into one travel lane, and you would have that buffer of the shoulder. Your car wouldn't immediately enter the travel lane when you departed your driveway. There's a little more maneuverability there. At times, the roadway is completely stopped. I don't know if there's an answer beyond having a circular driveway, which is not available to a lot of these folks, for people that need to maneuver out of their driveway into stopped traffic. Council Member Fine: Thanks. That's all for now. Mayor Scharff: Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: Going up level a little bit. How does the accident rate compare on this street to other Palo Alto streets? Mr. Mello: That's not where the basis of the analysis originated. This was primarily a resident-driven exercise at the beginning, and then when we started to look at the collision data, we noticed that there was a pattern. We TRANSCRIPT Page 63 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 don't necessarily look at the number of collisions; we look at whether there's a discernible pattern. If there's countermeasures that can be installed that would address that pattern, then we would like to move forward with those. That's where most of the recommendations come from for this. Council Member DuBois: I spent some time with the residents. I actually walked around with them. I just wondered is this one of our worst areas in terms of accidents or are there other areas that are as bad. Mr. Mello: Again, we didn't really compare it to other similar residential arterials. The bulk of our recommendations are based on the fact that there's a discernible pattern of collisions, namely the broadside collisions and the right-of-way violations. There is something happening out there. I don't know how that compares to other intersections on residential arterials, but we are concerned about the pattern that we see out there. Council Member DuBois: It was mentioned in the press for the holidays; there was an article. It was mentioned you have a hot list of trouble sections in the City. I wanted to ask if you could maybe share that with Council. I think it would be interesting to see. I think there are hotspots all over, and it'd be good to get that list made public. Mr. Mello: We're going to be bringing that to you when we bring forward our speed survey recommendations. That was part of the speed survey data collection. This section actually already has a Certified Speed Study, so that wasn't part of the Study that we're going to bring forward. Council Member DuBois: Looking at 7A and 7B, 18,000 cars on the residential arterial, doubled in the last three years. Where do your models show the cars are going to go with these changes? I think there was one mention that you were trying to avoid a backup to the Willow intersection. What assumptions are you making in terms of future growth? Are you expecting more cut-through on Hawthorne and Everett? Mr. Mello: Our analysis did not account for future growth, because the intersections are going to function at a poor level of service regardless of the growth that occurs. There's a section in the Staff Report that details the assumptions that were made around that. As far as diverted traffic, we can make guesses. I think the only way we'll know is to do the monitoring during the project. We would monitor all possible ways people could divert off of that. We're actually working with a Carnegie Mellon professor who lives in the Fairmeadow neighborhood to pilot some puck-like devices that would actually do real-time monitoring of all the blocks adjacent to this pilot. He's willing to develop an interface where we could in real-time see where TRANSCRIPT Page 64 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 people are diverting and track it over time. We're hoping to use this as a rollout for that device. Council Member DuBois: That sounds pretty cool. Looking at it as a pilot, will we establish thresholds of what success is and what's unacceptable? Mr. Mello: I think going in we would develop some thresholds around what level of diverted traffic is acceptable. Do we tolerate any increase in speed on adjacent streets or parallel streets? We'd also be measuring the travel time along Middlefield Road. We're hoping to use Bluetooth technology to do that. There's a couple of vendors out there. We'd probably have a threshold on—if travel time along Middlefield Road increased to a point where it was no longer tolerable, that's where you're going to start to see people divert onto local streets, when they can no longer tolerate the delays. Certainly, I think we would establish thresholds moving in and then have a discussion about whether the project met or did not meet those thresholds. Council Member DuBois: When we get to comments, I think really understanding what those goals are is important. Some people mentioned the Dumbarton express. Where it's wider than the lanes seems to be an issue. I don't know if we have any influence, but would it make sense to consider routing Dumbarton down University instead of down Middlefield? Mr. Mello: We can certainly talk to AC Transit about that. The Dumbarton 1 runs down Oregon Expressway. That's a parallel route that serves the Research Park. We could certainly discuss—I think it's probably because of the travel time along Willow, and Middlefield is probably more competitive than University. Council Member DuBois: It's just the width and those turns. Just real quick, just a couple of others. When I walked out there with a bunch of the residents, seemed like one of the issues was the bend in the road. That really wasn't discussed in the Staff Report. It seems like again people get frustrated coming down Willow. It's two lanes. They speed around that bend and the bridge itself. Are there any thoughts about—both the bridge for pedestrians and bikes and then that bend itself, are there things that can be done there? Mr. Mello: This project will not make any civil improvements to the bridge itself. I think there is an opportunity around the curve just south of the bridge to shift the travel lanes over a little bit to the east, so that you don't have that southbound travel lane directly up against the curb as you go around the corner. I think that would be part of this project. Then, we'd have to figure out where the best place to drop the southbound lane would be if we move forward with Concept 7A. TRANSCRIPT Page 65 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Council Member DuBois: I know it's not part of this project. Longer term, is the bridge alignment something we need to consider? Is that causing these problems? How big a contributor is the turn there? Mr. Mello: I think the bridge is acting as a constraint right now because the bridge is only three lanes wide. Having a wider bridge, we may not be discussing the alternatives the way we are this evening. Council Member DuBois: Not even wider, but I'm wondering if it could be aligned differently where there was less of a bend somehow. Mr. Mello: We can look into that. I don't know what the replacement schedule is for that bridge, but we can certainly look into that and get back to you. Council Member DuBois: My last question here on the crosswalks in 7A. Are those lighted? Do those have signals for pedestrians to cross Middlefield? Mr. Mello: Typically on a residential arterial, we would look to install what are called rectangular rapid flashing beacons, which are the high-intensity, flashing strobe lights. As part of a pilot project, we don't necessarily know that we could do that. It's very shady there, and they may require hardwiring. The intent of the pilot project is to be something that could easily be modified or removed if it doesn't work well. Long term we would certainly want to add rectangular rapid flashing beacons. One of the reasons we don't show crosswalks in Concept 7B is because you'd be crossing multiple travel lanes at the same time. Typically, when you have a crosswalk across multiple travel lanes, you want to install some type of enhancement like a rapid flashing beacon. Council Member DuBois: Would that trigger an EIR in terms of adding new signals versus the pilot? Mr. Mello: No. Rapid flashing beacons don't require a motorist to stop; they just serve as a warning device. They wouldn't affect arterial operations. Council Member DuBois: Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Kou. Council Member Kou: Thank you. I wanted to ask—there were other concepts that you showed. Could you briefly go through 3 and 1? I don't really care for barriers in the middle of the street, medians, because of emergency vehicles and the difficulty of them getting onto it. It looks like TRANSCRIPT Page 66 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 there's 3 over here and 5 that doesn't have it. Could you go through those for me please? Mr. Mello: First, though, I'd like to say that the leftovers that would be installed would be mountable by emergency vehicles. They could drive in the center turn-lane and actually pass over the leftover devices. Concept Plan 3 is what we call a traditional road diet. There's no civil improvements, there's no islands or medians or leftovers. It would restripe the roadway to provide one northbound travel lane, one southbound travel lane, a two-way left turn-lane, and then either paved shoulders or bicycle lanes. This would enable us to widen the travel lanes if we desired. You could also install leftovers as part of this concept. That's Alternative Concept Plan 3. What was the other one you wanted to look at, 5? Council Member Kou: Five. Mr. Mello: Preliminary Concept Plan 5 is adding on-street parking. This could either be all day on-street parking or it could be time restricted so that in the southbound morning there'd be no parking on the southbound side, and then in the evening there'd be no parking on the northbound side. This allows us to kind of match the roadway capacity to the demand. Some of the concerns about this from the neighborhood stakeholders were that the parking would probably be unutilized, and we might have unsafe passing on the right in the parking lane, we might have confusion from motorists as to whether the time of day allows them to drive in that travel lane. If parking were flexible, we wouldn't gain any space for shoulders or a two-way left turn-lane. This does match what is south of Channing Avenue today. Council Member Kou: Your Concept Plan 3, there is a bicycle lane there or is it again the barrier? Mr. Mello: Concept Plan 3 is showing bicycle lanes, but those could also be just paved shoulders with no bike lane markings. It would effectively be a bike lane but with no designated bike lane markings. Council Member Kou: Can I ask why did you not recommend this one, given that it is easier for the residents on Middlefield to back out of their driveways? Mr. Mello: Concept Plan 7A and 7B do not propose continuous medians. They only propose leftovers. The reason we did not advance this Concept Plan forward is it does not address the collision history. This does not address the broadside or left-turn collisions that are occurring at Everett. TRANSCRIPT Page 67 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Council Member Kou: One more question. There was this phrase on Staff Report Page 14; it says "confusion and/or aggressive driving." It leads me to this question. How do you measure close calls or near collisions or undocumented collisions? I've had a chance to experience also that sometimes police are called for a collision but the drivers exchange driver's licenses and then they go their separate ways and there's no report documented. How do you count those into your data? Mr. Mello: That's why we look at patterns; we don't look at sheer numbers. A pattern would generally be the same among reported and unreported collisions. There's nothing that leads us to believe that the unreported collisions that the residents have been documenting have different causal factors than the reported collisions. We're really looking at the pattern and what's causing the collisions, not necessarily how many there are, the volume. Council Member Kou: Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Vice Mayor Kniss. Vice Mayor Kniss: I'm going to—since we had a football weekend—take the ball and run with it if possible. First I want to say a particular thank you to you, Josh, and your team and to all of you here tonight who are affected by that road. I have spent a great deal of time there, both with Staff watching what happens, particularly with John Guislin and others, who I've met with in the audience, nodding their heads. This is a particularly bad stretch of road in our community. Many, many times, thank you all for sending me the pictures, frankly, as soon as it happens. It would pop up on my phone. As was said, they haven't been severe. What they have been is a constant interruption in the flow of traffic. At some point, one of them will be severe. I think this is one of those times when the residents have really come forward and said, "We need some relief." Staff has met with them now for at least a year if not a year and a half, stakeholder meetings and so forth. The Motion that I'm going to read is on Page 167, which says "review the alternate plans." I am going to move that we recommend 7A for Middlefield Road between the Menlo Park limits and Forest Avenue and so forth; amend the fiscal year Budget. That has both "A" and "B" to it, which will flash up here on the board. Then, find that this is exempt from the environmental review. I'll pause and see if there's a second. Council Member Fine: I'll second. MOTION: Vice Mayor Kniss moved, seconded by Council Member Fine to: TRANSCRIPT Page 68 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 A. Identify Alternative Concept Plan 7A as the preferred alternative to implement as a one-year pilot project; and B. Amend the Fiscal Year 2017 Budget Appropriation for: i. The General Fund to: a. Increase the transfer to the Capital Fund in the amount of $200,000; and b. Decrease the Planning and Transportation Contingency in the amount of $200,000; and ii. The General Capital Improvement Fund to: a. Increase the transfer from the General Fund in the amount of $200,000; and b. Increase the appropriation to Transportation and Parking Project (CIP PL-12000) by $200,000; and C. Find the preferred Alternative Concept Plan exempt from environmental review as a minor change to existing roadways that would not result in significant environmental impacts. Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you. Looking at this, I think you could find both good and bad in 7A and 7B. What I found persuasive, aside from the fact that it's very clear that's what the residents prefer, in addition if you look at the final concepts on Page 11, it reduces collisions and reduces neighborhood impacts from through traffic, which is exactly what we're looking for. Then, it has very few significant environmental impacts. This is the one that makes the most sense to me. I think Staff has done a very good job of reviewing this. Thanks especially to residents who have been so patient through all of this and who have stayed in touch, have really worked hard to come up with a solution tonight. I hope this goes through. Congratulations to all of you who have been involved. Remember it's still a pilot. This doesn't have to be the finale. I think this pilot is probably going to a little over a year, but I think the pilot will give us a very good understanding of what happens in particular on roads like that, when they double their traffic in—was it three years when they doubled the traffic? I know John knows. Three years. That's a big difference in the amount of traffic on your road. With that, onto the seconder. Mayor Scharff: Adrian, would you like to speak to your second? TRANSCRIPT Page 69 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Council Member Fine: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I think the Vice Mayor puts it quite well. This has been a community-driven project. It seems overwhelming that they support Option 7A. I think that's a nice way to cap this off and all the effort they've put into this. Personally, I think there's a few other things I like about this project. I think 7A does provide some additional transportation options, whether it's biking or walking, compared to 7B. It also matches the one lane configuration as Middlefield transitions to Menlo Park, which kind of rationalizes the corridor a little bit. Two other comments. I did like Council Member DuBois' comment about what are the successes that we're looking for here. I'd really encourage Staff to work with the folks who have worked so hard already to figure out what is it we're looking for, what are we not looking for. The final thing is more of a large comment on how we do things here in the City. This is a pretty detailed transportation engineering plan, and none of us up here are transportation engineers. We're really tasked with digging into it, listening to folks in the community, working with you and Staff. Just having come from the Planning Commission, this may be something that we want them to focus more on. I know it's been through PTC. As a Council in the future, we may want to think about respecting those decisions or giving some more leverage or power to the PTC who are supposed to be specialists in this area. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Tanaka. Council Member Tanaka: I also want to thank Staff for your work and also to all the residents that came out to talk about this matter. I've spent a lot of time on Middlefield, talking to a lot of the residents. It's definitely a big issue. It's actually not just this stretch of Middlefield, but a lot of other parts of Middlefield. I encourage Staff to actually do some work and try to fix some of the other parts. I support the current Motion on the floor, but I have a couple of comments. Two of my colleagues were saying earlier, I didn't see in the Packet the PTC Minutes. In fact, the PTC Minutes aren't even online. Do you know what happened to them? Mr. Mello: This project was not brought to PTC for a direction. We did give a presentation at PTC back in October regarding several projects that are occurring along Middlefield Road. Council Member Tanaka: I think you actually talked about this project at the PTC, because I was there. I think my fellow Council Member was also there. I was a little bit surprised that none of those comments made it to us. I felt like this was almost like déjà vu, like literally déjà vu from the last meeting. I guess I was a bit surprised. Why not leverage the work that was done already? TRANSCRIPT Page 70 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Mr. Mello: The Study Session with PTC focused on three different projects along Middlefield Road. It wasn't specific to this project. I apologize. Perhaps we should have included those Minutes. Council Member Tanaka: The last topic here is I don't know if you saw the letter about the tactical urbanism. I was wondering if you could respond to that, whether some of those techniques might be able to be leveraged. Mr. Mello: Our intent with the pilot is to use low-cost, flexible materials, to get something out there quickly and relatively low impact. That's certainly within the realm of tactical urbanism as done by a city. We would certainly look to the community as to what type of materials they'd prefer as part of the pilot project and in the long term. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: I'll be supporting this Motion. I came into this meeting tonight still not quite sure between 7A and 7B. A couple of things convinced me to support the Motion for 7A and not recommend changing it to 7B. One is the overwhelming support of people in the community for 7A over 7B of those who support moving forward with the project. Also, I think it was inspired by the line of questioning from Council Member Filseth—I think others have noticed this also—the question of safety and the challenge of backing out of your driveway or just getting out of your driveway, that extra space to do that without going into another line of traffic immediately, to ease that very challenging thing. There will still be days when it's difficult, when traffic is totally backed up. I don't want us to set expectations too high, that this is going to magically solve all the problems on the corridor. The hope here, though, is that we do see some modicum of relief on safety issues and the smoothness of traffic flow. There will still be a lot of cars going down Middlefield. It will still be tough. People will still honk their horns. People will still have a tough time getting out of their driveways sometimes, and there may still be collisions. Hopefully, it's a little bit better. Hopefully, at the end of a year or so we'll have a sense of how much better it is. At that point, we'll be able to reevaluate and reconsider if maybe we do want to try 7B or 7C, learn from this experience. I think that's important. I do want to also commend Staff and the community for their good work on bringing this to us. I'm eager to see it implemented, when I'm driving down Middlefield to see some improvements and to come back in a year and take stock and decide what we want to do after that. Mayor Scharff: Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: First of all, I want to say I understand and empathize with the safety concerns. I think all of the solutions increase the TRANSCRIPT Page 71 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 safety, which is the most important thing. I do support the Motion. Like Council Member Wolbach, I came in here fairly open and unsure between 7A and 7B. I do like the wider lanes, and I like the sightlines. I do want to quickly make a couple of points that I don't think have been made yet. Josh, how long have you been here with Palo Alto? Mr. Mello: I think it's about 18 months now. Council Member DuBois: Shorter than I thought actually. This is a long-term problem. It's not Josh's problem or fault. For my fellow Council Members, we really need to start to think about congestion in a big way. If you look at the Citizen Survey, ease of travel by car in Palo Alto has gone from 66 percent in 2010 to 44 percent, a 22 percent drop. That's a key performance metric that's not moving in the right direction. I think we've really got to figure how we at least stop that drop, if not turn it around. We've got to look at our arterials. We don't have that many arterials. I am concerned that we didn't consider any growth assumptions. We're going to have growth. In terms of congestion, Menlo Park wasn't really mentioned much in the Staff Report. We need to engage them in a much more aggressive way. They have a lot of development occurring on El Camino, and they need to upgrade their arterials. They have Marsh Road, they have Willow Road, and they route their traffic through Palo Alto to get to El Camino. With some of these new projects, we really need to talk to them about getting some of that traffic through Menlo Park to El Camino. Willow from 101 creates a lot of frustration in drivers. It went through a road diet, and it's one lane. When you hit Middlefield, it two lanes. Drivers are pent up, and the speed increases quite a bit there. Finally, we didn't really talk about enforcement very much. I'm not a big fan of traffic cameras, but this might be a place to capture illegal left turns. If it was really for this egregious—where a turn is not allowed, that might be something we want to consider. Police enforcement there due to the traffic is pretty difficult. We had a long discussion here. I think it really could be framed pretty simply. We have a residential arterial, like many arterials, and we're trying to decide do we want it to be more arterial or more residential. We should look at this pilot and really, like I said before, understand the metrics of success here. I think measurement is really critical. I'm really excited to hear about trying out some new measurement devices. I'd like to make a friendly Amendment, Liz. Vice Mayor Kniss: I'm listening. Council Member DuBois: I would add a "D, which … Vice Mayor Kniss: I'm waiting. TRANSCRIPT Page 72 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Council Member DuBois: Just making sure. I would add a "D" that Staff would define clear metrics for level of impacts that determine success or failure, so that Council can evaluate this pilot with data at its conclusion. Vice Mayor Kniss: I think that's a good Amendment. I certainly accept it. Mayor Scharff: Adrian? Council Member Fine: I accept it as well. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “direct Staff to define clear metrics for level of impacts that will determine success or failure, so that Council can evaluate this pilot with data at the conclusion.” (New Part D) Council Member DuBois: Thanks. That's it. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Kou. Council Member Kou: I will be supporting the Motion as well. Just to say thank you. You've worked really hard with the community. I saw the interaction at the meetings and so forth. Also, the residents who have been impacted have been working extremely hard. I'm glad to see this come forth. I realize the phrase road diet brings about many different reactions from people. The notion is to take away lanes as a matter of philosophy. However, this plan emphasizes safety. I want it to be clear it's about safety. One of the lessons that we did learn from the Arastradero road diet is the issue of displacement. There is evidence and there was controversy that there was a lot of traffic that was diverted onto Maybell Avenue, which is a Safe Routes to School street. Just piggy-backing off Council Member DuBois' "D," yes, we do need clear metrics in order to evaluate whether it does impact all the other streets on the side. Lastly, I just want to say tonight we're here on two issues with regards to traffic and parking. I think it's important to recognize, as Council Member DuBois said, that we have to address growth. I really hope that our community will come together when our Emergency Ordinances with regards to office and R&D cap comes up for expiration, that we do support it by extending it. Further, the ground-floor retail space by preserving that too. This way we can actually have some growth metrics and some preservation of ensuring that we do have less congestion or we can bear the congestion on traffic and parking. Thank you. MOTION AS AMENDED RESTATED: Vice Mayor Kniss moved, seconded by Council Member Fine to: TRANSCRIPT Page 73 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 A. Identify Alternative Concept Plan 7A as the preferred alternative to implement as a one-year pilot project; and B. Amend the Fiscal Year 2017 Budget Appropriation for: i. The General Fund to: c. Increase the transfer to the Capital Fund in the amount of $200,000; and d. Decrease the Planning and Transportation Contingency in the amount of $200,000; and ii. The General Capital Improvement Fund to: c. Increase the transfer from the General Fund in the amount of $200,000; and d. Increase the appropriation to Transportation and Parking Project (CIP PL-12000) by $200,000; and C. Find the preferred Alternative Concept Plan exempt from environmental review as a minor change to existing roadways that would not result in significant environmental impacts; and D. Direct Staff to define clear metrics for level of impacts that will determine success or failure, so that Council can evaluate this pilot with data at the conclusion. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Seeing no further lights, let's vote on the board. That passes unanimously. MOTION AS AMENDED PASSED: 8-0 Holman absent 13. PUBLIC HEARING: Resolution 9663 Entitled, “Resolution of the Council of the City of Palo Alto for the Creation of a new Residential Preferential Parking (RPP) Program in the Evergreen Park and Mayfield Neighborhoods Bounded by Park Boulevard, Caltrain Rail Corridor, Oregon Expressway, Page Mill Road and El Camino Real and Finding of Exemption Under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).” Mayor Scharff: Now, the next Item, I know Vice Mayor Kniss has something she needs to say. Vice Mayor Kniss: Because we own real property in this particular area, I need to recuse myself from the next Item. TRANSCRIPT Page 74 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Mayor Scharff: Why don't we just take a five-minute break. Vice Mayor Kniss left the meeting at 9:29 P.M. Council took a break from 9:29 P.M. to 9:36 P.M. Council Member Holman returned to the meeting at 9:32 P.M. Mayor Scharff: Before we start the presentation, I haven't counted them, but it looks like close to 30 speaker cards. If there are other speakers, if you could get it in because I'm not going to take any more speaker cards after the presentation finishes. Hillary Gitelman, Director of Planning and Community Environment: Thank you, Mayor Scharff, Council Members. I'm Hillary Gitelman, the Planning Director. I'm here with Joshuah Mello, who you know. Joshuah has another fantastic presentation. I wanted to remind everyone who doesn't know this that Joshuah is right now doing the job of three people . It's been a tremendous effort for him and his team to bring forward this Evergreen Park RPP proposal. We're looking forward to presenting it to you this evening and hearing your thoughts on the pilot program. Joshuah Mello, Chief Transportation Official: Greeting, Mayor, members of Council. I'm going to talk tonight about a creation of a new Residential Preferential Parking Program in Evergreen Park and Mayfield. Just to give you a little bit of background. The Citywide RPP Ordinance clearly defines findings that must be made in order to implement an RPP Program. These include the fact that nonresident vehicles substantially interfere with the use of on-street or alley parking by residents; that the nonresident vehicles occur at regular and frequent intervals; and that the nonresident vehicles cause traffic congestion, noise or other disruption. It also outlines that other alternative parking strategies are not feasible or practical in order to consider an RPP Program. This particular RPP Program, the Evergreen Park/Mayfield RPP, began back in February of 2016 when a Colleagues' Memo was drafted by several Council Members, recommending a College Terrace-like program in Evergreen Park. In March, before the deadline of the end of March, a group of residents from Evergreen Park submitted a petition according to the guidelines that are outlined in the Administrative Guidelines in the Citywide RPP Ordinance. In April, we brought this petition as well as several others to the PTC for prioritization, and Evergreen Park was prioritized over several other petitions that were submitted. In May of 2016, we brought the petition to City Council and received direction from you to proceed with the Evergreen Park RPP Program. Immediately following that meeting, we began initial data collection and initiated a stakeholder progress as outlined in the Citywide RPP Ordinance. Between TRANSCRIPT Page 75 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 July and November, the stakeholder process progressed. We also collected several more data sets. As the conversation moved forward, we realized that there were additional data sets that needed to be collected in order to understand what was occurring and formulate the program. In December, we went back to the Planning and Transportation Commission, and they recommended moving forward with the Evergreen Park program. There were a couple of modifications that they recommended, and I'll talk about those later. Here we are in January, presenting to you the Resolution that is attached to your Staff Report. Our ultimate goal is to begin enforcement of this program in April, which is when the enforcement for the Downtown RPP will begin if it's renewed. Going back to the May 9th Council meeting, where you gave us direction to move forward with the Evergreen Park Program, there's two clauses from that Motion that are relevant to Evergreen Park. The first is to 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 direct Staff to explore options including sharing permits so that low-income workers as well as retail and personal service employees can afford permits. That stakeholder process began immediately after you authorized us to move forward with the Evergreen Park RPP Program. It included a community workshop, where we presented the outline, the framework of the Citywide RPP Ordinance. We also talked about lessons learned from the Downtown RPP Program. That was followed by a resident focus group in August and a business owner and operator focus group in September. Finally, that stakeholder process capped off with a community workshop in July. Immediately following that workshop where we presented a draft program design for the Evergreen Park/Mayfield RPP, we mailed out surveys to all of the residential property owners and occupants in the proposed RPP District. The data collection that we typically do for the initiation of an RPP Program includes an occupancy survey. We do these occupancy surveys during four different times of day. We do a morning, a lunch time, an evening, and an overnight occupancy count. For Evergreen Park, initially we thought the program was only going to include the Evergreen Park neighborhood, so our first round of data collection is only in the Evergreen Park area. That's what's shown before you here. We also included Southgate in this data collection efforts, because there's a parallel program moving forward in Southgate. We also included a portion of Old Palo Alto, so that we would have a baseline to see if there's any intrusion into Old Palo Alto after this program is implemented. Some of the things we found is that the midday is the busiest time of day in Evergreen Park. Thirteen blocks were over 85 percent occupancy at various time periods throughout the day. Not surprisingly, the blocks nearest to California Avenue and El Camino Real have the highest occupancy. Overnight data. We used overnight counts to TRANSCRIPT Page 76 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 try to estimate how many of the vehicles on the streets were owned by residents. We assumed that most resident-owned vehicles would be parked on the street overnight, and that the users from the business district and Caltrain and Stanford and other nonresident users of the street would not be present at 11:30 p.m. Based on that, we determined that after taking into account how many spaces were occupied by residents overnight at 11:30 p.m., 44.7 percent of the curb space was occupied by vehicles overnight. College Avenue had a high night occupancy rate. We think that's because of the multifamily housing that's along College Avenue. Also, Stanford University students and Caltrain riders are not accounted for. We don't know how many people are leaving their vehicles overnight in the neighborhood who don't live there. There's no real way to determine that through just occupancy counts. We followed that up with—after we made the decision that we needed to include the Mayfield area to anticipate potential intrusion and relocation from Evergreen Park, we initiated a data collection in the Mayfield area. Similar to Evergreen Park, we found that the midday was the busiest time of day. There were eight blocks that were over 85 percent occupancy at specific time periods throughout the day. Surprisingly, the blocks nearest El Camino Real, not Cal. Ave., had the highest occupancy in the Mayfield area. We also conducted overnight counts in Mayfield around midnight. Those overnight counts, again, were used to attempt to estimate how many of the vehicles parked on the street were resident-owned. 36.5 percent of the available curb space in Mayfield was occupied overnight. The 400 block of Grant Avenue exceeded 85 percent occupancy overnight. That, again, has a large concentration of multifamily housing. Again, some vehicles were likely to be long-term Stanford students and/or Caltrain riders. We're not able to determine that through an Occupancy Study. Shortly after the second community workshop, where we presented the Draft Program Plan, we mailed out 1,652 surveys to residential units and residential unit property owners. 20 percent were returned, 32 percent from Evergreen Park and 13 percent from Mayfield. Overall, we saw 72 percent support for the program in Evergreen Park and 60 percent support in Mayfield. The recommended program design takes into account the program design that we presented to the stakeholders and the community back in July, but it also incorporates some changes that were recommended by the PTC when we presented it to them. We're recommending the implementation of an RPP Program in the area bounded by Park Boulevard, the Caltrain corridor, Oregon Expressway, Page Mill Road and El Camino Real. It would include all of the blocks within that boundary except for the existing 2-hour parking zone that's in the California Avenue Business District. That's shown in brown. That parking would remain 2- hour parking, open to all users. The green, blue and beige rectangles would be employee parking zones. Similar to the Downtown program, we would designate specific employee parking zones in an effort to distribute the TRANSCRIPT Page 77 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 employee parking as evenly as possible throughout the district. We're recommending a 2-hour time limit similar to the Downtown program with no re-parking. You could not re-park within one of the employee parking zones on the same day. You could not stay longer than 2 hours in one of those employee parking zones. We're recommending a little bit different as far as enforcement; this is based on feedback from the residents as well as the PTC. Instead of ending enforcement at 5:00 p.m. as we do in the Downtown RPP, we're recommending extending enforcement to 6:00 p.m. Annual resident parking permit stickers. Each household would be eligible for one free resident permit parking sticker and then two more at $50 each. Residents would also be eligible to purchase two annual hangtags that could be transferred between visitors at $50 each and 50 daily scratchers per year. Employee permit parking stickers. We're recommending a cap of 250 employee parking permits districtwide. These would be sold at $149 each, which is the same price as a garage lot permit for the Cal. Ave. Business District. We've modified the allotment of permits based on feedback we got from residents and the PTC. We're recommending 75 permits be sold in Zone A, 50 in Zone B, and 125 in Zone C. Zone B includes the area closest to Cal. Ave. north of the Cal. Ave. Business District. This is where we see a lot of the density of employee parking. We think we'd have a lower permit number in that particular employee parking zone. We're recommending giving priority to people that are already on the garage and parking lot wait lists for the Cal. Ave. Business District. There's roughly 300 people that are currently on that wait list; it's gone up since the Report was drafted. We would also give priority to low-income employees and offer them a $50 low- income permit per year. Employees would also be eligible to buy unlimited daily scratchers at $5 each. Those are for employees that don't drive to work every day, but they may need a parking pass occasionally. We're recommending a cap of 250 employee annual permits, as I mentioned. I have a table that explains this a little bit further into the presentation. With a 35 percent permit holder show rate—the show rate is at a given point in time, how many permit holders do we expect to show up. This is based on data that we have from the Downtown RPP. Roughly 30-40 percent of employee permit holders show up at any given point in time. Just because we make 250 permits available, that does not mean that 250 people will show up every day, on a Monday, on a Wednesday. With this show rate, this represents 15 percent of the available overnight capacity. If you remember, we use the overnight capacity to attempt to ascertain how much of the space is being occupied by residents. As I said, the garage wait list is currently at 250, 300 people. It's closer to 300 today. When we wrote the Staff Report, it was about 250. We're not recommending an employee parking permit reduction at this time, but we could certainly consider one after the 1-year pilot program. We're also not recommending eligibility areas. We do think that Old Palo Alto and Ventura may experience some TRANSCRIPT Page 78 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 relocation of employee parking, but we think that they should have the ability to create their own RPP District and not be roped into this program as an eligibility area. College Terrace across El Camino Real is already part of an RPP Program, so we don't anticipate any spillover into that area. There are some outstanding concerns. We made some modifications to address some of these, but there are some outstanding ones. I'll start with the modifications that we made to address some concerns. We are recommending extending enforcement to 6:00 p.m. A lot of the residents we spoke to wanted a larger enforcement timeframe from 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. When we start to stretch beyond 8 or 9 hours, it would require another shift of enforcement officers. We don't think that the financial tradeoff is necessarily worthwhile. There's also some concerns that there will be a lot of employee parking occurring on the blocks closest to the Cal. Ave. Business District, particularly College Avenue. We have made a modification to the employee parking areas; we added a third zone. We are allocating fewer permits in the E zone that includes College Avenue as a result of this concern. Some outstanding concerns that we haven't necessarily reached a Resolution on. There's a significant number of residents who would like to see a reduction in employee parking permits over time. There was also some consternation around our expansion of the boundary to include the Mayfield area. We really thought that it was necessary to expand this RPP to include Mayfield in order to anticipate the relocation of employee parking into the Mayfield area and get ahead of that and make them part of the program from the beginning. There was a also a little bit of concern about the inclusion of businesses along El Camino Real within the district. I think you'll hear a little bit from some of those businesses later this evening. That relates directly to the next point, which is the supply of off-street parking for dentist and doctor offices and others that are far from the garages and lots. We experienced this with the Downtown RPP Program, especially with some of the dentists and doctors that are along Middlefield Road. Our line of reasoning has been that these offices and establishments should be able to use the garages and lots and/or Caltrain or other public transit. That works well if you're in the Central Business District or within the California Avenue Business District. A lot of these dentist offices and doctor offices are not within the business district. They're a significant distance from the garages and lots. It can be a little bit of a hardship on them if there aren't accommodations made. Of course, we recognize that there's a need for a Comprehensive Parking Study of the entire area. You'll probably hear some comments tonight related to the difficulty to get garage and lot permits; the fact that we need more supply in the Cal. Ave. Business District; and other concerns related to the supply of off-street parking. We recognize that. That was not conducted as part of this program design, but we do hope to conduct a Comprehensive Parking Study of the entire area once we have the resources available. Next steps for the program. This evening, if the City TRANSCRIPT Page 79 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Council approves the attached Resolution, we would move directly into making contract modifications to the existing enforcement and online permit sales contracts. Then, we would update the administrative guidelines; install signs within the program area and start selling permits in March, with a goal of enforcement beginning in April. We would conduct quite a bit of public outreach to make people aware that this program is rolling out and also give them the ability to purchase permits. Ms. Gitelman: I'm just going to add one thing as Josh finishes up, just a couple of things from the Council's original direction. I wanted to point out your Motion originally asked us to consider prioritizing retail and personal service workers as well as low-income workers. We gave some thought to that and really decided that we would spend all of our time managing that prioritization program. We know how to prioritize for low-income workers; we've done it Downtown. If we were going to try and modify that and get fancy and do it by land use, it was just going to get complicated. We carried over the suggestion from Downtown to prioritize low-income workers. Also, you had asked us to consider transferrable permits for the low-income workers. At this point, we're not recommending that. We have the daily permits and stickers for the employees. They're not transferrable, but that might be something you want to consider further. Finally, I don't know if Josh mentioned it. The limit of 250 permits is coincidentally the same number of people that we have on the waiting list for the Cal. Ave. garages. It's a good estimate of current demand for permitted parking in the area. Mr. Mello: With that, we'll take questions. Mayor Scharff: We have a lot of public speakers tonight. It's going to be two minutes, and it's going to be five minutes for the groups of speakers that we have when we have five cards. I would encourage everyone, if you can be briefer than that, that would be great. As it is, I would expect us to finish this meeting somewhere around 12:15. I just wanted everyone to know that it's probably going to be two hours and 15 minutes at least. With that, our first speaker is Paul Machado. We have five people who are here for Paul. Paul, you'll have five minutes. Public Hearing opened at 9:57 P.M. Paul Machado speaking for five people, James Cornett, Doria Summa, Dedra Hauser, Patrick Slattery: Good evening, Mayor Scharff and Council. Staff and residents have spent countless hours to create an RPP that prevents Evergreen Park becoming a commercial parking lot. The process started 4 years ago with residents doing car counts, then collecting signatures on a petition that requested a College Terrace-like RPP. Residents drafted an RPP TRANSCRIPT Page 80 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 proposal. It was presented to the California Avenue Merchants Association and the City Council was also invited to hear the proposal. We were pleased when seven of nine Council Members, who graciously heard our presentation, all responded positively. This led to a Colleagues' Memo and later a mandate to create an RPP Program in Evergreen Park. Next, Staff and residents met several times as the RPP was crafted. I was also present when Staff did an outreach to the California Avenue Merchants Association. During this process, the plan has undergone many revisions. Now, you have before you the final version Staff recommends implementing after many years of toil. Recently, I was surprised to read an article that demanded twice as many business permits be sold in our small neighborhood. It said the neighborhood should be parked up to 75 percent. Let's be clear. 75 percent parked is a commercial parking lot, not a neighborhood. Our family neighborhood contains a major bike route that serves two grammar schools, and 75 percent parked just decreases visibility and livability. It defeats the entire purpose of this program. Also curiously, we have a dental office in our area that contains a 19-space onsite parking lot. This lot is never full. I pass it several times a day. It is unfortunate that Staff there always parks in the neighborhood. It is hoped with the implementation of the RPP, staff will be allowed to park onsite with the patients parking in the front of the office and new parking spaces created by two-hour slots that will remove the campers and Stanford parkers that are presently there. It is my experience that if you spend more than two hours in a dental chair, perhaps someone else would drive you home. I pray this dentist will give the program a chance. Having someone park in front of your house for two hours is far more desirable than having them park every day all day. Lastly, I ask my fellow neighbors to stand and show our support for the passing of this Staff- recommended RPP proposal. We want to thank Staff and Council for taking this initial step to protect our neighborhood life and acknowledge we are not merely a convenience for those who willingly under-park their projects, contributing to horrific parking and traffic congestion, which presently plagues this City. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Next, we'll have Hillary Bayer, also speaking for five people. You'll have five minutes. Hilary Bayer speaking for five people, Andrew Nepomuceno, Jen Bayer, Robin Bayer, Hilary Hug: Neighbors asked me to come here tonight to support permit parking. I am here and I do, but I'll be dishonest if I fail to ask you for what I really want. I've lived in the same house in Evergreen Park for all of my 17 years. When I was younger, we had a quiet neighborhood where people on the street knew each other, where drivers were neighbors who cared about neighbors, where traffic was light and consisted of residents, guests and service people. My parents and others TRANSCRIPT Page 81 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 told me about how our neighborhood was once overrun by short-cutting drivers and how residents and City employees and City Council people and business people worked together to make our streets safe and quiet. That is what I want. I want business people to pay the full cost of building commercial buildings with adequate parking. I want City employees and City Council people to make and enforce rules to ensure this. I want residents to accept permit parking as a temporary, necessary inconvenience rather than as a new normal. I am too young and not yet cynical enough to smile and nod about how making legislation is like making sausage. I understand that accommodating legitimate interests requires compromise. I am a twin, and I've been at it since I was born. I reject the idea that once someone has treated someone else unfairly and taken something from them, they have a legitimate interest in keeping it. I strongly disagree that public health, safety and welfare are improved by giving 250 business district employees a right to park on nearby residential streets for up to 72 hours at a time. I will likely live longer than almost everyone else in this room. I shudder when I think about witnessing the next few decades of the (inaudible), of climate disruption, of nonrenewable resource depletion and of attendant social strife. All of us know that automobiles and their required infrastructure are a huge factor in global ills. Almost all of us at least pay lip service to reducing automobile use. Mandating that my neighbors and I subsidize others' auto use by diminishing our quality of life is unreasonable and unfair, not just to us but to people everywhere now and for the indefinite future. I will be grateful if you will take a stand for reason and fairness and make this a true Residential Permit Parking Program, where permits are attached to residents by stripping it of permits attached to businesses. Thank you very much for considering my views. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Now, we'll have Tim Mulcahy. You'll have two minutes. Tim Mulcahy: Thank you. My name is Tim Mulcahy, and I was born and raised in Palo Alto. I've been a dentist in this community for 34 years. For the last 9 years, I've been owner of Mulcahy Family Dentistry at 1795 El Camino, which is on the outer edge of the Evergreen RPP Program. Residential parking has been squeezed by California Avenue, Caltrain's parking in the south and Stanford employees in the north, who park in the neighborhood and ride or walk to Stanford campus. The RPP proposal will eliminate the Stanford employee parking, but the entire neighborhood area is limited to 125 permits. Those 125 permits, if we go by the existing wait list for the parking lots at Cal. Ave., will completely be swallowed up. There will be none left for any dentists or any of the businesses on El Camino. My employees come from 60, 70, 80 miles away. They can't afford to live here. It means no viability to get new employees. I have a hard enough time TRANSCRIPT Page 82 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 trying to find employees to work in the office anyway, driving that far. If we have them park at the Cal. Ave. or further down in some parking lot and then have them shuttled to the office, that requires additional time to get to the office and less quality and less chance to keep those employees in my office. I have 14 employees, and they deserve a realistic place to park. I also have patients that are elderly and families with young kids. I cannot ask them to park on El Camino Real for the safety factor or for my elderly patients to walk through the community if they can get to that spot. I would prefer to have a usable, workable solution for all, not just for the residents. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Connie Lyssand to be followed by Christine Lee. Connie Lyssand: Hello, thank you. My name is Connie Lyssand. I'm the office manager for Mulcahy Family Dentistry. I've two things. One, I'm an employee; I'm also a manager. My job is to seek employees to come to our office. As Dr. Mulcahy shared with you, many of them do drive quite a ways to come when we invite them to come to Palo Alto and work for us. There's a lot of concerns with our staff as what's going to happen if they don't have a parking permit. Their jobs are dependent upon them being be able to be here and be able to work and have a place to park. They should have a safe place to park and it should be conditioned upon their employment. We have young mothers in our practice. Asking them to park in a parking garage and take a shuttle to the office would be difficult. If they had a family emergency, they would have to leave. They would have to try to make provisions to be taken back to a parking garage and be able to get their cars. One of the other conversations is about the parking and having to move your car every two hours. If our employees are parking there, we are healthcare providers. You can imagine that if you're caring for a patient and all of a sudden your two-hour time is up, you're going to have to leave your patient and go move your car. This compromises patients' healthcare. We have some concerns about how this is going to be implemented and put into place for employees. It sounds like there's still a lot of things that have not been resolved yet to make this an easy thing for people who work in this community. Most everybody here cannot afford to live in Palo Alto, so they do commute into work. We're just asking that consideration be made for the people that come into the area to work for employment. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Christina Lee to be followed by Mehran Fotovafjah. Christian Lee: Good evening. My name is Christian Lee, pediatric dentist. Many of my concerns regarding the RPP mirror those of Dr. Mulcahy's. My staff and I have to come from a pretty decent distance to come and serve you. We try really hard to provide a good service. I need to be picky about TRANSCRIPT Page 83 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 what type of people will come and take care of you. Making it hard for them to park here creates another hurdle for me to recruit good people who will take good care of the children. I also have parking spaces behind my office. I would love to be able to park back there myself and have my staff be able to park there myself for selfish reasons. Every day I get a mom who has three kids. She's got two diaper bags, a stroller and a toddler. She doesn't need to be worrying about whether her kids are going to get hit by a car on the way into the office. We do have to give up our parking spaces for our clients so that they can be taken care of and have safe access to the office. I did want to also express my concern about the gradual diminution of the number of RPP permits being sold. This would probably drive us out of the area at some point and probably limit Palo Alto's access to dental care, if we gradually lose our ability to park within the areas next to our offices. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Mehran to be followed by Eric Wu. Mehran Fotovafjah: Good evening. My name is Mehran Fotovafjah. I've been practicing endodontics in the City of Palo Alto for the past 19 years. The first 10 years I was on Welch Road. After that whole Stanford crisis, we had to move out and come on 1805 El Camino. For the past 9 years since I've been here, the City assigned us four parking spots. Basically we decided, since I have patients that are older and my practice basically runs on emergencies, that we'd park on the street. I understand parking is a major problem, but we are part of the community. We are providing to the people that are around us. I just don't see how this is going to work out and how we're going to run our practice if our staff doesn't have a place to park. I think that's a disservice to the community. I really urge you to consider to extend the RPP to the healthcare providers and their staff. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Eric Wu to be followed by Reza Riahi. Eric Wu: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen of the Council. My name is Dr. Eric Wu. I'm an orthodontist with my practice over on El Camino Real in Palo Alto. I'm a longtime, 37-year resident of Palo Alto. Grew up right here in Evergreen Park community, a graduate of Escondido Elementary School. I can see both side of the story here. It's a pretty tough decision. You've got lots of parties involved. I come to you tonight to voice some of my concerns as both a small business practice owner of ten employees, but also as a resident of Palo Alto as many of you Council Members are yourself. I live in the Green Acres II community. My wife is a volunteer emergency block preparedness coordinator. I know the importance of relying on local emergency preparedness volunteers to respond in a crisis. I just wanted to say in a major environmental, catastrophic event such as a major TRANSCRIPT Page 84 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 earthquake, the small local dental providers can provide some emergency services. All of our employees as well as doctors are all skilled in basic life support. The Evergreen Park community needs to keep this in mind, that we are there ultimately as healthcare providers. We are there for their benefit, to serve their better health. Thanks for your consideration. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Reza to be followed by Jeff Shadowa [phonetic]. Reza Riahi: Good evening. I'm an endodontist in the City of Palo Alto, and I'm also the immediate past president of the Mid-Peninsula Dental Society. We're here with a group of our colleagues who are deeply concerned about the RPP as it is written. I'm going to ask them to stand up because some of them are not going to be speaking. These are the dentists that provide health for the members of this community, for thousands and thousands of residents in Palo Alto. You've heard some of the concerns, and I've spoken before you in the past. This is not just for the dentists. This goes with all the healthcare providers, which obviously some of them are not here. We all have difficulty attracting proper employees to our practices, because they travel long distances. Every office you talk to is looking for new employees all the time. Besides paying the highest wages in the Bay Area, we can't attract enough staff. That also puts most of our staff above the medium priority level. They don't even qualify for the lower fee or getting priority in getting a sticker. The dental practices generally don't really grow over the years. Most of us buy a retiring dentist and we take over. The practices aren't growing that much; we're not adding that many employees. We're not really actively involved in the congestion that you're seeing. We would like to ask for a consideration that's separate from the businesses as healthcare providers to continue to have access to parking for our employees. We've talked about most of us do have parking in our facilities, but we give that up to the patients because some of them are even sedated after treatment. They cannot be walking down the street. I really appreciate you listening to us tonight. I hope you'll allow us to have a special consideration. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Jeff Shadowa to be followed by Stan Bee-La-Itz. Stan Bee-La-Itz: Good evening. I'm actually the second guy, Dr. Stan Bee- La-Itz. Jeff is one of our neighbors and friends, and he had to leave earlier and didn't realize that this meeting was going to go as long as I'm sure most of us haven't. I just wanted to quickly introduce myself. I'm Dr. Stan Bee- La-Itz. I work on El Camino and Park Avenue. I'm also on your Mid- Peninsula Dental Society Board, and I do a lot of outreach programs as a part of it, so very involved with the community. I just want to shed a little bit of light on my practice. I would say that most of my patients come from TRANSCRIPT Page 85 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Palo Alto and have for some 60 years. It's a third generation practice now. They've been very supportive of our position. I would say anecdotally half of my neighbors are my patients, and a lot of them are friends. When they found out about this issue, they were very supportive and offer how they could help. Some of their suggestions have been incorporated into a document that, I think, Josh Mello forwarded to you guys and some of the solutions that we as a dental group can propose. That was done in consultation with some of our neighbors. I had an unenviable task of putting that together. Tonight, I just want to highlight three points and offer a couple of suggestions going forward. The first point is we're not only an essential service, but when we did our survey with the Dental Society, we found that 90 percent of our offices are located a mile or even two from the areas of high congestion that were identified in the survey maps. Most importantly the garages being built. We're not really a part of the actual problem as far as the density. Second, in the Evergreen area, we just did a survey and got the response from seven offices. Five are fairly far from California Avenue and the proposed garages. We're looking at .75 miles or farther away. Together, we have 60 employees and 38 at any one time. We offer 35 spots that we allocate to our patients. We take hundreds of cars off the streets, and they're not circling for parking and helping eliminate traffic and related issues that we have discussed previously. The only thing I would ask you today is to, if this Resolution has to be adopted, at least in this introductory period adopt it with an amendment to allow us to renew our leases, to stay because you're not going to get a business that's going to move into our place that's going to be more quiet, more critical to your care and more peaceful for the community. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Council Member Holman: Mayor, I have a question for him if I could. It's brief. I just want him to repeat what he said on Item 3. Mayor Scharff: Come. Council Member Holman: The third point that you made that was employees and parking places. Would you repeat that please, just that? Mr. Bee-La-Itz: For Evergreen area, we surveyed seven offices. We have a total of 60 employees, 38 present at any one time. We offer 35 spots. From the community, we really take three spots away, but we take so many more cars off the road. Council Member Holman: Thank you very much. Mr. Bee-La-Itz: You're welcome. TRANSCRIPT Page 86 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Mayor Scharff: Greg Tseng to be followed by Becky Sanders. Greg Tseng: Hi, I'm Greg Tseng. Nice to meet you all. I am a practicing dentist in Palo Alto; I'm also a resident of Palo Alto. We also own our property Downtown. I've been here since the 1960s. I met my wife at Jordan. We went together at Paly, went to Stanford, came back to this area after dental school. We've been here a long time. One of the things that we want to make known is that we provide a real service to the community. Over the years since '81, I've had elementary school kids fall on the playground, basketball injuries, teeth knocked out, swimming pool injuries, basketball, all kinds of injuries. These teeth need implantation back in immediately; they can't wait or they lose the tooth. We've had 80-year-olds trip on the sidewalks; we've had bathroom accidents. They need the emergency treatment immediately. If we can't be in Palo Alto, I'm not sure how we can properly take care of our patients. A lot of the patients are our neighbors and friends. I think we should be able to—especially since I own property Downtown, it seems like I should be able to at least get as many permits as the residents get. We're Downtown; we've paid our properties. We're integral members of the community. I think we do quite a service for them. Also, I'm not sure if you know. When patients go to Stanford emergency room and they have dental problems, they are not addressed. They are sent back to their dentists. If you're in pain, you need something attended to immediately, you don't want to be driving down to Mountain View, to wherever you have to go to try and find dental care. I think it's something that hopefully you can take into consideration. Appreciate that. I'm not much of a public speaker, but I thought I needed to come out and voice my opinions. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Becky Sanders to be followed by Karen Machado. Becky Sanders: Good evening, Council Members. Thank you for your service. I want to acknowledge Tim Mulcahy, my dentist. Reza, I think you've done some work on me as well. I feel your pain; I really do. I want you to stay as well. I do want to call out that that's a good point. I want to say yeah, I hear you. Great workers. I live on Margarita Avenue in Ventura. I, however, totally empathize and sympathize with my brothers and sisters in Evergreen and Mayfield because I see the parking impacts every day where I live and also over there because I'm a frequent visitor to those neighborhoods. North Ventura essentially has already become a heavy parking lot for businesses already. As I go about my neighborhood, I regularly witness people parking, getting their bikes off the rack, hopping on the bikes and then driving away for 10 hours. I have a neighbor who actually asked someone who always parked in front of her house, "Why do TRANSCRIPT Page 87 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 you always park in front of my house?" He said, "I like your house." Then, she said, "Can you park …" He goes, "I can park wherever I want. It's a free country." I guess it is, certainly if you're in an unprotected neighborhood. Even though I do not live in Evergreen or Mayfield, I can get behind this proposal. I do wish it were a little bit more like College Terrace's program, because College Terrace protects residential parking 100 percent. CT is right across from El Camino; I think that makes sense. However, if that program is deemed unfair to business, why not just copy the Downtown program and stick it in Mayfield? Get a TMA and phase out the business permits, etc., and so forth. Thank you very much. It's an important job you're doing, and I know it's not easy. Thank you for hearing of all the points of view this evening. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Karen Machado to be followed by John Morris. Karen Machado: Good evening. Thanks for taking the time to consider all of our views. We're so excited that today has finally come after 4 years of work to consider an RPP for Evergreen Park. We really appreciate this and hope that you'll pass this proposal tonight. We've worked really hard with the Staff, and we really appreciate Hillary and Josh and Sue-Ellen who have spent so many hours trying to balance all the points of view of all the different stakeholders. We give our strong support to this program. It's a significant first step. It's a great pilot program, and we really want to see it get implemented in April. We note that in the National Citizen Survey 85 percent of the residents in area five, which is our area, said that the quality of life in Palo Alto was good or excellent in 2015. Whereas, only 69 percent of the residents in this area rated the quality of life good or excellent in 2016. We feel like the parking problem and the traffic problems are some of the things that have really contributed to this deterioration in the rating. We feel like this is a significant issue that needs your attention. We appreciate all the work on this. As I said, I think this is a great first step as a trial program, but there's four issues that really require serious attention during this trial period. The first is we need to limit the number of nonresident permits sold. We feel like 125 in Evergreen Park is too many. We certainly agree with the Staff that there needs to be a coordinated effort to encourage the use of alternative transportation on Cal. Ave., and we need to make sure that TMAs are really implemented, enforced, monitored, reviewed and really put into place in an effective way. We thought that the City was going to be responsible for that. We're surprised to hear that this is a reason why we can't reduce the number of parking spaces. Thank you for your attention. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. John Morris to be followed by Samina. TRANSCRIPT Page 88 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 John Morris: Thank you for the opportunity to speak to this issue. We homeowners in Evergreen Park have been dealing with this offensive parking situation for too many years. The City of Palo Alto has chosen to resist its citizens' outcries regarding residential parking rights beyond reason. Those of us who live here feel the pressure of employee parking of those who work at or attend Stanford University and those who work at the bike shops, the restaurants, the dental offices and the startups on El Camino Real. The residual effect in our neighborhood includes noise, garbage and crime. I only ask that anyone who feels that our situation does not deserve the attention that we request, please, please move here now and feel our pain. Mr. Keene, you are welcome to stay at our home for a week to get a taste. Just call me, John, at 831-325-7880. My friend, Cheryl, has offered to be your host at Leland and Ash. She's lived there for 65 years and will be pleased to be your host. It's a beautiful place to live other than the parking problems, which only continue to get worse. Historically, I believe that the City of Palo Alto and the College Terrace Parking Permit effort received $100,000 from Stanford University in order to proceed with their successful program. Geographically, Evergreen Park is on the other side of the El Camino Real. Thank you for your thoughtful consideration. I'm just so sorry that the Hayes Group and the ARB got away with what they did. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Samina to be followed by Terry Holzemer. Samina: Good evening, everybody. Happy new year to everyone, and congratulations to new Council Members. I'd also like to thank the Staff for working hard for us. I've been living on Park Boulevard where my neighbors, all these dentists who spoke, are. Most of them are on corner of El Camino and Park Avenue. There are only six parking spots on the streets where I am. In the beginning, I really didn't mind as much, because they're my neighbors. In Islam, you're supposed to be very good to your neighbors. Now, I have a serious problem. I have a knee that is very painful, and I'm afraid to leave my house for anything. I need to go to my pool; I don't go there. If I leave, I can't get back my parking spot. Forget about doing groceries, because I might not find parking anywhere. When these two offices and residential places were built, we lost at least three parking spots. I have a question. I know there is parking for their employees. When they were building these huge buildings, why didn't they think about that at that time? That would have been really good to consider, where our employees are going to park. This is something that really has to be fair to the residents and fair to them too. I don't mind, but please help us. Like my previous friend said, this is a beautiful place except the parking problem that we are facing. My car was hit; nobody left a note. The side view mirror broken. My car is dented. If we had a normal situation, neighbors and all TRANSCRIPT Page 89 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 that that we knew, I'm sure they would have come and told me that. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Terry Holzemer to be followed by Lucinda Lenicheck. Terry Holzemer: Good evening, Council Members. Thank you tonight for the opportunity, very much, to voice my full support and thanks for the planning of this RPP for Evergreen Park and Mayfield. I especially want to thank the City Staff that's in front of me for making sure and recommending to the City that my neighborhood, especially Mayfield, be included. City Staff and the residents of Mayfield have seen firsthand the impacts of increased office development, growth in commercial parking and traffic congestion along Park Boulevard, Sherman, Grant and Sheridan. In recognition of all of these impacts, over 60 percent of our residents returned the City-sponsored survey saying yes, they wanted to be part of this program. In addition, I personally have sent out a survey to my Mayfield residents and certain condominium associations at Silverwood, Grant Avenue and at 410 Sheridan Avenue. All of their boards have said, "Yes, we would like to increase that percentage." They've also told me that they wanted to be part of this program. It's clear that the residents want to try this program for this one-year period. I encourage you greatly to consider this pilot one-year program, because it will be such great benefit to the residents in our area. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Lucinda Lenicheck to be followed by Aileen Yang. Lucinda Lenicheck: I'm a member of the Evergreen Park problem. I want to first say many, many thanks for addressing this issue, many, many thanks to Josh and all the people working very hard to plan solutions. I was honored by the Weekly to be quoted having addressed in this chamber once with a quote of one of the ten best quotes of the year of "It's criminal to pit neighbor against neighbor." It's criminal for the dentists to be upset with us and for us to be upset with the dentists. I hand it to Josh and all of you. Let us find a solution where everyone can—as they say, can we just get along? If we find a solution, I would think we would want to have a transportation management program. We want enough parking garages and enough available parking. I don't know if the County takes care of El Camino Real. My question is, isn't there enough commercial parking available along El Camino if you don't have Stanford overlapping? Isn't there available parking for all these folks near Park Boulevard and El Camino that would help solve their problems in addition? Thank you for helping solve our problems and for distributing the parking that is closest. We're on Oxford Avenue. We get TRANSCRIPT Page 90 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 the overwhelming, crowded parking. I'm very, very grateful that there's a proposal to distribute all the parking permits throughout the region so that it's not all crowded close. Thanks a lot. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Aileen Yang to be followed by Joan Phelan. Aileen Yang: First, I would like to show my appreciation for our Council Members to support Evergreen Park Residential Parking Permit Program. I also appreciate the hard work of City Staff on this proposal. I'm a resident of College Avenue in Evergreen Park for more than 10 years. Being born in a big city, I'm not afraid of growth, but it is important to do it right from beginning since it will take much more effort to correct errors later. As we all indicate (inaudible), the Evergreen Park neighborhood is a residential neighborhood. We are not parking lot. When my neighbor have to call the police to give citations to cars that block our driveway very often, we know something is not right. I cannot stress enough the importance of the Residential Parking Permit Program for us. In addition, I want to remind you that a good solution to prevent business communities parking close (inaudible) on single street is imperative too. Despite that, College Avenue is very close to business district. We do have great numbers of young families with small children in both the apartment buildings and single houses. In order to keep the environment safe for children to play close to their home, please don't let too many cars drive through this residential section of the neighborhood. We do appreciate the updated proposal to divide our neighborhood into two zones to avoid the clustering situation. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Joan Phelan to be followed by Michael Eager. Joan Phelan: Good evening. I'm Joan Phelan, and I've lived on College Avenue, this time, for about 28 years. I've seen a big change in the amount of parking problems and the speed that people are driving on. I also have my dentist here and my endodontist here, so I feel them thinking about things. I came to really talk about our parking problem, but I can also see we need them, we need dental health, oral health, all kinds of health professionals in our neighborhood. We would really like to support them. I wanted to tell you something that nobody's really talked about. It's the double parking that happens because all the parking spaces are full. About 10:00 in the morning, all the spaces are gone. That's when we start seeing Uber drivers and UPS trucks and everything double parking. Then, we have two schools right across—one beside me and one across the street, Living Wisdom and Casa dei Bambini. Those people are driving, letting their kids off, trying to get around the double-parked cars. There's a real safety issue that we're having in my end. When I walk over to Dr. Mulcahy's office, it's TRANSCRIPT Page 91 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 not as frantic as it is where I am. I could see a different type of permit happening there. I know over where I am—I'm so close to California Avenue that we just see a lot of traffic. I'm hoping that you can come to some kind of solution that would support the residents but also the healthcare providers in our neighborhood. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Michael Eager to be followed by Marilyn Mayo. Michael Eager: Hi. I'm in favor of the Residential Parking Permit Program. We need this. This is a decade-long problem that's been getting worse. The RPP doesn't solve the problem. It addresses a pain point in the neighborhoods. It addresses an issue where people can't park in front of their house, where people can't have visitors. It doesn't address the issue. I'm very sympathetic to the needs of the employers. The employees need a place to park. They need parking lots. We need transportation systems. Solving the employee parking can't be done as a burden on the neighborhood. That's what's been going on for many years now. I encourage you to approve this Residential Parking Permit Program. I encourage you to add a phase-out program for the employee parking permits as you work on addressing the issues of inadequate parking, of buildings which are built without adequate parking provided, and addressing the transportation issues which we have. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Marilyn Mayor to be followed by Wolfgang Dueregger. Marilyn Mayo: Good evening. Thank you for your support, listening to us. Hope we have your support as it follows. I've been in the neighborhood 40 years, same house. I provide parking for six to seven cars every day. I have a corner lot; I'm a block off El Camino and two blocks from California Avenue. They're almost neighbors except they move and they come back. They're part of the terrain, I guess you'd say. Two images I'd like to leave with you. One is Swiss cheese. That's what I feel Evergreen Park has become. It's getting these holes infringed upon by various elements, and they all have needs, but it's our little neighborhood. I want you to consider how many holes can you have in the Swiss cheese before it just kind of crumbles and falls apart. We're really threadbare right now. The second image is pickup sticks, where you throw them on the ground, and they're all intertwined. All these compromises have been made. We've been working in good faith. You pull one out to make a concession for someone, then someone else says, "What about us? We've been working with you for several months." Now, there's a new change in the game at the last minute. For those of us who have worked so consistently with the Staff, which I congratulate. They've been so patient with us and with the merchants and the businesses. I hope you'll approve the parking permit. TRANSCRIPT Page 92 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Wolfgang Dueregger followed Jack Morton. Wolfgang Dueregger: Good evening. My name is Wolfgang Dueregger, and I live in Evergreen Park. For the record, I want to read you a letter that was addressed to City Council from a business owner on California Avenue. Hello Council Members. I own a technology business that employs 85 people who put in full days from 8:00 to 7:00 regularly in our location on California Avenue. I recently became aware of a proposal to completely eliminate parking options from around California Avenue and was completely in shock. Let me first describe to you the state of parking without the restriction. The current parking options around California Avenue are severely limited. They are first, you can wait 1 1/2 to 2 years to receive a parking permit that allows you to park in the 2-hour limit areas. Second, you can park in the Evergreen Park neighborhood where there is no time limit, where it's still about a 5-10 minute walk to the office, but definitely bearable. Less than five people at our office have actually received a parking permit option, number one above, and the majority are in various states in the queue. The majority of the office including myself park in the Evergreen Park neighborhood. The issue with parking in the neighborhood is that it gets completely full by around 8:45 a.m., forcing you to drive farther and farther away. When the new Visa office opened, we were terrified after we heard there was only 100 parking spots under the building to support 300 new people. The situation has only become worse. In fact, it's so hard to find parking for our employees that the more risk-tolerant have resorted to a new, internally built system where employees park in the 2-hour spots closer to Cal. Avenue without a permit. One person is assigned to watch the lot for the meter maid. As soon as the meter maid enters the lot an alarm is sounded in the office, so people have time to run out and move their cars to the new spot before tickets are doled out. That actually was also referenced in the New York Times. Very briefly, please enforce this Parking Permit Program where there is no gaming allowed, no re-parking in Zones A, B, C. Please give us also a TMA like Downtown and a phase-out of the permits. Maybe you can review it in August coinciding with your reviews of the Downtown Permit Parking Program. Thank you. Sorry for the overtime. Mayor Scharff: Jack Morton to be followed by Jeff Levinsky. Jack Morton: Good evening, Council Members. I'm here to speak on behalf of the California Avenue business community. What's so special about California Avenue, Mayfield and Evergreen Park is that we were a community. We were a community until we just got overloaded by the overbuild at Stanford. Things aren't going to get better. We're grateful that you approved 250 and that the residents supported us, because we loved our area before it became intolerable and impossible. The only solution is to TRANSCRIPT Page 93 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 find a way in which to accelerate parking structures. The 250 parking permits that you've allowed for low-income employees and regular employees are all gone. The waiting list is far beyond that. As the last speaker has just mentioned, there are offices of people who haven't even put their name on that list. The only way we can beat this problem, I think, is to accelerate the Downtown parking garage. We have approved buildings that are terribly under-parked. Stanford has not even built out its last approval of 2 million square feet. It's already in the process of requesting the County to allow it to build 3,500 more homes and another 2 million square feet in the next 10 years. Unless we as a community deal with the overflow from Stanford, which is largely what the problem is, not the minimally paid employees who work in the businesses, not the dentists, not the lawyers, not the insurance agents. California Avenue worked for the 35 years that I've had my office in that area. As you heard from most of the members here, all we want is a way of putting it back together. The California business organization supports the neighborhood, but this is only a minimum first step. We have to solve the problem by building more parking for the under-parked buildings that we've already approved over the last decade. Thank you. Jeff Levinsky: Good evening, Mayor Scharff and Council Members. I'm speaking on behalf of the PAN Committee that looks at zoning issues. PAN is Palo Alto Neighborhood. We very much support residents who are trying to reclaim their streets and the parking in front of their homes. I also want to support the previous speakers who have pointed out that one of the reasons that we're here tonight and the whole parking problem is because there are buildings that have been approved, that do not have adequate parking. That continues to be a problem at this very hour. Many examples, but one just across the street that you may recall is the University Arts building. We pointed out to Staff repeatedly that the remodeled project would be under- parker. They approved it anyway. We then appealed the project. The owner decided not to have the Council hear the appeal and put in the right amount of parking. There's an example over on California Avenue that has concerned us. That's the 260 California Avenue building. That was originally approved only for a ground-floor retail, but they want to put a restaurant in, which requires more parking. We have contacted City Manager Keene twice. We have contacted three different Staff members. We have yet to hear back over a period of 8 months as to how the City proposes to deal with this potential under-parking situation. It is not only residents who are impacted by this. It is also the businesses who put in the legitimate amount of parking, who are properly parked, who are now being hurt because they too face problems caused by these overbuilt, under- parked buildings. Please have Staff work on that as part of the overall solution to parking problems across the City. Thank you very much. TRANSCRIPT Page 94 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Tommy Derrick to be followed by David Schrom. Tommy Derrick: My name is Tommy Derrick. I've lived in Evergreen Park for 40 years. I want to publicly thank Hillary for her leadership in pulling this together. We got off to a rough start, and I think we've now come to a good place. I think it's important as you consider this that you understand that healthcare offices have two separate issues. One is employee parking, and one is customer parking. We are happy to assist for providing very close-by two-hour parking for all the customers that come their way. We believe that employee parking is your problem and their problem. Just as Jack said, I urge you to put intense pressure to move forward to find a solution to the employee parking but stop asking the neighborhood to provide that solution to that problem. I would urge you to consider changing the one-year review to a six-month review. I believe Staff can gather all the data that's needed within six months to show that this is working. We can get going forward with it. Please, please include a five- year phase-out of this process. We've been here lots longer than five years because we haven't closed this out. We need now to eliminate this program to give your Council and future Councils the support to get a solution to employee parking. Thanks again for the help. We've been here a long time. I've been looking at some of you for a long number of years. I'd really like to see the old guard with the new guard pull this together and call it done tonight. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. David Schrom to be followed by Bob Smith. David Schrom: Hi. I want to begin by seconding what Tommy just said. It's been a long haul. Thank you, guys, for hanging in there. I'm glad we're this far along. I'd love it if we could wrap it up. I want to start by making some observations about sound land use and transportation planning. The only reason the streets of Evergreen Park exist is to provide access to the adjacent properties. Before that neighborhood was developed, there were no streets there. We put streets there solely for the purpose of providing access to those properties. That's a universally accepted principle of sound land use planning. How did we get to where we are today? People built commercial buildings without sufficient parking. People operated businesses in them without sufficient parking. You folks and your predecessors had a hand in that by allowing it. Now, the people who use those buildings park in the neighborhood. Who can blame them? It's an abuse of residents, but the rules were stacked in their favor. Sometimes, even when you have an unfair advantage, there's a benefit in surrendering because it's more important to you to have a fair world. That's what we're really asking of our commercial neighbors tonight. We're saying, "You guys got a benefit that really you weren't entitled to for quite a while. Now, we want to ask you to give it up. TRANSCRIPT Page 95 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 We want to ask you to do that as good neighbors, not because somebody puts a gun to your head and threatens to take your wallet from you. Because you know it's the right thing to do." Let's be clear about what we're asking. We're asking people to park on the far side of El Camino and take a five-minute walk to get to the office. It's a nice climate here; that's why we live here or part of the reason. We want everybody to understand that we're not trying to be adversaries; we're just trying to be good neighbors to you the way we're asking you to be good neighbors to us. Maybe I'm too old school. I look at our current political scene and I think maybe principle doesn't matter anymore. I hope that you folks will disagree with that. Thank you. Thank you. Bob Smith to be followed by Neilson Buchanan. Bob Smith: Good evening, again. Bob Smith, Greer Road. I've worked in California Avenue for the last 11 years. I've lived in Palo Alto for 35. I had one of these magic stickers for parking that I gave up a couple of months ago simply because it wasn't really helping anymore. The parking situation was so bad that I felt it would be easier just to not have it. The culture at many of the companies over there, a lot of startup companies, a lot of lawyers' offices as you know, is devoted to solving the parking problem. They have various systems. Somebody talked about one system that they have for making sure they can find parking. People at my office move every two hours. Every two hours about ten of them get up and walk out and go move their car to another space, which is its own kind of absurdity because they're still taking a space of course. They will continue to survive, I'm sure. Whatever rules you come up with, they'll come up with a solution. Let me talk about a couple of things, two of which haven't been mentioned, that might help. One is builder restrictions. The building at Ash and Sherman that was just completed basically used the entire parking lot across the street for two years because all the people that were working on that construction came up with their pickup trucks. I have photos showing all the guys out there eating their lunch, and the pickup trucks and everything. I think that is not appropriate. I think the contractors should be required to bus their people in and find solutions other than taking our parking. The meter people actually stopped even bothering them. They didn't get tickets. I know that for a fact. Second point, with permits you have to come—I don't have time. I do endorse everything that's said about getting more parking and not permitting these buildings to be built without adequate parking. It's ridiculous. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Neilson Buchanan to be followed by Christian Pease. TRANSCRIPT Page 96 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Neilson Buchanan: I'm going to call upon my wonderful Uncle Bill, who was a physician. I'll tell you how he managed conflict within his family. When my cousins, his daughters, had all their family spats and problems with boyfriends, my cousins would wake up the next morning with my uncle's prescription pad with a little advice on it. That's the way he spoke to his family. The Evergreen Park residents asked me to make a few comments and suggestions based on what we've learned in Downtown North Permit Parking Program. Let me write a couple of prescriptions. I would encourage you to ask Staff to come back on August the 28th with some thoughts about reduction, whether it's possible. There's no reason it can't be addressed pretty quickly. We learned enough from Downtown North that you could deal with it with the idea it might be implemented April 1st next year. That's a year cycle. The second prescription is I think you need to talk to yourselves to give some allocation and a mandate to the TMA to find some ways to actually implement the transportation demand management things that you've asked for. You've been making promises; it's in the written record particularly for you Mayor Scharff. I can show you to the letter when you denied an appeal that there was intention to do something about demand management, and that hasn't happened. I believe in the TMA stuff. It takes a long cycle to get people to change their behavior. You could take the edge off the problem by not letting that sit idle. My third prescription is to be very careful about new projects coming through and not digging the hole deeper. The economy still shows no sign of abating. You can't completely regulate the density of workers Downtown. While you're trying to take the edge off this problem by containing it, it might not be. Be really careful about new projects. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Christian Pease is our final speaker. Christian Pease: Aren't you glad about that? Christian Pease, Park Boulevard, I think, about 20 years, and I grew up in Palo Alto. Whatever. I think it's hard to find an article written about the California Avenue Business District that doesn't immediately say it's transportation rich. If you come here tonight, you'd say that's kind of hard to believe. This problem is bigger than Evergreen, it's bigger than this RPP. What I'd like to suggest to you, given all the plans, some of them quite interesting looking forward, to develop this area because it's transportation rich, is we need a Comprehensive Plan for the entire district. When we came here a year ago, we pointed out that we thought it was astonishing that there was no such plan. The City Manager has just mentioned in the press that the reason we can't have a phase-out is because there's no organized coordinated effort like there is Downtown to manage traffic over in the California Avenue area. I encourage you, after all the hard work that Staff has done—a fairly thankless job, I might add and one that's filled with a lot of emotion at TRANSCRIPT Page 97 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 times; they really did a good job for us—to simultaneously with considering this RPP to look to the Transportation Management Association and extending their charter over to the California area and funding them to immediately get to work on a Comprehensive Plan for this entire district. I think it's critical for its future, no matter where you stand on a lot of issues. I think that you should continue on and accept this plan as written and keep the phase-out on the table. Not decide to reconsider it in a year, but to decide whether it can go forward in a year. If it is kept on the table just as it is Downtown, it will take six full years for this program to be implemented. As a community, if we can't begin to meet the needs of all the people here including the dentists, in six years we're in a world of hurt and we're going to have a lot of trouble dealing with the future that we all want to share together. Thank you. Public Hearing closed at 10:59 P.M. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Now we return to Council for questions, comments and Motions. Council Member Filseth. Council Member Filseth: I'd like to make a Motion, but I also have a couple of questions. How procedurally should I do this? Mayor Scharff: Just do your questions and then you can make the Motion. Council Member Filseth: I actually had a couple of questions. I notice in the plan the permit price is $149 a year as opposed to the Downtown one is $450 a year. $149 a year is like 60¢ a day, which is like a third of a cup of coffee at Starbucks or something like that. What's the reason that there's a difference in price between the two areas? Mr. Mello: A garage permit Downtown is $466, so the RPP permit is equal to that. A garage and lot permit in the Cal. Ave. Business District is $149. We matched that in our proposal for the RPP permit. Council Member Filseth: You were looking relative to garage existing. Another question I wanted to ask is—this is sort of an open-ended one, so we may come back to this. You said this whole issue of who gets the parking spaces, low income versus non-low income and so forth. You looked at the issue of this kind of business versus that kind of business. This is sort of open-ended. Did you look a lot at it, and the issue was it's complicated? Anything quick you can say about that? Ms. Gitelman: I think we decided just in terms of the administrative burden. We would spend so much of our time arguing with people about what their TRANSCRIPT Page 98 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 uses were that it would take time away from really implementing the rest of the program. Council Member Filseth: It seems to me—I think this is a much bigger problem than just parking. I think we actually have—you look at commercial—two economies that cohabit in this area and also Downtown. You have this local economy of retail and local-serving businesses like a number of dentists out here tonight. You have this global economy of software companies and tech companies, and they have dramatically different economics and numbers of people and infrastructure needs and stuff like that. We need to figure out how to deal with those. The Retail Ordinance is another facet of the same thing. If we get into a discussion and come back to the issue of who gets these, I think we're going to have to deal with that. It may be worth some more cycles on it. What I want to do, if I can, is move the Staff Motion. Mayor Scharff: I'll second that. MOTION: Council Member Filseth moved, seconded by Mayor Scharff to: A. Adopt a Resolution to implement the Evergreen Park-Mayfield Residential Preferential Parking (RPP) Program as a one-year pilot and direct Staff to make corresponding changes to the RPP Administrative Guidelines; and B. Find the program exempt from review under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Council Member Filseth: I thought the way the PTC handled the whole process, which they handled all the details as a series of individual Amendments voted on separately, was a good process. I want to suggest we do that. If I can speak to my Motion for a moment. Two reasons. First, the whole issue is a hardship for residents who have been calling for solutions for years. I'm glad the City has—we've taken our time, but we've moved to respond to that. As people have said, it's both a quality of life and frankly a safety issue in a lot of cases. The second is traffic and parking are way up high on everybody's list of passions in this City. A major strategy for our City growth that we've adopted, both business and housing not to mention sustainability, is to reduce our dependency on automobiles. If there's cheap parking in the neighborhoods, it's going to compromise those. Furthermore, I would say that between Caltrain, the Marguerite, the VTA on El Camino and so forth, this is about as transit-rich as it gets in this entire City. If we can't make that work here, then we ought to throw in the towel and start building giant garages everywhere. For those reasons, I'm glad we're doing this tonight. I think the Staff and the PTC did a pretty TRANSCRIPT Page 99 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 thoughtful job on this. The proposal we've seen is consistent with the Downtown framework. I do hope that some of the items that we have looked at will get some discussion including pricing roll-downs, who gets the permits. I think we ought to talk briefly about the number of scratcher permits, which didn't really come up in the PTC meeting. That's how I hope we'll proceed. Thanks. Mayor Scharff: Thank you, and I'll speak to my second. I agree with everything Eric just said. I'm really glad that we're moving forward, first of all, with an RPP. I think the neighborhood really has been impacted, and it has taken too long. I'm really glad we're doing that. It's really important that we focus on the quality of life in the neighborhood. I also think it's really difficult in that we need to balance issues that the dentists, for instance, have brought up tonight. I do think that we probably underprice our parking. I actually was going to ask the City Attorney is that something we can put in the Motion or do we have to have a separate meeting to talk about whether or not to raise the price or could we direct Staff to come back tonight and look at that issue, if that was something that we wanted to do. Molly Stump, City Attorney: I think that the RPP Program price is on your Agenda, but the garage price is not. As I understand the recommendation, Staff believes it makes sense to align the two. That is probably a subsequent Item. Mayor Scharff: We could direct Staff to come back with that as an issue, right? James Keene, City Manager: We could do that. I would just add that the Staff, focused on Downtown now in particular, is developing a whole paid Parking Study. Ancillary to that is the extension of that kind of conversation to other areas of the City. That's on the docket for this calendar year, coming to the Council. Of course, we've got an upcoming budget for FY '18 that the Council will be considering. Mayor Scharff: With that said, I think as we go through this if people have Amendments they want to make, that's fine. I don't think that I'm going to accept anything as a friendly Amendment, frankly. I think that we should take votes. I just wanted everyone to know that upfront. It's not that I don't like your Amendment, I'm just not going to accept any friendly Amendments. With that, I'll open it up to my colleagues. Council Member DuBois, you were first. Council Member DuBois: You guys moved quickly on the Motion. I do have some questions, so I'm going to take a little time on that. I just wanted to clarify a few things. Only the east side of El Camino would be part of this TRANSCRIPT Page 100 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 district, is that correct? I was glad to see in the presentation you included the Caltrain occupancy levels. When we worked on the Downtown parking, we did a lot to make sure the garages were all filled. I'm wondering have we considered—we got a lot of emails about the permit process in Cal. Ave. area. Do you guys have ideas on how to optimize the sale of permits? Have we looked at valet parking like we did Downtown? What are some of the options? Mr. Mello: Just to clarify, the blocks on El Camino within the district would not be signed for RPP. The businesses on El Camino could buy permits, but the on-street spaces in front of those businesses on El Camino would not become part of the RPP Program. There's a list of the enforced blocks within the Resolution. I mentioned it earlier. I think this area needs a Comprehensive Parking Study, where we can look at the permit prices and the supply and demand for the garages and lots. We were just not equipped with the resources to complete that as part of the development of this RPP Program. Council Member DuBois: A year and a half waiting list. I'm really surprised there's 31 percent occupancy at the Caltrain lot. That's a huge lot. This is a minor point, but it's something we should consider. We should bake in the street sweeping times in the signage when we do this, similar to Downtown. No parking on certain days of the week on certain sides of the street. Mr. Mello: We did offer the Public Works Department that option with the installation of these signs. Apparently the enforcement resources are not available to enforce that on a regular schedule. They currently post in advance of the street sweeping day, and they use temporary posting. They feel that that's the most effective currently for this area. We did consult with Public Works to see if that made sense. Council Member DuBois: The Colleagues' Memo that we wrote asked that we try to bring Southgate and this together. There really isn't much mention of Southgate. We were concerned about the other area being impacted. I'm concerned Southgate's going to get slammed. What's the plan if that happens? Ms. Gitelman: Thank you for that question. After the Colleagues' Memo, we came to Council for direction, and we did get your direction to move forward with an RPP Program through a stakeholder process and to work to align the two programs. I think align was the word in the Motion. We've committed to the Southgate neighborhood that, once we got through this even this evening, if we can get the Council's approval to move forward, we would send out the resident survey in Southgate and start moving forward with the TRANSCRIPT Page 101 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 idea that around the time this goes live in Evergreen and Mayfield, we would be in a position to bring to you the program for Southgate. Now, we're short staffed. We're scrambling to get all of this done. That's our objective. Council Member DuBois: Thank you for that. Is there any limit to how many one-day tags are sold to employers? Mr. Mello: No, not in the proposed program. Council Member Dubois: I understand the reason for the pricing, based on the garage price. Would it simplify it if we had consistent pricing across the City? Would it make it easier to administer and sell at all? Is that a consideration? Ms. Gitelman: I think we would like to research the history of how these garage permits got set so much lower to begin with. We can certainly do that. In the Council's annual budget cycle, if there's a recommendation we can make to raise those prices and therefore these, we're happy to do that. Council Member DuBois: It seems like we clearly have demand. I do think we need to start thinking about streamlining, not having everything be custom. Ms. Gitelman: I completely agree. I'm just nervous there might be a reason for the way it's set, and we have to investigate that. Council Member DuBois: Just a few quick comments. I did find the PTC discussion useful. There were a lot of votes. A lot of times it's the discussion that's the most valuable. It was interesting to see a lot of different viewpoints in the Minutes there. One thing I think everybody here realizes—we talk about 85 percent occupied; that's pretty much fully parked. When you go above that, you have people driving around looking for parking spots. It's clear we have an issue here. A couple of areas that I've been thinking about, and I'll offer some unfriendly Amendments. First of all, the definition of the district. It's great that you came with Evergreen and Mayfield together. I don't think they should necessarily be tied together in terms of policies over time. I could see more office, more multifamily developments happening in the Mayfield area. I think Evergreen Park actually has more in common with Southgate in terms of style. I would just have a caution there that we not treat this as one large district, but actually think of these as separate neighborhoods, because I think they're quite different. In terms of allocation, I was considering how do we prioritize—my biggest concern is the unlimited number of daily permits. Downtown we did allow shared hangtag permits for retail. I'm not sure why we didn't do that in Cal. Ave. I would much rather see that. Is that correct or incorrect? TRANSCRIPT Page 102 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Mr. Mello: Employee hangtags are available for businesses to purchase at the full price Downtown. Council Member DuBois: I would much rather have seen that where businesses in Cal. Ave. could share them among employees but not be able to buy unlimited daily permits. Again, we've already expressed pricing concerns. We seem to have demand; I'd like to see us evaluate the pricing. I have three Amendments to make. "C" is come back for a Council discussion six months after the program launches. Council Member Holman: Second. Council Member DuBois: Is there a second for that? Council Member Holman: Second. AMENDMENT: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Council Member Holman to add to the Motion, “direct Staff to schedule a Council discussion six months after the RPP launches for a review.” Council Member DuBois: How do you want to do these, Greg? Should I get them all out on the table? Mayor Scharff: Why don't we do them one-by-one? Council Member DuBois: Are we going to vote on them now? Mayor Scharff: Yeah. Council Member DuBois: We heard a lot of concerns from the business community, from neighbors that we should have a check-in in six months rather than a year. Mr. Keene: Can I ask a question or just a comment on this? Council Member DuBois: (Crosstalk) after it launches. Mr. Keene: Part of the Staff thinking on this—I think you've heard testimony about how involved and engaged the Staff and neighbors were on putting together this RPP proposal. These same people have got to turn their attention to Southgate in addition to supporting work we're doing on the Parking Study, work on the parking garage, all of those sorts of things. The motive for this timeframe was to not distract from our ability to make the next advance in the neighboring RPP, given the level of work that a small number of Staff people have to do. Not that it was just an arbitrary number. I would ask that you keep that in mind. There could be potential impacts. TRANSCRIPT Page 103 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Mayor Scharff: I'm going to try something a little different. Council Member Holman: Could I speak to my second? Mayor Scharff: Yes, you can, but just wait. I'm going to try something different. I want you to think about this all. If Tom's going to have three Amendments—I didn't quite anticipate we'd have that many. If every Council Member has one or two and then we have a long Council discussion about each of them, we are going to be here 'til 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. What I'm going to suggest is we actually don't have any discussion on the Amendment. We vote. If you want more discussion on the Amendment, abstain. If the vote doesn't get five votes negative or positive, then we can have a discussion on it. If there's overwhelming support for it or overwhelming negativity, we'll know that right away. If you really want to talk about it, abstain. If the abstentions get the most or there's no consensus otherwise, we'll then have a big discussion about it. If anyone doesn't really object too much to that, but I will let Karen speak to her second. Council Member DuBois: Actually I just want to clarify it. Six months after it launches, not six months from now. Mayor Scharff: Karen, do you want to speak to your second quickly? Council Member Holman: Yeah, quickly. The intention is not to have Staff do the rigorous kind of outreach that you did to get this far. I applaud you for getting this far. To have a check-in that—we're going to hear things. We're going to hear things as Council Members. You're going to hear things as Staff. The merchants and medical offices are going to have comments to make. I think it's an opportunity for the Council to just hear and Staff to hear too how it's going. Certainly not the intention of doing the extensive outreach you did to get to this point in time. We don't expect that. Mayor Scharff: Let's vote. Ms. Gitelman: I think we understand that. It's just that it would—it's the same Staff who will be working on the Southgate program, the Downtown program and other parking projects. Mayor Scharff: Let's vote on the board. That fails on a 4-4 vote. AMENDMENT FAILED: 4-4 DuBois, Fine, Holman, Kou, no, Kniss absent Council Member DuBois: My second attempt. I'll word this carefully. To consider the creation of a phase-out program for business permits, that TRANSCRIPT Page 104 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 would start when the new Cal. Ave. garage opens. Is that clear, what I meant? Mayor Scharff: It was to me. Council Member DuBois: I’m getting quizzical looks. Again, there's a question of whether the business permits are permanent in the neighborhood or not. I'm saying we would consider a reduction of those permits that would start when the new Cal. Ave. garage that we have planned is built and opened. Mayor Scharff: Do you want to second? Council Member Filseth: Yeah. Actually I want to comment. I figure I'm going to second it, comment and then vote against it, if that's okay. Mayor Scharff: That's fine. Council Member Filseth: I'll second it. AMENDMENT: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Council Member Filseth to add to the Motion, “to consider a phase out of business permits when the new California Avenue parking garage opens.” Council Member Filseth: The Motion that's on the table says we're going to revisit this whole thing a year from now, which is going to be before the garage opens. I've seconded the Motion, but I'm going to vote against it. Mayor Scharff: You want to withdraw it or do you want to do that? Council Member DuBois: When it comes back in a year, would this issue about draw-down be on the table then? Mayor Scharff: It would. Council Member DuBois: I'll withdraw it then. AMENDMENT WITHDRAWN BY THE MAKER Council Member DuBois: The third one and last one. I'm open to input on this one. I'm going to say my Motion is we eliminate the unlimited daily hangtags. If somebody wants to refine that, I would be open to that. We're talking about a limited number of permits in the neighborhood, but then we have this huge loophole of ability to purchase an unlimited number of permits. TRANSCRIPT Page 105 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Council Member Filseth: I second that one too. AMENDMENT: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Council Member Filseth to add to the Motion, “direct Staff to propose a limit to daily hangtags per employer.” (New Part C) Council Member Filseth: Can I ask the maker of the Motion, you said eliminate unlimited daily hangtags. I think we need a limit for the Motion. Council Member DuBois: Yes. I didn't want to propose a number. Households are limited to how many they can purchase. Maybe we limit the number a business can purchase. Council Member Filseth: How do we resolve the number? Council Member DuBois: Have Staff come back with a proposal or we pick a number tonight. Does Staff have a suggestion. Mr. Keene: We're scurrying. Mayor Scharff: Why don't you just suggest that Staff—just pass that Staff come back. Council Member DuBois: Residents can purchase 50 a year, right? Ms. Gitelman: That's right. Each residence can purchase 50 a year. There's not really a good way to equate that to employees. Council Member DuBois: If an employer could purchase 50 per year … Mr. Keene: I'd rather you guys vote on this. If it passes, you would direct us to come back. Just let us give a little more thought to it. I understand what the objective is. Council Member DuBois: The Motion would be to have Staff propose a limit per employer for daily hangtags. Mayor Scharff: That's passes on a 6-2 vote. AMENDMENT PASSED: 6-2 Scharff, Tanaka no, Kniss absent Mayor Scharff: Are you done? Council Member DuBois: Yes. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach. TRANSCRIPT Page 106 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Council Member Wolbach: I don't want to make as many comments as I was originally planning on making because of the hour. I do want to say thank you very much to Staff, thank you very much to members of the public. I want to specifically call out two Hillarys in the room, who have done a great job being very articulate and intelligent. My passion for civic life started when I was about your age, by the way. I hope you don't lose it and don't become cynical. It's very tempting. I struggle with that every week. Also thank you to Josh and the rest of the Staff who have worked on this, everybody in the community who's worked and been patient. I know it's been a long time coming. I'm in a neighborhood that doesn't have a parking impact problem or we don't need an RPP system. If we ever did have the need, I'd want to be able to have at least a pilot like this to see if it works. I'm glad that we're going to have a pilot to see if this works. Real quick, I just wanted to check. Properties on El Camino Real are or are not included in this? Mr. Mello: They are included in the district, but the block faces along the east side of El Camino Real will not be part of the RPP Program. The on- street parking will not be regulated as part of the RPP Program. Council Member Wolbach: The property at the corner of Page Mill and El Camino Real, where there is—I think actually there's been filed an application for a property that is saying we're not going to impact the neighborhood. We're talking about having a lot of housing. It's not going to impact the neighborhood. Would a residence in that property be eligible to have parking permits in this district as the district borders are currently drawn? Mr. Mello: Yes, as currently proposed, they would be eligible to purchase resident parking permits. Ms. Gitelman: Unless there was something about the approval of that project that precluded this residence, if this is legal, from obtaining permits. Council Member Wolbach: I would rather head that off right now and deny that property's future potential residents from being able to get free passes in this district. That would just be a lot more cars competing for the same amount of space. I would like to propose an Amendment … Mayor Scharff: Your proposal is to remove that property from the district? Council Member Wolbach: Yes. I'm going to make a—correct me if I'm wrong. I believe it's 2755 El Camino Real or 41 Page Mill Road, but it's the corner of Page Mill and El Camino Real. The Motion would be to remove the property, which was the former VTA park and ride lot at Page Mill and El TRANSCRIPT Page 107 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Camino Real, from this district in order to deny residents at that property in the future from being able to access this district. Mayor Scharff: I'll second that. AMENDMENT: Council Member Wolbach moved, seconded by Mayor Scharff to add to the Motion, “remove 2755 El Camino Real (former VTA Parking Lot) from this RPP Program.” (New Part D) Mayor Scharff: Are you going to speak to your Motion? Council Member Wolbach: Yes, I'll speak to it quickly. Essential to what's been discussed for that property is it will not create a parking impact. It is envisioned as a pilot of its own to demonstrate that a car-lite or car-free lifestyle is something that some people actually do want in Palo Alto. It'd demonstrate we can have housing developments in Palo Alto which are not going to negatively impact the residents with its parking impact. Part of that means we need to have some constraints on how much they can park up the neighborhood. Particularly in a neighborhood with an RPP system, that seems like a good place to have a pilot. Mayor Scharff: I was just remembering—thanks for bringing that up—when this came to us and we gave preliminary comments at the screening. That was one of the things we actually talked about. If we put in an RPP District, we put it around this so that that project wouldn't have permits. If this was included, this project would automatically get permits. Therefore, I support this. Let's vote on the board. That passes unanimously. AMENDMENT PASSED: 8-0 Kniss absent Mayor Scharff: Cory, some more or are you done. Council Member Wolbach: That's it for me. Ms. Gitelman: Mr. Mayor, when you have a moment, we have a few typos we want to correct in the Resolution. Mayor Scharff: Do you want to do that right now just in case? Ms. Gitelman: It's in Section 4, parking permits, Packet Page 276, in Item A.c, the signage and allocation of spaces. It says "all employee parking permits will be specific to one of the two employee parking zones." It should say "three employee parking zones." With kudos and thanks to Mr. Borock, who I didn't see here this evening, for this Item. He pointed out in writing to us that the next section that's called resident parking permits, in both TRANSCRIPT Page 108 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Item 1 and Item 2, it should say "each residence" rather than "each resident living within the district." That's changing in both those sections. Mayor Scharff: I'm fine with those changes to the Motion. Are you fine? If Council Member Filseth's fine with them too. Council Member Filseth: Yeah. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “replace in Resolution Section 4.A.c. ‘two employee’ with ‘three employee’ and replace in Section 4.B.1 and 4.B.2, ‘resident living’ with ‘residence.’” (New Part E) Council Member Holman: Is that right, each residence living, C-E? Why wouldn't it be "each resident living"? I don't understand how a resident—a residence doesn't live within a district. Ms. Gitelman: We would take out the word "living." Instead of saying "each resident living within the district," it would say "each residence within the district." Council Member Holman: It's each residence within the district. Got it now. Ms. Gitelman: This is what we did in Downtown. Council Member Holman: Got it. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Kou. Council Member Kou: Mayor, I'm going to pass. Mayor Scharff: Fair enough. Council Member Tanaka. Council Member Tanaka: I have a couple here. First of all, thank you to everyone for all your work on this. There's one that really—let me first just ask Staff, just to make sure I understand. For the Mayfield part, is it opt-in or is it blanket, everyone in? Mr. Mello: We are not recommending classifying Mayfield as an eligibility area. We are recommending that they be admitted to the program on Day 1. Council Member Tanaka: It's counter to the PTC recommendation, where each block face would opt-in. Mr. Mello: That's correct. TRANSCRIPT Page 109 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Council Member Tanaka: I'd like to make an unfriendly Amendment that Mayfield is an opt-in area. I'll give the same reason why I gave it on PTC. If you look at the survey response rate for Mayfield, it's really low. It's about a third response rate from everyone else. The second thing. If you look at the overnight parking, the pure parking isn't employees. It's actually the condo dwellers, the apartment dwellers. What's going to happen is the people who live there suddenly have to pay for parking. If the response rate was higher, I would say okay. The response rate was actually pretty low. It's a bit marginal. To be on the safe side, it's better to make this an opt-in area, which is what we did in College Terrace. College Terrace program, basically each block face voted in. By doing that, we were able to get the program through. Mayfield, there wasn't enough participation in their surveys. The overnight parking is really high relative to the other areas. It's dangerous for us to not say this is opt-in, it's going to be forcing a bunch of people to pay for parking where they may not actually want it. That's my Motion. Do I have a second? Council Member Fine: I'll second it. AMENDMENT: Council Member Tanaka moved, seconded by Council Member Fine to add to the Motion, “the Mayfield area will be designated opt-in.” Mayor Scharff: Let's vote on the board. That fails on a 4-4 vote. AMENDMENT FAILED: 4-4 DuBois, Holman, Kou, Scharff no, Kniss absent Mayor Scharff: Anything further, Greg? Council Member Tanaka: Yes. Let me just ask Staff to see if it's in there. It's also another PTC recommendation for this program to be reviewed by the PTC. I think it should. We have a member who actually participated in the College Terrace Residential Parking Permit Program. Is this a recommendation in the Motion currently or not? Ms. Gitelman: No. I don't think we put a review by the PTC in the Resolution. Council Member Tanaka: I'd like to make another unfriendly Amendment that this gets reviewed by the PTC. The reason why is because they have more bandwidth than we do to look at this. I think this program is very complicated. There's a lot of moving parts. It'd be worthwhile for us to leverage our Planning and Transportation Commissioners to Study this more thoroughly before it hits us again. TRANSCRIPT Page 110 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Council Member DuBois: I'll second it. AMENDMENT: Council Member Tanaka moved, seconded by Council Member DuBois to add to the Motion, “refer review of this RPP Program to the Planning and Transportation Commission prior to Council’s review.” (New Part F) Council Member Filseth: Can I ask what it is that we're voting on here? Mayor Scharff: I wasn't sure what we were voting on either. Council Member Tanaka: Basically in a year this gets reviewed by the PTC before it hits us. Mayor Scharff: Is this when it comes back in a year? Council Member Tanaka: Yeah. Mayor Scharff: When it comes back in a year, it goes to the PTC first. Council Member Tanaka: Correct. Mayor Scharff: Then, it comes here. Council Member Tanaka: Correct. Mayor Scharff: Got it. Council Member Wolbach: (Inaudible) by them before (inaudible). Mayor Scharff: That passes on a 7-1 with Council Member Filseth abstaining. AMENDMENT PASSED: 7-0-1 Filseth abstain, Kniss absent Mayor Scharff: Greg, anything further? Council Member Fine. Council Member Fine: I've got a couple here. One, I was noticing that currently it's got five permits per household. I'm wondering why Staff chose that figure. In College Terrace, I think we're three. Ms. Gitelman: We just took that number from the Downtown program. It's worked pretty well. There's a variety of housing types in this neighborhood like there is in Downtown, particularly on the Mayfield side. We thought it would work. TRANSCRIPT Page 111 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Council Member Fine: Mr. Mayor, do you mind if I quickly query the audience to see if any of them have five cars? Mayor Scharff: I don't mind. Council Member Fine: Any of you have five cars? Anybody have four cars? Female: My neighbor has five or six cars. Council Member Fine: Do they park in the driveway or on the street? Female: Both sometimes. Council Member Fine: The reason I'm asking is five cars is quite a lot. No judgments. If we are talking about impacts, that is an impact you'd have on your neighbor. The unfriendly Amendment would be to change that from five to three. Mayor Scharff: You're seconding that? AMENDMENT: Council Member Fine moved, seconded by Council Member Tanaka to reduce the number of permits residents can obtain from 5 to 4. Mayor Scharff: Do you want to speak to your second? Council Member Tanaka: No. Mayor Scharff: Let's vote. That fails on a 4-4. AMENDMENT FAILED: 4-4 DuBois, Filseth, Holman, Kou no, Kniss absent Council Member Fine: Thank you. The next one is something a number of us have mentioned and we've heard from some of the business owners in this community, about the difficulty in terms of getting spots in the Cal. Ave. parking district. The unfriendly Amendment would be to direct Staff to look at ways of streamlining the ability of businesses to purchase permits in the garage areas. The purpose being that we would rather have these employees park in the garages than on residential streets. Mayor Scharff: Does Staff know what that means in terms of actually what they'd do? Council Member Fine: It may be a separate direction. TRANSCRIPT Page 112 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Mr. Mello: Yes, we do believe that we need to take a look at permit pricing, the wait lists. Maybe we look at a shorter term permit or something to that effect. Council Member Fine: Maybe this is actually another good one to direct Staff to investigate this and float it to the PTC. Does that seem appropriate? Mayor Scharff: I thought you wanted it done quickly. Council Member Fine: Just direct Staff to look at ways of streamlining this process and then come back to Council. Council Member DuBois: I'll second that. I'd also like to include the idea of valet parking like we had Downtown. Council Member Fine: Sure. AMENDMENT: Council Member Fine moved, seconded by Council Member DuBois to add to the Motion, “direct Staff to investigate ways to streamline purchasing of parking garage permits and consider valet parking.” (New Part G) Council Member Fine: The purpose here is asking Staff to investigate ways in which employers can more easily purchase garage permits to allow their employees—we had a number of speakers say they'd been on wait lists two, two and a half years or their employees are not able to get on the wait list. It seems to be a problem. Council Member Kou: This is just to investigate not to (crosstalk). Council Member Fine: And report back to us. Mayor Scharff: That passes on a 7-1 with Council Member Holman abstaining. AMENDMENT PASSED: 7-0-1 Holman not participating, Kniss absent Council Member Fine: One last small one, and then I'll give up the mike. I'd like to make an unfriendly Amendment that the permits … Mayor Scharff: You can just say an Amendment. We don't always have to be unfriendly. Council Member Fine: You set the tone. Mayor Scharff: Yes, I did. TRANSCRIPT Page 113 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Council Member Fine: This is to allow the employee permits to be transferrable among employees of the same business. Council Member Holman: Second. AMENDMENT: Council Member Fine moved, seconded by Council Member Holman to add to the Motion, “allow employee permits to be shared between employees of the same business.” (New Part H) Mayor Scharff: You want to speak to your second? Council Member Holman: Yeah. It's actually one of the points. If I could put a punctuation on this. When the Colleagues' Memo was originally written, it was for also not just the permits that would be sold in the neighborhoods but also the permits within the district. Your prior Amendment was talking about streamlining getting permits. One of the things that would facilitate the employees being able to get permits is if they could share them within the district. Right now, if you're an employee of a company and you leave, the next employee that comes along and takes your place has to go to the end of the waiting list. If an employer has four permits that they can share among employees, it's a lot more expeditious. If it's like Downtown—I think it is—a permit is assigned to a specific garage. If that employee doesn't come that day, then there's a place left open. It's not even very efficient, it doesn't seem. Ms. Gitelman: Through the Mayor, if I can just clarify. I think we're talking about two separate things, garage permits and RPP permits. I think we've recommended stickers for employees just to reduce the kind of opportunity for fraud. We want an employee, not an employer, to purchase the sticker. If they're a low-income worker, obviously they show us documentation for them, not for someone else in their company. It's kind of a different issue if you want us, in the context of the review for streamlining for garage permits, to look at that. We could think about that. Those are really two separate issues. Council Member Holman: If you're talking about sharing permits that are part of the RPP Program and it's a sticker on the car, how do you share? You can't. Ms. Gitelman: That's what I'm saying. In the RPP Program, we don't allow sharing of employee permits. We have these daily hangtags, which is the way employers get some flexibility. If they have someone coming for an interview or something, they get one of these daily hangtags. The employer permits are generally these stickers that are affixed to the cars. TRANSCRIPT Page 114 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Mayor Scharff: It may or may not be a good idea. Clearly Council Members have the right to change the RPP Program. Ms. Gitelman: I'm just trying to clarify whether the Council Members are talking about the garage permits or the RPP Program. Council Member Fine: I was originally intending to talk about RPP. I understand they're stickers. I think hangtags would be preferable for many employees so they can shift them among employees as needed. Council Member Holman: I'm good with that. It sounds like what I'm proposing would be something additional to what you're proposing. I'm still good with the second. Mayor Scharff: Are you finished talking to your Motion? Council Member Fine: Yes. Mayor Scharff: Let's vote on it. That passes unanimously. AMENDMENT PASSED: 8-0 Kniss absent Mayor Scharff: Are you done? Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: As we never got around to questions, I do have two or three questions. It seems to me that there's a role for the Business Registry here. Staff was saying it was hard to discern what was a retail business and what was an office. Isn't that one of the reasons we have a Business Registry? To know what kind of business is operating at a particular address. The Colleagues' Memo and even the conversation at the Council meeting talked about prioritizing merchant and personal service, which would include medical office. I guess my question is couldn't the Business Registry be used for those purposes. Ms. Gitelman: Council Member Holman, I'm sure there's a way to do this. We just considered the level of effort that would be involved to administer a program where we're trying to adjudicate between different uses. For example, medical offices are not the same as personal services. We would end up asking our parking permit contractor to be making these kind of calls about various land uses. We thought it would take time and energy away from other aspects of this program that need our attention. It was purely about the administrative burden. Council Member Holman: When the business registration goes in, there isn't a basic category of—it's been a while since I looked at it. Isn't it a basic TRANSCRIPT Page 115 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 category of retail or general business office? I thought there was some pretty basic categories. Ms. Gitelman: Again, that exists. It's just not accessible to the people who are issuing these parking permits. It would add a level of effort and complexity to their work and take time away from other activities. In that sense, we think it would impose an administrative burden. If the Council wants us to proceed with that, we could look at a way to handle it. It's just going to make this program that much more complex to administer. Council Member Holman: I guess that's pretty disappointing. I thought one of the purposes of the Business Registry was to be able to use it for this kind of endeavor. Another question is TDM compliance, also in the Colleagues' Memo. We talked about—Council Member DuBois, I think Council Member Filseth was part of that. I can't remember who else. We talked about how this is an opportunity to do a parking district, an RPP. It would also be an opportunity to help determine whether our TDM programs were effective or not. There are a number of projects in the California Avenue area that were granted parking exceptions because of TDM agreements. Do we have any notion of how many of those TDM agreements are being complied with or in compliance with their development approvals? Ms. Gitelman: Off the top of my head, I do not have an answer to that. We've done some investigation. Amazingly, a lot of the buildings that went in had TDM programs that were part of the proposal, so part of the project description. They didn't get put in place with kind of the enforcement mechanism and the conditions that we would use today. That would take some digging to figure that out. Mr. Keene: Could I just add. I think we need to keep in mind the fact, as you well know, that we have ten different interlocking initiatives going on relating to parking and traffic. They're all in various stages of evolution. We're not anywhere close to the end at all of evaluating both the status of our existing TDM and how we can most effectively expand that. I'm sure for the rest of the time everybody who's up there is on the Council, we'll still be advancing on those issues. I didn't want to leave it that the Staff is done with this. Council Member Holman: I didn't think that. One other comment. I'm just going to throw this out there for folks to think about. I don't think it's an extreme idea, but I haven't heard anybody mention it. For the dentist and medical offices—I've thought about this and even mentioned it to the City Manager a while back, because I live not so far from a number of dentist offices. Some of the speakers even mentioned how most of your clientele is TRANSCRIPT Page 116 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 from Palo Alto, so you're serving Palo Alto residents. Just think about how much of your parking lot you could use for your employees. I don't want to presume costs onto people except that. Provide for your clientele an Uber or a taxi to and from, give them door-to-door service. I was commiserating with a colleague here. Maybe $10 or $18 to a dental visit, and they get door-to-door service. If they're numbed up and shouldn't be driving anyway, they're not driving. It's certainly not something I want to impose or could impose. It's just a thought, because I am sympathetic to—it's just a thought, not an imposition. It's a just thought. I don't think you need to speak. I'm sorry. I'm not trying to be disrespectful. I'm trying to solve a problem there. People have talked about office density and parking requirements. I've already mentioned TDM compliance. Given we have the problem we do and the situation that we do in Evergreen Park and other neighborhoods, we ought to be a little more cautious about how we go about project approval. Office densities are not 4 per 1,000 oftentimes. I just think we ought to be cautious and cognizant going forward how we look at project approval. Also with TDM projects, I think we're doing a better job now of writing Ordinances so that they are more enforceable. I just want to make sure we are good with that, and we are prudent with that going forward. As part of Staff coming back in a year, I would like to add an Amendment. That would be for Staff to come back with a recommendation on how permits could be shared within the business district by a business. AMENDMENT: Council Member Holman moved, seconded by Council Member Tanaka to add to the Motion, “direct Staff to investigate ways for businesses to share permits within the Business District.” (New Part I) Council Member DuBois: How is that different than "H"? Council Member Holman: This is within the business district and not just the RPP area. "H" was intended to be in the RPP area. Council Member Filseth: That means that Zombie Runner can share them with European Cobblery? Is that what it means? Council Member Holman: No. It means that Zombie Runner can share permits among its employees. Council Member Filseth: Isn't that what we did before? Council Member Holman: I thought "H" was changed to be just within the RPP Districts and not in the … I'm talking about the garages and lots in the commercial core. "H" is only in the RPP District. That's what I thought "H" was supposed to be. TRANSCRIPT Page 117 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Mr. Keene: I know the knee bone is connected to the shin bone and all of that stuff here. We are starting to move out of the direct Item that's before the Council on the RPP and moving into related but ancillary parking issues. I really wonder if that's advisable. Council Member Holman: This was in the original Colleagues' Memo; it was part of the discussion when it came to the Council before too. Mr. Keene: Right. With all due respect, I didn't know we were explicitly coming back with a comprehensive response to the Colleagues' Memo as it is with bringing a recommendation for the pilot for this particular RPP. Council Member Holman: I think they're intricately interwoven with each other. Mr. Keene: I'm not saying that they're not. You're bringing up issues now that we're not as fully prepared as we should be on Staff to support the full discussion to the Council. You're sort of giving us additional new directives at the last minute. I just am thinking that we're going to be talking more broadly about next phase parking issues and is this the best way to do that. I just raise it. Council Member Holman: Council Member Tanaka did second this. There's been discussion about how to potentially in the future reduce the number of commercial permits in the neighborhood. I think this is one way to potentially do that. I think it's fairly critical. Again, we asked the Staff to come back with a recommendation. Council Member Filseth: Question on that. Isn't this covered under one of the previous ones where we directed Staff to come up with ways of being more efficient about getting permits to the garage? Council Member Holman: I don't see it as part of that. If Staff wants to say that is part of it … Mayor Scharff: Let's just vote on it. You seconded this? Council Member Holman: We have to know what we're voting on. Mayor Scharff: (Inaudible). Council Member Holman: The question arose is "G" the same as what I'm proposing. I don't see them as the same. Mayor Scharff: (Inaudible). TRANSCRIPT Page 118 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Council Member Holman: Is Staff saying it is the same? Ms. Gitelman: In Item G, you're asking us to look at ways of streamlining the garage permits and look at valet parking. That could or couldn't include setting up a permit process where businesses could share permits. We really haven't given it any thought. This is new direction to us this evening. Council Member Holman: You're saying it could be included in "G"? Mayor Scharff: I personally think it's (inaudible). I think we should just vote on it. Staff can do what they want with it. That passes on a 5-3 vote. AMENDMENT PASSED: 5-3 DuBois, Fine, Scharff no, Kniss absent Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman, are you done? Council Member Holman: I'm done. Mayor Scharff: I'm just going to briefly say, since I haven't spoken, that the only thing we didn't really address was the medical/dental issues. I'm not quite sure how to address that. I appreciate that everyone came down and talked about that. I will just throw out there that I think we should give an additional 25 permits for people for locally serving medical/dental who reside within the district. Council Member Fine: I'll second that, but I'd like to quickly ask Staff about, if you permit, the estimated number of employees in these districts and what the drive rate is. AMENDMENT: Mayor Scharff moved, seconded by Council Member XX to add to the Motion, “increase the number of permits for medical and dental serving employers to 50 based on location.” Ms. Gitelman: I think we're thinking it would need to be a little higher than 25, maybe 50. I think we would like to do it by location, identify businesses along that section of El Camino. Mayor Scharff: I'd be happy to do that, and I'd be happy to have you do it by location. I would change it to 50 and by location. Council Member Fine: It's 50 per the three employee parking districts? Mayor Scharff: I wanted to go with 25 but Staff said 50. TRANSCRIPT Page 119 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Mr. Mello: I think we'd want to get away from trying to classify whether it's a doctor's officer or a dentist's office. I think it might be better to just pick— there's a handful of standalone … Mayor Scharff: You don't have to classify dentist or medical. I just said medical, dental or medical. You don't have to classify. Mr. Mello: There's a handful of standalone dental and doctor offices mostly along El Camino. I think we'd rather have it based on a location than a classification of business. We would identify those standalone dentist and doctor offices and allocate the 50 permits for those locations. Mayor Scharff: How would you write this? Mr. Mello: Medical services and dentist offices along El Camino Real. Mayor Scharff: I'd be fine with that, but I don't have a second yet. Maybe no one else is. Seeing no second, I'm just going to drop it. No second. AMENDMENT RESTATED: Mayor Scharff moved, seconded by Council Member XX to add to the Motion, “increase the number of permits for medical services and dental offices along El Camino Real to 50.” AMENDMENT FAILED DUE TO THE LACK OF A SECOND Mayor Scharff: With that, we should vote on the board on the whole Motion. I did have a couple of other questions. I forgot. Yes, sorry. What is the timing on the garage? I think that is an important question I don't think we got out there. When do we expect that to be completed? Mr. Keene: Several years. We'll give you more of an update. Mayor Scharff: Could we speed it up? That's really the question. Mr. Keene: Yes, we can. With the utmost respect, I will also be asking the Council that too when we come back with any adjustments that we have. It's complicated because it's linked to the Public Safety Building also. I think we still have some additional decisions to make on the parking garage. We talked about this potential scale and retail and that sort of thing. Mayor Scharff: I think as part of that we should look at what our size options on the garage are and what the costs are. We heard a lot tonight about a future TMA for this area. At some point, maybe that should be on some Council Agenda or something. We may want to have a discussion about how we expand the TMA or something like that. I think we should start thinking about that. TRANSCRIPT Page 120 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 Council Member Holman: (Inaudible). Mayor Scharff: Sure. I'll put it that we agendize a future discussion of a TMA for California Avenue. Council Member Holman: Second. AMENDMENT: Mayor Scharff moved, seconded by Council Member Holman to add to the Motion, “direct Staff to schedule a Council Agenda Item relating to the creation of a California Avenue Transportation Management Association (TMA) or expansion of the Downtown TMA.” (New Part J) Mr. Keene: In response to that, I would add that the most likely way we would bring that back is when we talk about strategies for financing TMA in general. That could have an application to Cal. Ave. If we don't have the money, the TMAs are not going to go anywhere. We have the ability to bring some options to the Council in that regard. Council Member Wolbach: (Inaudible). Mayor Scharff: The creation of a California or expansion of the Downtown TMA, why don't we say that? Everyone good with the Motion, ready to vote? Council Member Fine: We have to do the Amendment. Mayor Scharff: We haven't voted on this Amendment, you're right. No, we just voted on the … Council Member Filseth: No, we didn't. Mayor Scharff: We didn't. Let's vote on this Amendment. That passes unanimously. AMENDMENT PASSED: 8-0 Kniss absent MOTION AS AMENDED RESTATED: Council Member Filseth moved, seconded by Mayor Scharff to: A. Adopt a Resolution to implement the Evergreen Park-Mayfield Residential Preferential Parking (RPP) Program as a one-year pilot and direct Staff to make corresponding changes to the RPP Administrative Guidelines; and B. Find the program exempt from review under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA); and TRANSCRIPT Page 121 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 C. Direct Staff to propose a limit to daily hangtags per employer; and D. Remove 2755 El Camino Real (former VTA Parking Lot) from this RPP Program; and E. Replace in Resolution Section 4.A.c. “two employee” with “three employee” and replace in Sections 4.B.1 and 4.B.2, “resident living” with “residence”; and F. Refer review of this RPP Program to the Planning and Transportation Commission prior to Council’s review; and G. Direct Staff to investigate ways to streamline purchasing of parking garage permits and consider valet parking; and H. Allow employee permits to be shared between employees of the same business; and I. Direct Staff to investigate ways for businesses to share permits within the Business District; and J. Direct Staff to schedule a Council Agenda Item relating to the creation of a California Avenue Transportation Management Association (TMA) or expansion of the Downtown TMA. Mayor Scharff: Now, let's vote on the whole Motion. Council Member Fine: Mr. Mayor, one last Amendment? Mayor Scharff: You already spoke. I'm sorry. I'm not going to open it up for a whole other round. That passes 8-1. MOTION AS AMENDED PASSED: 8-0 Kniss absent Council Member Filseth: Can I ask a question before we leave this completely? Mayor Scharff: Sure. Council Member Filseth: I don't think we should drop the issue of medical, dental, local-service retail versus tech software companies that have tons and tons of employees and very deep pockets crowding those out. How do we revisit that issue? What's the process? Ms. Gitelman: I think we're going to understand very shortly after we start implementation of this program if we've designed something that's going to TRANSCRIPT Page 122 of 122 City Council Meeting Transcript: 1/23/17 work. If we find that we are having real problems, we're going to have to come back to Council for an adjustment. Council Member Filseth: We can expect to have at least some discussion no later than a year from now. Inter-Governmental Legislative Affairs None. Council Member Questions, Comments and Announcements Mayor Scharff: Council Member Questions and Comments. Hold one second. I've got too many lights on. Put your lights on if you have a Council Member Questions or Comments. I have one. I just want to let you all know that I was appointed to the—what was it? I can't think of it. I'll tell you next week. That's fine; I can't remember. Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: I just wanted to commend the City for being a cohost, especially the Human Relations Commission, for cosponsoring an event that a number of organizations and residents put together, including people from San Mateo County, called Immigrants and Allies, that was held at the Cubberley auditorium last week. The program was entirely in Spanish. The attendance was excellent despite it being a cold, dark, rainy night. Lots of information was shared with all attendees about resources available for immigrants regardless of documentation status, resources to seek help legally for families, psychology, anything. That video will be online hosted by the Palo Alto University website and hopefully will also be linked to the City website. Mayor Scharff: I did remember now. It's the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority, which is the governing board. It's about seven members, and it's how we spend the Measure AA Funds that were passed. With that, we're adjourned. Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 11:58 P.M.