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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2017-04-03 City Council Summary MinutesCITY OF PALO ALTO CITY COUNCIL TRANSCRIPT   Page 1 of 79  Regular Meeting April 3, 2017 The City Council of the City of Palo Alto met on this date in the Council Chambers at 6:02 P.M. Present: DuBois, Filseth, Fine, Holman, Kniss, Kou, Scharff, Tanaka, Wolbach Absent: Closed Session 1. CONFERENCE WITH LABOR NEGOTIATORS City Designated Representatives: City Manager and his Designees Pursuant to Merit System Rules and Regulations (Ed Shikada, Lalo Perez, Eric Nickel, Rumi Portillo, Molly Stump) Employee Organization: International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), Local 1319 Authority: Government Code Section 54957.6(a). CONFERENCE WITH CITY ATTORNEY—POTENTIAL LITIGATION Significant Exposure to Litigation Under Section 54956.9(d)(2) (One Potential Case, as Defendant) – Palo Alto-Stanford Fire Protection Agreement. Mayor Scharff: I need a Motion to go into Closed Session. MOTION: Council Member Wolbach moved, seconded by Vice Mayor Kniss to go into Closed Session. Mayor Scharff: Moved and seconded. All in favor. That passes unanimously. MOTION PASSED: 9-0 Council went into Closed Session at 6:02 P.M. Council returned from Closed Session at 7:18 P.M. Mayor Scharff announced no reportable action. TRANSCRIPT    Page 2 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions Mayor Scharff: There's no Agenda Changes, Additions, and Deletions. Let me just get a little organized. Who are we missing? Liz and Filseth. Why don't we go to City Manager Comments? City Manager Comments James Keene, City Manager: Mr. Mayor, thank you, and Council Members. The first item pertains to the proposed hotel on San Antonio Road. A Draft Environmental Impact Report, EIR, for the hotel project, which is at 744-750 San Antonio Road, was released for public review on March 27th. Public comments on the Draft EIR are welcome until the close of business on May 10th. The project is also scheduled for an ARB hearing on April 6th, which is this week. Comments can be provided orally at that time. All substantive comments on the Draft EIR will be responded to in a Final EIR before this project is presented to the City Council for action based on a recommendation from the ARB. Next up from Planning and Community Environment. Planning Staff and consultants are hosting a community meeting to kick off the Eichler Neighborhood Design Guidelines project on April 11th at 6:30 p.m. in the Midtown Room at the Mitchell Park Community Center. Unfortunately, this time conflicts with a Special Meeting of the City Council, but we're hoping for a good turnout from interested residents and Eichler enthusiasts. The meeting is intended to start a community conversation about a way to ensure that home additions and new construction are compatible with the character of Palo Alto's Eichler neighborhoods. The project, we expect, will result in new guidelines for homeowners and enable the City Council to consider whether or not there should be any accompanying changes to the City's zoning regulations. On the RPP front, the City's contractor continues to make permits available to residents in the Downtown and in the Evergreen Park/Mayfield RPP districts through the City's parking website, which is cityofpaloalto.org/parking. As of Sunday night, the contractor reports that we've sold over 3,000 resident permits for Downtown and just 325 resident permits for Evergreen and Mayfield. We will continue to get the word out to residents and are spreading the word to area businesses, which are eligible for a small number of employee permits. In the case of Downtown, low-wage workers were eligible to start purchasing employee permits Downtown yesterday. As of last night, we had issued 281 permits. All employees in the district will be eligible to purchase permits starting April 9th. Right now, just the low-wage workers are our focus. Low-wage workers and employees who are on the waiting list for parking lots and garages in the California Avenue area are now able to purchase Evergreen/Mayfield employee permits. As of last night, we had issued 78 permits. All employees in the district will be eligible TRANSCRIPT    Page 3 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  to purchase permits beginning April 9th. I'll be giving a pop quiz on this later on the timing on these. Hopefully, folks can go to the website, if there's any question, to be sure they are able to meet the deadlines. I did want to share that our contractor does continue to struggle in keeping up with the volume of calls to their customer service number. We understand their voice mailbox was full over the weekend. Callers were unable to leave messages. Our Staff has asked the company to fix this problem and to provide additional support at the customer service lobby in City Hall. If you got here at the right time, you saw some lines of folks who were here to make purchases Downtown. We'll continue to monitor the situation, spreading the word that enforcement will not begin until April 17th for Downtown and April 24th for Evergreen/Mayfield. Even after enforcement begins, we'll issue warnings for a couple of weeks before we issue citations. Lastly, if you look up to the booth, a neat thing to report from our folks in our public art program. Over the next 2 months, public art will be changing the face of Downtown. First of all, a giant inflatable speech bubble and video recording booth will pop up in front of City Hall on Wednesday, April 19th from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. People can enter and record a 2- minute video beginning with the statement "the truth is …" . This exhibit is called In Search of the Truth. The Truth Booth, for short, has been brought to cities around the country and actually around the world and has been touring the U.S. on a special tour. We're one of the final stops on the tour. Our public is invited to come down to the plaza to tell their own truth. That begins to get us ready for what’s going to be, we think, an amazing event. Beginning on June 1st, a Thursday, and running through June 3rd, our Downtown will transform into a series of urban interventions as part of Code Art, which is a weekend-long festival that will include eight installations in Downtown spaces that will include prototypes of sound and light activation, virtual reality, street furniture projects, and other interventions that activate some of the Downtown storefronts, alleys, parking lots, and blank walls in new and inventive ways. There will be a new temporary artwork installation on King Plaza, The Murmur, that will visually activate the plaza with its dynamic shape and illumination. I think we've got a picture of it up there. It's actually been at the Moscone Center. It will create an immersive and meditative environment to draw passersby in, will include embedded 3-D printed data pods that display search terms trending in Palo Alto. LED text displays within the data pods will inform viewers of what Palo Altans are searching for. With motion sensors tracking the presence of viewers to create an interactive light display, the artwork allows individuals to contribute to the streams of data as they flow by. Viewers can also contribute whispers or direct messages to the murmur wall through a web portal at murmurwall.net. These real-time anonymous contributions move rapidly through the lattice as bright white data streams. They'll appear only once, never to be collected, reused, or shared while creating a unique and TRANSCRIPT    Page 4 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  dynamic experience. It will remain on display from June 1st through October 2nd. It is also part of the National Day of Civic Hacking that will take place at that point. Part of the connection to art and technology is the reason for some of the projects that we've selected. Finally, the Clerk's Office asked that we put out a reminder that the deadline is tomorrow at 4:30 p.m. to apply for vacancies on the following Commissions: the Human Relations Commission, the Library Advisory Commission, the Public Art Commission, and the Utility Advisory Commission. Deadline is tomorrow, 4:30 p.m.; that's Tuesday. Apply online at cityofpaloalto.org/clerk. That is all I have to report. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. I also wanted to congratulate you, Jim, on being named one of the top 25 Doers, Dreamers, and Drivers of 2017 by Government Technology Magazine. I must say I was a little concerned that you were named one of the top drivers. You need to ride your bike some more. Jim is being recognized for his innovative ideas and bold thinking in how cities use technology and how to execute on the promises of truly digital government. In the feature piece on Jim, he said that he would like to see local government move to the cloud, use agile development, and create opportunities for more collaboration between the private sector and its citizens. At the same time, he believes cities must rethink their assets from street lights to parking meters, which can be turned into digital tools. Jim said in the article, "We try to recognize more overtly in our community that government is a partnership between citizens and their representatives, but a city doesn't become innovative and more effective by changing how it obtains and uses technology. You have to build trust and think like a startup." According to Jim, "That's the mindset we need to have so we can scale up solutions that not only make our city a better a place but help make other cities better as well." We just wanted to congratulate you for that achievement. Job well done. Mr. Keene: I would put it in perspective. That was a very nice shout-out. My wife over the years has said repeatedly to me that she should have married a handyman rather than a dreamer. Oral Communications Mayor Scharff: Now, we have Oral Communications. We have several speakers; you'll each have 3 minutes. Our first speaker—I can never read these properly. If I say it wrong, I apologize. Is it Ella Hen [phonetic]? Maybe I got it wrong. It looks like—I'll ask the Clerk, and we'll come back to it. Olivia Donner to be followed by PaloAltoFreePress. Do we have Olivia Donner? Now, we have PaloAltoFreePress, to be followed by Mark Mollineaux. TRANSCRIPT    Page 5 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  PaloAltoFreePress: I think I had mentioned last week that last week was going to be my last visit here. If you look at DNA, all of human kind is genetically connected. I've got a little bit of Arnold Schwarzenegger in me, so I'm back. When we launched PaloAltoFreePress—by the way, Cory, I called you on the phone. You didn't call me back. Who else did I call? Tom, you didn't call me back. Greg, you didn't call me back. That speaks volumes of your attention to your constituents. It just shows that what you do is you do this. They turn their back on the population. They turn their back on the voice of democracy. It's terrible. I wouldn't tolerate it. They are our elected officials. I have been speaking before City Council for the past 10 years. Every time I step into chambers it's like a war zone. It really is. I have to really psyche myself up in order to talk (inaudible). Currently, as in the past, I viewed all the previous City Council Members as Nazis. I view these guys as the Taliban. They're terrorists because they do not care about you. They do not care about me or anybody else. Let me just share with you something, just a little bit. I had a falling out with the Watch Tower Bible Tract Society's executive staff. Pretty amazing, isn't it? Twenty-five years of preaching the good news of the God's kingdom. You know what? I remember on a warm, sunny day, this farmer just plowed himself through the screen door with his American flag and said, "Salute this, you Goddamn son of a bitch Jehovah's witnesses." Terrible isn't it? It's horrible. That's their democracy, not mine. It's horrible. This is what they believe in. You folks ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Liz, I've got 20/20 vision, and I hear perfectly well. You lost your hearing ears a long time ago. Sandra Brown made a directive to all of the policing staff not to receive my telephone calls, not to return my telephone calls as a journalist, not to be interviewed as a journalist. That's horrible. That is what you believe, sir. You're spineless, each and every one of you. Just totally spineless. You're racists is what you are. I'm a minority. I'm from Nicaragua, dude. You should be proud of your achievements and how you treat Latinos and African-Americans in this community. I have recorded time and time again racist remarks by the police. It's horrible. As a Black man, I'm sure you've experienced it. You've probably been pulled over by the police. Right out of the gate, they ask you, "Have you ever been under arrest?" Has that not been the truth? You're smiling. You know it's true. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. PaloAltoFreePress: This may be my last time. I don't know. Liz, I wish you'd get to working on the letter that I requested on complete exoneration. Can you do that? Do you think you can get back with me and let me know? I'm not a rapist. Do you hear me, Liz, or do I need to ring up the volume a little bit more? Can you nod your head in acknowledgement? Yes or no, Liz? Yes or no? TRANSCRIPT    Page 6 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  Mayor Scharff: Mark? PaloAltoFreePress: Yes or no? Mayor Scharff: Mark? PaloAltoFreePress: I'm leaving. This is my last appearance. If you want to call the police in chambers, you go right ahead and do so. I want an answer from that woman … Mayor Scharff: Mark? PaloAltoFreePress: … right there. Mayor Scharff: We don't respond to public comment. We never have. PaloAltoFreePress: So it's a rhetorical question. Is that the case? Mayor Scharff: That is correct. PaloAltoFreePress: I have seen City Council respond to criticism time and time again on First Amendment issues. Come on. What you're saying is bullshit. Rahm Emanuel, do you know who he is? He was part of the executive staff of Obama. He just launched the F-word I can't tell you how many times. All of you are just one big cluster f***. That's what you are. With that said, I'm out of here. Mayor Scharff: Mark Mollineaux. Mark Mollineaux: Hi there. My name is Mark Mollineaux. I graduated from Stanford. Currently looking for a place for rent. Just a few comments I'd like to make about last week's discussion about affordable housing and below market rent units. In particular, I'd like to respond to one point in your discussion that you are trying to adjust your fees to better fit in with the rest of the cities in the Peninsula. It seems like I was seeing the Palo Alto following in the footsteps of the other cities. I think they're capable of a lot more. I can understand completely why they do this. The old saying goes no one got fired for buying IBM. Just doing the same thing as everyone else is buying IBM. It's the safe thing to do. We're in Silicon Valley; we're capable of a lot more and actually innovating. I think Palo Alto could really be a leader in finding new ways to make things that work instead of following the safe policies that don't work. If there's one city around here that's capable of trying a new way of fixing a problem, congestion pricing for fixing traffic, community land trusts for fixing affordable housing. I don't think it's going to be one of the other cities. I think Palo Alto—if anyone is going to be a leader, I think it's going to be you TRANSCRIPT    Page 7 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  guys. I really think instead of following the same policies of exclusionary zoning to try to keep traffic down and to try to keep density down, I think new solutions are out there. If anyone's going to be the innovator, I think you should look at yourselves and try to make it happen. I think you're capable of it. Thank you very much. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Debbie to be followed by Laura. Deborah Sherrell: Thank you for letting me speak tonight. First of all, I wanted all of you to know that I've been a public servant of the government for most of my career. Recently, I became homeless to my demise. I never thought I would be. I wanted to speak about some of your plans for homelessness. As you know, the homeless is not one area of just degenerates. We have homeless that are primarily baby boomers, not the young kids that have mental illness as well as drug addiction. It's hitting people who are highly classified as far as degrees, with master's degrees. They're invisible to the public. Those folks are people that cannot be addressed because they're ashamed, like myself. They can't get the help that they need. Thus, the City Council has to be very creative in finding a loop to get them into society, get jobs, and be useful servants—not servants, but be back in applicable jobs so they can be helpful to the community. Not only do you have myself who falls in that category, you have other people who have mental illness. They need to be served by a case manager to get the help they seek so that they can get into group homes where they can have case managers work with them. (inaudible) six levels of people that are homeless, and you can't just group them as homeless in one category. What I would suggest is—what I used to do is give surveys in communities to see what are the big problem areas and how can we fix them, what are the capital projects can we do to fix the city, how can we involve community involvement so that people from ten different countries speak to each other. That was my job. That was one of the jobs I did with the city. What I’m asking you folks to do is put your heads together and brainstorm. Think about with the monies you recently received—I believe it was Measure A. Don't try to think of housing this people in one area because you have people that are from different areas and different groups. Instead, use the money wisely and getting case managers and giving a survey to those people and see what they need. You take the survey and break it down, and then you see where you can use the money. Thus, you might have a more productive way of helping people who are thus called homeless. Thank you very much. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Laura to be followed by Stephanie Munoz. It's Laura first. TRANSCRIPT    Page 8 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  Laura Stanley: Thank you. In addition to what Deborah just said, I recently as well—at the end of the year, my mom passed away—just became homeless myself. Prior to that I have all my life along with my mother donated my time, volunteered my time to help poor people, elderly people, seniors and so forth, shut-ins, not just in food and everything else but helping them in any way I could. When my mom passed away with two massive strokes at the age of 94, I lost my home, I lost my job, and I lost my mom to end up in a situation like this. Without Stephanie, I don't know what I would have done. Recently I heard something that really disturbed me. I'm glad that the City of Palo Alto or the Police Department was able to build a shelter, or is willing to, underneath the jail at the police station. That's fantastic for somebody who might be a danger to somebody on the street, but for someone in this situation who's trying to dig her way out, to get back on their feet—I'm this far away from finding housing, working my butt off to try and get there. It was a little bit of a slap in the face to have somebody say, "You need to go live in a jail because we don't have any other place for women." There are shelters for men, but there are no shelters for women. Women need your help. Can you help us, please? We have a group that Heart and Home was nice enough to put together. A shelter was put together for us, a temporary shelter. The problem is in the City of Palo Alto and most cities you have to have a permit. Those permits are only good for 45 days maximum. The City of San Jose recently lifted that for churches. They no longer have to have a permit to house homeless or to house any group in this situation. Is that something that Palo Alto could possibly do? Can you help us in any way? Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Stephanie Munoz. Stephanie Munoz: I'm Stephanie Munoz. Good evening, Mayor Scharff and Council Members. I thought I would share with you the rare opportunity to hear from some of these women. The way things are set up, we have some shelters. The regulations are very manipulative. You have to be in at 7:00, not later, or you lose your place for next time too. You'll never see them here because the homeless people who have found their way to some kind of overnight shelter have to go to that shelter. They cannot come and tell you what is wrong with a society that is leaving women out on the street. Of course, I can and I will. You cannot have women out on the street at night. You just can't. It is not a civilized society. The reason is that women are susceptible to rape and impregnation. If you have that kind of wild west society, you end up with unparented, illegitimate children or maybe abortion if you like that better. Women are really despoiled on their way to earn their living in a respectable way. The divorce laws that we passed often—the new divorce laws leave women at loose ends when the husband decides that he needs a younger paramour. There they are, out on the street because they TRANSCRIPT    Page 9 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  cannot get housing by themselves, with their own jobs. Their little jobs are okay if you can combine them. That's one of the reason you have the Latinos managing. They have little families that stick together, and they have two not very good jobs. The two not very good jobs will buy you housing. One not very good job won't. I'm asking you to realize that when a long ago Palo Alto City Council put in industry with no place to house the workers, they were setting all of us, you as well as us, up for a big problem of supply and demand. I believe you have to insist that the big companies provide some housing, not 1:1 but something in relation to the number of people they have, at least four bedrooms, and that there be some place, some shed, some tent, some something next to a bathroom for the homeless. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Our last speaker is Sea Reddy. Sea Reddy: Thanks, Mayor and citizens of Palo Alto and City administration, for taking me in at the last minute. I know you are pressed for time. I was listening today to all the stuff about North Korea and all that. What's critical to us, to the City of Palo Alto, (inaudible) our state, is for us to be prepared for the worst. In 1978, I worked for (inaudible). We built 10 million rounds of ammunition. Granted, in those days computers were not there. We had a contact list we all carried in our pockets no matter what anybody says. In 2000 we had an earthquake when I was at Boeing. Nobody had access to phones. I hope the City Hall and the City administration has a list like this in the pockets in a hard copy format so we can help for emergency preparedness. We don't really know what's going to happen. All the talk, all the nastiness is everywhere. I think we want to protect our citizens. It's our duty to do that. Thank you. The second thing I think is wholly stupid for Democrats to filibuster and create a scene. We know Judge Gorsuch is going to be nominated sooner or later. I think it's going to set a bad precedent. Here's what I propose. We negotiate—the Democrats can go and negotiate. The next reappointment could be Judge Garland. You give a carrot, and then we live a life. I hope the citizens that are very influential in Palo Alto and Woodside and all the communities we have call your Senators and say this is an unnecessary confrontation. It doesn't do anything. It just puts the ego of Chair Schumer. Other than that, it doesn't do anything for us. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. TRANSCRIPT    Page 10 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  Minutes Approval 2. Approval of Action Minutes for the March 7 and 20, 2017 Council Meetings. Mayor Scharff: Now, we need a Motion to approve the Minutes. Vice Mayor Kniss: So moved. Council Member Wolbach: Second. MOTION: Vice Mayor Kniss moved, seconded by Council Member Wolbach to approve the Action Minutes for the March 7 and 20, 2017 Council Meetings. Mayor Scharff: All in favor or vote on the board. That passes unanimously. MOTION PASSED: 9-0 Consent Calendar Mayor Scharff: Now, I need a Motion on the Consent Calendar. Beth Minor, City Clerk: You have one speaker. Mayor Scharff: We have one speaker; we do. Keith Bennett speaking to Item 6. Keith Bennett, speaking regarding Agenda Item Number 6: I just wanted to say three things very briefly. First of all, thank you very much for passing this motion. I hope you'll reaffirm your decision tonight. The second comment is directed a little bit more to City Staff. It's our hope that this will be implemented well, and that you get the data you need for the proposed 2018 regulations and also change the frequently asked questions on the website on dewatering to help motivate applicants to get with the program as opposed to the current topics now and explain why the City is taking these actions. Now that this will be an ordinance, we hope if there are penalties that are payable, they are in fact assessed and people pay them. That's the way at least some builders recognize the City is being serious. The third is another request to Staff. You'll be coming back in 2018 with— later this year for proposal for 2018. We hope this is done in a timely manner, not after April when the 2018 season has started, and that you will take this opportunity to look at the potential of having a very simple regulation that has at its core that no water will be dumped down the storm drains from dewatering. I think that was suggested at the Policy and Services Committee. I think it will be shown to be feasible. It's easy to TRANSCRIPT    Page 11 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  enforce. It's very clear. It will of course need some other wording around it to have the right intent. That's all I have to say. Thank you very much. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Now, a Motion on the Consent Calendar. Council Member DuBois: (inaudible) Vice Mayor Kniss: So moved. MOTION: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Vice Mayor Kniss to approve Agenda Item Numbers 3-6. 3. Approval of the Update of the Ten-Year Gas Efficiency Goals. 4. Resolution 9674 Entitled, “Resolution of the Council of the City of Palo Alto to Join the World Health Organization's Age Friendly Global Network and the Santa Clara County Age Friendly Initiative.” 5. Authorization for the City Manager to Vote on Storm Water Management Fee Ballots Received for Parcels Owned by the City of Palo Alto. 6. Ordinance 5410 Entitled, “Ordinance of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Amending Chapter 16.28 of the Municipal Code to Require Testing, Monitoring and Protective Measures for Temporary Construction-related Groundwater Pumping (Dewatering) (FIRST READING: March 7, 2017 PASSED: 9-0).” Mayor Scharff: Motion made by Council Member DuBois, seconded by Council Member Kniss. If we could vote on the board. That passes unanimously. MOTION PASSED: 9-0 Action Items 7. Council Direction on the Parking and Retail Program and Related Zoning Changes Needed for the Public Parking Garage Component of the Public Safety Building and the new California Avenue Parking Garage Project at 250 Sherman Avenue and 350 Sherman Avenue, Respectively. Mayor Scharff: Now, we're up to our first and only Action Item, Item Number 7. Do we have a Staff Report? TRANSCRIPT    Page 12 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  James Keene, City Manager: Yes, we do, Mr. Mayor. Assistant Public Works Director lead on implementation of the Council's Infrastructure Plan, which includes the subject garage at Cal. Avenue and then ultimately the Public Safety Building. Brad. Brad Eggleston, Public Works Assistant Director: Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. We're happy to be here this evening to talk about the Cal. Ave. parking garage options with you. With me, adjacent, I have Matt Raschke, a Senior Engineer in Public Works Engineering. Out in the audience we have two members of our design team, Michael Ross from RDC Architecture and Michelle Wendler from Watry Design. They'll be helping with some of the questions you may have. A brief summary of our presentation. We'll be talking a little bit about the status of the Public Safety Building and Cal. Ave. garage projects; looking at the garage options and costs that were in your Staff Report; talking about some zoning issues having to do with public parking garages; and then the Staff recommendation. The status of the project. You probably recall we were here in December; although, there are new Council Members. We issued a Request for Proposal for a design of both the Public Safety Building and the Cal. Ave. garage last August, 2016. Then, we brought the design contract award to Council in December. For the design work, one of the very first steps we needed to do to keep the project moving was to look at options for adding more parking to the California Avenue garage beyond what had originally been approved by Council a year before, in December 2015. That's where we are tonight, looking at trying to finalize the program for the Cal. Ave. garage, which is a critical step. I just wanted to say that it's really important to us to get a decision on that tonight to keep the projects on track. As we all know, there are pressures on parking in the Cal. Ave. area already. The new Evergreen Park/Mayfield RPP program is estimated to take away something like 240 spaces that were previously available for parking in the residential neighborhoods. That's a further pressure. We know that there will be strain on parking in that area until this garage is finished. Just another key point about that. With these projects, time is money. Between the garage and the Public Safety Building, we're talking about approximately a $100 million investment. As we've worked on cost estimates for these projects, the Public Safety Building in particular, the cost escalation associated with just the Public Safety Building portion adds up to about $150,000 a month. We see that and view it as critical to try to keep this on the fast track and make sure we stay on schedule. What is that schedule? The next couple of bullets there. We're working on getting the project—we have a scoping meeting coming up at the Planning and Transportation Commission on April 12. We plan to bring the project with approval of the EIR back to Council in December of this year and begin construction of the parking garage next summer 2018, and complete that the following TRANSCRIPT    Page 13 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  summer, at which point we would immediately begin construction of the Public Safety Building and anticipate completing that in the spring of 2021. That's the overall timeframe. This next slide shows the parking options that were considered and that were provided in the Staff Report. A couple of things I wanted to point out here. You'll see that we're showing total stalls in the garage and then the net amount of spaces added. There's a couple of nuances to that that I wanted to point out and that were described in the report. The 2014 Council Infrastructure Plan, that provided the initial funding for this project, had as its goal adding a net 160 parking spaces to the district through building the garage. You'll see, for example, in Option 1 we say there's a total of 471 stalls but only a net added of 129. We're starting with 310 spaces on these two lots. We're going up to 471. The thing I wanted to point out is that on Options 1 and 2, that have the retail component, by the Zoning Code there's about 20 parking spaces needed to support that retail. The other change is that we're providing 12 visitor parking spaces for the Public Safety Building in this public parking garage. As I said, these are the options shown in the Staff Report. You'll see that Option 3 is slightly grayed in to denote that's the Staff recommendation for the 522-space garage that would be a net increase of 200 spaces. What we've tried to do there—that's more than the 160 spaces that was originally planned in the Infrastructure Plan, but we're trying to balance the community input that we received in our public meetings and through many letters and emails about the need to maximize the parking with the budgetary needs for the overall Infrastructure Plan and the fact that costs are rising and we have a lot of projects to support. Looking here on this page, the project costs there, $26.2 million, is actually about $3 million less than our baseline project, which was Option 1. I wanted to take just a moment to orient you to the project area we're talking about. You can see the parking garage here, kind of towards the center of the slide. It has the red writing on top of it. Just to the right of that, which is to the south, is the new Visa building. Just to give a sense, since we're talking about building heights in some of these options, the new Visa building is 45 feet 5 inches. If you look to the left of the parking garage and up a bit, you'll see the new Public Safety Building, which is a three-story building that will be 50 feet high. Just to the right of the Public Safety Building, the kind of diagonally shaped building is the County Courthouse, which is 65 feet high. That's some of the context of the project area. This next slide is repeating a couple of the options that were on the previous slide. This may be a little confusing. We had the four options that were shown on the other slide. Once our Staff Report was published and there were more discussions, there were ideas about three additional options beyond those. What this slide is showing is all five of the options that don't have the retail component. The two to the left, starting with Option 3, are the two that were on the previous slide. The three on the right are the additional ideas that came up. Those TRANSCRIPT    Page 14 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  were ideas about further increasing parking and/or having more of the levels be above ground rather than basement levels, because that significantly reduces the cost per stall and the overall cost. I didn't want to go over this in detail. I think you received a message today with a table that had similar information. We wanted to include it here and thought we would potentially use it as a reference during questions and discussion. The other aspect of the recommendation has to do with public facility zoning. Both of these lots, C-6 and C-7, that we're talking about have this PF zoning. For the Public Safety Building, we're actually able to design that to meet all the zoning constraints under the PF zoning. The PF zoning is not suited to public parking garages, and we talked about this in the Staff Report. There's things like this 35-foot height limit, lot coverage ratios that would have you only build a structure on 30 percent of the site, floor area ratios, and setbacks that are issues. What we're proposing and the Staff recommendation is we go and update the PF Zoning Ordinance to address these issues so that it's essentially feasible to use PF-zoned parcels for building public parking garages. With that, this slide shows our recommendation. It's to direct Staff to proceed with Option 3 for the public garage and, as we said, that's the 522-space option that has four levels above and one level below. That option doesn't include that standalone retail building that had been included in Option 1 and 2. Another part of that recommendation is to specifically work on enhancing that Birch Street frontage particularly since we would not have the retail building there. One thing about that I wanted to note is, as I mentioned, there's a combined budget of about $100 million for these two projects. With our City's 1 percent art program, that means we're going to have about $1 million to invest in public art in these projects. That's a large budget and really gives us a chance to do something very attractive with these sites and with that frontage on the parking garage. Mr. Keene: Are you finished? Mr. Eggleston: The other piece of the recommendation is just revising the PF Zoning. Mr. Keene: Thanks. Mr. Mayor, if I might add to Brad's good work. I do think that the supplemental set of options is worth the Council looking at, even though the Staff recommendation was Option 3. There are a number of different factors or variables that the Council will be considering here. I'm not putting them in any priority. There's obviously the number of parking spaces that can be provided as one factor. There's the total cost including the price per parking space. There's the height issue. In one sense, there are design issues. There's the potential that lower-cost-per-stall parking could let the same amount of money be put into even enhanced design for TRANSCRIPT    Page 15 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  the building, so the ability to look at the design is an important factor. Before we move on, I know it will come up later. Brad, if you could go back to the picture that has the context. It doesn't really show the concept for I'll call it a ramp-less design for the garage. If you might hit on that for a second. It's just one of the factors that was—this is a particular kind of design that we've settled on. Mr. Eggleston: If you look at the parking garage, what you'll actually see— it's actually one half of it that we would characterize as a parked on ramp. Another way to say that would be ramp-less in the sense that sometimes you have a parking garage where you have wasted space because it's just ramp and there's no parking provided there. On this garage, the long half of it that's closer to the bottom there where you can see the slope, that is where cars would drive up, but they will also be parking on either side of that. It's essentially a very efficient utilization of the garage space. The other side actually is flat, so what you're doing as you drive up into the garage is driving up a slope that you can park on and then driving around a flat surface and then driving up the slope to the next level. If that helps. Mr. Keene: Thank you. Mayor Scharff: We're back to Council. Before we go to the public—do we have a bunch of public cards—I actually wanted to give Council Members a chance to maybe do a lightning round of 3 minutes each, if you would like that. Don't feel like you have to say something. If you want to ask questions or give comments, whatever you feel like you want to do. The last time I started with Tom, so I thought I'd start down there this time. Council Member Holman: Thank you. A couple of questions. This document that was emailed to Council Members this afternoon, has the public seen this? Are there copies of this available for the public? Beth Minor, City Clerk: Yes, they're in the back. Council Member Holman: Was this distributed in any fashion to people who went to the meetings? It's a lot of information and critical information. We just got it this afternoon. Mr. Keene: We just put it together. Council Member Holman: The public needs to see it too. Mr. Keene: It's here. In one sense—I don't mean to say it's relatively simple. I understand that it's late. As need be, to the extent the Council can help articulate the differences through the conversation, that ought to TRANSCRIPT    Page 16 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  allow the public, certainly who is here, to weigh in on it. I think it'll be dependent upon what recommendation the Council makes as to how you would consider where you go from there. Council Member Holman: It doesn't seem like it was in response to a Council Member question, so it's not on the City's website either. Mr. Keene: We were hearing different kinds of comments or questions. We thought it was really important to, one, start to draw a distinction between underground and aboveground parking spaces and the cost, which in many ways is essentially designed to do this. We just populated a number of options to give you some perspective between cost, height, above and underground parking, and parking space yield. Council Member Holman: I understand that. I'm worried about the transparency aspect of this and having it available to people. I was very surprised when I read the Staff Report that the retail component was provided as a standalone, separate building at 4,700 square feet. When this was at Council before, we just talked about perimeter, small-space retail on the edge of the parking garage. How did it get to be 4,700 square feet, separate footprint, separate building when we were just talking about edge small retail spaces or personal service? Mr. Eggleston: Actually, at the time we brought the feasibility study to Council in late 2015, even at that time the retail was described as a standalone building of that same size, approximately 4,700 square feet. Council Member Holman: It wasn't my recollection of that conversation. Was that the only option that was talked about? Mr. Eggleston: It was the only option. Mr. Keene: If I might just add. Obviously, that design feature factored into a lower number of available parking spaces in the garage itself because of that design. That's one of the reasons Staff has identified some of the options without that standalone feature. Now, it doesn't include any retail in that situation. Council Member Holman: I understand. There's a big difference between the two concepts. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Council Member Fine. Council Member Fine: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you very much for the report. Just a couple of questions. I did want to echo Council Member TRANSCRIPT    Page 17 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  Holman, first, about the retail spaces. I think we thought it was these perimeter spaces. That was a little surprising. Just a few specific questions. I know it's kind of down the pipe. Do we have an idea of where construction vehicles will park for the construction of this garage and if that will also result in a net decrease in spots available in the district? Mr. Eggleston: I'm sorry, Council Member Fine. I missed the very first part of your question. Council Member Fine: Do we have an idea of how many and where the construction vehicles for this garage will park, and whether that also results in a net decrease during the construction period, and how big is that? Mr. Eggleston: We don't have an idea about how many vehicles there would be. This is something we've been discussing with the business community in Cal. Ave. repeatedly through multiple meetings. We're exploring several ideas for what to do during the project both in terms of addressing the 148 spaces that would be missing from Lot C-7 and construction parking. Ideas are parking at the Caltrain lot. We've initiated discussions with the County recently to try to talk about ways that they might be able to help us. We got a very good suggestion at one of the community meetings which was, even though we wouldn't begin construction on the Public Safety Building itself until the garage was completed, the project would be approved, and we could essentially scrape and restripe or just open up the other lot where the Public Safety Building will go and do some very intensive valet operations that could help. There's a number of things we're looking at. Council Member Fine: I think it would be helpful to characterize that impact. Two other questions. Will the garage be future-proofed in case we want to implement future signage requirements or potentially charge for entry to that garage? Mr. Eggleston: To charge for entry? Council Member Fine: Yeah. Mr. Eggleston: Yes, it will be. The garage includes wayfinding, parking guidance systems. We're talking about making sure it's designed to accommodate paid parking. Council Member Fine: Thank you. I found this chart very useful. Just the one question, if Staff could work on it. It'd be really nice to know the costs per stall per floor, depending on whether it's aboveground or belowground, even if we just get an idea that aboveground it's 40 and below ground its 60, something like that. Thank you. TRANSCRIPT    Page 18 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  Mayor Scharff: Council Member Tanaka. Council Member Tanaka: Also, thank you for your work on this report. It's clear that more parking is needed in Cal. Ave. A few quick questions here. First of all, what is the square footage of the lot? I heard it was 40,500 square feet; is that right? Matt Raschke, Public Works Senior Engineer: Correct. It's approximately 1 acre, just a little under 1 acre. Council Member Tanaka: Has Staff looked into automated parking mechanisms? Mr. Eggleston: Are you referring to fully automated parking systems? Council Member Tanaka: Right. Mr. Eggleston: We haven't. We've heard about different types of fully automated parking systems a little bit. In doing the feasibility study, we had essentially described this as a parking garage, but we were open to getting proposals in response to our Request for Proposals where someone could suggest such a system. Likely that would be a partnership between an architect who would design the building and a provider of those sorts of technologies. We received seven proposals but didn't hear from anyone about that sort of innovation. Mr. Keene: Can I just restate this, just for a second? We put out the Request for Proposals. The Request for Proposals did not specifically say we really want to pursue utilizing either I'll call them simplistic parking/stacking technologies or almost fully automated. Nonetheless, there would have been the opportunity for somebody to respond. As Brad said, we did not get that. That being said, we've heard a flurry of buzz and questions. We get contacted by folks as it relates to this. I do think we're in a little bit of a position for our architect and our engineering firm to be able to comment on some of the implications of that more tonight if need be. Council Member Tanaka: Do you want to comment on it? Mr. Keene: Mr. Mayor, is this the time you would want us to get into that level of detail? Mayor Scharff: I'm fine. You have 44 seconds left. I'm happy to have them do that if that's how you want to spend the time. You'll have another chance later to ask questions. TRANSCRIPT    Page 19 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  Mr. Keene: Why don't you say something in summary? We'll probably need to get into more detail about it later. Mr. Eggleston: We have had discussions with our design team about how applicable those sorts of garages are to our situation. A couple of factors. Basically what we've heard and discussed is that it's very unlikely for those sorts of systems to pencil out in areas where you've got enough space and kind of a standard parcel size where a traditional parking garage works. One other thing that we have looked into a little is we've seen a proposal for a fully automated garage specifically for this lot actually that suggested a through-put of about 300 cars entering or exiting per hour. With the single entry that we plan and this type of garage design, it accommodates about 800 entry and exits per hour. That's another factor that for this sort of use in the Cal. Ave. area, where there's a lot of retail use and in particular during lunch and dinner hours, seemed like a potential problem. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Filseth. Council Member Filseth: I'd be interested in hearing a little more about that too, in particular how much greater density of spaces does it get you if you do something like that. As I "back of envelope" this, the thing that struck me is it looks to me like the scale of the parking crunch in the Cal. Ave. area is about 300 cars. It looks to me like that's roughly the number that the RPP is going to displace out of the neighborhoods. They're going to need somewhere to go. A lot of that is people that park all day, and they're not going in and out of retail. The thing that struck me is all these options, with the exception of Number 1, basically produce an increase of 200 or 300 spots. Of those, it's probably a little bit less than that because some of the people that are going to get displaced are Stanford people and people that park in the neighborhoods and drive Caltrain to their job in San Francisco. What I thought was great was it looks like the sweet spot. It looks like we could actually fix the whole problem with one garage, which would be a really good thing. In other parts of the City, we're grappling with we've got to do some of this and some of that. We could actually do the whole thing, and all these options would do it. At that point, it boils down, I thought, to how high is it going to be versus the cost of putting more underground. We're going to end up trying to trade off that kind of stuff. I would love to have it be all underground and doesn't tower over the stuff on California Avenue. It doesn't cost very much, and it accommodates a huge number of cars. If we could just have that—I think the tradeoff is going to come down to what's our tolerance for putting more. Most of that area is not even 35 feet; yes, we have a couple of buildings nearby, the Courthouse building and the police building. People are going to scratch their head on those. I think that's the tradeoff. If some of the mechanisms like Council Member Tanaka TRANSCRIPT    Page 20 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  is suggesting can help us navigate through that, I think it's worth looking at. I'd be curious what the answer is. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Kniss. Vice Mayor Kniss: No. They're answering Eric's question. Council Member Filseth: I'm done. I'd love to hear an estimate of how much more dense it is if you do it. Mr. Eggleston: Michelle, could we have you come to the podium and answer some questions about fully automated parking? Michelle Wendler, Watry Design: Sure. Michelle Wendler with Watry Design. Do you want me to just jump in or is there a specific question? Mr. Eggleston: I think the specific question was about the density that can be achieved relative to traditional garages. Ms. Wendler: With fully automated parking, this is a fully robotic system as opposed to lifts, which you may have seen in other projects. A fully automated system, you can fit more parking spaces within a similar volume. That doesn't necessarily mean that it costs less overall, per parking space. Each project being different, you have to build the housing for it and then put the system inside that and then maintain the system over the life of the parking structure. Looking at each project—we haven't studied it for this project, but we've studied it for other projects. This site's actually a very good site for building parking in a conventional way because you're able to fit the parked-on ramp that Brad was addressing earlier within the regular geometry of parking, especially meeting a very good efficiency in that particular case. A lot of times when we study that, we're studying it in cases where we're not able to achieve that in parking. Council Member Filseth: Do you get like twice as many stalls or 30 percent more? Ms. Wendler: In the same volume, it's not twice as many. It depends on the system, and it depends—one of the critical factors is how many of the—I call them portals; everyone's got a different name—areas where you pull in and leave your car and walk away you need to deal with the turnover of the spaces. In this case, being retail parking for a big portion of that, it'd be higher turnover; you'd need a lot of those. Depending on how many you need to accommodate that, that might take up a big portion of the ground- floor. It varies on how many stalls you can obtain that way. TRANSCRIPT    Page 21 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  Council Member Filseth: More than 10 percent, more or less, than twice as much. Ms. Wendler: It's not twice as much. It's maybe—I haven't seen any of the proposals that someone has tried to draw for this particular one. It does depend on its geometry. I'm not sure I could answer that specifically. Council Member Filseth: You think most of it's going to be retail. I'm assuming that most of the people—it's going to suck up the cars that go out of the neighborhoods with the RPP in place. My sense is most of those are there for all day. Mr. Eggleston: What I would say is—we don't have a good parking study for the Cal. Ave. area in the way that we do now for Downtown. Anecdotally and from what I and others have seen even before the RPP has become effective, if you go there during the lunch hour, there's effectively no parking. Mr. Keene: If I just might … Council Member Filseth: Either there or in the neighborhood surrounding it. Mr. Keene: If we just go to your point again, the math that you had done on your comments earlier are accurate about the employee parking needs. Again, we have about 250 people on the waiting list for parking permits right now. Let's even just assume 250, 300 of them are in the garage. Clearly, we're going to put those parking spaces on the top part of a garage because they're going to be there all day, and we're going to want the lower levels obviously for the turn-around folks. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Kniss. Vice Mayor Kniss: Brad, I'd have to say frankly I'm disappointed. Although, I haven't studied it for a long time, I've spent some time over the last week really looking at the mechanical parking. I don't think the answers we're getting tonight are really good answers. I'm somewhat puzzled by this. There has to be some answer out there as to how many more cars you can get in a mechanized garage. It's really puzzling to me. I think you've gone so far on this; there's not much you can do. It just amazes me that on page 4 it just says it was not considered for this garage. I'm kind of at a loss. That very much deals with limited space. We have limited space in that area, and we're seeing that California Avenue is really ramped up a great deal. You cannot find parking there. I tried to find it just the other day. Tell us once more why we didn't look at mechanical parking. TRANSCRIPT    Page 22 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  Mr. Eggleston: We did a feasibility study that looked at these sites and made recommendations about the type of parking we could fit. I think at that time we did have some preliminary discussions about mechanical parking systems. It frankly wasn't recommended. I would say … Vice Mayor Kniss: By whom? Who was it not recommended by? The feasibility study? Mr. Eggleston: Our consultants working on the feasibility study. We had also not heard of—we were not aware of successful examples of these garages. I think there are still concerns out there about them. For instance, the one example that we do know about, the West Hollywood garage, we've heard has a 10-minute wait time to retrieve your car. That seems potentially problematic. Another aspect of these—I agree we haven't done a full … Vice Mayor Kniss: Brad, I don't mean to interrupt. Is that hearsay, the 10- minute wait time? Mr. Raschke: No, that's a Wired article that's available online. They actually did the test … Vice Mayor Kniss: At any time of the day or night, it's 10 minutes? Mr. Raschke: It's quite a slow process to get the car out of the garage. Mr. Eggleston: That's not to say that any such system is that way. The one other aspect I did—go ahead, Jim. Mr. Keene: No, go ahead and do your thing. I was going to say something. Mr. Eggleston: The one other aspect I did want to bring up is a typical parking garage, once it's built, is a low-maintenance facility with very low operating costs. Here in this type of system, suddenly you're talking about potentially 12 elevators and hundreds of spaces where every single space is a piece of mechanical equipment. Vice Mayor Kniss: Bottom line, we don't have any cost figures, right? Mr. Eggleston: That's true. Mr. Keene: That's right. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach. TRANSCRIPT    Page 23 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  Council Member Wolbach: I do have a couple of questions. I did just want to say that I think Staff's put a lot of work into this. If there was a strong push to make this a fully automatic garage, that push should have come from this Council much sooner. For those members of this Council and the community who are raising this at this point in the process, I certainly wish they had offered those suggestions and that energy earlier if that was something they wanted to explore in greater depth. I think it's a little bit late in the game for this parking garage to fully change course. As Staff mentioned, there was an RFP and no automated garage proposals came back. As we heard the consultant say, this is a site where traditional parking is quite feasible. We also understand that there is a time delay and convenience issue, and there's also a cost even if we don't have the exact numbers. This is a standard, easy thing to say we should have, of course, done automated. I just wanted to defend Staff and the consultant a little bit on this. They've been doing good work with the direction they've gotten from this Council. Again, if anyone has blame to place for us not having explored mechanical early on, much earlier in this process, that blame lies up here with the nine of us, not with the Staff or the consultant. Now that I've wasted half of my time with that, a couple of questions. I'll try to be brief with them. Just wanted to double check that the number of spaces that the RPP removed was 230 or was it—that removes from … Mr. Eggleston: It's kind of a hard number to define. The number that I was referencing was about 240. That's looking at the total inventory minus the overnight parking. If you assume the overnight parking is also there in the day and that there are 250 permits, 240 is roughly the difference. Council Member Wolbach: The number of spaces on the lot right now is 322? Male: 310. Council Member Wolbach: Thank you for correcting me. We're looking at about—this parking garage would need to be 550 to just match what we're losing from the existing parking lot and the RPP. As we're talking about numbers, let's remember that 550 is the minimum. Also wanted to ask about spaces, particularly in covered areas for people who are biking, either a scooter, motorcycle, or regular bicycle where a very small space is possible but being covered is ideal so you can change out of your riding gear, whether bicycle or motorbike. A lot more people are trying to ride forms of transportation that don't take as much parking space. I was wondering how that has been or could be incorporated into this parking garage, especially in corners where it wouldn't be feasible to fit a car, but we could demarcate it for some form of two-wheeled transportation. TRANSCRIPT    Page 24 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  Mr. Eggleston: That's a good point. Level 1 will have motorcycle and bicycle parking. Council Member Wolbach: Thanks. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Kou. Council Member Kou: First, I want to support what Council Member Wolbach had said. Thank you very much for the great job that you've done. I read in the Staff Report that mechanical and lifts in a garage of this kind, which is supposed to be more or less community-serving which means for lunch hour, for retail users as well as for people who are in the community-serving business—this is the purpose why lifts and mechanical doesn't work because it does take a certain length of time to get it up and down from there. Thank you for that. I wanted to also ask can you give me a ballpark of how you're getting the funding for this garage? Where is the money coming from? I'm really curious. I know there's that $100,000, but where is the $100,000 coming from, and then where is the $50,000 that you're estimating? A million, million. Mr. Eggleston: The funding for this garage is coming primarily from Certificates of Participation that will be issued to be repaid by revenues from the City's hotel tax or transient occupancy tax. Essentially, the Council in 2014 adopted what they called the 2014 Council Infrastructure Plan that provided funding for nine different projects. These are essentially two of them. They're the Public Safety Building, Downtown and California Avenue parking garages, replacement of two old fire stations, Charleston- Arastradero corridor, the Bike Pedestrian Plan, and Byxbee Park completion. I think they're the nine. The Highway 101 bike/pedestrian bridge. Council Member Kou: If the increase for this garage obviously is going to take more money, is it going to take away from other projects that are in our Infrastructure Plan? Mr. Eggleston: Big picture, we have a funding shortfall. When we look at our current cost estimates and the recommendations that we're making on this project and also the Downtown parking garage that's coming to you next week, if you take that as a whole, we think we're short about $10-$15 million on a total of about $180 million in projects. Mr. Keene: Let me just restate it so we're clear. In the couple of years since the Council adopted the Infrastructure Plan for these nine projects, we have already updated the funding needs and put $30 million in contingency and have that added into the pro forma that's basically been shared with Council and essentially adopted or approved by Council. That being said, as TRANSCRIPT    Page 25 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  we have updated the cost estimates on these projects this year, even despite that $30 million contingency that have been added to the whole thing, we look to be $10-$15 million short, not on just these projects but how we spread them around, which is why money is a factor in the decisions that we make and why time is money also, obviously, unless we hit some major recession or something. Council Member Kou: May I have one more question? Mayor Scharff: I typically don't let people because then everyone will want it. We'll have time afterwards. Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: Good transition; I wanted to talk about money. I have six questions, so I'm going to rattle the questions off and see how many we can get through if you could give short answers. It looked like the cost escalation, contingency, other costs were about 35 percent over the base. I want to know if those are plug-ins or if they're actually detailed estimates. Second question, how are hard and soft costs determined? If you could just jot these down maybe. Three, do you have any metrics for what other cities have recently spent on garages, maybe on a per spot? Are there any residential buildings near this garage? Is the height listed the height to the top of the elevator shaft? Why do we lose the 12 spots to the police building? Mr. Eggleston: I'll try to answer as many of those as I jotted down, and maybe you can remind me of the ones I missed. In the cost estimates, the hard costs for construction are based on prices per stall for either aboveground or different levels with the basement levels getting progressively more and more expensive the deeper you go. Those figures are based on our consultants who are helping with these projects and who work on projects all over the Bay Area and on public and private projects that they've seen costs for recently. On the soft costs, there's escalation, which is 6 percent this year and 4 percent next year. That's where that 10 percent comes from. There's construction contract contingency, which is 10 percent, which is a standard thing we include pretty much on all projects. For the soft costs that you're seeing something like $3.8 million there, part of those are costs for our design consultants who are already under contract; part of it is estimates for future work we'll need like construction administration, construction management, building permit fees, things like that. Mr. Keene: First question was is it a plug-in number on the (inaudible). Council Member DuBois: Is there a residential building … TRANSCRIPT    Page 26 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  Mr. Eggleston: The cost per stall is a plug-in number. There's multifamily residential located near the site, just to the east and behind the Visa 385 Sherman building. The heights that we provided are to the top of the railing on the top level and don't include elevator shafts. One of the questions was are we comparing to other cities. We're doing that by means of the expertise of our consultants and using figures from recent projects that they've seen. Council Member DuBois: The last question .. Mr. Keene: Twelve spots. Council Member DuBois: … Twelve spots at the police building. Mr. Eggleston: The 12 spots from the police building, we needed to relocate the entry to the below-grade garage for the police building. There were also needs for parking other police vehicles on that site that there would not be space for as well as some storm water treatment needs. Mr. Keene: If I just might add. A lot of these things still are planning numbers. Since we're dealing with large budgets, there's no doubt in my mind that we may not be value-engineering some of the projects as we get into more detail to match dollars with what the program is. Thanks. Mayor Scharff: I had a couple of things I wanted to say. First of all, I think it's a really exciting project. It's rare that we get to sit up here and possibly, as Council Member Filseth said, actually solve a problem that bedevils a neighborhood. I think this is a great opportunity. I'm going to agree with Council Member Wolbach as well that 550 is the minimum and probably doesn't solve it. I think we need to be at 600, 636. I come out on the 636. Where we need to, in my view, think about this a little bit is the different costs. If you have it in your mind that for every level we go up, it's $4 million. The first level we go down is 6 million. The second level we go down is 8 million. In looking at, for instance, Option 3B, which would be one level below/five levels above, versus Option 3A, which is two levels below/four levels above, the difference is 32 feet versus 43 feet. You're talking about 10 feet going up. Is that 10 feet worth—is it worth it to be 10 feet lower for $4 million? I think that's one of the policy questions we need to grapple with tonight. In thinking about that, I note that we have a 65- foot building for the Courthouse. We have a 50-foot police building. We have the Visa building at 45 feet. The reason we'd have the 35-foot on part of the site in this zoning is because of the multifamily, but that multifamily agreed to the Visa building without appealing it to ARB, which is 45 feet. I take it that that group of multifamily simply doesn't care about the fact that it's 45 feet, since they didn't appeal, didn't come to Council and complain. TRANSCRIPT    Page 27 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  The Visa building actually never came to Council, which I take also as there wasn't a lot of opposition to it being 45 feet there on the height limit. I personally don't have a problem with going to the 43 feet. Now, a number of you might. I think it's important, if possible, to get some sort of consensus, if possible. It may not be possible. That's one of the things we should discuss. The other thing is on the retail. I actually was a huge proponent of putting retail along there. My concern with the retail is I'm not willing to lose 84 spots to do 4,700 square feet of retail. That's again is a policy choice. That's one of the things we need to discuss as a Council, how do we feel about that. For me, those are the two big policy choices that we need to make here. For me, going 54 feet, which would be six levels, is too high, and I personally don't think we should go there even though that is where you save the most money. If I had—I'll stop there. Now, let's go to the public. If we could put up the speakers. How many speakers do we have? Twenty. We usually get a few more as we go. I'm going to give everyone 2 minutes. Our first speakers is Scott Gable. Scott Gable, City Lift Parking: Hi, good evening. I'm Scott Gable. I'm the founder and CEO of a company called City Lift Parking. I appreciated the conversation on automated parking. Whether you decide to continue to do a conventional garage on this location or you want to do something in automated, I really would encourage you to consider it in more detail to make sure that some of the facts are brought to bear. Just some key things that we notice regularly in many of the projects that we work on. The space savings are real, 40 percent minimum and sometimes much more in terms of the amount of space which can be reused, whether that be for more parking or for other uses. Cost-wide, we're typically finding we come in about a third less in terms of the investment cost. Adaptive reuse. None of us know what the parking demand is going to be like in 10 or 20 years. Building a structure with ramps is a difficult structure to reuse. If you don't need the parking and it's automated, you unbolt it and you move it out and you create more space. You can reuse that space for another purpose. In addition, there's an environmental angle to this. The construction on these is usually done with steel as opposed to cement floors. We typically find there's about a 75 percent savings on the construction and the greenhouse gas emissions associated with those. These are systems that are highly configurable. There was a lot of discussion today specifically about through- put. I agree there are a lot of systems out there where it probably doesn't make sense because of the through-put. There are some systems out there; one of them we have. I've highlighted on page 8 that we handed out to all of you what's called the puzzle lift system. In the interest of time, we're probably not going to have time to show you a video of how that works. Suffice it to say when we did a quick "back of the envelope," we can get 100 percent turnover for a garage in a 1-hour period of time. That's a doable TRANSCRIPT    Page 28 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  number. It's just a matter of how you structure the garage. I would, just in summary, encourage you to keep pushing and looking at this issue. I think it's an interesting one that's been around the world for 25 years. Its time has probably come here in the U.S. given where land costs and constraints are with land. I certainly encourage all of you here to at least consider it, whether it's on this project or future projects. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Jessica Roth to be followed by Mike Meffert. Jessica Roth: Thank you all for your time tonight. My name is Jessica Roth. I'm a Palo Alto resident, and I own The Cobblery on California Avenue. I wrote this before I knew there were a couple of other options that the Staff was going to propose. Some of it might not be as relevant, but I'm going to read it anyway. We have experienced huge growing pains over the last 15 years. We as merchants have been asking for more parking over a decade. I have customers that no longer want to come down to our street because of the lack of parking. Over the past 4 days, a few of us have put together a petition asking our employees, customers, and neighbors their thoughts on parking. I've emailed you a copy and urge you to take a look at the comments. We collected over 270 signatures and got many more given a bit more time. I think we're all in agreement that this is a problem. With the parking we'll be losing from the Public Safety Building lot along with the under-parked new Visa building, Staff's proposed garage Option 3 is not enough parking. We need to maximize the parking now unless you're ready to commit to another garage in the area in the near future. At the outreach meeting with the merchants, it was a huge majority in favor of combining Options 2 and 3, going two levels down and three levels up. Parking is my priority; however, if your minds are already set to choose one of the three options proposed by Staff, that's what I'm talking about it not being any more. I would have urged you to choose "2;" that maximized parking and added a little bit of retail. Retail is always good for Downtown areas and neighborhoods. I wanted to also address the lack of parking during construction. We need to get creative with parking during this time. I know that Council Member Tanaka has had some good ideas. I think we should all keep brainstorming and really try to minimize the impact of the parking problems during this build. I wanted—just really quick? We shouldn't be replacing the parking that we're losing in the Evergreen Park area with this garage. We should be adding parking in California Avenue district. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Mike Meffert to be followed by Jennifer Allen. Mike Meffert: Good evening everybody. My name's Mike Meffert. I've been in commercial real estate in Palo Alto for the past 15 years and also own a building in California Avenue. For about that 15 years' time, I as a real TRANSCRIPT    Page 29 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  estate agent have seen tenants go away and not lease space in the California Avenue district for lack of parking. it's common knowledge that it's very hard to find parking, especially at the lunch hour. That's a big deterrent for not only the merchants but owners as well. One thing I would emphasize—you'll probably hear it throughout—is we need to increase the capacity to the maximum capacity, whether you build down, whether you build up or introduce technology to do it in different ways. It's the capacity of parking spaces that we're looking for, not the retail, not the nice arcades. Those are all good things to have but, when you make tradeoff decisions and money is scarce, parking trumps. That's most important. Looking at the demand, it's like being a quarterback. You can't throw the ball to where your receiver is currently standing; you have to anticipate and throw it where the receiver is going to. In the same manner, we're looking to build supply for a future demand. We've talked a little bit here about the RPP program. What the slides don't really recognize is not net added; it's net added after RPP. If you take away 200 or 250, whatever the number is, some of these are negative additions. They're negative, not additions. Certainly during construction, you're double negative. You need to consider that when you're taking into consideration the cost benefit. What is the net net, not just the net. The other thing I'd like to add—I'll close—is you're taking away a lot. A lot is convenient. A garage is not so convenient. You should be increasing capacity also to take into account the lack of convenience. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Jennifer Allen to be followed by Lori Villarreal. Jennifer Allen: Hello. Thanks for having us here tonight. I'm Jennifer Allen. My husband, Mike Maystead, and I own PIP Printing. We've been a part of the Palo Alto community for 44 years. We're grateful for how the community has embraced us up until recently. We feel that our business and all businesses used to be valued and wanted by the City and its residents. We along with many other here tonight provide essential services and goods to the residents of Palo Alto. Now, I sense an atmosphere that is unfriendly towards the success of our small businesses. It's essential, with a new mandate such as the Evergreen RPP and the new proposed parking structure as considered, that an encompassing and compromising plan is put forth so that all affected are taken into consideration. We business owners have been given slight consideration as to how the lack of parking affects us and ultimately our community when we businesses leave because we will leave. Sorry, I lost my place. In one meeting we were told by the Chief Transportation Officer that there's no comprehensive plan for future parking. Yet, the Evergreen RPP was rolled out, and the recommended garage proposal does not maximize parking space to ensure a thriving business community. As others have pointed out, the RPP negates all those big TRANSCRIPT    Page 30 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  numbers that are up there. We need to think about the future, not just the next few years, not just getting this parking garage built but what's going to happen 5, 10 years from now. If we take care of this now, you'll keep businesses. I've been looking at moving out of the City, and I don't want to do that. The lack of parking is a huge hardship on my employees and my customers. We are going to probably leave. Please consider that the RPP be postponed until the new garage is built and can we look beyond and maximize the number of spaces. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Lori Villarreal to be followed by Hamilton Hitchings. Lori Villarreal: Hi. I am currently an owner of two businesses on the corner of California Avenue and Birch. I've been there 12 years. Like Jessica was saying, we've seen some growing pains. I think my biggest concern is obviously we need the maximized stalls installed and the time, how long you want the customers to stay. Currently, most of our lots are 2 hours. I know we do have a couple of garages that are three. I'm constantly having customers run out and move their cars and come back. It's a huge inconvenience for 2 hours. What was said earlier was potentially a pay structure. If they can stay longer, I'm not sure if that's a consideration. Listening to everybody and listening to all you guys, I feel like California Avenue is kind of—I feel like we need to maybe go back and say what's the vision of California Avenue. I'm not sure if maybe it just got lost in the way of the growing pains. Is it a destination that we want it to be or is it we're just trying to figure that out as we go along? Are we trying to change the wheel as the car is going? My concern is what's the vision and do we want businesses—what do you guys want our expectations to be as business owners and what should we tell our customers? Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Hamilton Hitchings to be followed by Jack Morton. Hamilton Hitchings: Thank you for deliberating on this important project. Tonight's comments are my own as a resident. Finding parking at lunch time in California Ave. is a problem, which makes it harder for local restaurants and retail to survive and thrive. In addition, the 250 parking permits already being allocated to local neighborhoods, there is pressure by local merchants and companies to increase that number further in the future. There is clearly a need for substantially more parking than is currently available. Many office and retail workers already park all day in local neighborhoods. Palo Alto is one of the few cities in the Bay Area that allows this. Building more parking spaces could potentially reduce the number of parking permits in adjacent neighborhoods or at the very least TRANSCRIPT    Page 31 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  not increase them in the long run. In terms of mechanical systems, they fail, and then you have your garage or part of your garage offline. They take a lot of money to support. Are you willing to spend $50 million on a garage? If you get more spots and they're not cheaper, it could be a $40 or $50 million garage. I am personally not ready—I do not support a mechanical garage at this time. I do support choosing an option that holds as much parking as possible while taking into account the height. My first choice would be "3A," then "3B," then "3." I really prefer a 36-foot height, but I would understand a 45-foot height given the finances and the other things. I would like to see us go two levels underground if possible. Thus, a larger garage is better for residents, local merchants, and office workers. Let's think long term and do right by selecting an option that addresses our long-term parking needs so we don't need to build another garage later or stuff our local neighborhoods with employees' cars. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Jack Morton to be followed by Lara Ekwall. Jack Morton: Good evening, Council Members. At the risk of sounding like a repetition of everything that's been said, first of all let me thank Staff. We had a capacity meeting on Cal. Avenue. As you've all figured out, even before the RPP goes into effect there are 250 people on the waiting list. When the RPP goes into effect, we lose another at least 250 spots available to patrons and employees. Visa has moved in; it's under-parked. Construction is underway on Park for another multistory, single-tenant building. California Avenue is zoned TD. It's zoned for density. Police building will bring more demand from families, etc., than the 12 spaces allocated. There's only one solution: defer the RPP until the garage is completed, adopt Option 3A unless you are willing to go to the 57-foot. The community, the businesses, the patrons, visitors all support this solution. If you're thinking about this crazy idea of mechanical parking, ask yourself would your mother yield her car to a robotic parker and then stand there for not 10 minutes, 20 minutes while it's parked and when she comes back. Would she ever come back to Cal. Ave. again if she had one such experience? The idea is idiotic, and it's not worth the cost. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Lara Ekwall to be followed by Philippe Lehot. Lara Ekwall: Hi, my name's Lara. For those of you I haven't met, I own a business on California Avenue, and I've been there for 20 years. Council Member Holman, no, to my knowledge none of us received this information in advance or perhaps we would have modified our talking points. I'd like to thank Brad and Mr. Ross and the Staff for their presentation recently. I've been to a lot of them, and it was well organized, pleasant and productive. However, when we left, I had this hope or sense that maximizing parking TRANSCRIPT    Page 32 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  was going to happen. When the 522 came out, I think all of us in attendance were a little bit surprised. As a business owner, we listen to so many people complain and talk about our severe lack of adequate parking. I cannot count the number of dinner guests who tell us they just won't come to Cal. Ave. lunch anymore. Please read the comments on the petition that we've started. Sadly and respectfully, people we've engaged, residents, taxpayers, and employees, aside from those of us who had the time and energy to show up tonight, not many of them had something positive or respectful to say about City Council. I think that's sad. I'm here, and I've talked many times to City Council. I very much respect the process that we all go through. However, a lot of them don't think that attending the City Council meeting is going to make a difference. I'm hoping, fingers crossed, it will. I read something recently about your group making reasonable end times to these meetings. Go for it, dude. I know none of us want to be here at 11:30 at night. I think it was great. However, maybe you could consider rebranding the City Council as you move forward. It's an opportunity maybe. Palo Alto is a major tech anchor. I propose that your website have a video forum for people to submit 60-second comments. Maybe you don't want to hear more than that from us. They wouldn't have to drive and park to get here. You would all be able to view those same clips maybe in your pajamas at home. Everyone could have the same information coming in. I actually think at that point you would actually have a more accurate sampling of your community. Too often when I take the night off to come in and speak to you all, I do feel like maybe I'm not going to be heard, and it's going to be the usual suspects. Perhaps moving forward you will consider this. I do think you would have been bombarded with people asking for not just more parking but maximize parking. Props to you on your game faces. You guys sit through a lot. Good job. Mayor Scharff: Philippe Lehot to be followed by Israel Rind. Philippe Lehot: Good day, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Philippe Lehot. I think I have the distinct privilege of having been owner/manager of real estate in California for the last 38 years. I think I started in '79. In those days, that area had enough parking. It was comfortable for customers to come to our cafes, restaurants. It was very busy during lunch time because all the people from Stanford Research Park would come. Today, I hate to tell you it's quite the opposite. The people in Stanford Research Park can't come because they'd waste at least 20 minutes trying to find a spot. They don't have that much time to waste for lunch at that point. Some of the restaurants, which used to pack 50 people at lunch time very easily, are now lucky to get 20. I know several examples. I manage the real estate for at least three restaurants. I would say there has not been a long-term view of the needs of the district, the parking needs of course. You've heard from TRANSCRIPT    Page 33 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  other people who have explained that to you. I'm the guy with the white hair here, and you're kids. I would admonish you to take your time and build something much bigger, much better and blow the money, go 67 feet or even higher if needed. You're going to put police building there, which is going to attract a lot more people. They're taking away—at this point now, if you were planning ahead of time, you would have to put not one but two parking buildings. Look at what's happening. Look at the buildings which are—there are a lot of old buildings which are going to disappear in California Avenue and go up three floors if not more. I'm asking you be smart, look at long term. If it takes more money, find more ways of financing it, but do it right. Take your time. It doesn't matter if you're going to, at this point, take 6 months, a year, or 2 years more. Frankly, you're looking at your children and grandchildren. The district now is being strangled by the parking problem. I don't have to tell you that. You heard from—thank you very much. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Israel Rind to be followed by Michael Ekwall. Israel Rind: Good evening. My name is Israel Rind, and I've owned Izzy's Brooklyn Bagels since 1996. Just like everybody else, I'd like to ask you to maximize the parking in our neighborhood. Our businesses will not be sustainable if that's not done. We all depend on it. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you very much. Michael Ekwall to be followed by Judy Kleinberg. Michael Ekwall: Good evening. First off, I'd just like to reiterate that the City Staff and Mr. Ross did a great job with their presentation on two occasions where we met with California Avenue. That being said, I assume everybody here read the short letter that the California Avenue business community sent your way, so I won't go too far with my comments tonight, and I won't retread what everybody else has said. We do appreciate this opportunity and promise for additional parking in our district. It really is critical. It's something that we have actually been requesting for many years. We do hear this every day from our customers about the parking issue and shortage. For our businesses to remain sustainable, we do need parking for not only our guests and customers but for our employees as well. At the same time, we do need to recognize that our neighbors, whether they're Evergreen Park, College Terrace, or other parts of Palo Alto, do have concerns with employee parking. Several of us in the community have gotten together. Obviously some people can't come out tonight because they're busy working. We do recognize that this probably is a one-time opportunity to maximize the parking in California Avenue. Adding what we believe is an unnecessary retail component doesn't seem to make a lot of TRANSCRIPT    Page 34 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  sense. Currently, just to be accurate, there are 250 or so people just on the waiting list for California Avenue permits. That has nothing to do with Evergreen Park. To add 250 really would be a minimum and a break-even for us. Do also consider that there are over 3,000 employees in the California Avenue business district. Thank you. Sorry I went over time. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Judy Kleinberg to be followed by Stephanie Munoz. Judy Kleinberg: Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council People. I'm going to make four points. I'm going to talk about retail versus employee parking; the purpose of the garage; the money for the garage; and a vision. It is not true that this garage was supposed to just be for retail. This garage was supposed to be for employees as well as retail. The merchants have said that a garage needs to be for both workers. You've just heard the statistic that there's over 3,000, at least, identifiable employees in that district. There is not enough parking for those employees; that's why we have a problem in the neighborhoods. We have to solve that. They absolutely need the largest garage that you can possibly authorize. The purpose of the garage. It was supposed to be for retail before the RPP, but that would displace employees from street parking when there aren't enough permits. You've heard about the 3,000 employees. Let me also just divert for one minute to another point about retail. The merchants know what business works in their district. They have said virtually unanimously, "Don't put a retail unit there." It's illogical; it's ill-placed; it won't work. Please don't waste the space on retail that could be spent on parking. The TOT money. There seems to be some misunderstanding about what the TOT money was going to go for. Originally, when that passed as a general tax, the conversation—a very public conversation—was that the TOT money would be spent on two garages and a Public Safety Building. Now, somehow new Councils have added eight more infrastructure projects. Quite frankly, I hear from Chamber seniors, who have been around a long time, that that was an understanding, that that's how the money would be spent if the business community wouldn't fight that tax. I've been told by people who were here and who voted for it at the time, that that's really the case. Finally, the vision. Let me just say two sentences about the vision and try to zero in on the TOT money. I don't think anybody here including myself knows much about mechanical parking. However, it is done all over the world. If we are innovative—we are the entrepreneurial, innovation center of the globe—why wouldn't we have the vision, why wouldn't be doing something entrepreneurial and build a garage of the 21st century, not a conventional 20th century garage. Let's take the time to work with the community and the designers. It's not too late to be innovative. Thanks. TRANSCRIPT    Page 35 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  Mayor Scharff: Stephanie Munoz to be followed by Terry Holzemer. Stephanie Munoz: Good evening again. I recognize that I don't know anything that you don't know. I'm hoping only to bring up some point that you can note down and ask yourselves about. You don't need me to be an advocate for some point of view. The first thing I'd like you to remember is there is such a thing as enough. It seems to me that if you're planning to add destinations which will make it necessary for more cars to come in, that is counterproductive. The remark that Council Member Holman made at the beginning, where did all this extra retail come from, is worth pondering. There was one thing about the perimeter parking. Back some years ago we had a Commissioner named Kotts [phonetic], and his thought was we needed perimeter parking—not parking but perimeter retail on a parking garage to make it more interesting, which is worth thinking about. Other things to think about are you could have a shuttle, for instance, from Stanford to go around to all these restaurants. It would be an economy. Some years ago, we were actually thinking of penalizing employers who provided parking for their employees because that was keeping them from taking public transportation. If you have this building, you need to think about earthquakes and emergencies. Personally, I don't believe we're going to have an earthquake, but you can't afford to think that way. It is your responsibility to assume that there will be an earthquake. Where are you going to keep the stuff? You're going to keep it in this parking garage. It's going to be the newest building that you'll have to put all the refugees in. There are some other things; maybe I'll write you a letter. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Terry Holzemer to be followed by Bob Moss. Terry Holzemer: Good evening, Council Members. As many of you well know, I live in this neighborhood every day. It is my neighborhood, and I value it very much. Palo Alto is one of these unique communities that I love dearly. Even though I'm a transplant from Ohio, I've lived here for over 20 years. I'm a strong believer in the ideals that Palo Alto stands for. I wholeheartedly support the idea of a new garage on Lot C-7. I think it is needed and will be an added feature to our neighborhood. As residents, I have two major concerns. My first concern is over how this parking in this garage will be used. I don't believe there has been a real community or neighborhood discussion about how much parking is really needed in this neighborhood. Related to this is the true understanding of how additional traffic and congestion will be affected in my neighborhood. I'm very concerned of how the different streets around the parking garage will add extra traffic not only to Park Boulevard, because a lot of that traffic will end up on Park, but a lot of it will be focused on Sherman and Sheridan, which are really small neighborhood streets. They're not meant for huge amounts TRANSCRIPT    Page 36 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  of traffic, which they will be facing. The second point I want to make is, in addition, I'm very concerned about the garage massiveness and the need for maybe exceeding the 50-foot height limit. One of the things I think makes Palo Alto so unique is its consistent desire to maintain the 50-foot height limit. It's part of the reason why I decided to come to Palo Alto. Granted the costs are going to be higher if the City decides to go deeper. Ultimately, if the City does go deeper, it's a benefit to the future of our City. One more final thing I'd like to say. You only need to look at our neighboring city to the south and look at San Antonio Road and see what the City of Mountain View has done. If you look closely at what they've done in the San Antonio Shopping Center, I hope that we will never become that. Thank you very much. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Bob Moss to be followed by Christian Hansen. Bob Moss: Thank you, Mayor Scharff and Council Members. First, I'd like to make a little suggestion. We have a Comprehensive Plan and a Zoning Ordinance. Please try to follow them. Saying that Options 3B, 3C, and 3D, which far exceed the height limit, are acceptable is not the way you should be doing things. This community has been very carefully developed within existing standards. If you don't follow the standards, you have wild card zoning, and nobody knows what's going to be built next to them. That's not the way you want to have a city operate. Of the options that are presented, I think Option 3 is the best. One of the things I want to caution on is that Options 1, 2, and 3A, with a two-level underground garage—it is possible that the second level will be penetrating the contaminated aquifer that flows from the Research Park down towards Alma Street. We've had 4 years of drought, so the amount of the water in the aquifer and the level is not normal. This year, we've had far more than usual rain. If we have another 3 or 4 years of 150-200 percent of normal rain, that aquifer is going to flow closer and closer to Sherman, and underground structures may penetrate it. We do have a contamination problem with the groundwater from the Research Park flowing towards Alma. I just caution you on that. Finally on the height being 36 feet 4 inches, a foot and a third more than is allowed, my understanding, looking at page 66 of the Staff Report, is that extra height is caused by railings. You can consider that to be an accessory structure, not a building structure. For example, elevator shafts are allowed to be more than 50 feet. The elevator shaft of the JCC is almost 60 feet. If the railing is an accessory structure, I think it can exceed the 35 feet. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Christian Hansen to be followed by Neilson Buchanan. TRANSCRIPT    Page 37 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  Christian Hansen: Good evening, Council Members, Mayor. I have ownership interest—the group I work with, we manage several properties in the neighborhood. One of the properties is adjacent to this new parking structure. I just want to talk about briefly three things that haven't been touched on tonight. Our employees are in agreement that we need parking. Parking is an issue. The waiting list for these employees is way too long. We would be in favor of "3A." Like Council Member Filseth said, I think it's important to just remember you want the building to fit. If you go too high up, we're just concerned that it won't fit in the neighborhood. That's why to go down would definitely help that. The three things I want to discuss. One, if you drive down Jacaranda Lane, you'll notice there's a bunch of dumpsters and grease traps and other unsightly debris, canisters. We have a unique opportunity to hide some of those and maybe incorporate them in this new parking structure. I'd just urge the Council to look at that and maybe cleaning up that back lane as it becomes more of a thoroughfare for pedestrians, to try to get those dumpsters and grease traps hidden in the structure. Second, you have a full city block of a building. I didn't see any greenery on the plan. A lot of those buildings along Cal. Ave. and Jacaranda look into what's now going to be a huge building. It'd be nice to at least see some vines. I know other parking structures Downtown have some sort of greenery to break it up or make it at least a little more appealing. A third thing I want to present is there's been talk about what do we do with construction vehicles that are going to displace a lot of the employee and patron parking. I think one solution is there's a lot of developments coming down the pipeline. There's the Olive Garden site now. There's the VTA site on the corner of Page Mill and El Camino. There's an opportunity—this may be far down the line. You could trade development rights or density bonuses if they let you use their lots while they prepare for their development. That's just one solution that may work. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Neilson Buchanan to be followed by Herb Borock. Neilson Buchanan: There are a lot of residents and a lot of business people here tonight with interest in parking. None of us have expertise in parking. I ask you all to take a real good hard look at what, I think, modern-day transportation experts are recommending. In regions like this, you won't find a single transportation expert saying adding another lane on a freeway is a solution. I don't think you'll find many transportation experts saying adding one garage after another garage after another garage makes any sense whatsoever. You can't play the paper chase, parking space game and win in this economy. You've got to start a new way of thinking. I ask you to take this in little bites. If the TMA is good for the University Avenue, what about California Avenue? You're starving the TMA to death. It does not TRANSCRIPT    Page 38 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  have the economies of scale. It needs to go to California Avenue now, not later. I ask you to take a real solid look at technology, not just the technology in the building but the technology that's alluded to in the comprehensive parking study next week. Finally, Karen, Liz, and Greg, you have all the seniority in this Council. It's time to take a look at the total constellation of parking systems. I think it's a real mistake to make any decision tonight for California Avenue. It is just one orbit in the parking management system. Next week, you've got a comprehensive study coming about how to solve 75 percent of University Avenue. That comprehensive parking system thinking has to happen for California Avenue. I'm not going to be here next week, so I'll ask you in advance not to take any action this week or next week. Sit on it for 2 weeks as the guy with the French accent says. It doesn't make any difference in the long run. You can't build enough parking to solve the problem. You've got to think about changing human behavior with new systems. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Herb Borock to be followed by Rita Vrhel. Herb Borock: The property owners of California Avenue want you to build more parking as long as they're not going to pay for it. While it might solve the current problem, it's not going to solve the problem of adding more office buildings, which is the current zoning and the current desire of the commercial property owners. That is why I requested that the Architectural Review Board consider the projects on Cambridge Avenue for the solar panels on top of existing garages that would effectively prevent those garages from being expanded or replaced. By having the ARB consider it, it gives any interested party the opportunity to appeal that to the Council. A decision has been made by the Director already to approve it, and the appeal period is running. It'll run out in a couple of days. I encourage anyone who is interested in the Council considering 475 Cambridge and 275 Cambridge to consider appealing those approvals. In regard to the project before you tonight, it's subject to an Environmental Impact Report, which might be done by the end of this year. That's the time where the Council normally makes decisions on whether to approve such things as the project and changes to the Zoning Code or the zoning of the site. Since you're both the applicant and the final approving authority, there may be a temptation to act like some private developers who do all the detailed drawings for the project before the Environmental Impact Report is done and then assume they have an entitlement to have the EIR approved because they've already spent the money on the detailed drawings. I would suggest that you don't do that, and that you wait to find out what is in the EIR because you might change your mind on the basis of new information and debate, which is the purpose of doing an EIR. Thank you. TRANSCRIPT    Page 39 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Rita Vrhel to be followed by Bob Smith. Rita Vrhel: I don't go to California Avenue because there's no parking. I park on the other side of California and walk under the underpass, and it's quite lovely. I really feel for people that live in this area because it has been designated a growth area. It just seems that there's more and more and more buildings. Having sat in City Council meetings for the last several years, what I see as a major problem is that buildings are being permitted under-parked. A prime example was the Olive Garden site, I think, last year, when everybody acknowledged that it was under-parked but somehow the traffic mitigation program was going to come to the rescue. To my knowledge, there's been no report to the public regarding the efficiency of these traffic mitigation programs or TDMs or whatever they're called, as to whether they even achieve the goals that have been set for them. I think we're here tonight to talk about a parking garage that the public will pay for because private developers were not asked or required to pay for their fair share of parking. I hope in the future that you will not under-park garages. As Greg Schmid used to say, it is all cumulative. Hopefully, you'll add some green space. I think a shuttle from Stanford Research Park starting at 11:00 in the morning and running through 2:00 p.m., as Stephanie Munoz suggested, to bring all the Stanford Research Park people down to California Avenue for lunch and shopping is a fantastic idea. Perhaps this is something that you could discuss with Stanford. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Bob Smith to be followed by Adina Levin. Bob Smith: Good evening. Bob Smith, I live on Greer. I've lived in the community for about 50 years with a little bit of a departure. For the last 12 years, I've worked at California Avenue as CTO of a company there. During that time, the change in the parking situation is remarkable and incredible and does not seem to be stopping. I'm, however, here to talk about a slightly peripheral matter, which I think is an important one, and that is what are the rules by which construction occurs and the footprint of that construction process that affects the community, especially the parking. The last 2 years, I watched carefully the Visa building on the corner of Ash and Sherman. It's a nice building, too big but that's typical. The question that Mr. Fine was asking earlier tonight, what happens to the people who come for the construction, I'll tell you what I think happened with the Visa building. Each and every construction worker drove his own pickup truck. They came in the early hours of the morning. Here's a photo. I took a number of photos. They came in the early hours of the morning and basically used the parking lot at the corner of Ash and Sherman. Large crowds of them out there, they owned the parking lot. They were nice people, and I don't dislike them at all. We can have better rules about that. TRANSCRIPT    Page 40 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  I see no reason why every single one of them should be driving their own pickup truck when we could have the contractor required to take people in on buses, which is what happens in large cities, where you simply couldn't have that many pickup trucks. This is an obvious thing to do. We're here now 6 months finished with that project, and we're about to start another one. The next one is going to take away that lot at the corner of Ash. It's time to rethink the footprint of construction. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Adina Levin to be followed by Omar Chatty. Adina Levin: Good evening, Adina Levin with Friends of Caltrain. Clearly everyone including residents, visitors, business people want Cal. Ave. to continue to be a lively area with services for residents and employees. The City Council has over time had a three-legged strategy for parking including adding new supply; managing the current supply including a Residential Parking Permit program so that neighborhood streets are not used as free parking lots for employees; and transportation demand management to reduce the demand for driving. What I hear is residents and businesses right now in Cal. Ave. calling for more parking because of a shortage of parking. However, what I see here in Cal. Ave. is one side of the stool being discussed without some of the other elements of the stool. The parking management that will be coming up next week—the TMA is not operating here. An employee parking permit costs $137.80 per month, and a Caltrain pass is that amount of money per year. A Caltrain pass is ten times the amount of an employee parking permit. The current policies are basically bribing people to drive and create traffic and use up that parking. If 10 percent of the people will reduce driving with the TMA, that would provide as much as the garage. Evan Goldin of Lyft talked at an event that we cosponsored on taming traffic. He estimated that if you spent about half of what this parking garage would cost and use it to subsidize Lyft rides—by the way Mountain View is doing a pilot program so that people who are in Mountain View can subsidize that trip with Lyft or Uber and not use their downtown parking—that would be the same and get people out of their cars. I would urge you to balance the stool, which is not balanced right now. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Omar Chatty to be followed by Phil Harsh. Omar Chatty: Hi. My name's Omar Chatty. I worked in Palo Alto between 1986 and 2012 for 17 years both Downtown at Hamilton and Alma and then also at Stanford Park, a real contrast in parking. I used to have to walk down to the little market on whatever it is, Bryant, to park my car and then come on up. I come to Palo Alto about 5 days a week for any number of reasons. I do have to come late sometimes to avoid the parking problem on TRANSCRIPT    Page 41 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  California Avenue. I love Izzy's bagels and coffee and cookies, but unfortunately it's been very difficult to find parking. You have lost business there. Especially close-in parking, which is important for some of us, especially if we have a garage that will suck up a lot of folks. It all comes down to balancing land use, as you know, with quality of life. The wrong focus for 30 years, since Ellen Fletcher was here, the bicycle lady. A good lady, but she hated automobiles. Same kind of stuff we just heard. You won't get people out of their cars. They're personal and ego mobility vehicles. Let's plan for it; let's build a proper garage. When you get the cost per stall, remember the value over the life of the garage that it will bring in. Future growth, a lot of people have mentioned it, so I won't beat it to death. With Palo Alto being selected as High Speed Rail and the KDM- endorsed Council candidates who are going to be pro High Speed Rail, I'm pretty sure, you're going to have more density. You need the garage. Remember, Molly Stone said that if California Avenue forced them to move, Pat Burt said gleefully that we'll just build a higher-density, mixed-used building in their place. That's what's coming. Don't become UCLA's Westwood if you've been down there lately. Please don't be fooled by demonstrated failed transit oriented development expectations that fail. Come on down to where I live and I'll show you some places that it doesn't work. Please avoid the eco-socialist dogma that has plagued so many developments. Build it, they will come. Don't build it, they'll still come. Please build it. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Phil Harsh to be followed by Robert Martinez. Phil Harsh: First of all, I'd like to thank the Council for having a policy, which I think I see clearly, of measuring twice and build once. The current state of California Avenue is best exemplified by the parking structures that are there now, that are one ground story and one elevated story. If there had been a little more foresight in the days those were built, we might not have to discuss this now. I'm a geologist, and I think the benefit to the City is to build as big as it can for a structure like this, and not necessarily push growth but account for growth if it's beneficial to the City. I'm not a growth expert; I couldn't give anybody advice on growth. I think the City should be prepared as well as it could be. If you look at the current developments in that area, most of the commercial developments are digging down two floors. I'd urge you to dig down two floors and go up as high as you can fiscally respond. I don't know what's the most efficient and what's the best bang for the buck, but I know if you dig down one story, you can't dig down after that a second time. I'd urge you to go underground two stories and go as high as you can. I have one other comment on this. Being next door to the projected emergency, fire and police station, if there were a very large earthquake in this area and there were a lot of damage, it might be not only TRANSCRIPT    Page 42 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  wise for the City but wise for the whole region to have additional parking next to that emergency building to accommodate some emergencies we might not see now. I thank you for considering as much possible space as you can build in that new parking structure. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Robert Martinez. Robert Martinez: Good evening. I'm Robert Martinez. I've been in business here for 25 years. I've heard everybody speak about the parking, the parking structure. I think the concept is worthwhile to consider. However, before we go any further, what I want to talk about, besides the structure, is would you consider spending the first million on a project meant to create really cool parking spaces. The other thing I haven't heard anybody talk about, except for Phil, is the existing structure we already have there in the district. We have one between California Avenue and Cambridge. No one has even talked about maybe refurbishing that site. The one next to the Post Office, refurbishing that site. You already have two spaces that have parking. Why don't we just redevelop those? Thirdly, I haven't heard anybody talk about checking with Caltrain and partnering with them and see if they would like to build a parking structure in their parking lot as opposed to taking the ones we already have. That's all I've got to say. Think about it. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Now, we're going to come back to Council. I saw a lot of pent-up demand—I hope I'm not missing it—for more questions and comments before we actually get to motions. I'm a little hesitant to let people talk forever because—I think comments are fine. It's only 9:30. I was thinking what we'd do is just do comments and questions. Hopefully each Council Member can talk for about 5 minutes maximum. Don't feel you have to talk more than that. The Vice Mayor will time that, so hopefully we can get through it. Then, we'll move to Motions and comments and whatever you want to do. I'm going to let Council Member Wolbach—put his light on—go first. Council Member Wolbach: You can actually set my timer for 3 minutes, and I'll try to keep it to that. Others can try if they want to keep up, but I'll leave that to the Mayor. Vice Mayor Kniss: (inaudible) Council Member Wolbach: Thank you, Vice Mayor Kniss. She'll keep me on track. Just a few questions coming out of the public discussion, the discussion that we had earlier that I'm thinking about. One is how to make the best use of the space. A lower tech, and thus lower maintenance cost or predictability possibility for that, is something we've done in some of our TRANSCRIPT    Page 43 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  Downtown garages, at least one, valet parking. With the design we're thinking about, would potentially valet parking, especially for employees, on say the top floor of this structure or down in the basement, whether it's the bottom floor if it's two story or the one floor if it's a one-story basement, be feasible for those people who don't need to get in and out, which would be frankly the customers, but rather for the employees? Mr. Eggleston: Yes, it would be feasible. Council Member Wolbach: I think I heard Staff say earlier that there would be the technology or at least the capability to institute paid parking systems if we chose to in the future with this garage. Was that correct? Mr. Eggleston: That's right. Mr. Wolbach: I think both of those features are important. There's definitely been, I think, an important discussion about who this garage is for. I don't think we need to decide for the lifetime of this garage tonight who the garage is going to be used for, who's going to use it, what the time limits are going to be, what the paid system would be, whether we'd have valet parking. We don't need to decide that tonight. Having the technology and the system that is flexible for the future is important. Instituting the RPP in those neighborhoods is important for the residents in those neighborhoods to feel that their street has not turned into a parking lot. I do think it is important for those employees who had been parking and have been parking on those streets to have somewhere else to go. This has been my philosophy about a lot of things in public policy, international, national, local, whatever. If you're going to kick somebody out of somewhere, maybe for a good reason, try and help them find somewhere else to go. For me, this garage is an important part of that. I also think the TMA is an important part of that too. I think it is important that we do explore how to expand our TMA and make it more effective in the Downtown and expand it to Cal. Ave., to have that third leg of the stool. I am interested in the question of how we mitigate the parking/traffic impact of the construction itself. That's it. Mayor Scharff: I'm actually going to jump in and give my comments, and then I'll continue going. I do want everyone to realize, first of all, that we have $1 million because of 1 percent for public art between the Public Safety Building and the parking garage to make it look good. I think that's an important aspect of all of this. For me, it really comes down to one thing. We need to make a decision and move forward because we need to get the Public Safety Building built, and we can't do the Public Safety Building until we do this. Brad told me—I'll just tell you all because it's something I don't TRANSCRIPT    Page 44 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  know if he told the rest of you. Our costs on the Public Safety Building and the garage are escalating at approximately $150,000 a month, if I recall. A 6-month delay is a lot of money. I just want everyone to know that delay is not our friend. We had some comments from the public about let's take some more time and think about this. I don't think that would be a good strategy. We need to make a decision. From my point of view, I would like us to have more consensus rather than less consensus. I really think there are two options that stand out here, "3A" and "3B." I didn't hear much appetite from the public for the retail, and I haven't heard many Council Members support doing the retail there. If that's not true and I'm missing that, it'd be nice to hear from you about the retail. Council Member Filseth and Council Member Wolbach had it right in that we have an opportunity to solve the parking problem here. Council Member Wolbach said 550 spots— some of the speakers did too—keeps us where we were and we're not adding anything more. I think the 636 or 634 number is the right number, and that's how I come to "3A" or "3B." The difference for me between "3A" and "3B" is simply will the aesthetics of having this parking garage be 10 feet lower roughly, being 30 feet versus 42 feet roughly, worth $4 million. That really, for me, is the issue on the table. I come out that I would be supportive of the larger garage. If enough of you feel that it's not, I'm willing to support the garage that's lower frankly. For me, I'm really interested in hearing how you feel about that. I will remind everyone that the way I got there was I said to myself, "The Public Safety Building is 50 feet. That's on one corner. Right across the street from it is the Courthouse at 65 feet. The Visa building at 45 feet, which is right on the other side of it." That's doesn't mean that reasonable people can disagree. I think that's perfectly fine. I would like people to address that in their comments, how they feel about that issue and what they think about it. For me, those are sort of where I come out on looking at this and what I want to hear about it. I also wanted to get a little bit from Staff on the public art aspects of how we can make this building less like a cinder block building, frankly, and what they thought about that. Mr. Keene: Real quickly, Mr. Mayor, I don't know that we can speak to that right now. Clearly, there are a lot of great examples of garages around the country that, through public art and the quality of the design, can actually be the opposite of brutalist, massive garages. I would throw out that there are many factors to design and design quality. Height is one factor. I would just say even with the money we have for public art and the differential between "3A" and "3B," there is more flexibility for funding to be put into the quality of materials and the skin and all of those things for a slight difference in the height. We should think about more factors in the design quality than just a height limit under "3B" that would be underneath the 50-foot height TRANSCRIPT    Page 45 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  limit, which we say is what we're focused on. I think we will want to make this a quality building. That'll be an important factor in the design. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Kou. Mr. Keene: Let me just say one last thing on that. I don't think we can neglect the fact that this building is ancillary to the Public Safety Building that, as was pointed out earlier, is 50 feet. How we integrate the design of this garage with the design of the Public Safety Building will be an important factor for each of those buildings. Thanks. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Kou. Council Member Kou: I just want to ask is it true that there was only three infrastructure projects that was identified or did I misunderstand somewhere somehow. Mr. Eggleston: That's not true. The Council in June of 2014 adopted the full funding plan for the list of nine projects that a Council Committee that was formed at the time had analyzed for about a year before making that recommendation to the Council. Mr. Keene: If I can add to that. There was more than one funding stream in the total package. There clearly was the incremental difference of the increase in the TOT. There was other funding from the existing TOT, and there were other funding sources. It was always very clear that the incremental increase in the TOT and the yield it would have would be applicable to those three projects. The fact is there was other funding in other projects. Council Member Kou: Thank you. I just want to say to the community thank you for, one, coming here tonight. I know that you had a long day at work. I'm glad that you are here. I also want to say that I am sorry to hear you're finding it difficult to operate your business, etc. I want to emphasize it's not the RPP program that is causing this parking issue. It has a lot to do with we as previous Councils have approved office and R&D buildings around you that are not fully parked as one of the public speakers spoke. That is impeding on the parking issue. The thing is you are very important to the community. You're community-serving. I find that every one of you—I love Izzy's, I love PIP Printing. I have colleagues that go there all the time. It's not RPP. Let's make sure we're putting everything in perspective. We don't want the neighborhoods to be parking lots. It is really a need for parking for employees that work for retail businesses and work for restaurants and also for the medical offices and dental offices and all the other community- serving businesses. Please, let's put things in perspective and look at TRANSCRIPT    Page 46 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  exactly where the problem is. One more thing I wanted to say. The dumpsters and grease traps, who does that belong to? Mr. Eggleston: The dumpsters themselves would belong to the City's trash and recycling hauler, but it's the responsibility of the businesses to provide a space for them and to maintain it. Council Member Kou: We don't necessarily have to put a cabinet in our parking garage to accommodate all these dumpsters and so forth, right? Mr. Eggleston: Not necessarily. Council Member Kou: I hope not. At least there should be a cost that comes out from these businesses that will help support that. Also, we will get the chance to—this is just approving what you recommended about the size of the garage. We do get a chance to come back and determine permit fees and who parks, who has priority, TMA, TDM, etc.? Mr. Keene: That's correct. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: A few questions, one comment to start all this out. Really appreciate all the retailers' participation and certainly your locating and staying in Palo Alto. I don't remember how many years PIP Printing has been in business here, but I think you're one of the last two printers in Palo Alto. Jessica's gone now, but The Cobblery is generations in this town. Many of the rest of you have been here for a long time. Certainly thank you and gratitude for being here and providing—you are here— services and goods to us. It's very much appreciated. Please stay. I didn't quite hear the response to Council Member DuBois' question about why there are 12 parking spots from the Public Safety Building that went over to the parking garage. Mr. Eggleston: It's a little complicated. When we were first doing the feasibility study, we were considering a plan to include a tunnel from the below-grade, bottom level of the Public Safety Building parking, that would cross under Birch Street and go to the bottom level of the new parking structure. As we began the design, we realized and thought that was going to be too expensive and probably not feasible to do. There are requirements for Public Safety Buildings like this to have alternate egress and ingress besides the primary one, so we had to relocate that. That was really a key reason. As I had mentioned earlier, when we started looking at some of the other needs for parking different police vehicles, they would not fit in the basement levels. Those are the primary reasons. TRANSCRIPT    Page 47 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  Council Member Holman: Wishing otherwise, of course. The EIR question that was brought up is a good one. We're looking at what happens. We say conceptually this is good. How do we get an adequate and accurate EIR analysis of these projects? Mr. Eggleston: Some of that work has begun already in terms of the traffic impact study. It's been done looking at kind of a higher limit of what we thought the size of the garage could be. We're starting the EIR. Essentially design of these facilities hasn't really begun yet. What we've done is preliminary design work that's really looking at layouts and massing and how things can fit. Council Member Holman: If the EIR work has begun but tonight we have options in front of us that provide a good number of more parking spaces— understand the impetus to do that, but it's nothing that's been vetted by virtually anyone. If the EIR work has already started, obviously this hasn't been included, different heights, different number of parking places generating more traffic. I am somewhat concerned about the sequencing. Mr. Eggleston: That has more to do with the actual traffic analysis that's based on whatever is chosen for the parking program for the garage. The work that's already been done is going out and actually collecting all the traffic count information that goes into doing that modeling. With that, the traffic impact analysis will be able to be completed. Council Member Holman: The image on Packet Page 81, the page number is cut off. It's two pages in front of Packet Page 83. It shows a very skeletal parking garage as the image in the slide presentation and other places in the Staff Report as well. It's a very skeletal, very obvious parking garage. I know other things can be done with design to make parking garages look other than parking garages, but that's not what's in front of us. I don't have any notion or any information that tells me what doing a different kind of design would impact the design and construction costs. Mr. Eggleston: This is not mean to be a design. It's really just meant to show massing. The cost estimates that we're presenting here are assuming that these garages would have nice skins and architectural elements and treatments that would be part of the design of a very aesthetically pleasing garage. Mr. Keene: I'm glad you brought that up. When the Staff proposed this, I said, "Why are we going to show this picture? This is not what it's going to look like at all." It was exactly for the reason for them to show the context and the scale of the building itself. Clearly, this is not final design. TRANSCRIPT    Page 48 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  Council Member Holman: I have a couple more questions if that's okay? Mayor Scharff: Sure (inaudible). Council Member Holman: I'll put my questions out there. This is an important reason why I made kind of a stink about it to begin with. Nothing in the materials that we have demonstrate what these other options are, including Option 3B, which seems to be one of the Mayor's options. It's 11 feet taller. There's nothing that tells us what the advantage is or the economics are of adding the solar on top, which also adds height. I went back and looked up the motion from December 14, 2015 about the retail. The motion included Option C, which is a standalone public parking structure over two floors of underground parking and ground-floor commercial spaces. Later when it talks about cost, it talks about 47,000 square feet of retail. It says nothing about a detached building. That was only with the cost analysis. I'm just looking at the Minutes from then, having to do with the motion. I still am interested in, as I was then, very small retail on the perimeter edge that isn't 47,000 square feet and doesn't demand a lot of parking and could by its own design and implementation create a good, soft edge for the side of that parking structure. I don't know if you have responses to any of that. The California Avenue TMA, we haven't talked about that yet. Otherwise, these are just numbers. Mr. Keene: Not sure what you mean by just numbers. The numbers are important. It's not only numbers. Obviously we understand that. I would just say sorry that there's been any confusion. I think the Staff has been clear that the way the design and the costs and the parking space computations were done with retail were based on this idea of a separate, free-standing, and not 47,000 square feet but 4,700 square feet, just so we're clear. Council Member Holman: I meant 4,700. I'm sorry; I apologize for that. Mr. Keene: The implications that incorporation of a design of the retail into the building would affect the number of parking spaces and some aspects of the design for the building itself, which we would have to factor in. Secondly, I would ask us to think—my own bias would be really for retail. On the other hand, that garage wall and everything on the street would be the far end of the retail sector of Cal. Avenue. It would be directly across from the Public Safety Building and the plaza. You could make the case that integration of the garage with a public plaza for the Public Safety Building and the building itself is actually a situation where retail isn't critical in the same way from a design point of view. I would ask us to think about that, TRANSCRIPT    Page 49 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  what the impact of it would be on the parking and the design itself to try to incorporate it into the ground floor of the building. Council Member Holman: When I say these are just numbers, I mean they're important, they're critical, but they don't give an impression of how is this realized. I think being across from the plaza is a great case for very small retail spaces. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Fine. Council Member Fine: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just a few comments and then two questions. At a high level, this is a huge amount of money we're looking at spending for a 20th Century problem, which persists today. If we're going to spend $25 or $30 million on this 20th Century problem, then when it comes time I really hope my colleagues will help support the TMA and potentially looking at charging for parking. Those are the three legs of our parking stool, new supply, better management of existing spaces, and supporting the TMA, so we reduce parking demand. We're talking about putting $25 or $30 million down in a garage. We're spending nearly $1 million on RPP. I think those should be comps for us as we look at the TMA when it comes to us. That said, we're going to build a garage Downtown on Cal. Ave. I don't have a strong position here but, just so you all know, my guiding parameters are good urban design, particularly along Birch. I think that's an emerging corridor for the City particularly with the Courthouse, the Public Safety Building, and some activity towards Park Boulevard. Of course, the cost per parking stall is a guiding principle. Most importantly, as the Mayor put it, how much do we value 11 feet for a new floor versus $4 million to put it beneath? That's the question I think we have tonight. Two quick questions for Staff. Is circulation better if the ground floor is—is circulation better in Option 3A than Option 3B? I'm just wondering because you have two floors below you and four above versus one below and five above. I'm just wondering in terms of the technical circulation for a parking garage there. Ms. Wendler: Hi. Michelle Wendler. It is easier when you circulate starting at a middle level and you have some more spaces down and up. Now, you're distributing the traffic over more area. In this case, it's not as much as it could be because it's not that large. Generally, it's better to (crosstalk). Council Member Fine: There's some gain. Thank you. The second question is around the retail space issue. Did we ever do any early cost calculations on what the City could net from the retail space? TRANSCRIPT    Page 50 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  Mr. Eggleston: I wouldn't call them cost studies. We took some estimates from our real estate manager of what we might get in rent if it was rented at market rates. We got numbers for net operating income that range from maybe $150,000 to $200,000 per year. Council Member Fine: Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Tanaka. Council Member Tanaka: First, I want to thank all the retailers for coming out. You guys provide a valuable service to the community. We definitely hear the need for more parking. I definitely support the concept that the Mayor put out there, which is we need to maximize the parking in this area. I think the question is how to do that. It's quite expensive, the basement option. One thing about Palo Alto's land value is it's very, very expensive here. Each square foot matters. One thing we could consider is do two levels below and then five levels above, and then you have a lot of parking. That's one option. The other thing is—if we have this much parking here, one thought is to focus this on employee parking, not just for retail but maybe certain floors are meant for retail, shorter term, and other ones are structured so that it's mainly for employee parking. In regards to the question about retail, one thought I had—it's definitely nice to have. It's probably more important to have parking here. One thought I had, just looking at the diagram of where the Public Safety Building will be and the parking lot, is I've seen some other cities actually put parking over the street, so bridging the parking garage to the Public Safety Building and using that as extra parking as well. We kind of get additional parking that way as well. Last thought I had is just what I mentioned earlier. I think some of the other speakers mentioned this as well. What is our vision in terms of we have some of the highest land values in the world, and can we not use technology to optimize this more? I looked at Option 3D. Option 3D is the five floors with—I forgot how much. It's the 57-foot one with 636 spaces. I just did a simple calculation of the volume of that divided by the amount of volume of 636 cars just as an example. I came out with about 11 percent of the volume of Option 3D is just for the cars. That means almost 90 percent of it is something else, concrete, stairwells, ramps, driving cars around. Technology gives us the potential to actually take this from 11 percent to something higher, maybe 20 percent or something much more. The reason why automated parking is something for us to think about is, as Council Member Fine said, this is a 20th Century problem. Maybe in the future with autonomous cars, with Uber and Lyft, with TMA, this becomes less of an issue. It is sufficient to use the parking on the ramp. In the future, if we don't need as much parking for instance, does it still make sense? Is it easier to redeploy that space? It's harder when you have the ramps. I do TRANSCRIPT    Page 51 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  like the idea that some of the stuff can be disassembled and reused for other things. The last thing I want to mention is I've been watching and looking at some of the automated parking solutions out there. I've seen, for instance, one parking solution, which says that—it had a little YouTube video which showed them building a structure for 12 cars. The 12 cars was 37 feet and no basement parking on two parking spots. For two parking spaces, you get 12 cars, 12 spaces, and it was built in 5 days. This doesn't have to be a 5- year endeavor or a 2-year endeavor. This could be something much, much shorter. We have to think a little bit outside the traditional box that we've been thinking in. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Filseth. Council Member Filseth: I also thought the Mayor framed the question in front of us the right way. We are talking about the right number of parking spaces here. The question is what's the tradeoff versus two levels underground and four on top or one level underground and five on top and so forth. One thing that struck me is we've been looking at the aerial view of all this stuff. Most people aren't going to see it from the air. Most people are going to see it from the street on California Avenue, which is in here. I'd encourage people to look at it on Google maps street view, which we're doing up here too. The thing is once you get over—as we've got here, you can't see it from here. You can look in the packet. As you've got here, that's the 35, 36 feet. Once you get over that, you start to see it quite a bit from California Avenue. It looms over San Antonio's Nut House and Starbucks there. That's where most people are going to see it from. The point about the Visa building is 45 feet is true, but you can't see the Visa building from California Avenue. You may be able to see it from the Courthouse. I'm not worried so much what it's going to look like from the Courthouse. Part of the identity for California Avenue is it is kind of low. I don't think it should look like San Antonio, particularly when you look at the design without the retail. What you've got here on Birch Street is a wall. The question is high of a wall are we talking about. Is it going to be 35 feet, which is like the one across the street, or is it going to be X percent more than that? I think we ought to stretch and dig deeper, spending the extra $4 million to keep it lower and doesn't loom over the Nut House. In the long run, I think we'll find that's money that we spent well. Five or 10 years from now, we won't remember that we spent 10 percent more, but we will have California Avenue to what it looks like there. I think that's the case for "3A." I did want to shift gears slightly and say something about—a couple of the speakers brought up the issue of building for now and the future. We've got some other stuff we've got to deal with. We keep putting up these buildings, as a couple of the speakers said. Our Codes say that a building like 385 Sherman is fully parked. Everybody knows it's not fully parked. If TRANSCRIPT    Page 52 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  we review these buildings, mixed-use buildings, office buildings, look at them all and say, "We don't need very much parking here because people aren't going to drive cars," and then a couple of months later when we review garages, we say, "We need lots and lots of space because everybody drives," we can't have it both ways. We won't get out from under this problem if we continue to go business as usual on all fronts as we have done. As a couple of people mentioned, the car-lite model—this location is next to the train station. If we can't make the car-lite model work here, then we ought to quit talking about it for everywhere. We have a chance to solve the parking problem on Cal. Ave., and I think we should do it and it's good. If we don't think longer term about some other parts of things like our Codes and how we assess parking demand for other things, then you give it a while and we'll be back here. We have to do that too. I think we ought to dig deeper, both in the pun intended and not intended sense, and do the "3." I think we'll be happier in the long run with that. Mayor Scharff: Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: When I look at this, I think the problem we're trying to solve tonight is how do we do this quickly and cheaply. We need to help the Cal. Ave. merchants. A lot of them have gone home already. I was the rep on the Cal. Ave. Business Association 2 years ago when we first started talking about RPP and tying that to the garage. Both the merchants and the residents want more parking, and they want to support each other. We do have some offices there that have no allocated parking. That's what's really stressing this part of the City. In terms of process, I did see these new options late this afternoon. I did want to echo Council Member Holman's concern that it wasn't noticed. It wasn't in our packet 10 days ago. I do think we'd probably have more members of the public here if they saw a 54-foot option to the railing, probably 70 feet when you get to the elevator shaft and the photo cells. If we're really going to consider some of these new options, I would suggest that we continue this to next week, discuss both garages, give the public time to weigh in on these options that were sprung at the last second. I want to talk about funding and cost. I'd like to see some progress on the business tax. The Council authorized the citizens advisory group to explore funding options. Council Member Fine talked about the TMA. We need to fund a California TMA. Part of the reason we formed that group was to have additional funding options for parking, traffic management. I do hope we start to make progress on that front. I did like the Downtown parking study, which came in our packets this week for next week's meeting. We need the same kind of pricing rationalization for Cal. Ave., what people are paying for RPP versus permits in garages and also sure we get the retail pricing right so that people in offices don't just pay the hourly rate all day and park there all day. We need to make sure TRANSCRIPT    Page 53 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  that people can come and go to lunch. On the complexity scale, a garage seems much easier than a Public Safety Building or a library. I'd be interested in us getting much more specific on some of these just percentage plug-ins, the contingency fee and the escalation fee. It seems to me we would be much more precise with a garage. If we had a 5 percent contingency fee or 6 percent, these numbers shift around. It's going to be significant. I'd also like to see how we negotiate with contractors. I'm less interested in innovating in the design on this garage. I'd rather do it quickly and cheaply, use that $1 million for art and putting some greenery to make it look better. I'm a little concerned that, if we try to make each of the nine projects really cool, we're going to go way over our budget. I'd rather save it on the garage. I'll throw it out there. I think we should consider a "not to exceed" cost and to really start to try to value-engineer some of these projects. I'd also be really interested in hearing ways we could fast-track development and make sure it minimizes construction time. For me, I like Option 3A. I think it maximizes the parking. I could see selling employee permits in the two floors underground and removing a lot of cars from residential streets. Again, it seems to fit quite well. I am concerned about the context of larger buildings looming over Cal. Ave. I think that is the important vantage point. We've talked in the past at Council about not wanting Cal. Ave. to become a 50-foot canyon. To me, it's worth the $4 million to go underground. I would say it's not $4 million for 11 feet; it's $4 million for an acre of parking. It's a lot of parking that nobody's going to see. It's a really wise investment. The other thing I would say is the context on Ash is also 35 feet. There are residential buildings. The Public Safety Building is going to have some nice setbacks, so even though it's taller it's not going to feel as looming on the sidewalk. One thing nobody's really talked about is the zoning question tonight. I'm really unsure of the impacts of changing all PF zones, changes to the FAR. I would actually want to understand if we considered just using variances for these specific projects and not changing the PF Zone Citywide. Finally, one last, quick comment. Council Member Holman was talking on being able to visualize this better and maybe having some more drawings. I'd like to see this come back to Council for a check-in before December. I'd really like to see more detail and some renderings from different vantage points. I think that's a long time, and you're going to be really far down the road. I'd ask maybe that you could come back sooner. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach actually had 2 more minutes, and then we're going to go to Motions. I actually am not going to give him 2 minutes; he gets 1 minute of his 2 minutes. Council Member Wolbach: I probably don't need even a minute. Because the Mayor had asked us to weigh in with our thoughts about these TRANSCRIPT    Page 54 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  alternatives after I'd spoken earlier, I just thought I'd add my two cents. If we're looking at these alternatives, the discussion that Mayor Scharff and Council Member Filseth—I tend to agree with them. I think the choice is between "3A" and "3B" as the best options. I don't know if the Staff has a quick number on something Council Member Tanaka mentioned, which was five floors aboveground and two floors of basement. I don't know if that was run. If it's not available … Mr. Eggleston: I think approximately it would add about $4 million in cost. Council Member Wolbach: If we did want to spend the extra $4 million on top of "3B," we could spend the $4 million and get that extra acre of parking by going down a second level, have the five floors above plus the two floors below. How many spots is it per floor of basement? We've got 117, so we're looking at … Mr. Keene: It's more like $8 million, not $4 million. Council Member Wolbach: Never mind. My inclination is to go with "3B" then. Part of it—I'll be honest—is I am a little bit concerned about any risk that we take associated with going too deep in that area because of some of the groundwater plumes. It's possible that my concerns there could be alleviated, but my inclination is to go with "3B." I'm open to the arguments around "3A" as well. Mayor Scharff: Now we come back to Council for questions, comments, and Motions. Council Member Filseth. Council Member Filseth: With that, I'd like to move the Staff recommendation with Option 3A. Mayor Scharff: Second. MOTION: Council Member Filseth moved, seconded by Mayor Scharff to: A. Direct Staff to proceed with full preliminary design on a new 636-space parking garage concept with four levels of above-ground parking, two levels of basement parking and no retail space, (i.e. California Avenue Parking Garage Option 3A), and to design enhancements to the Birch Street frontage that will create an appealing interface between the garage and the pedestrian sidewalk, with the Council discussion serving the purpose of a prescreening preliminary review; and B. Direct Staff to prepare revisions to the Public Facility (PF) zoning Ordinance to specifically accommodate public parking garages. TRANSCRIPT    Page 55 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  Council Member Filseth: I think I've already spoken to it. This whole thing fits into the necessary evil category. We're going to build a big, block-long thing, but I think this is the best tradeoff. Thanks. Mayor Scharff: I'm going to support this even though I personally think "3B" is a better choice. The extra $4 million we save is probably worth it, but I'm not sure. When you're not sure, I'm going to take the more conservative approach on this by saying let's go with the lower height. I think we'll get more consensus on Council on this and more support overall, at least I hope we will. You never know on this Council. I think we're doing a lot of great things here. We get 636 parking spots, so that goes ahead and addresses the concerns of the merchants and, frankly, concerns of other people that have raised this. We're getting a large parking garage. I think we're doing good things. Hopefully you'll all support this. Lights have lit up now. Vice Mayor Kniss. Vice Mayor Kniss: It's been interesting to hear all this, but I find myself in a slightly different place. I'm going to try a Substitute Motion. If there is a second, I will speak to it. My Substitute Motion looks very much like what's up on the board except that it would be to proceed with "3B," which you have in front of me, which is 43 feet tall, only goes one level below and five levels above. Council Member Wolbach: Second. SUBSTITUTE MOTION: Vice Mayor Kniss moved, seconded by Council Member Wolbach to: A. Direct Staff to proceed with full preliminary design on a new 632-space parking garage concept with five levels of above-ground parking, one level of basement parking and no retail space, (i.e. California Avenue Parking Garage Option 3B), and to design enhancements to the Birch Street frontage that will create an appealing interface between the garage and the pedestrian sidewalk, with the Council discussion serving the purpose of a prescreening preliminary review; and B. Direct Staff to prepare revisions to the Public Facility (PF) zoning Ordinance to specifically accommodate public parking garages. Vice Mayor Kniss: Having a second on that, may I proceed with speaking to it? Mayor Scharff: You absolutely may. TRANSCRIPT    Page 56 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  Vice Mayor Kniss: I'm very sympathetic with Council Member Filseth's Motion. Certainly that would have been one that I would have considered pretty carefully. Again, because we've heard people talking tonight—Bob Moss may have gone home. One of the things that I'm really concerned about in that area is the aquifer. If we go down more than one level, I'm not sure what we may run into or not run into. I think water may be a problem as well. We've discussed this extensively recently about basement dewatering and so forth. That looks like a pretty safe area, but I am concerned about the aquifer. Neilson Buchanan was here earlier; he talked a lot about the TMA. I hope that we can also without mentioning it here tonight talk about the TMA and make sure that's part of this as well. Going down to the funding for a minute. I was here when we decided to have a TOT. My recollection is number one on that TOT was parking garages and number two was Public Safety Building. It might have been in reverse. The other items came along later. The reason that I remember that—Former Mayor Judy Kleinberg spoke tonight. I remember at the time we asked to have business support in this community for that TOT in exchange for parking garages and for a new Public Safety Building. We were getting pretty desperate at that time. I think that was—Jim, was that maybe 2013? Mr. Keene: I'm trying to remember. Was it 2013 or was it 2014? 2014. Vice Mayor Kniss: I think we discussed it in '13, and then voted in 2014. Correct? Mr. Keene: Yeah, 2014. Vice Mayor Kniss: Something else that persuaded me tonight is there is a long petition from those who are in the California Avenue area. What they are saying is they are just desperate for more parking. Even though some of you are willing to go and spend more money, I think in this case I'd save it for—we've got another garage to do and another Public Safety Building to do. As I also listened to both Council Members Tanaka and Fine's comments, I too don't like this being a 20th Century solution in the 21st Century, but we didn't move in that direction. I'm concerned that we do have to deliver parking at some point. I would remind us this is the summer of '19 when this is going to be done. Tell me when did we last dedicate a parking garage, what year would that have been? Were any of you here? Mr. Eggleston: Matt was here in Public Works Engineering. He says it was 2003. Vice Mayor Kniss: I guess it's time, isn't it? It must be time to do some kind of parking garage. Having said that much, I would say that if "3A" does go through, it's not a disaster. I do think from several standpoints, TRANSCRIPT    Page 57 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  especially from the standpoint of going down a second story, running into the aquifer, having to do some draining there, that's a major issue. With that, Council Member Wolbach. Mr. Keene: Mr. Mayor, could I just make two comments in support of Staff? Happy to see us looking like we're going to move toward some decision here tonight, which is really important. I did want to clarify two things. One is on the sheet we passed out tonight, that you're looking at. If you were to look at Option 3A and cross-reference that with the Option 3A we had in the Staff Report, this thing says it's 32 feet 10 inches tall. In the Staff Report, it's actually 36 feet—excuse me, 36 feet 10 inches tall. It's actually 36 feet 4 inches tall because that includes accounting for the railing above the edge of the top of the floor itself. Under Option 3B, it says 43-6. Again with the railing around the top, the actual apples-to-apples measurement would be 47 feet. Second point. When we talked about the funding gap in the Infrastructure Plan of $10-$15 million, that was predicated on this Option 3 that's on the far left of a $26 million project. We're counting it as $26 million and saying we have a $10-$15 million gap. If you look at "3B" costs $30 million, we're adding $4 million to the gap, and "3A" we're adding $8 million to the gap. Those are planning numbers that are there, but these are the implications of the cost side of this also. I did want to share both that height information and that financial information. Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you very much, City Manager. I would also indicate that the one we're talking about right now, that I've just made the motion on, Option 3B, is sort of the middle of the road as far as cost. It's not as expensive per stall as "3A," and it's not as cheap as Option 3C. It's a good compromise solution in the middle, even though I'm hearing that these buildings may loom. This is in an area where many buildings are above 40 feet. Council Member Wolbach. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: Thank you. Like Vice Mayor Kniss, at least it seems the direction she's going and the direction I'm going—I'll be honest. If the Substitute Motion is not successful, I'll support the main Motion, but I hope we'll be able to convince some of our Colleagues to support the Substitute Motion. As I mentioned and the Vice Mayor mentioned and Rita Vrhel from the public mentioned, there are some concerns about what's underground. Some of us have been working with some advocates in the community to put together a Colleagues' Memo and working with Staff on that as well. It's a complex issue, but the question of how we improve our safety and our policies around the concerns around groundwater contamination from some of the industrial work that's been in Palo Alto over TRANSCRIPT    Page 58 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  the years. That is one of my concerns, that makes me lean towards having only one basement. The cost is the other really big issue for me. I do think with $4 million—if we thought about where are we going to get that $4 million or what else could we do with it, if we thought about it in terms of cutting it from somewhere else to help fund it, do we cut it from parks, do we cut it from the police, do we cut if from fire, do we cut it from salaries across the board, I don't think any of us is eager to do that. It's always a question in budgeting of figuring out where you want to prioritize and where you want to spend your money and where it's worth doing. If we think about it in terms of opportunity cost about further funding in related areas, $4 million combined with—I appreciate Council Member DuBois mentioning the idea of additional funding sources such as not exclusively but—I know a lot of us are leaning toward some sort of employee tax or business tax. In addition to that, $4 million from the City's part to help fund the TMA would be a real shot in the arm, a real boost. I do think the finances are really critical. If "3B" is not supported by the majority of the Council, I'll support "3A." I hope this isn't a divisive discussion. I do think it's an important discussion. We talk about being thoughtful about the budgeting, being thoughtful about our finances. There have been a couple of other times where we've opted for the more expensive option or passed up funding opportunities related to things that were happening in town. I hope this is one opportunity where we don't throw away $4 million putting it in a hole in the ground. Speaking of the hole in the ground, how deep is—Council Member Filseth offered a pun earlier, so I figured I'd try to keep up. How deep would two stories below go? How deep underground would that be? Ms. Wendler: Each level below ground is about 10 1/2 feet plus the foundation, so 21 feet plus about a 4-foot foundation, so about 25 feet below the ground. Council Member Wolbach: That's getting down there. Again, I do know—it was mentioned earlier—that some of the other projects in the area have gone down that deep. I'm not sure how comfortable I am with the City taking that on. I'd urge my Colleagues to support this alternative. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Tanaka. Council Member Tanaka: I'd like to offer a friendly Amendment to the Substitute Motion which is to ask Staff to explore automated parking solutions. Not to do it, but just to explore it. Vice Mayor Kniss: Sure. That's fine. Council Member Wolbach: I'm actually not going to support that on this. I do think there might be other alternatives or opportunities in the future for TRANSCRIPT    Page 59 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  some of the other parking areas in Cal. Ave. or Downtown to explore that. I don't think this project with the concerns about timing is the right place. I won't accept it as friendly. Vice Mayor Kniss: (crosstalk) this project per se? I'm sorry. I misunderstood. I don't think we can move this project. Good idea. AMENDMENT TO THE SUBSTITUTE MOTION: Council Member Tanaka moved, seconded by Council Member XX to add to the Motion, “direct Staff to explore automated parking options.” AMENDMENT TO THE SUBSTITUTE MOTION FAILED DUE TO THE LACK OF A SECOND Mayor Scharff: Council Member Tanaka, that's all you wanted? Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: There's a procedural rule that I always forget. I actually have another motion, but I don't think you can make a Substitute Motion after there's a Substitute Motion already on the floor. Mayor Scharff: I believe that to be true. Council Member Holman: After we vote on this, if it should happen not to pass, I do have a Substitute Motion. Mayor Scharff: Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: I'd like to get to the actual total heights of these buildings. What would be the height of "3B" if we put solar on top? Mr. Eggleston: With solar on top, it would be about 53 1/2 feet to the top of the solar canopy. Council Member DuBois: How high is the elevator shaft? Mr. Eggleston: We don't have elevator shafts designed at this point. Council Member DuBois: It just comes up, and there's no elevator to the top floor? Mr. Eggleston: Likely about 8 feet, the elevator shaft, which would then put that at 51 1/2. I shouldn't give the half actually, because I don't want to be that precise. TRANSCRIPT    Page 60 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  Council Member DuBois: Do you know if the Visa building had one or two stories of underground parking? Mr. Eggleston: Two stories. Council Member DuBois: I assume it's a commercial project, so we'd likely use secant walls. They minimize pumping on these commercial projects. Mr. Eggleston: I understand for their project they actually did not encounter groundwater except for drilling for footings and an elevator shaft. Council Member DuBois: That was my next question, the elevation and a groundwater issue. Mr. Eggleston: I would say that we're doing a geotech study right now. We've actually taken borings at these sites in the last month. We encountered groundwater at 19-20 feet below grade. Council Member DuBois: I'm not going to be supporting the Substitute Motion. I do think this is too massive. Again, I'm really concerned that it wasn't noticed to the public. I actually have a question for the City Attorney. Can we consider this building if it wasn't in the Staff Report? It came to us very late this afternoon. Mr. Keene: Go ahead. I hope you rule right because the Council makes Amendments all the time to Motions that don't include parameters that were in the Staff Report. Terence Howzell, Assistant City Attorney: The short answer is yes. You may proceed. This is not a new matter. This is truly a filling out of options that were already presented. I think we are fine here with proceeding. Council Member DuBois: I think there was some specific options, and none of them went to 53 feet. I'm personally not prepared to vote on an option that goes that high tonight. I just don't think it's a clear, open process with the public. If we wanted to do this, I think we should come back and discuss it at a later meeting. That's why I'm not going to support the Motion. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Fine. Council Member Fine: Thank you. I'm also not going to support the Substitute Motion. I would be willing to support the main Motion on the floor, the original Motion; although, I am worried about the cost escalations here. I'm mainly persuaded by Council Member Filseth's point that 10 percent of the cost will look small to us in hindsight when we all go walking TRANSCRIPT    Page 61 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  through the Cal. Ave. district and know there's two floors beneath rather than one on top. I'll be supporting the original Motion. Mayor Scharff: Let's vote on the board. That fails on a 6-3 Motion with Council Members Wolbach, Kniss and Tanaka voting yes. SUBSTITUTE MOTION FAILED: 3-6 Kniss, Tanaka, Wolbach yes Mayor Scharff: Now, we're back to the main Motion. Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: I do have a Substitute Motion. I drafted it earlier, and there's some changes to it. I'll make changes to it after it's up on the board. I really feel like this evening we're making decisions with not enough information. I know we can ask for information and keep going ad nauseam. That's not my intention here. There's some critical things we don't know. There's been a lot of conversation about the groundwater and is there contaminated groundwater or not. We don't know. The Staff says they've done their preliminary geotech or that's ongoing right now. If we had an answer to that, we'd be more comfortable with going two levels below. I support the notion of going two levels below. Council Member Filseth was correct in saying in hindsight the $4 million will not seem like much. It's also long-term thinking and long-term planning that keeps the height of the garage down. It's something we can look back on in the future and say that was the right thing to do. Other things that cause me to make this substitute is because … Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman, you didn't get a second. Council Member Holman: I'm speaking, and then I'll actually propose it. I just wanted … Mayor Scharff: I'm seeing the Motion up there. Council Member Holman: I just wanted him to get it up there. Mayor Scharff: Next time, I think we need to speak and then make a Motion. We don't put the Motion up. Council Member Holman: I have to edit it. Mayor Scharff: I'll let you go this time. I think next time … Council Member Holman: Council Member DuBois mentioned earlier about not making wholesale changes to the PF Zoning for parking garages. I think there's wisdom in that. I would rather see a variance approach, so we know TRANSCRIPT    Page 62 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  what it is we are looking at. The Staff proposal, which hasn't been specifically addressed here—by implication, it seems we might be approving it—is to consider tonight's meeting as the prescreening as the project. It really is barely massing models, which is not what we look at for prescreening for anything else. I think we go overboard in some of our other reviews in looking at too fully developed plans. This is barely massing models. I don't think this should be considered as our prescreening. The other thing I mentioned earlier is the other options. If the main Motion passes, five would be moot. It is concerning that we have options in front of us that have significant implications and have not been vetted by the public and (inaudible) the City's website as typically we would in terms of response to Council Member questions. From my perspective, the small retail at the perimeter, the edge of the parking structure, is really what the Council was talking about when we talked about this in December of 2015. There wasn't anything that I read in the motion or in the Staff Report having to do with a detached, separate retail building. That really sets off and puts off the notion of even minimal retail on the edge of this. My Motion is to continue this item to next week when the Council looks also at the TMA and Downtown parking garage. Staff return with answers to the following questions, which will be applicable to both garages: the options of perimeter or edge, small retail spaces—that means small retail spaces—or personal services along the street frontages; variance requests sought and prescribed for PF Zoning for proposed garages; quantified benefit of rooftop solar installation; cost comparison to recent or currently proposed parking garages in other communities—with five, I'll take off "3C" and "D" because it seems like those aren't being considered—and return to Council at an early stage of design completion for preliminary review or prescreening. That is my Substitute Motion. Council Member Kou: I'll second it. SUBSTITUTE MOTION: Council Member Holman moved, seconded by Council Member Kou to: A. Continue this item to April 11, 2017 when the City Council looks at the Transportation Management Association (TMA) and downtown parking garage; and B. Direct Staff to return with answers to the following questions (which will be applicable to both garages): i. Option of perimeter/edge small space retail or personal service along the street frontage/s; and TRANSCRIPT    Page 63 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  ii. Variance requests sought and described for Public Facility (PF) zoning for proposed garages; and iii. Quantified benefit of rooftop solar installation; and iv. Cost comparison to recent or currently proposed parking garages in other communities; and v. Images to reflect Option 3B as are provided for other options; and vi. Return to Council at an early stage of design completion for preliminary review/pre-screening; and vii. Status of ground water analysis. Council Member Holman: I think I've spoken to it. I think we're just jumping the gun a little bit on this. If we had this more in context and had just a couple of answers—I don't know if Staff can come back with response to the groundwater question in this time, which actually should be added to this. Staff to return with status of groundwater analysis. Again, I think we're acting a little bit too quickly with not enough information to have some solid footings, if you will, to base our decision. Mr. Keene: Mr. Mayor, may I make a comment or not? Mayor Scharff: You certainly may. Mr. Keene: I don't want to sound contrary here, and I don't mean it this way. This is very late and is a departure from the way the Staff Report was put together. If we put the Staff Report out and then brought this to the Council at this point, you could make the same argument that the public wasn't prepared to know that we would be postponing possibly the decision and asking us to really look at this in the context of a lot of other things. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. When we share some information that's part of the discussion with the Council as if there isn't enough time, and then we can do that here at the very ending of the meeting. We got no questions from the Council in advance of this. We're now in a position of having to try to answer whether or not—if you really want to—what it would take to do all of these things. The second thing I would say is we are never going to get this Infrastructure Plan done if we can't make a decision and we've got to bring it to the next point and the next point and the next point. I can guarantee you right now, even if you give us this directive on this, we're going to come back with more information as we unfold this. We may find that there's a water problem, TRANSCRIPT    Page 64 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  and suddenly we have to come back to the Council and say we need you to redirect. We may say we're trying to value engineer it enough, and we bring it back, and you say that's too much. This is not done by you saying this. You are signaling roughly how many spaces you want and the ballpark of what it's going to cost and how much you think it's down and what the height is. The Motion is good in this sense because it starts to connect to all the other moving parts that you have of all of your initiatives on TMA, but those are all interacting with each other over time. If we're going to try to link them up at every moment rather than make a decision to move on and see how it does, I don't know how you're going to be able to make hardly any decisions in a very complicated year with a lot of things. I just say this as habituating yourselves to making some basic decisions and not putting it right now, knowing there will be changes. Let me just say this right now. When we're talking about the gap in the funding, I've told the Staff right now, in my view, that doesn't mean we're automatically going to say we're going to find more money for it. It may mean we've got to come back when we have more detail and value engineer our project back down. We're going to have to present those options to the Council. I just think it's a mistake to think you make a decision here, and this thing is all done. What you're really saying is you're making decisions on the height, you're making decisions on the rough costs, and you're making decisions right now on the number of spaces that you want to achieve. In this case, you are basically excluding the retail. That's the one issue. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Kou, did you want to speak to your second? Council Member Kou: I hear you. Time is money, and all that. It's only a week, the way I look at it. My biggest concern here is—actually I'm really torn with the retail space. I was reading a letter in the Staff Report from this one person who said it'd be a great space that the City would own, and the City would be capable of doing some good for the community, whether it's renting it out to a nonprofit, which would also benefit another cause. There's opportunities here with the retail. With the picture that Council Member Filseth showed and the packet pages are all gone. On the street here, on Birch, it's actually pretty—it becomes a canyon now. If you still have the perimeter retail, at least you still see some sky and some blue. Now, you have a canyon with the tall building there. I appreciate the first motion. I feel like we're losing something over here without the retail. I'm really not comfortable with going to the PF—changing the PF Zoning for garages. Lastly, I do have some thoughts in terms of the transparency of the whole thing with this opinion of construction cost comparison with Option B and C and D included, which nobody seems to know about. It's 1 week. I hope that doesn't make a big difference in costs. TRANSCRIPT    Page 65 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  Mayor Scharff: Tom, did you want to speak? Council Member DuBois: I support a lot of this Motion, but it goes too far. I would propose a friendly amendment, if you would remove "Bi." Based on our discussion tonight, there's not widespread support for the retail. It seems to be a major change. Council Member Holman: At least three of us support that. I don't know how many others. If we could vote on that one separately, I'd certainly consider that. Council Member DuBois: I don't hear a second for that. AMENDMENT TO THE SUBSTITUTE MOTION: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Council Member XX to remove Part B.i. from the Substitute Motion. AMENDMENT TO THE SUBSTITUTE MOTION FAILED DUE TO THE LACK OF A SECOND Council Member Holman: Like I said, I'm happy to vote on that one separately. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Filseth. Council Member Filseth: I understand the desire to see more data. I don't know how much more—first of all, I was very impressed with the City Manager's comments. I don't think we're going to know much more in a week on this kind of stuff. As the City Manager said, all this stuff is going to be subject to munging and changing. Obviously, if somebody finds a problem with the groundwater, then we're going to shift course. I don't think we're going to know anything more in a week. I think we should move forward. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach, did you have your … Let's vote on the amendment—on the substitute motion. That fails on a 7-2 vote with Council Member Kou and Council Member Holman voting yes. SUBSTITUTE MOTION FAILED: 2-7 Holman, Kou yes Mayor Scharff: We return to the main Motion. Does anyone need to speak or can we vote on the main Motion? You want to speak? (inaudible) wants to speak. Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: I actually think this is a nice compromise. I appreciate you guys for making the Motion. I do think we should give some TRANSCRIPT    Page 66 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  direction on some of the other issues. I'm going to propose some amendments. For "B," we've discussed it very little. This is proposing to change PF Zoning Citywide. I'd actually adopt some of the language Council Member Holman had … Mayor Scharff: It's just for parking facilities? Council Member DuBois: Just for "B" here, to direct Staff to prepare variances needed for the Cal. Ave. parking garage in the PF zone. Rather than changing PF Zoning blanket, we would just do what we need for this project. Council Member Filseth: Before I accept or not accept this, can I ask Staff to comment on this? If we change the PF Zoning specifically for this, how broad is it? Does it apply to other kinds of PF projects or is it strictly for parking garages? Mr. Eggleston: It would strictly be for parking garages and only for public parking garages that the City would construct. Mr. Keene: What's the nature of the variance now since we don't have a height variance on this? Maybe slightly if we go up above … Mr. Eggleston: There's a potential issue of the railing that we're working with Planning on, getting a clear answer about how that relates to that 35- foot height limit. The other issues are lot coverage. Based on the current PF Zoning Ordinance, we'd be required to only build on 30 percent of the plan view footprint of the current lot. There's a 1:1 FAR. The 30 percent lot coverage says it all right there. Council Member DuBois: My proposal is we allow it for this project as a variance. Changing the height requirements (inaudible) to neighborhoods and other PF zones, I'm not really sure what the implications are. My preference would be to do it for this project and not change the underlying zoning. Council Member Filseth: This doesn't apply to other PF Zones, I think I heard. Council Member DuBois: It applies to all PF Zones, right? Council Member Filseth: Only for parking garages. Council Member DuBois: Those parking garages could be next to residences. TRANSCRIPT    Page 67 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  Mayor Scharff: We're building them. Mr. Keene: I don't know to what extent the City Attorney can help. The only question I would have—some of you would know even better. Turning this into a variance situation on this site versus a legislative change by the Council clarifying things is a different process that has to be followed. Mayor Scharff: Tom, I'm not going to accept it. Let me tell you why. It's really what the City Manager is saying. We've had a lot of discussion over the last 2, 2 1/2 years about variances and not really wanting to do that. What we're really saying is we are going to zone for what we want on a parking garage. This really applies to this parking garage. If we decide to build another parking garage, the next City Council, when they get to it, can decide if they want to do that. It's more difficult for Staff to actually have Staff Reports about coming with a variance. Here, what we're telling them to do is go make a legislative change, tell people what we're going to do here. Council Member DuBois: Can we clarify? I don't think this applies to this garage. I think it applies to PF Zones Citywide, which is my concern. It's not specific … Mayor Scharff: Only if you're building a parking garage, a public parking garage. Council Member DuBois: Right, but not just this lot. Council Member Holman: I'm seconding this. AMENDMENT: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Council Member Holman to replace in the Motion Part B, “revisions to the Public Facility (PF) zoning Ordinance” with “variances needed.” Council Member DuBois: That's my concern. We actually don't know what we're zoning for right now because we haven't looked at all the PF Zones and seen what the implications of this change is. Mayor Scharff: The difference is it would come to a City Council, and a City Council when they're building—let me just put it this way. Sometimes I think we get way too much in the weeds in that we've built a parking garage. The last time was in 2003. If one comes to us in 15 years or 5 years or 10 years—I guess this would apply Downtown is what you're thinking, that this would basically affect the Downtown parking garage. That's the next one. What this does is allows us not to use the PC process, which has built every other parking garage, and saying, "When you build a TRANSCRIPT    Page 68 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  parking garage, you have to have"—remind me. We need to change it for the lot coverage. We need to change it—otherwise, you have to have 40 percent. There's all these things. To have a system where we say we are going to do variances on something we will always need a variance to build a public parking garage flies in the face of everything people have been saying … Council Member Holman: Mr. Mayor? Mayor Scharff: … about it. That's really why I'm going—yes, I've probably spoken a little too much to it. I agree. I'm going to let Karen—you need to speak to your first? Council Member DuBois: No. I have two other small ones that I'd like to get out. Council Member Holman: I'd like to speak to my second. There are comments made like if we ever build another parking garage. We're going to build one Downtown … Mayor Scharff: We are; that's correct. Council Member Holman: … in the near future. It speaks exactly to the points I made earlier and the points that Council Member DuBois is making now. We don't exactly know what we're doing because we don't have a project in front of us to even look at. The parking garage Downtown is, I would say, something where we would not—my opinion based on not much of anything we have in the Staff Report for next week, and I haven't read it all to be fair. I wouldn't want to see a lot-line-to-lot-line structure there. We have several historic buildings. Right across the street is the Birge Clark Post Office. I don't know that I would want to see a building of the mass and scale that these changes wholesale would allow there. That doesn't mean we have to build it there just because we make these changes, but it does give the implication that the Council has approved that. Since you approved it, it implies that we're okay with that. I think that's a bad precedent. We're not looking at what the consequences could be in a broader spectrum. We're making zone changes Citywide for parking garages because of one project. I think it's a really bad precedent and a really bad concept. I appreciate why Staff would come forward with it. It simplifies things, but I think it's really a bad action to take. Mr. Keene: Mr. Mayor, may I just read the Staff Report just so we're clear? We're just trying to clarify things. It gives more clarity in responding to the Council concerns about saying not just on a project-by-project basis but what you think. The last public parking garage we built was in 2003. The TRANSCRIPT    Page 69 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  Council has two public parking garages in your Plan. I haven't heard about any other public parking garages by the City at all. What we said is upon Council direction to pursue PF Zoning Ordinance modification, Staff would prepare Code revisions, initially review the changes with the Planning and Transportation Commission before returning to the City Council for approval. I can't imagine that we wouldn't be considering the implications for the Downtown parking garage when we go through that whole process. We're going to have to bring this back to the Council for your approval. Council Member Holman: A follow-up question to that? Mayor Scharff: Yep. Council Member Holman: It would seem like, if we give that direction to the Planning Commission, we're telling them what we want to do. Won't they try to enable that? it seems like that would be the direction we'd be giving. In the past, many but not all of our parking garages have been PCs. The reason for that is because they are in sometimes tight, complicated, even complex, irregularly shaped parcels. That's why they've been PCs, to accommodate those sorts of things. We do few enough of them that that is why they've been PCs and why, I think, the wholesale change for this, whether it's 15 more years before we build another—I just think the implications are far-reaching and not well thought out. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Filseth. Council Member Filseth: I was going back and forth on this. I think I just got convinced by the City Manager. I thought your point that what we do will dictate how the Downtown Garage is done was important. The PTC, when they see this, will have the benefit of seeing both projects at once. The danger that we impose something that doesn't fit on the Downtown location because of something we decide tonight on the Cal. Ave. location, that seems like a much lower risk. I do agree with the Mayor on this. I don't like doing one-offs in this kind of thing. If we're going to do garages, we should have a standard way of doing garages, such that they don't need to be PCs each time. Also, as long as what we're deciding is policy—that's our job, to decide policy—just for public garages and not medical offices or some other PF utilization, I think I'm more comfortable with that. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: I will not be supporting this Amendment. The Mayor's comments earlier were important. I just want to be very clear. Council Member DuBois' Motion here is suggesting that it is preferable to govern in land use policy by variance rather than changing the Code. I've TRANSCRIPT    Page 70 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  heard Council Member Holman say for years zone for what you want. I've heard Council Member Filseth say in the past the Code is the Code; if you don't like the Code, change the Code. I've heard a lot of criticism of past Council practice of using variances and exemptions and exceptions in order to support projects that past Councils supported. I think this amendment would move us in the opposite direction of where we've been trying to move, trying to be clearer in our Code about what kinds of things we can allow. That’s just in general about the approach here. Specifically, Council Member Filseth and Scharf's comments were right on the money. The comments from the City Manager were important as well. This just makes it clear what kinds of discussions we're going to need to have when those future garages come to us or a future Council. We're not approving something that then some third party can go and do without coming to Council. It's only for public parking garages. Mayor Scharff: Vice Mayor Kniss. Vice Mayor Kniss: It's not on this. Mayor Scharff: Let's vote on the board. I think I hit my light the wrong way. I'm going to change my vote to no. That fails on a—Council Member Kou, did you vote? Council Member Kou: My light's not working. Mayor Scharff: How would you like to vote? Council Member Kou: It's a no. Mayor Scharff: This fails on a 7-2 Motion with Council Member DuBois and Council Member Holman voting yes. AMENDMENT FAILED: 2-7 DuBois, Holman yes Mayor Scharff: Now, can we vote on the main Motion? Council Member DuBois: I actually had two (crosstalk). Mayor Scharff: (crosstalk) two more. Council Member DuBois: First of all, we're talking about the costs on this. These numbers feel really squishy. I know it's early. I hope we're really taking a scalpel to the Public Safety Building. That's gone from $50 million to $75 million. Is that right? TRANSCRIPT    Page 71 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  Mr. Keene: Potentially yes. I don't even want to acknowledge that because, if we have to cut it … Council Member DuBois: If Council said do Option 3A for 28 million, could you value engineer it and look at the escalation and the contingency? Mr. Keene: I think the better way to instruct us is tell us value engineer it as much as possible and let's see what the tradeoffs would be. Do you know what I mean? I'm worried about a target number and then just trying to work to that. Council Member DuBois: I hear a desire to design a really nice parking garage. My amendment would be to direct Staff to evaluate a value- engineered version of Option 3A. Council Member Filseth: Is Staff comfortable with that? Mr. Keene: The question is whether that's in addition to the motion, so there are alternatives, or if that substitutes for how we would be looking at it. Council Member DuBois: It's still Option 3A. It's asking to look at a low-cost build. Mayor Scharff: I want Staff to value engineer these, but I do not want an ugly-looking building there. If we're going to do that, I would rather go back to "3B" frankly. I'd rather take the $4 million and make a nice looking building and have an extra 10 feet in height. If we're going to make the decision to spend the extra $4 million, I don't want it to be a really ugly building there. That's how I feel about it. Council Member DuBois: I'm just not convinced this $4 million—we're talking about it like it's a definite amount of money. Mayor Scharff: I think Staff is very … Council Member Holman: Mr. Mayor, did the maker of the motion accept the amendment or not? Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman, I've given you a lot of leeway. Just hold on a second. I think it's really important to focus on having a decent building. I understand that Staff is going to look at value engineering on this anyway. I'm happy to say that, but it seems a little—what's the word? To tell Staff to value engineer this when they're going to value engineer it anyway. That's why I'm not going to accept it. TRANSCRIPT    Page 72 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  Council Member DuBois: It's just the idea of are we saying we want to go 4 million over or are we saying we do kind of want this building but tell us if you can do it for less. Mr. Keene: I think the request was made earlier, but Brad spoke to the fact that we would be coming back to the Council with preliminary concepts before we get to ARB and down the road. Obviously, our ability to focus on cost is going to be key. On the other hand, I don't think you guys have told us to throw all design concerns to the wind. I think we'd be presenting you a range of options as we come down the road to know what they are. Council Member DuBois: That's really what I'd like to see, a range. Council Member Filseth: I'm satisfied with the City Manager's answers. Council Member DuBois: I'll withdraw the Motion as long as we can see a range of price. AMENDMENT: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Council Member XX to add to the Motion, “direct Staff to evaluate a value engineered version of Option 3A.” AMENDMENT WITHDRAWN BY THE MAKER Council Member DuBois: The last one we didn't talk about it at all, but it's in the Staff Report. It says that Public Works is considering solar on the roof. I would suggest that we don't consider solar at this time as part of the project, that it comes back with its own budget and at a different time. Mayor Scharff: That was my understanding of it. If Staff has a different understanding, that they would have to come back with the solar separately. Council Member Dubois: Until we can see the budget for this, I almost don't want to spend time and effort on it. Mr. Eggleston: Where we are right now is that we wanted to consider it, but there's no funding for it. It's not in the budgetary estimates we're showing you. Essentially, we would only be trying to move forward with it if we found a way. Council Member DuBois: Would you start to work on it before coming to Council? Mr. Eggleston: What we're doing is working with the Utilities Department primarily to see if we can come up with some kind of model or a public- private partnership model that could allow it to be built. TRANSCRIPT    Page 73 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  Council Member Filseth: If I understand what you just said, the default under this motion is no solar, but it may come back later as a separate thing. Mr. Eggleston: I don't think we were viewing it as we would come back to Council for approval of it if we found a way to pay for it that wasn't coming out of the project. That's a little problematic because, as we enter into the ARB process and environmental review, if it's a potential component of the project, it would need to be considered upfront and defined as part of the project. Council Member Filseth: I think this is actually an interesting point here. If you put solar on it, it raises the height 10 feet. You're going to go is the tradeoff of having solar on it worth the additional height. At one point, do we review that? Mr. Eggleston: It'd be when we come back to you with preliminary designs, as we just talked about. Mr. Keene: Anything we've been thinking about, as Mr. Shikada points out to me, would not be General Fund funded. Council Member Filseth: It would come back as part of designs. I'm okay with that. Are you okay with that? We're not approving it. Council Member DuBois: Again, I'm just concerned that you're going to spend time and effort on it. If it came back and we said, "It's too high. Let's not do it on this building," we're going to have wasted a lot of effort. I'll offer the Motion and see if there's any support. Council Member Filseth: What are you proposing as a Motion? Council Member DuBois: I'm just saying we don't consider solar at this time as part of the project. I'd kind of like to see it built, see what it looks like, and then we could add solar later. I'm also not sure a little spot solar is going to make much sense. Council Member Filseth: I think we should vote on that. Council Member Holman: I'll second it. AMENDMENT: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Council Member Holman to add to the Motion, “direct Staff to cease evaluation of solar panels on the garage at this time.” Council Member DuBois: I think I've spoken to it. TRANSCRIPT    Page 74 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  Mayor Scharff: Just so I understand your Motion—I'm going to let Council Member Holman speak in a second to her second. Your Motion is to—right now the Staff's not including it in the garage, but your motion is actually for them to cease all work on it basically? I just want to make sure that's correct. And not to do anything until the project's built. Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: I don't think I need to speak to it. I think it's been hashed out. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: I think that's the opposite direction from how we should proceed with this. If anything, I think it would be wonderful to see solar integrated into the design of the project in a thoughtful way. If I was going to add any direction in this motion this evening—I'm not intending to. If I were, I would direct Staff to look for how to integrate the design of the solar with the structure and to accelerate the application of solar. Solar panels provide shade to cars parked on the top floor. I cannot support this Amendment. Mayor Scharff: Let's vote on the Amendment. That fails on a 6-3 vote with Council Member DuBois, Filseth and Holman voting yes. AMENDMENT FAILED: 3-6 DuBois, Filseth, Holman yes Mayor Scharff: Now, we're back at the main motion. Vice Mayor Kniss. Vice Mayor Kniss: I was very enthused about "3B." One of the reasons it's been good to have a continuing discussion is "3B" grew about 10 feet between the time we started and now. This one says 43 feet. I heard 47, and I finally heard 51.5. Where did the 51.5 come from? Mr. Eggleston: The 43 1/2 is the height to the top deck of the garage. The 53 is 10 feet for the solar canopy on top of the top deck of the garage. The 47 is the height with the 3 1/2 feet added for the railing. Vice Mayor Kniss: The 47 is essential. Correct? Mr. Eggleston: Yes, that's correct. Vice Mayor Kniss: When we really look at Option 3A, which we're about to vote on, what are we really looking at for height? It's not 32. Mr. Eggleston: It's 36 feet 4 inches. TRANSCRIPT    Page 75 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  Vice Mayor Kniss: How about with solar? Mr. Eggleston: It would be … Mr. Keene: That would add the 10 feet. Mr. Eggleston: … 43 1/2 feet. Vice Mayor Kniss: I think that makes Option 3A a whole lot easier. It would have helped if we'd known this earlier. I think most of us support solar. I certainly think that's going to be a perfect place for solar. A big, flat roof is just the right place. We're not going to have a sun deck up there, I'm pretty sure. For me, that brings us back to something between—you really are hitting 40 feet. You're almost back to 43 feet as you would be in Option 3B. The one problem I have with "3A" is the extra 4 million that has been casually talked about tonight. It's 2 million; it's 4 million. We forget how difficult it is to collect that money and how hard we have worked to get the TOT to get the money in place. I am going to vote for this. We need a garage. I ran last fall. We promised a garage. Just about every coffee I went to—looking at my colleagues down here, you promised a garage. I think it's up to us to deliver on that garage. Even though it might not have been exactly the one I would have chosen, it gets pretty close. Mayor Scharff: Let's vote on the board. (inaudible) Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: I need clarification on something please. In the Staff Report it says that tonight's discussion is intended to meet the requirement for prescreening contained in the Municipal Code. It's mentioned a couple of times in here. I'm more appreciating what City Manager has been saying a couple or three times that this will come back to us in preliminary design stage before it goes to the ARB. Which one is accurate please? Mr. Eggleston: The prescreening is with respect to the PTC process. Council Member Holman: Council does a prescreening process as well. I guess the question is, which I would much prefer, that this comes back to the Council after preliminary designs are done and before it goes to the ARB. All we have tonight is very simplistic massing models. Mr. Keene: I think we're being very clear when the Council says this is very preliminary, we want you to come back when we have more definition. Regardless of what we even said we were doing tonight, by us coming back, TRANSCRIPT    Page 76 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  clearly the Council is going to be able to give feedback and weigh in on the design. Council Member Holman: What you were saying earlier is what was intended in the Staff Report. It'll come back to us before it goes to the ARB for preliminary design. Mr. Eggleston: That's right. That's a change we're making based on these requests this evening. Mayor Scharff: What requests? If it's not in the Motion, it's not in the Motion. What changes are you making? What are you doing? Mr. Eggleston: Just the fact that we said before we begin the ARB process, we would come back to Council with some preliminary design information. Mayor Scharff: Is that going to slow the process? Mr. Eggleston: Yes. Mayor Scharff: I've been hearing how important it is to move forward fast. Mr. Keene: Early on in the evening, I thought we said as a Staff that we would come back to Council with preliminary designs. The only question is whether or not we would come back and say these are the preliminary designs, but you can't say anything versus to comment on it. I think this does slow us down. I hate to say it, but it's also in the Council's lap when we bring it back. It's up to you all. If you're going to really re-direct—I think we're being very clear about the general parameters. We're really going to be dealing with main design issues, of how this thing—there was concern about all we had was this schema, a shell. Is this what it's going to be? No, that's not what it's going to be. We'd like to see that before you proceed with it. That's what I think we're going to do. Mayor Scharff: Let's vote on the board. That passes unanimously. MOTION PASSED: 9-0 Mayor Scharff: We're not adjourned. Council Member Kniss. Vice Mayor Kniss: Do you want this as a Motion? Mayor Scharff: If you want to make a Motion on it, sure. Vice Mayor Kniss: I want to move that the next garage we look at, which I think will be the Downtown Parking Garage, considers not only the classical TRANSCRIPT    Page 77 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  type of garage we just voted on, but also looks at the mechanical lift garage as a possibility. Council Member Fine: I'll second that. MOTION: Vice Mayor Kniss moved, seconded by Council Member Wolbach to direct Staff to consider not only the classic type of garage but also mechanical parking options. Council Member DuBois: What is this, Council Member Comments? What are we doing right now? Mayor Scharff: We're still on this item. Vice Mayor Kniss: I made a Motion. That's a Motion. Mayor Scharff: We're still on this item. We have … Council Member DuBois: Isn't that on the agenda for next week? Mayor Scharff: We've actually had—many times the City Attorney has told us—Molly has told us many times that we can direct Staff to consider—can't take any action—so that when this comes back to us, you can give information on the issue. Mr. Keene: We're coming back next week on the 11th on the Downtown Parking Garage and then on the parking management study. I think you're going to take up both of those things. We're not going to be prepared to be responsive. You could ask the question again then. Mayor Scharff: I think they're right, by the way, on that. That it comes … That it's coming next week. Vice Mayor Kniss: Do you want the Motion next week? Mayor Scharff: They don't need a Motion. Mr. Keene: We'll do a little bit more reading on this. You're going to want to say this again next week when we bring the actual item, rather than you say why didn't you guys bring us that stuff. Mayor Scharff: We'll deal with it next week. MOTION WITHDRAWN BY THE MAKER TRANSCRIPT    Page 78 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  Inter-Governmental Legislative Affairs None. Council Member Questions, Comments and Announcements Mayor Scharff: With that, we're at Council Member Questions, Comments. I see a bunch of lights. I assume they're all for Council Member Questions, Comments. If they're not, just say—Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: I was at the Caltrain Local Policy Makers Group meeting. There was a presentation about the Union Pacific outsourcing of freight to third parties. Cities along the corridor are interested in writing a letter to Union Pacific and Caltrain urging them to support grade flexibility. Caltrain has said they are going to do that, and they're going to represent cities' interest. I'd like the City of Palo Alto to participate in that letter. It'll come to us for review. Mayor Scharff: Tom, a little bit of a distraction. Just so I've got it clear in my head. They're writing a letter? Council Member DuBois: The cities are getting together to write a letter. Mayor Scharff: At the Policy Maker Group? Council Member DuBois: Yes. Mayor Scharff: What's the letter about? Council Member DuBois: The Caltrain Board has approval over the third- party freight operator and making sure those conditions include flexibility on differences in grade that would support more operations for grade separations. Mayor Scharff: If you could agendize that letter at the Rail Committee. Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: Last Thursday, I had driven down Wednesday to Ontario, California, for the League of California Cities committee meetings. I'm on the Public Safety Committee. It was an interesting discussion. Our local State Senator, Jerry Hill, has a bill—I believe it's SB 21—bringing forward an issue we're also working on currently in Palo Alto, which is the question of transparency and public approval and Council approvals for use of surveillance technology at the local level to ensure Fourth Amendment privacy rights of local residents. It was actually quite contentious. I'm glad TRANSCRIPT    Page 79 of 79  City Council Meeting  Transcript: 4/3/17  I was there. Some people were inclined to outright oppose it with no negotiation. We ended up with a compromise position from that committee. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Tanaka. Council Member Tanaka: No. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman. No. Meeting's adjourned. Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 11:15 P.M.