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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2017-05-22 City Council Summary MinutesCITY OF PALO ALTO CITY COUNCIL TRANSCRIPT     Page 1 of 111    Special Meeting May 22, 2017 The City Council of the City of Palo Alto met on this date in the Community Meeting Room at 5:05 P.M. Present: DuBois, Filseth, Fine, Holman, Kniss arrived at 6:35 P.M., Kou, Scharff, Tanaka, Wolbach arrived at 5:13 P.M. Absent: Palo Alto Youth Council Present: Antony, Ashoke, Bahl, Cheng, Hristov, Iglegart, Kao, Keyani, Kumar, Li, Pujji, Qi, Quigley, Sales, Tadimeti, Yu Absent: Ji, Sandhu Parks and Recreation Commission Present: Cribbs Warner, Greenfield, LaMere, McCauley, McDougall, Moss, Reckdahl Absent: Study Session 1. Joint Study Session With the Palo Alto Youth Council. Mayor Scharff: Today we have a joint Study Session with the Palo Alto Youth. Thank you all for coming. It's so great to see all of you here. You're the Staff liaison? Jose Perez Sanchez, Community Services Program Assistant, Palo Alto Youth Council Liaison: Yes. Mayor Scharff: Welcome. Mr. Perez: Hello. Good afternoon, Council. My name's Jose Perez. I am the Teen Program Specialist for the City of Palo Alto's Community Services TRANSCRIPT      Page 2 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Department, Staff liaison for Palo Alto Youth Council. Today, they have a presentation on their accomplishments for this year. At the end, we'll open it up for questions. They're really excited to be here today. I'll go ahead and pass it on to Uma Bahl, who is the President of Palo Alto Youth Council. Mayor Scharff: Just before you start, would it be all right if everyone just introduced themselves briefly, so we know who you are? Palo Alto Youth Council Members introduced themselves. Mayor Scharff: Thank you all. Now, you want to proceed. The 2016-2017 Palo Alto Youth Council (PAYC) consists of 19 Palo Alto high school students with representation from Henry M. Gunn High School (Gunn), Palo Alto High School (Paly), and Castilleja School at every grade level. This year the Youth Council adopted the theme, “Finding Balance” to emphasize the importance of youth well-being across all aspects of their lives. To support this theme, they selected the following projects: Palo Alto Roots Magazine- Palo Alto Roots is a teen-literary magazine that promotes youth voice by providing Palo Alto students with a platform to express themselves through writing, poetry, photography, and art. The magazine is distributed to local schools and businesses; and Titan Triumph Award- an award that teachers give to recognize students for their effort, character, and achievement outside the classroom, or any other action or behavior deemed worthy of recognition that is not tied to academic performance. PAYC felt that this award would encourage authentic, caring conversation between a teacher and student, thus providing the foundation towards a positive relationship between a caring adult and a student. The program piloted in the 2014-2015 school year and has been a success; and Transportation Survey- PAYC developed a survey to distribute to Palo Alto teens to determine the prevalent issues teenagers face while commuting to school and around Palo Alto. They found that safety seemed to be a bigger concern than inconvenience associated with traffic. Their proposed solutions included the development of a bicycle bridge, synchronized traffic lights, protected turns, and an increase in crossing guards; and TRANSCRIPT      Page 3 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Youth Job Expo- a youth friendly business expo aimed at providing teens with job and internship opportunities. The expo hosted career- related workshops for students providing them with the tools and resources to effectively find and acquire career opportunities. PAYC felt that this youth friendly business expo would also encourage positive relations between businesses and Palo Alto teens; and Intramural Basketball Program- a basketball tournament implemented during Henry M. Gunn High School’s flex period. PAYC implemented this tournament to help alleviate stress faced by students in the school setting, and allow teens to develop a sense of community, teamwork and build leadership skills. Council took a break from 5:58 P.M. to 6:07 P.M. 2. Joint Study Session With the Parks and Recreation Commission. David Moss, Parks and Recreation Commission Vice Chair: … number one. We're going to talk about the accomplishments of our Commission over this past year, and then we'll get into the future. The biggest accomplishment we had for the whole year, of course, was this Parks Master Plan, which you're going to be looking at in detail this month. We basically worked on it every single month, getting it all ready for you to approve this next month. We had goals and policies and programs. We wanted to make sure that we gave us enough information that we could understand what we need to do over the next 20 years. We wanted enough detail, but we knew that every year it was going to change. We were going to look at it and tweak it. We got a lot of feedback from the public. This has been an ongoing process for a year. The second big item seems to be dogs, dog parks. We spent a lot of time this year talking to the public and hearing their frustration of 10 years' worth of talk about this. We have evaluated a number of parks to make a dog park there, and we settled on three or four. We've gotten it down to the first couple that we're going to do. That was a big job. We're going to start with Peers, but there's also Pardee in the mix. We're very excited about that. On the next slide, we had a number of things that we did with open space. The big one that we started was when we got the 7.7-acre parcel in Foothills Park. The first thing we needed to do was a hydrology study of that whole creek because it significantly affects what we can do with that parcel at the very bottom of the park on the way to San Francisquito Creek. That got started, and we've done a lot of work on that. We're still continuing that as we speak. The other thing we did is the Byxbee Park hill got started. Actually, it's practically finished, but it started in detail last year. We're very TRANSCRIPT      Page 4 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    excited about that. Also, people may have gone to the opening of the Lucy Evans Baylands Interpretive Center that was rebuilt last year. That opened Earth Day in this year. In addition, we are redoing the Boardwalk at the Baylands, and that's many, many stakeholders and regulatory agencies. There was a lot of work that had to go into the design for that last year. We are moving along to get that done not this year but next year. The last thing was that we got final title to the ITT antenna farm, which is at the corner of Embarcadero and 101. That was a big deal because we've been working on that with the City since about 1998 or something like that, or '95. Finally, we can work towards getting that dedicated as parkland. We also started the major golf course reconstruction last year and spent a lot of time looking at the plans and helping Staff to get ready for that. That's started and well on its way. The final thing on that page is the Junior Museum and Zoo. We had several meetings with that organization as far as how it affects Rinconada Park. We wanted a holistic result that would marry the two wonderful pieces of the City. That's now pretty much ready to go. I think they're finishing their funding right now. On the last page, the other things that we worked on last year were things to do with management of the parks. We had a lot of discussion about what to do with aquatics at Rinconada Park and whether or not we could work with an outside organization to manage the aquatics. That's going to happen this year in one form or the other. That was a big deal. We also spent some time looking at the restroom policy. I know that everybody wants restrooms but not necessarily in the park right next to their house. There's been a lot of give and take and a lot of listening to get some help to the Staff on how to deal with that. We did a redo of the parks website, which was pretty exciting. It hadn't been done in a while. The last thing is that there was a lot of discussion about synthetic turf policies versus natural turf and what sports and what age levels and which parks needed synthetic turf versus keeping it natural. There was a lot of discussion about that. I think the Staff now has a policy for when to use synthetic versus natural. We did a lot of work on parks connections. Obviously, the biggest one is the Highway 101 Adobe Creek overpass, which is now ready to go. There was some work on how to best do that from an aesthetic and from an ecological and from a traffic flow viewpoint. We gave a lot of input in that. Also, Stanford paid for an improvement to the flow of pedestrian and bicycle traffic from the Palo Alto Transit Center to the El Camino Park to the Stanford Shopping Center and on to the Medical Center. We had to give input on that discussion. That's happening. The other one that wasn't so successful, but we spent a lot of time on it, was the east-west corridor, trying to connect Alma to the Baylands with bicycle and pedestrian starting at Matadero Creek. We TRANSCRIPT      Page 5 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    learned a whole lot about what we can and can't do. We're still hoping to make something happen. We spent a lot of time on that. The last thing is that we obviously want to continue to grow the park system. Parkland acquisition is going to be something we need to deal with over the 20 years. The AT&T property has just come up, and we need to be able to jump on that and see if we can't add that to Boulware Park. All of that happened last year. That's all I have. Keith Reckdahl, Parks and Recreation Commission Chair: Before I move on to priorities, I want to talk about the Master Plan because the Master Plan did a lot of work. Because of the Master Plan, we know more about the City now than we've known for many years. Instead of just guessing, we're making informed decisions. In the next slide, I overview the analysis and the outreach that we did. The first thing we started—we looked at what do we have in the system, what parks do we have, what facilities do they have, what kind of condition do they have. The same with the classes, what classes are we teaching in recreation, which are the most popular classes. From that, we moved on to geographic analysis. If you walk out your front door, how far do you have to walk before you hit a park? There's very nice plots in the Master Plan of that. They both looked at general parks but also parks with certain features too. Next was demographics. We're planning parks in the future, and who's going to be using those parks? For example, today right now, almost 40 percent of the people in Palo Alto speak a language other than English at home. If they speak a different language, they may have different cultural preferences, and they may have different parks and rec needs. We really have to take that into account. We also looked into trends in saying if the trends continue, in 10 years half the population is going to be 55 or older in Palo Alto. We have to make sure the parks and rec are consistent with those trends. After the trends analysis, we looked at the needs summary. If we're going to build some more athletic facilities, do you build more tennis courts or lacrosse? What's most popular and how is the popularity changing? That's in the Master Plan also. The last one is, I think, the most important, community outreach. We did a lot of community outreach. You can see there's many types of surveys. Some of them were individual; some of them were in groups; some online; some in person. We really asked a lot of questions for a lot of people. The patient people of Palo Alto really provided very good input. I think the best two are the last two, the prioritization. One of the problems—you ask them, "Do you want this in the park or do you want that in the park," people tend to say yes, yes, yes. Their eyes are bigger than their stomach. We don't have the budget or the land space to make all those. Prioritization, we gave each person a mythical $10 and said, "How would you spend that $10 over these TRANSCRIPT      Page 6 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    park projects?" Most people split it over many projects. Some people, like dog park people, put everything on dog parks. Even though they're a fairly small group, their passion also is very important. That was nice that we were able to capture that instead of just a yes/no. Now, what are our priorities going forward? One thing we learned from the Master Plan is that relationships are really important. We had a lot of interaction with people, also interaction with groups. At the top of that list is PAUSD. In the surveys, two of the most popular projects were new swimming pools and new gyms. Those are great projects, but very expensive projects. PAUSD has some pools and gyms. Before we spend our money, we really should make sure is there a way that we can use the pools or the gyms in PAUSD and not impact them. Obviously, we're not trying to get something for nothing. We have to develop this relationship and make sure that this is beneficial to both the City and PAUSD. That has a lot of potential just due to the cost of the facilities. It's not just about money. For example, if you want to improve soccer fields, who do you ask? The best person to ask would be the people who use it every week. We really want to keep the user groups and also the Friends of Palo Alto Parks and the recreation group in the loop and harness their passion and their knowledge about the situation. That's very important. The next group now is ready projects. We've done studies, and now the Master Plan has confirmed it. If we had the money and the workforce, we'd do these projects right away. One is park restrooms, and the other is dog parks. Both of those now we've put on a schedule. Every couple of years, we're going to be churning out a new dog park and a new restroom. That's the plan. We'll whittle away our deficit one by one. Another thing that became very popular in the surveys was people just don't want the parks in Palo Alto to be a concrete or a plastic Disneyland experience. They want nature in parks. We have to make sure that, as we remodel these parks and we're adding things left, right, and center, we keep some nature in the park because people want their kids and want them to be able to go to the parks and experience nature. That came up very high in the surveys, and we want to make sure that's in our plans. The next is programming. Teens are really important in this community, and teen programming is important. Sports is very popular with teens. Unfortunately, in the high school situation, most of the concentration in high school athletics is varsity sports. As the schools get bigger and bigger, not everyone can play varsity sports. We're interested in providing intramural leagues where people who aren't varsity-class athletes can play but also just have unstructured play. For example, have a time every week where we show up with a bunch of equipment. You can go there with your friends and decide whether you want to throw frisbees or throw footballs around or play TRANSCRIPT      Page 7 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    croquet, whatever, just a variety of ad hoc recreation in the parks. Also, social, developing those social webs that teens really need for support. The next is we want to fine tune existing programs that are popular. Our aquatics program is very popular, and also our fields and our courts are very popular. We want to try new things, new aquatic classes that will get new people in the pool. We also have a lot of demand now for pickle ball. We've had pickle ball people visit us regularly. We want to look at the courts. We have tennis courts; can we also use those for pickle ball? As the demand changes, we want to make sure that our policies change with them. The last one in the programming is people wanted new things. They've had the same parks forever; they want new things. We can do some pop-up programs both in recreation and in the parks. Can we do something new and fresh that lasts a month or two, and then we move on to the next thing? That's the other interest we have in programming. Slide Number 4 is major projects requiring further study. We have Cubberley, the 10.5 acres in the Baylands, the 7.7 acres up at Foothill Park, and also the golf course clubhouse renovation. These are big projects, and we're not going to do them overnight. Even if we want to do them in the future, we need to start planning so that down the road we can make wise decisions. That's in the mix even though we don't have immediate plans for any of those. Finally, the big one is Master Plan funding. We have a lot of really good programs in here, but the General Fund just can't swallow that. There's no way that we can pay for this. We have to find other revenue sources. For example, in the School District the PiE model has worked quite well. A lot of the School District funding comes through PiE, and people donate to PiE and PiE helps in the classroom. The same thing here. We have Friends of Palo Alto Parks and the recreation association. We want to see if those can be a conduit of funds into Palo Alto to fund park projects. The other is private donations like users groups. The Baylands batting cages never would have happened if Babe Ruth hadn't paid for it. The same with the little league at Hoover Park. The groups are willing to do this. If they play soccer and they use the soccer fields, they want a good soccer field, and they're willing to pay for it. We want to keep them engaged and find out what can we do to make their experience better and is that something they can pay for or we can pay for or do we split the cost. There's a lot of opportunity there, also for some of the big things at Cubberley. We're not going to get Cubberley built with donations, so we have to consider other things like a parcel tax or bond measures to fund some of these big projects. That's not trivial to do, to propose and also pass these things. You don't get something for nothing. You have to work hard to get your money either way. Those are options for funding the Master Plan. That is it. Questions? TRANSCRIPT      Page 8 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Mayor Scharff: You guys are done with your presentation? Commissioner Reckdahl: Yeah. Mayor Scharff: Now, we'll come to Council Members. Any questions? Cory. Council Member Wolbach: A couple of things. First, I just want to say thanks for all the work you do on the Commission and thanks for all the work on the Parks Master Plan. I'll just throw in my two cents. I know we're going to take this up more later. I think some of the things you're focusing on, like dog parks and adding more bathrooms in the parks, is really important. For me, this really comes down to accessibility, accessibility for families, accessibility for people with disabilities, accessibility for seniors. The bathrooms are really important for all those groups and others. The dog areas, whether it's on-leash on trails or off-leash in parks, that's important for dog-owning families as well. I wanted to ask if—I know we've had a discussion in the past, and we even had somebody from the family that originally helped Palo Alto acquire Foothills Park. It's an age old question about what we do with accessibility to Foothills Park. Currently, people who are not Palo Alto residents are able to enter the park but not able to drive and park in the park. I was wondering if there was any discussion or how much discussion there was about charging a fee, maybe even a steep fee, for non-Palo Alto residents to drive into Foothills Park and if that has been broached, discussed. I know some consider it a third rail, but I'm not afraid of it. Commissioner Reckdahl: It is a bit of a third rail. We haven't talked about that just because we kind of view that as a Council decision. If there's direction from Council, then we would consider that. Some possibilities are either charging something or, like David suggested, once a month you let one of the cities in. One of the things we're concerned about is Foothills Park is a beautiful park, and we don't want it overrun. Whatever you do, you have to make sure that you don't open the gates and let everyone swarm in. There are different options for metering use and sharing that. Also, we want to make sure that, number one, the nature isn't impacted, and Palo Alto residents are not impacted. Council Member Wolbach: I think those are both very good points and well taken. I appreciate David for highlighting that during your discussion and Keith for highlighting that this evening. As we continue our discussions, I hope that we'll keep those in mind while also keeping open the question of greater accessibility. I also wanted to highlight and thank you for really TRANSCRIPT      Page 9 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    thinking carefully about the acquisition question, the long-term acquisition issue, and also the tough questions we're going to have to ask about funding. Mayor Scharff: Tom. Council Member DuBois: It's great to see all of you guys. We have a pretty new Commission, so hopefully you guys will stick together and be working together for a while. I appreciate the point on senior needs. I do think we need to think about how we shift our programs and things as the senior population grows. I'll just tell you I'm starting to hear more about conflicts between seniors, say, walking in a park and not hearing bikes come up behind them, that kind of thing. We need to think about how do we separate, say, walking paths from bike paths, that kind of thing. Cultural diversity, look around the room. We could definitely use more diversity. I would suggest maybe you guys reach out to people you know to help you think about kinds of programs that would appeal to more diverse groups in the City to really bring in more representation, even maybe as assistance to yourselves officially or unofficially, even on an ad hoc basis. I'm sure it'll come up later tonight, but we should think about limiting the use of parks for private events. We had a lot of feedback. I'm sure you guys had feedback on that. We just heard from the Palo Alto Youth Council, and they actually started an intramural basketball tournament at Gunn. It seemed like it was really successful. I really do think there's a pent up demand for intramural sports that any kid can play. It's not a cut sport. Maybe even something where, with some support from you guys, you could work with the Youth Council to help foster some of these things and not actually take a lot of Staff resources. Something to think about. I did want to say I'm interested in supporting Magical Bridge expansion. I know it's expanding into other cities. If you guys hear about opportunities in Palo Alto, obviously it's something to come back to Council as well. We'll talk about it later tonight, but I don't know if all you guys will stick around. The facilities that are City-owned but not parks, like Winter Lodge and Gamble Garden, we need to bring them onto the list as things that we track. It may not be in the Master Plan, but I'd like to see them added as park-like facilities that we pay attention to. Just quickly a couple of comments. I did really like the prioritization section of the Parks Master Plan. I thought it was a great example of how to think about projects that are maybe important and expensive and longer-term versus critical things and also short-term opportunities that maybe don't cost very much. It's really good to get that mix in. I'd love to see other plans we do adopt that approach, which I found it really useful—kudos on that—like the golf clubhouse facilities and possibly TRANSCRIPT      Page 10 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    a gym called out maybe for some private donations, maybe even selling naming rights. That might be something that you guys can drive forward as a Commission. Lastly, I think we're going to start to see a lot of focus on Cubberley. I'd really like to see you guys get involved and help drive that forward as well. It's a huge opportunity. There's going to be hopefully a lot of rec center and community center activities there. Those are my thoughts. Thanks. Mayor Scharff: Lydia. Council Member Kou: Thank you for the work that you all have done on it including the past members. I think they spent a lot of time on that too. I just have some questions. On the community outreach, packet page 109, I did not see any of the senior housing facilities or the low-income groups, also La Comida. Is that part of—I don't know if it's too late to reach out to them to see what are their needs and what their thoughts are in terms of what's needed in the community for them. Also, I noticed that there was a page where you mentioned building a gymnasium perhaps over at Cubberley. What would be included in a gymnasium? If you can elaborate on that a little bit for me later. Would it include a swimming pool there? I know that's a very expensive one. Also, in the Staff Report, expand programs for seniors. It says in there on Packet Page 189 that Staff will coordinate the effort with Avenidas. I hope as we're doing that that we keep reminding that La Comida is an integral part of the senior programs offered. I'd really like to see that stay there and if that's something that can be coordinated. When, Keith, you were talking about the sports like pickle ball, is that something that the community comes and tells you they want? How do you assess which one is the more popular ones and which ones are not? I also hear cricket is another popular sport in the community. How do you weigh which one you pick? Commissioner Reckdahl: In the past, we would have been doing a lot of guessing. The Master Plan really does help us with that. We've done the surveys. The problem with the surveys is they weren't statistically significant in the sense that we didn't make sure we got a certain amount from each type of group. They were just whoever happened to answer that survey. We went out to intercepts. People who were at the farmers market and willing to stop, we got their input. If they were not at the farmers market, we didn't get them on that date. We went to a lot of different locations to search out different types of people. We looked online, and anyone could have gone online and answered the question. We can't guarantee that we got all the cricket ball people, for example. There was TRANSCRIPT      Page 11 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    some cricket response, but not an overwhelming cricket response. From pickle ball, the people showed up at our meeting and expressed—now a couple of meetings—their interest in pickle ball. To a certain extent, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Council Member Kou: It sure does. I know within the Indian community, cricket is a very, very big sport. I do hear from them but, like you said, you have to show up at the meetings and be involved with the surveys and so forth. That would be the diversity part that Council Member DuBois was talking about. There was a couple of things in the Staff Report. Page 216 has a list of all the leased land acres that are counted. I noticed that there are two that are leased from Stanford. We count their numbers into our total land? Commissioner Reckdahl: Correct. They're dedicated parks. Council Member Kou: There's also impact fees. Are they paid one time? I think it is only paid at the time when they get their building permit. Commissioner Reckdahl: I believe so, but I'm not an expert on that. Council Member Kou: It's a one-time payment. If a building is knocked down and then it's rebuilt, are those fees based on the new square footage or is it based on the entire square footage for the entire building? Mayor Scharff: This is more a Study Session with them. We're going to do the parks thing ourselves. I think the focus should be on them, not on asking Staff questions. Rob de Geus, Community Services Director: I was going to say that too. Just to answer your question, every time a building is rebuilt then the park impact fees are reassessed. Council Member Kou: Thank you. I think I'm done. Mayor Scharff: Adrian. Council Member Fine: Thank you all very much for coming tonight. I just want to laud you on this Plan. I think it's really comprehensive, has a good schedule of projects, efforts, costs, and priorities. As Council Member DuBois mentioned, I really do think the implementation section is helpful in terms of timespan, in terms of funding, in terms of long-term cost to the City. That's really helpful to us. I also think there were a lot of inputs in TRANSCRIPT      Page 12 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    here. As the Chair was mentioning, there were intercept surveys; there were online surveys. I actually really like the mapping surveys where you could see what people were thinking in a certain location. I think that's really relevant to parks and rec. Just a few broad comments and just one maybe question. I really appreciate some of the specific focus on dog parks, on connectedness and accessibility as well as new uses for existing spaces. I think that was actually a theme I saw in the plan, not called out in the principles but a diversity of uses or uses at different times or temporary things. You mentioned something about the pocket parks. There was some theme there that didn't seem called out. I saw it in the Plan. Last comment. Completely agree with Council Member DuBois that Cubberley could be the next big thing. It would be helpful to see what the Commission thinks there. Thank you very much. Mayor Scharff: Karen. Council Member Holman: Thank you. We have several new Commissioners, so thank you for applying and thank you to some of you—I guess Keith in particular has been there the longest. Commissioner Reckdahl: The old man. Council Member Holman: I share your pain. Thank you all for your service. It's much appreciated. The Master Plan, you and prior Commissioners can feel proud of it. A few things. One is you talk about partnerships of a different kind. If there was one complaint I heard about the Lucy Evans Interpretive Center opening was nobody knew about it. There were people who really wanted to be there and didn't know it was happening. Would you think about partnering with other organizations to help promote things that are consistent with your and, thus, the City's goals in terms of education? For instance, partnering with Audubon to do, not just in the open spaces but we have these connectors that we've set up in the Plan, do partner events with Audubon. The same thing with Canopy. Canopy does tree walks; maybe parks tree walks as opposed to just street tree walks. Just think about it. I go back to what Council Member DuBois said about dedicating our undedicated places now. A different thing here. I know there's a City policy, but I don't know how firm it is or how identified it is, about vehicles in our parks. Most especially I would say our open space areas. What brought this to the forefront with me was I was in Foothills Park a little while back. While you want people to carpool, there was a tour bus of such a size that it was really out of keeping with Foothills Park. It was so big that, when it was going from the lookout point above and coming down and going to the TRANSCRIPT      Page 13 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    meadow, it got stuck. It couldn't make the turn literally. I ran into somebody else out there who was like, "Really?" It was like deer and this bus. Maybe you all will take a look at that, see what's appropriate for size of vehicles. A thought for you all to consider. Because a lot of the things that we're concerned about in the community is having recreation space and downtime spaces for youth, did it make sense to just float the idea of having a youth liaison to Parks and Rec Commission? Think about that. Cubberley, yes, but I would add to that Fry's. It doesn't get too much attention, but Fry's is another really big opportunity for all manner of things including parkland. Rob has heard me mention this probably every year for how many years, a parks and rec app. I think it's amazing that we don't have one where people can get the app and see where the parks are, where the trails are, where the nearest recreation facility is, how far it is from here to there. Get the youth liaison to do it. The last thing I would bring up is—I think, Keith or David, one of you brought up something about what people want. When you surveyed them, they want to be connected with nature. They don't want plastic and that sort of thing. Without being critical about it, I just will reference a number of comments that I've heard over the years about the playground at Heritage Park. It's a lot of plastic and off-the-shelf as opposed to Magical Bridge Playground where everything is more organic and natural and expensive. What kind of standards might we develop for play equipment in our parks? Mitchell Park Playground has concrete structures and stuff that the fourth graders from Fairmeadow School went to bat for several years ago to keep. The City was thinking of moving all of that along; it had been there for a long time. The fourth graders were like, "No, we love this stuff." Those cover my points. Commissioner Reckdahl: One thing that we did find in the surveys is that people don't want to go to each park and have the same playground at each park. Council Member Holman: I would agree with that. Commissioner Reckdahl: They want a variety at each park. They want us to mix it up. Council Member Holman: Absolutely, I would agree. Commissioner Reckdahl: That's where things like Mitchell are very nice because there are unique facilities there. Council Member Holman: Good. Thank you all very much. TRANSCRIPT      Page 14 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Mayor Scharff: Liz. Vice Mayor Kniss: Would you indulge me in something? Mayor Scharff: Maybe. Vice Mayor Kniss: I want to ask each one of you what your favorite park is starting with Anne Cribbs. Anne Warner Cribbs, Parks and Recreation Commissioner: The two that pop up to my mind right away were Mitchell and Rinconada. I'm sorry. Those are my favorite in-town parks. I have to add Foothill to that. You really can't have one favorite here in Palo Alto. Vice Mayor Kniss: You can have three favorites tonight. Commissioner Cribbs: I have three tonight. Vice Mayor Kniss: Ryan, what's yours? Ryan McCauley, Parks and Recreation Commissioner: Foothills is very near and dear to my heart. I'm a Downtown resident, though, so Johnson Park and Heritage Park are the two that I frequent. Vice Mayor Kniss: It's one of my favorites. Jeff. Jeff LaMere, Parks and Recreation Commissioner: I have a 5-year-old, and his absolute favorite park is Pardee Park. He also likes to go to Magical Bridge, but he really likes Eleanor Pardee Park. For me, I really enjoy going out to Foothills. Vice Mayor Kniss: Foothills must be a more adult park. Commissioner Reckdahl: I really think we're very lucky to have Foothills Park. It's such a wonderful park. It's unique; other cities around here don't have that. We're very lucky. That has to be on your list. Also, my neighborhood park, Robles Park. I've spent many hours there with my kids, so I have a soft spot in my heart for that. Vice Mayor Kniss: David. Commissioner Moss: I think Foothills Park wins. That's my favorite park. I use it all the time. I'm right behind Cubberley field, and I consider it my City park. Even though it doesn't have all the amenities, it's wonderful. TRANSCRIPT      Page 15 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Vice Mayor Kniss: It's great open space. Don McDougall. Don McDougall, Parks and Recreation Commissioner: It'd be inappropriate not to put Foothills on the list, but I think Baylands is really, really important. What Byxbee is becoming and can become is really spectacular. I frankly would say Foothills is a jewel, but Byxbee is where I go every other day. Vice Mayor Kniss: It's beautiful. Jeff. Jeff Greenfield, Parks and Recreation Commissioner: Foothills Park first, but I'll say … Vice Mayor Kniss: You guys are a bit redundant. Commissioner Greenfield: Mitchell Park and, I'll throw out a new one, the soccer fields at Mayfield, where I've spent many hours as well. Vice Mayor Kniss: That's interesting. Thank you for sharing that because I rode around this weekend to take a look. I thought it's interesting to see which ones are the most used. I didn't see that in the report, though. Maybe it's in there somewhere. I would say Johnson for kids from about 3-8 is hands down. Make sure you have cardboard so you can go down the slide. That's remarkable; tons of parents there; easy access. It's interesting to hear Foothill because that probably is a more adult park even though it's fun for kids to go up there. When my kids were little, we went to every park. Who said variety is what people want? Didn't you, Keith? Commissioner Reckdahl: Mm hmm. Vice Mayor Kniss: What people do want is different things at different parks. I remember they would ask to go to the bumblebee park or the jumpy park, whatever it was. We are rich in parks; we are so fortunate. We're unusually fortunate in having Foothills. Just one other comment. I noticed all the dog parks are in the south, and the gardens are in the north. Is there a reason for that, Mr. de Geus? I'm teasing. I thought that was interesting. I don't know how that happened, but that's the truth. I guess we need a garden more to the south, and we need a dog park in the north. Thank you all for serving. I really appreciate it. I think you might have one of the more enjoyable Commissions. Thanks. Mayor Scharff: Greg. TRANSCRIPT      Page 16 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Council Member Tanaka: Also, thank you for your work. I really appreciate it. This is impressive. Just four comments. Just to echo what Council Member DuBois said which, in terms of naming rights, I know funding is a big concern. We are in a wealthy community, and naming rights might be a good way to raise money and pay for some of the improvements, acquisitions that are desired, so I think strongly look at that. San Diego actually has a very active program, so you guys might want to look at that. I think they raised $2 million through naming rights. They were selling off naming rights for a baseball tee or stuff like that. I think definitely look at that. One idea I heard from a resident about Foothills is instead of necessarily just letting everyone else in, what you could do is just charge more perhaps for nonresidents to go to Foothill Park. That's something else to think about. That's something you could also extend to other areas besides Foothill. To what Council Member Kou said earlier about La Comida, I actually met with some of the board members yesterday. They're looking for a home. One of the things that came up during my discussion with them is perhaps being able to temporarily or maybe more permanently have seating on the outside near where La Comida is right now, to have some outdoor eating areas with some shade. This is just fresh off the press, so to speak, from my meeting yesterday. Something maybe you guys could explore with them. My last comment is also from Council Member Kou. I also have heard a ton of people requesting cricket fields. I'm not sure if you guys ever got that, but I've gotten it so many times. I've gotten it so much I do wonder why we don't have any. Just out of curiosity, what do your surveys say right now? Commissioner Reckdahl: I don't have the numbers off the top. One of the big problems with cricket is it takes such a big field. If you have a true cricket field, it's huge. There are ways around that. Council Member Tanaka: Did the surveys say anything about it or is it totally not? Commissioner Reckdahl: Do you remember, Rob? Mr. de Geus: It came up, but it wasn't overwhelming. Council Member Tanaka: I do wonder if we're getting a good representative sample. I've gotten it so often that I wonder what's going on. If you could find out. Thank you. TRANSCRIPT      Page 17 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Council Member Filseth: First of all, thank all you folks and your predecessors for all this. We've seen this evolving over a period of multiple years here. That's part of the reason you're not getting blistered with new questions. It's been a work of love for so long. I wanted to ask a question about aquatics. What's your intuition as to—I know there's some possibility to expand it, the use of existing facilities. What's your intuition as to how close we are to capacity on Rinconada right now as an aquatics complex? Are we 50 percent of the way there or 90 percent of the way there or 10 percent of the way there? What do you think? Have you guys looked at that. We're all looking at Anne. Commissioner Reckdahl: It also depends on the density, and that's one of the tradeoffs. You can cram a lot of people in a pool, and there's diminishing returns after a while because people are enjoying it less. Maybe, Anne, you'd be better … Commissioner Cribbs: It's a hard question. It's really important, from my perspective, to expand the amount of people in the pool. What I mean is to make use of the water and make sure that the water is being used on a regular basis. There are people in the pool all the time, and we're able to respond to lessons, to lifeguarding, to staffing the pool, and also to creating and maintaining the quality programs that we offer right now to the residents. Having said that, as a swimming person, there's always a need for more water. I think there's a need for a new pool some place in Palo Alto, either in the south or by using one or two of the School District pools. The short answer is we need more water, we need to take advantage of all of the facilities we have, and enable our Staff to make sure that they can appropriately staff so that people can use the pool. Council Member Filseth: Rinconada, which is north of Embarcadero, is the main Palo Alto aquatics complex. I don't think there's anything that's the scale of Rinconada and Burgess until you get down into at least Sunnyvale, maybe Santa Clara as well. Mountain View has a couple of little, tiny ones. I wonder if we were to build something—if we were to put something in south Palo Alto, I wonder if there's some possibility to share with Mountain View. You were talking about reaching out to other groups. Commissioner Cribbs: I don't think it's crazy thinking. It's good to explore other opportunities with other cities. There's a lot of "how would that run" and "how would that happen." Another pool in south Palo Alto would be really terrific for the aquatic community and for those who need to be in the aquatic community. TRANSCRIPT      Page 18 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Mayor Scharff: I also want to thank you for your service. Parks and Rec is one of those things that I always feel really comfortable that it's doing a good job and focusing and is close to the community and getting it done, and we have to do less. It's one of those things that seems to work really well. We have a lot more oversight of what happens at PTC. We get more involved in the Utilities Commission. You guys really go out and make a lot of decisions, frankly, that really impact the community. In looking through the Master Plan, it was a really good job. The hard part, though, starts after the Master Plan. The Master Plan is hard to put together. One of the things we have a history in Palo Alto, at least prior to maybe the 5, 6, 7 years, is we would do these fabulous studies, master plans, and then people would say there's no funding. They'd put them in the drawer. I think you really looked at the Bike and Pedestrian Master Plan, not this one but the previous one. No one ever did anything on it. There's an alley study in Palo Alto; it talks about how we could better use our alleys. No one sits around and talks about how we fund it. It sits in the drawer. There's a lot of those studies that we do. We're really good at doing studies. The reason I'm leading up to this is I really do think that the next big job of you guys is to figure out how to fund this. We can't just leave it in the drawer. That's going to take Council focus and you having more interaction. I, for one, think we should have a 2018 ballot measure to start funding this and providing at least—you might be able to raise a lot of money. You also would then have money to match funding groups that you've talked about. Coming forward to Council and saying, "Let's put something on the ballot," and then having the Parks and Rec actually act the way the Finance Committee. We had a separate committee when we did the infrastructure. Council acted as that committee where we did polling, we looked at it. I think the Parks and Rec Committee would be a much better choice on how to implement this and figure out that. I think that could be a huge task. Frankly, it'd have an outcome that would be fantastic for everyone. What we're limited by is money. Parks are something that everyone gets behind in Palo Alto and everyone wants. As you said, there's unlimited demand almost. If you gave people $100 in that exercise, they would have come up with more stuff. We'd have a dog park on every street. That's something I really would like you guys to focus on, and I'd like the Council to work with you on. The other thing I wanted to talk a little bit about was the ITT antenna field site in the Baylands. We've undersold this. I realize it's part of Byxbee Park out there, but it's the largest dedication of parkland that's occurred in 50 years? I don't know. It's 35 acres, and I can't remember the last time. I'd have to ask Liz; she might know. When was the last time we dedicated 35 acres of new parkland in Palo Alto? That's a huge number. TRANSCRIPT      Page 19 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Vice Mayor Kniss: Haven't done it. Mayor Scharff: That's something we should celebrate in this community and let people know. I was talking to the City Manager today about that because right now it's scheduled for being on Consent Calendar. I understand why it should go on consent Calendar. I don't think anyone here is going to fight the dedication of the 35 acres of parkland. On the other hand, we do want the community to know this is a big deal and we're doing this. Tom's comment, I wanted to pick up on that. It's unclear to me and it depends on the different interpretations over the years of what our City Attorneys have looked at. I remember Gary Baum being our City Attorney and having a very restrictive view of what can go in a park and what can't go in a park. Some of these things we have to decide. Under Gary's interpretation, I believe you would not be able to host weddings at Gamble Gardens on a regular basis if we made that parkland. I don't necessarily think that would be Molly's interpretation, but I don't know. The point I have is the notion of park-like facilities, that we start including that as opposed to necessarily dedicating Gamble Gardens, for instance. We have to think about what currently occurs. I live near Gamble Gardens, so I'm seeing all the events they have all the time, and I'm seeing people there all the time doing weddings. I see that they rent out different parts of the facilities. We had the issue about private events recently on a park. Gamble Gardens has a lot of private events. We want to think about park-like facilities and how we implement those without actually dedicating it as parkland. If we do decide we want dedicated parkland, we start deciding if we're going to have one rule fits all or if we're going to have different rules for different parks. Lytton Plaza is a park, I believe. What's appropriate in Lytton Plaza, in my view, is totally different than what's appropriate in Johnson Park. That's really what I'm thinking and getting at as I think about this. In the Parks Master Plan, we talk about putting as much solar—I'm paraphrasing—as we can throughout our parks. That's the way I read it. One of the things I would have concerns about—I obviously think that's a good thing. If we're going to put solar on buildings and that solar is going to be with some sort of company where we lock in for a 20-year period and then you're going to need to remodel that building, what is going to be the buyout to take that solar down, have it moved to somewhere else? Those are the questions that need to be asked because some of the facilities in some of our parks might need to be remodeled soon. For instance, putting solar on top of Cubberley and entering a long-term contract for 20 years would be a really stupid thing. I bring that up because everyone recognizes it would be a stupid thing, but there may be tradeoffs in other places where we do that. Just because it's solar, we need to ask the question. That's what I would TRANSCRIPT      Page 20 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    encourage you to do, always ask the question of how does this limit us in the future of what we want to do and how do we mitigate against that. Oftentimes, you can mitigate against it. I did want to just briefly address some of the Foothill stuff. When I first joined Council, we were in the depths of the recession, which is a different feeling. We actually did what Council Member Tanaka talked about. We looked at Foothills Park, and we said to ourselves, "If we need to raise money, how would we raise money by charging for Foothills Park?" Our determination at that point was it would cost more money to charge for Foothill Park than it would raise frankly. That was pretty clear to all of us. We talked about even not having people and doing drop boxes and all of that. We went through all sorts of things about is that really cost effective, does that work, and all of that. I actually think those are—after having done that in 2010, I don't think those are things worth spending time and money and effort on. I would discourage you from moving in that direction. What else did I want to basically say on this? Cubberley. I do think Cubberley is a huge thing, but I also think it could take away from your larger mission. I worry a little bit that the School District doesn't know what it wants to do with Cubberley. The Council doesn't know what it wants to do with Cubberley. We haven't hashed that out. We could hash out one thing, and the School District could hash out another thing, and it could all change. I'm not saying you shouldn't spend time on it. I'm saying that could be effective, but you should have more distinct questions to answer about Cubberley with better direction from the Council and frankly for the School District before you embark on a large Cubberley exercise. Those are my thoughts. I did want to say I really do appreciate all the work you guys do. Vice Mayor Kniss: Greg, could I add one thing to Foothill? Mayor Scharff: Sure. Council Member DuBois: Could we do a 15-second round? Mayor Scharff: Yes, we'll have a 15-second round because I must have really … Vice Mayor Kniss: Mine's just information. Sometime back, when we wanted to buy a piece of property that is adjacent to the Astra property, the old Bressler property, if any of you remember that, there was a deal made with the County that the park is open to everyone. You cannot drive in, but you can walk through it, you can hike through it. It's all in writing, and it's all an agreement with the County. While we may not think it's open, it's TRANSCRIPT      Page 21 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    simply not open to drive in. For the most part, almost anyone could drive in during the week. There's no one there. It's very underused. I will say it in public; I don't think it is wise to look at altering the current situation, put succinctly. Mayor Scharff: Why don't we do a quick 10-15 second round? We can just start and go this way. Tom. Council Member DuBois: Liz reminded me. I meant to mention the community gardens. South Palo Alto lost two community gardens recently. There's one left, so I definitely think there's a need for community gardens in south Palo Alto. Mayor Scharff: Cory. Council Member Wolbach: Picking up on what a couple of my Colleagues had mentioned. We did just have the Youth Council in here earlier today. I think the idea of communicating with them and having some kind of youth liaison to the Parks and Rec Commission is worth exploring. It was interesting that we heard from our Youth Council that something fun, preferably free or low cost, where you could study but also hang out and socialize, near each of the high schools was something they were looking for. The Gunn students wished they had something like Town and Country near Gunn. For both schools, they wished something like the Mitchell Park Community Center, which is a great place, which is close to one of the middle schools, was near the high schools, that was accessible to high school students. I'm not sure where that conversation will go, but I thought it was interesting and worth note in future discussion. Mayor Scharff: Liz, anything further? Vice Mayor Kniss: Just simply notice that Anne seems to be the only woman on the Commission. Mayor Scharff: Eric, do you have anything further? Greg, nope. Karen. Council Member Holman: Just one quick one. I think Anne doesn't seem to be the only; I think she is the only woman on the Commission. I did notice that earlier. Just support for something Council Member Fine said earlier, which was pocket parks. I don't think we give enough attention or consideration for how to get pocket parks. Just want to put a plug in for those. TRANSCRIPT      Page 22 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Mayor Scharff: That just reminded me, what Karen just said. If you are going to look at this funding plan and stuff, I do think in seeing your plan that there are these little opportunities where you do see these corner lots come up or something where there could be an opportunity to buy a small little piece and put a park in a neighborhood. That could be really effective. I realize it could be a couple million bucks for that little lot. If we had funding—I think people might actually vote in this town for dedicated funding to buy parks. I'd actually be surprised if they don't. I think that would work. Thank you very much. Really appreciate your service. Now, if we want to go back into the Council Chambers. Council took a break from 7:04 P.M. to 7:14 P.M. and reconvened in the Council Chambers. Mayor Scharff: We're resuming the Council meeting. Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions Mayor Scharff: That brings us to, no Agenda Changes, Additions or Deletions that I know of. City Manager Comments Mayor Scharff: City Manager Comments. Mr. City Manager. James Keene, City Manager: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of Council. I have a couple of things to report. First of all, Beth, are you over there with some photos for me or are we waiting for your sidekick? Beth Minor, City Clerk: I'm just waiting for my sidekick. He went to the other room. Mr. Keene: I'll reorder the sequence of stuff if that's okay and start off sharing with the Council and the community that this week is Emergency Medical Services Week. May 21st-27th is EMS Week. This is an annual recognition of emergency medical service providers. This year's theme is Always in Service and highlights the Palo Alto Fire and EMS services' around- the-clock response capabilities and commitment to our community. Nearly 6,000 times per year, Palo Alto emergency medical professionals are called to serve residents and visitors in their time of need. Our teams provide professional and compassionate care, evidenced by positive customer service reviews and patient outcomes. Please join me and Chief Nickel and a number of our Staff who are here today in saluting our emergency medical TRANSCRIPT      Page 23 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    technicians and paramedics during EMS week. Chief, do you want to stand up please? To make the point more pointedly, I guess, every day is in many ways a day in the life of our public safety personnel. Those who respond to those most in need are actually saving lives that mean more than just the cliché of a day in the life but the actual life of real people in our town. On May 14th, this year, at 10:43 A.M. Palo Alto Fire and Police Departments were dispatched to a cardiac arrest at the Rinconada Pool. Medic Ambulance 62 staffed with Aaron [phonetic] Crain and Daniel Fortino and Engine 61 staffed with Sunny Johnson-Gutter and Michael Simbulan and Captain Krusing were dispatched followed by Engine 62, Captain Stewart, Jesus Zuniga, and Adam Fortino. The patient, a mail in his 60s, became unconscious while swimming due to a sudden cardiac arrest. He was pulled from the pool by lifeguards who started cardiopulmonary resuscitation, CPR, almost immediately. Palo Alto Police Department Sergeant Wayne Benitez and Officer Doug Vanbibber and later Officer Dan Seghetti arrived less than 2 minutes after the 9-1-1 call, deployed AED, automatic emergency defibrillator, shocked the patient, and began CPR. There were also three call-takers who took the initial call and dispatched police and fire personnel Katy [phonetic] Plett, Joseph Luttrell, and Darci Vargas. You get the sense of just how many different individuals are involved in just one incident just in a matter of minutes. Medic 62 and Engine 61 arrived 3 minutes after dispatch, 3 minutes after dispatch, and requested a second engine, Engine 62, who arrived 4 minutes later. Requesting a second engine allows more personnel to assist with labor-intensive, high-quality CPR as well as the overall coordination in such crucial roles involved in this event. Everyone on the call, lifeguards, police, fire, and medics, played substantive roles in what has turned out to be a positive outcome. The patient regained a pulse and spontaneous breathing in route to Stanford Hospital. As of a couple of days ago, the outlook from the attending doctor was very hopeful. Our patient is showing positive signs of recovery. EMS Chief Kim Roderick is maintaining contact with the Fire Department's Medical Director for future updates. Recent department training on the high-quality CPR approach taught by the prestigious Resuscitation Academy from Seattle, Washington's Medic One program has been taking place with our folks. Palo Alto Fire is the first fire department in California to have participated in this training. The advanced resuscitation approach requires more personnel, but outcomes have significantly improved with positive, long-term patient survival rates. This outcome is due to first responders getting involved immediately, the quick response of police, fire, and paramedics combined with coordinated efforts and aggressive treatments. I did want to share that it's my understanding, Chief, that we do have Adam Fortino and Michael Simbulan, who were TRANSCRIPT      Page 24 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    responding to the particular call, with us this evening. Is that correct? If you would … Thanks so much for what you do every single day. Thank you. Beth, are we ready? Ms. Minor: Yep. Mr. Keene: Thank you. Obviously, there is tremendous variety in what we do in the City. On Saturday, June 3rd, the City will hold its annual Citywide yard sale between the hours of 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. An interactive map of over 200 sale locations and merchandise will be available online May 26th at paloaltoonline.com/yardsale. A printed version will be available in the June 2nd edition of the Palo Alto Weekly. The City-wide yard sale is a collaboration between the City's zero waste group and the Palo Alto Weekly with the main goal to reuse good products and to keep these items out of the landfill, promoting the City's goals of reducing waste, conserving resources, and reducing our community's carbon footprint. It's not working, okay. Next, I did want to share that National River Cleanup Day—if we get the photos, we'll show them to you. We have several. Heavy rains and high flows this winter brought even more trash down our creeks than normal. This past Saturday, 30 volunteers along with ten City Staff removed several hundred pounds of trash from our creeks and watersheds on Saturday as part of National River Cleanup Day. City Staff Julie Weiss, who is in the photo that you can't see, helped lead the charge via kayak for those hard- to-reach areas. Lots of folks down in the creeks, down in the Baylands, and that sort of thing, both volunteers and Staff spending their Saturday beautifying our City. If you haven't seen or heard the news today, some good news coming out of Washington. Repeat that again, some good news coming out of Washington. The Secretary of the Department of Transportation, DOT, will allocate funding sought by Caltrain. As background, in January Caltrain had requested $647 million in Federal grant funding for its Peninsula corridor electrification project. The project is intended to improve Caltrain system performance, reduce long-term environmental impact by reducing noise, improve regional air quality, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As the Council knows certainly, on January 24th Republican members of the California Congressional Caucus signed a letter urging the Secretary to deny the funding, citing previous Federal funding and the increasing costs of the proposed High Speed Rail project, where it runs up through the Central Valley at this point in time. On February 3rd, Democratic members of the Caucus submitted a letter in support of the project. On February 17th, the City of Palo Alto submitted our letter of support, and the same day Caltrain received notice from the DOT that the decision on the request was deferred and would be taken up TRANSCRIPT      Page 25 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    later in the year as part of the larger Federal budget. However, today we have learned that DOT will approve the grant proposal. Good news for the electrification project. The City of Palo Alto Teen Services held their second annual Think Fund Gala, formerly known as the Bryant Street Garage Fund. That was held last Thursday, May 18th, at the Mitchell Park Community Center. As you know, in 2001 the City Council at that time voted to lease out property formerly known as the Bryant Street Teen Center with a stipulation that 75 percent of the net rental revenues fund youth and teen programs. That fund, known as the Think Fund, is now being invested back into the teen population by offering grants to Palo Alto teens interested in creating new programs, activities, and events in our community. With no idea too big or too small, Think Fund strives to provide teens with opportunities, resources, mentorship, and support to bring their ideas to fruition and project those ideas throughout our community. Over 120 youth, teens, and adults attended this year's Gala to recognize and celebrate teens for their innovation, ideas, and work. Grantee of the Year was awarded to Teens Exploring Code, which aimed at providing middle school and high school teenagers with the resources and tools to make their technology- related ideas come to life. Through mentorship, support, and computer programming workshops, Teens Exploring Code hopes to be inclusive to teens of all programming backgrounds. Lastly, one final announcement on our upcoming Code: ART Public Art program, which will take place three days, June 1st-3rd, Downtown. Our community is invited to a once-in-a- decade event where you can explore eight creative and fun art installations that reimagine Downtown plazas, alleys, and public spaces through interactive sound, light, and motion. On those 3 days, Thursday, June 1st through Saturday, the 3rd, Downtown will be transformed into a laboratory for urban experimentation that will stimulate discussion about the future of our public spaces. There's an exciting kickoff event in partnership with the Institute for the Future Thursday, June 1st, from noon to 1:30 P.M. featuring a panel on artists as futurists. All of the installations will be open to the public from 1:30 to 9:00 P.M. on Thursday, 11:00-9:00 on Friday and Saturday. There will be two daily short performance of Tomo Saito's Safe and Sound musical installation on King Plaza at 2:00 and 6:00 P.M. I think we are still trying to recruit some City Council Members who are interested in being guinea pigs in that musical installation experiment. Code: ART is made possible through the support of a National Endowment for the Arts Artworks Grant, signature partner Hal's, a Palo Alto-based business, and generous support from the Institute for the Future, Palantir, and Verizon. RSVP to the event at the Institute for the Future. To sign up for one of our TRANSCRIPT      Page 26 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    volunteer slots, please visit the cityofpaloalto.org/publicart and click on the Code: ART tab. That's all I have to report. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Oral Communications Mayor Scharff: Now, we are to Oral Communications. We have a number of speakers, so you'll have 2 minutes each. Our first speaker is Judith Schwartz, to be followed by Carol MacPherson. Judith Schwartz: Hi, everyone. Good evening, Mr. Mayor and members of the City Council. I'm Judith Schwartz; many of you know me as a Commissioner on the UAC. Tonight, I'm here as a private citizen. My husband I have lived in Palo Alto for 35 years, and for most of the time I've been a Masters swimmer. I've swum with several of the local teams, so I've only been an official member of Rinconada and Menlo Masters. I'm very familiar with and fond of both teams, which have evolved over the years into very distinct experiences. Both programs have served me well at various times in my life, and I like and respect coaches Carol MacPherson and Tim Sheeper of Menlo. Currently, I'm swimming with Menlo Masters, and tonight I'm representing that organization with Rinconada. We would respectfully ask you to direct Staff to reschedule your vote approving the contract with Team Sheeper to run the Palo Alto aquatics program until the Masters have had a chance to negotiate a reasonable contract. We've been meeting with Tim and representatives of the City independently over the last year. We thought we had a clear understanding of the common goals, priorities, and route to growing our team in what has become a very competitive market. Unfortunately, the negotiations have not been transparent. Quite frankly, the terms of the contract are so onerous that we would not be able to continue the program as planned. At our meeting last—I'm trying to skip. They would shut down our team even if it was not the intent. Among the more egregious items are immediately tripling our costs to use the pool; a requirement that we have two coaches on deck at all times, something that no other Masters team has including Menlo; and requiring $1 million in additional insurance instead of continuing to rely on the standard insurance provided through the U.S. Masters organization. Can I continue with Carol's time? Mayor Scharff: No. Ms. Schwartz: Why don't you read this part? TRANSCRIPT      Page 27 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Carol MacPherson: Before I read this, I'd like to give you a little more understanding of what happened to my swimmer, the one that had the heart attack in the water. It was not the lifeguards that pulled him out; it was my swimmers. I got his head out of the water, and then my swimmers got him up on the deck. We started CPR. The lifeguards were not there doing that; it was our swimmers. I do want to thank those paramedics that came. They did a fantastic job, fantastic. We run a break-even operation, and our advisory board has been reviewing the contract and is finalizing a counteroffer. We are sending that document to Tim and the City this week and expect they will need time to review and consider our terms and to get all parties in the room at the same time, so we can negotiate an agreement acceptable to everyone. We are starting to implement a marketing campaign to recruit more swimmers, but it is not realistic to imagine we can triple our membership overnight. I'm not opposed in principle to the City hiring for-profit operators to replace City personnel to manage the pool if it makes sense. Please recognize Tim Sheeper has different goals than the City and our team. If you award the Masters contract prematurely, then as a practical matter we have no leverage. You will be responsible for eliminating a team that has been consistent, operating for 45 years, and is a valuable asset for this community. All we are asking for is a reasonable extension so that we can negotiate fairly with Sheeper and the City. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: I just wanted to ask the City Manager when is that—do you know when that contract is supposed to come to us? James Keene, City Manager: It is sometime in June. I'm looking for the exact date right now, Mr. Mayor. I'll tell you in a minute. Ms. MacPherson: It's fairly soon. Parks and Rec is supposed to be reviewing it tomorrow. Beth Minor, City Clerk: June 12th. Mr. Keene: June 12th is the tentative schedule. Mayor Scharff: Davina Brown to be followed by Ken Horowitz. Davina Brown: Good evening. I'm Davina Brown. I was here about a month ago telling you about the plight of La Comida, which is our senior nutrition center. We're still in trouble. We still don't have a site. We have thankfully been contacted by a number of Council Members who are helping us. It's urgent. We need a site Downtown. We feed about 150 people a TRANSCRIPT      Page 28 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    day; very often it's their only meal of the day. Some of you know that we're in discussion with a site in south Palo Alto, still ongoing. The site is not good long-term; it's only short-term. It's small, and it has no parking. We really need a site Downtown. We did visit with Avenidas and talked to them about using the dining room, which is a smaller space than we had wanted. They were not very forthcoming about our getting back into that space, which is a shame since it's a City-owned property that's given to them at $1 a year for a very long time. We also are a very large organization that helps a lot of people. Avenidas was given the task of being the senior department of Palo Alto, to take care of all seniors. You don't have a senior department in the City; that's very unusual for a City this size. It's supposed to be Avenidas. They need to be letting us back in or helping us with you find another site. There are 35 nutrition sites in the county. Palo Alto's the original one; we want to keep it going. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Ken Horowitz to be followed by Sea Reddy. Ken Horowitz: Good afternoon, good evening. Ken Horowitz, I've lived in Palo Alto for about 35 years. I've been missing a few meetings because I haven't been feeling that great. I want to share with you—I sent a copy to City Manager Keene—an article. It's very interesting because you've been talking a lot about transportation and parking garages. This is an article that was in the LA Times about a month ago called "When Car Ownership Fades, This Parking Garage Will Be Ready for Its Next Life." It's kind of interesting when you start thinking about what the future is for cars. Interesting that some of the chief executive officers are predicting that car ownership will peak in about 2020 and then decline. Young people are not buying cars like they used to. It's a lot cheaper to use Uber and Lyft. A friend of mine came to visit me in Palo Alto, and I told him—he flew into San Jose airport. I said, "Why don't you rent a car?" He took Uber for $11, $11. (inaudible) $22, why would you rent a car? There was talk about parking garages. I need you to look at the fact that maybe in 15 or 20 years a lot of those spaces will be obsolete. This article says that when you're planning parking garages, plan them with a future use, for example shops or gyms or offices, whatever. They may not be needed; all those parking spaces by 2030 may not be needed as you may think they'd be needed as of 2017. Thank you for your time. I appreciate you looking at the article. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Sea Reddy to be followed by Mitchell Zimmerman. TRANSCRIPT      Page 29 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Sea Reddy: Good evening, Mayor and the City Council Members and the citizens of Palo Alto and the neighborhoods. I have one piece of information. Next Wednesday, on the 31st of May, Stanford kindly agreed to come back to College Terrace and give us the GUP update, General Use Plan update, of what they're planning to do in the next 15, 20 years, which is of a lot of interest to College Terrace as well as Palo Alto. Thank you. The second item is—I think I want to go to the national level. I think it's America the great in situations is able to sustain checks and balances. Rod Rosenstein is a great Attorney General Deputy, and he appointed Mr. Miller to look into the whole thing. Truth will come out. I also applaud President Trump going to Middle East and asking 40 nations to shed all the terrorism. I think only one more thing he could do would be to bring Shia, Sunni, and Kurds altogether. All this perception of Muslims are this, that, that. They all need to get together. They want to live on earth or they want to fight all this stuff. As you know, you just heard that there's another 19 victims in Manchester, England. It's going to go on, but we all need to work together. I applaud the President for taking all the best steps no President has ever been able to do in the United States or in Europe. Thank you, Mr. President. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Mitchell Zimmerman to be followed by Lama Rimawi. Mitchell Zimmerman: Good evening. My name's Mitchell Zimmerman. I've lived in Palo Alto for more than 40 years. I'm one of about 150 members of an ACLU-affiliated group called People Power. We are concerned and interested this evening in raising with the City Council and asking you to begin thinking about or thinking further about the City's policies regarding its Police Department's cooperation or declining to cooperate with immigration enforcement. The City currently has a very good policy on that, Policy 428, that does embody the City's recognition that it should not be involved in immigration enforcement and represents a commitment not to be involved in that. That policy, we believe, is based both on humanitarian considerations and on the very practical consideration that crime victims and witnesses to crimes are fearful of coming to the police because they're afraid they might be departed, that this injures the safety of all of us. The current policy is a very good policy, but it's ambiguous in a number of ways. There are some points that are really essential to it achieving its purpose, that are wanting, and that call for some amendments. We have proposed some of these more specifically to acting Police Chief Watson who's basically declined to consider these in light of his role as an acting police chief. We have a letter that we've distributed or will be distributing to all members of the TRANSCRIPT      Page 30 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Council. We ask you to meet with us and to consider some of these changes. Thank you very much. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Lama Rimawi. Lama Rimawi: Hi. I'm Dr. Lama Rimawi. I've lived in Palo Alto for the past 4 years, and I've been a pediatrician in the community for the past three years. I want to thank you all for everything you've done for the community. Actually, I'm also a member of People Power and very concerned about the kids in our community who've had to deal with the constant stress and fear of their parents being taken away from them or for themselves of being taken away from their families. I think it is really important to consider these minor changes to Policy 428 that would actually make a big difference in these people's lives and really provide a safer community for our immigrants as well as for our police officers. Thank you very much. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Kirani Grind [sic] to be followed by Jenny Schmidt. Kiran Gand: Yes, good evening, Mayor and Vice Mayor and everyone on the Council. My name is Kiran Gand; I've been a resident here in Palo Alto for 5 1/2 years. I've also been a former high school teacher where I've worked with many immigrant students, both documented and undocumented. I am part of a family that has an immigrant background as well. I'm raising children here in this community. I wanted to speak out to say that I also support the tweaks that are being suggested to Policy 428. I wanted to also commend the Council for the work that you did in December to pass a resolution supporting the values of diversity in our community. I stand behind that, and I think that we do have one of the more diverse communities in our nation. I want to see that, with these tweaks to 428, we continue making it possible for all the members of our community to follow their dreams here and to be protected by our law enforcement. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Jenny Schmidt to be followed by Julie Noblitt. Jenny Schmidt: Hello. My name is Jenny Schmidt, and I'm also here in support of the People Power initiative that my previous colleagues have described. I've lived in Palo Alto for 7 years now. Thank you for the work that you have done that led to the December resolution and that led to the Police Department Policy 428. I believe that the immigrants that are under consideration here, in my experience, are working very hard and are TRANSCRIPT      Page 31 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    contributing to the welfare of this community. I think it's only right that they should feel safe in their work and in their contribution to our community. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Julie Noblitt to be followed by Roland Hsu. Julie Noblitt: My name is Julie Noblitt. I've been a resident of Palo Alto for about 15 years and, like my colleagues at People Power, I'm here to speak on behalf of the changes we're recommending to Policy 428. I want to commend actually—the current policy is, I think, one of the best. In fact, I understand that the policy in Santa Clara County is known for an immigration policy that comes closest to the recommendations of the ACLU. I want to thank you very much for that and thank you for considering the further changes that we're recommending. Mayor Scharff: Roland Hsu to be followed by Nan Dame. Roland Hsu: Good evening, Mayor and City Council. I appreciate the opportunity to briefly address you also in support of the People Power initiative proposing small changes in Policy 428 to clarify areas where our public security officers will know how to approach the issues of immigrant rights. I have a perspective that I didn't expect to have. I'm a long-term resident of Palo Alto, since 1960. I returned to teach at Stanford, and I'm now also a therapist at a local unified school district high school. Through that role, I have seen the impact of the ambiguity that some of our families suffer from. What they need is the clarity that these small changes propose. Thank you very much. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Nan Dame to be followed by Beth Mills. Nan Dame: Hello, I'm Nan Dame. I'm four generations Palo Alto resident. I've been here for a long time. I'd first like to thank you very much for the work you've already done on behalf of what we call Policy 428 and protections for immigrants in Palo Alto. My great grandparents were immigrants. As children of immigrants and grandchildren of immigrants, we've all provided a lot of input and good support to the City of Palo Alto. Probably the most important thing that I think we should remember is that having an unambiguous policy supports our police officers, who have to rely on that policy to help them make decisions about how they're going to handle immigration issues in Palo Alto. First and foremost, having an unambiguous policy will help provide the safety for our community, for our Police Department, and for other first responders. Imagine the outcome of TRANSCRIPT      Page 32 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    the heart attack at the swimming pool if the bystanders were afraid to call 9- 1-1. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Stephanie Munoz, our final speaker. Beth Mills, sorry. Beth, come on up. Beth Mills: I'm Beth Mills, and I've lived in Palo Alto since 1984. My kids went to school here, and I taught also in the Palo Alto Unified schools for 23 years. I just want to say that I'm working with People Power also on these changes. My motivation comes from personal experience in our schools, at Juana Briones, with many families of whom some part was not documented. I particularly recall one day when I was going out of the orthopedic handicap wing, and one of my students was standing on the other side of the glass door, just standing there. I opened the door, and I asked him why he wasn't coming in. He said he couldn't pull the door open. I looked at him, and I looked at his arm. I could see he was in terrible pain. He had been in school already for 4 hours by that time and never said a word to me. It turned out he had a broken arm. His mother had taken him to a healer because she was afraid—didn't have a doctor for one thing, and was afraid to get involved in the medical system. At that time, I believe our principal paid for him to go to a doctor and get his arm set. The other family that I'm still in close contact with have five children, three are college graduates. One is at Williams College now. This is not a wealthy Mexican-American family. The mother is the only remaining person without papers. The reason she has no papers is she was deported at some point, when she already had six children. She felt, and we could understand, that her only recourse was to get back in illegally. Because she did that, she cannot get papers. She is very frightened. Her youngest child, who's about 11, is having nightmares about her mother being picked up and taken off. I'm here to work on these issues to make sure our policy is the best it can be. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Stephanie Munoz. Stephanie Munoz: Good evening, Mayor Scharff and Council Members. I think maybe it is time to rethink the Council's longstanding deference to money-making uses of land. The time has come when we are having to decide about which is the better thing to do with the very limited public land that we have. We have actually come to the point where land that we increase the value of by up-zoning we're having now to buy back. This is not very practical. The first thing I noticed was the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, an outstanding building, one of the bookend buildings to Channing House in south of Forest. We could have had that building for TRANSCRIPT      Page 33 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    nothing because, in fact, they were going to demolish it. It was demolished. There was the high school gym; that could have sheltered the homeless people. There was the annex to the Palo Alto Medical Foundation; a perfectly respectable building just torn down. There's Buena Vista. When Palo Alto accepted those mobile home owners—enticed them to come in— they gave an up-zoning to the landowners who didn't deserve it. Now, we have had to buy it back at the increased value. I'm glad you bought it back; I'm glad; I'm glad. It was good. Nevertheless, I would have preferred to buy it for what it was worth before you gave them that up-zoning. There's the Post Office. It would be a crime to let that building be privatized. It would be just a crime. You can have it for nearly nothing. You can put a garage in it that you need. You can use the garage for housing the car campers at night. Do it. Don't let … Mayor Scharff: Thank you, Stephanie. Ms. Munoz: … that building go. Thank you. Minutes Approval 3. Approval of Action Minutes for the May 8, 2017 Council Meeting. Mayor Scharff: Now, I 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 May 8, 2017 Council Meeting. Mayor Scharff: Vote on the board. That passes unanimously. MOTION PASSED: 9-0 Consent Calendar Mayor Scharff: Now, I need a Motion to approve the Consent Calendar. I'll move the Consent Calendar. Vice Mayor Kniss: Second. MOTION: Mayor Scharff moved, seconded by Vice Mayor Kniss to approve Agenda Item Numbers 4-6. TRANSCRIPT      Page 34 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    4. Preliminary Approval of the Downtown Business Improvement District (BID) 2017-2018 Annual Report; Resolution 9679 Entitled, “Resolution of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Declaring an Intention to Levy an Assessment Against Businesses Within the BID for Fiscal Year 2018 and Setting a Time and Place for a Public Hearing on June 12, 2017 at 6:00 PM or Thereafter, in the City Council Chambers.” 5. Approval of Amendment Number 3 to Professional Services Contract Number C15157200 With Walker Parking Consultants for the Design of a Downtown Automated Parking Guidance System Extending the Contract Term Through June 30, 2018. 6. Resolution 9680 Entitled, “Resolution of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Amending Utility Rate Schedule D-1 (General Storm and Surface Water Drainage) to Implement the Storm Water Management Fee Approved by Palo Alto Property Owners via Mail Ballot Election on April 11, 2017.” Mayor Scharff: If we could vote on the board. That passes unanimously. MOTION PASSED: 9-0 Action Items 7. Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space and Recreation Master Plan. Mayor Scharff: Now, we come up to our first Action Item, the Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space and Recreation Master Plan. We are going to have another opportunity to look at this after we finish with EIR comments. At that time, we will move to pass it. Tonight, we won't move to pass the Plan. It'll be coming back to us. I also thought we should do a hard stop at 9:15 because this is really just an opportunity to get a look at it—the Parks and Recreation Commission was here—and to give initial feedback. Any changes anyone thinks that they want to make by motion to this document, feel free to do so. With that, I'll turn it over to Deputy City Manager. Rob de Geus, Community Services Director: Director of Community Services still. Thank you, Mayor Scharff. Good to be here. Rob de Geus, Director of Community Services. I'm pleased to present the draft Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space and Recreation Master Plan this evening. I'm joined here with Kristen O'Kane, the Assistant Director of Community Services, and Lauren Schmid from MIG, our consultant. This has been a real labor of love, as we heard about in the previous Study Session, something we've been working TRANSCRIPT      Page 35 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    on for some time. I do want to just call out a few thank yous to the Community Services Staff involved, Public Works Staff—it's really been a cross-departmental effort—and the City Manager's Office. Special thanks to Landscape Architect Peter Jensen, who's really helped us be coordinated and keep moving along. The Parks and Recreation Commission, both current and former Commission, has just been remarkable not only at their monthly meetings but in between with ad hoc committees and community events in the variety of outreach we did. They've been terrific. Most importantly the residents of Palo Alto for their engagement, which was super engaged, their patience, and their insight. We have a brief presentation for the Council. I think Chair Reckdahl did a pretty darn good job just a little while ago, so we're going to go through it pretty quickly so we can get to the Q&A. Kristen's going to go over the presentation. Thank you. Kristen O’Kane, Community Services Assistant Director: Good evening, Mayor Scharff and Council Members. Kristen O'Kane, Community Services Department. I will be presenting tonight on the Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space and Recreation Master Plan, including a short overview of each phase of Master Plan development and also what has been accomplished since we were last here, which was back in September. Some of what you'll hear tonight has already been presented. However, like I said, it's been a while since we've been here. Also in consideration of some new Council Members, we thought it would be worthwhile to quickly go through it. That said, as you know, Chair Reckdahl also gave a brief presentation earlier. I'll go through quickly anything that he's already covered. Before I get started, I wanted to remind everyone why we have open spaces, parks, and recreation in Palo Alto and why they're important to any city. Open spaces and recreation programs and facilities contribute to the overall health and wellbeing of a community and its residents. They foster social connections, improve neighbor relations. They encourage environmental stewardship and environmental education and improve not just physical health but also emotional and mental health. They actually also provide positive economic benefits to the community. With that, the purpose of our Master Plan is to guide decision-making for the future of our parks, trails, natural open space, and recreation system. A couple of things I want to point out. When we mention open spaces, what we're referring to are the developed areas of our open spaces, so picnic tables, parking lots, restrooms, things like that. When we refer to recreation system, we're referring to both recreation facilities and programs. The phases that we went through are—the first phase, which you heard about earlier this evening, is the technical analysis and community engagement phase. These were two parallel efforts that included a physical inventory and also a demographic and recreation trends TRANSCRIPT      Page 36 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    analysis. It also included an assessment of our current sustainability efforts as we manage the system. Phase 2 consisted of taking that analysis and also the results of our community engagement efforts and synthesizing that into our goals, policies, and programs. Phase 3 is actually the development of the Master Plan. We're coming to the end, hopefully, of Phase 3. One thing that this slide does show and I want to point out is that throughout the process, the community, the Parks and Rec Commission, and Council were heavily involved in the process and provided feedback throughout the process. We really felt like this was a collaborative effort not just with the Commission and Council but also the community and stakeholders as well. You've seen this list earlier this evening. We did recognize in our community engagement effort that not everyone receives and provides communication the same way. The outreach plan really used a range of techniques to adjust for individual preferences for communication. For example, intercept surveys reach people who typically won't attend a community meeting or won't respond to an email survey. The idea was really for us to go to the community and not just wait for the community to come to us. The feedback that we received from these different outreach methodologies was used directly in the framing and development of the goals of the Master Plan. Like Chair Reckdahl had mentioned earlier, we had intercept events and workshops that targeted specifically people while they were out in the community. We had a mapping online survey that allowed people to use a map online to identify their favorite park, identify issues that they might have around a park. We did a community survey that had over 1,000 respondents, that asked specific questions about where their preferences are, what their priorities would be. My favorite was the community prioritization challenge, where people were given a certain amount of money and were allowed to put that money into what they think are the priorities for the system. This one was conducted later in the process, and it really allowed us to focus. Once we knew what the areas of focus were, it allowed us to identify what the community's preferences for prioritizing those areas of focus. Once we had all of our data from the community engagement process and also our technical assessment, we synthesized that into key findings. These key findings are called areas of focus in the Master Plan. We had 12 areas of focus from the Master Plan. Some are very specific, for example, improving off-leash dog options and integrating nature. Others are a little more broad, for example, increasing the variety of things to do in parks and enhancing the comfort of parks. Following that, we took the areas of focus, and we refined those even more to develop our vision for the Master Plan. The vision is represented in these eight principles, which are playful, healthy, sustainable, inclusive, accessible, flexible, balanced, and TRANSCRIPT      Page 37 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    nature. Development of the goals. The goals really form the organizational structure of the Master Plan and also represent the community's input in areas of focus. We ultimately ended up with six goals. The first focuses on providing facilities and services that are accessible, inclusive, and distributed equitably across Palo Alto. The second relates to enhancing the existing system. The third is to create opportunities for activities, both active and passive, that support health, wellness, and social connections. The last three goals focus on integrating nature and ecological principles within the system, expanding the system of existing programs and services. The sixth goal is something that we added, that really didn't come out of our community engagement effort. We wanted to highlight that we should be managing Palo Alto's land and services effectively, efficiently, and sustainably and also measuring how we are doing along the way. Updates to the Master Plan since we were last here. Some of the comments that we heard back in September—there were a few themes that we heard. I wanted to point some of those out. The first had to do with being selective and cautious as to where parkland is dedicated. We heard a lot of comments about that and also that that might place too many restrictions on parkland. One way to resolve this, that we heard, is there might be a way to explore a process to utilize space for park-like or recreation functions, which would allow for more flexibility than dedication does. We also heard quite a few comments about providing less competitive intramural sports and also providing opportunities for creative play and also more casual pickup games within our parks. All the comments that we heard guided our revisions. These were ones that I wanted to call out because we did hear them consistently throughout the Council meeting last time. The largest change that you'll see in the Master Plan since September is the addition of Chapter 5, which is the implementation chapter. We spent a lot of time on this chapter in discussing how we might prioritize all the projects and programs in the Master Plan. We developed the five criteria, which are fill existing gaps, respond to growth, address preferences of the community, maximize public resources, and realize multiple benefits. Every year, our intent is to have an annual action plan that will help us prioritize what is in the Master Plan using these criteria as our guide. One thing we did do in this chapter is include a list of projects and programs that we know today, based on community feedback and Staff input, are high priority. Some of these are large-scale, high-investment projects that will require more study and a long-term planning and funding strategy, while others are smaller scale, can be initiated immediately, and completed in the near term. These typically would have a lower funding requirement or could be completed with existing Staff resources. A couple of implementation considerations that we TRANSCRIPT      Page 38 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    also developed for the Master Plan would help us identify where these projects lie in relation to one another with respect to planning effort, capital cost, operating cost, timeframe for implementation, how urgent the project is, and potential funding options. When we talk about urgency, what we're talking about is looking at the demand of a program or a service versus the availability of that service. Also, is there a time sensitivity associated with making a decision about a particular park or recreation opportunity? Also, if we don't act on something immediately, do we miss a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity? Those would be things that would have higher urgency. An example of one of these large-scale projects is the 10.5-acre site in the Baylands. This is how the Master Plan organizes these. For the large-scale projects such as these, we do include funding options that might be considered in the future for funding these types of projects. In this case, you'll see this has a high planning effort, high capital cost, mid operating cost, and timeframe of near term. The next example is one of the smaller- scale projects, developing adult fitness areas in parks. In these cases, we don't include potential funding options because these are inherently low cost associated with them. That being said, I did want to mention that several of the high-priority projects that are proposed in the Master Plan are included in our 5-year proposed Capital Improvement Plan for fiscal years '18-'22. There is, however, a current funding gap in that 5-year capital fund. One thing we recognize is that, as we prioritize these projects, we'll also have to prioritize them against other City projects. We recognize that, and that would have to be considered as we go through the budget process. Wrapping up is our next steps. The draft Master Plan is going to the Parks and Recreation Commission meeting tomorrow night. This will be our formal public hearing to hear comments from the public on the draft CEQA document. Following that, we expect to go back to the Commission in June, asking them to recommend adoption. We plan to come back to Council in August with the same recommendation. Mayor Scharff: Thank you very much. Do we have any public speakers on this item? No public speakers. Anyone in the audience want to speak to this because I'm going to close public comment on it? Coming back to Council then, anyone have any comments, lights? I'll call on Vice Mayor Kniss. Vice Mayor Kniss: I'm going to say something that won't surprise my colleagues. I'm always disappointed when we have something that is as appealing as parks and so forth, or trails, all of that—we have the Commissioners here. Thank you for coming. You would think you would have a crowd here tonight, telling you what else they would like and how delighted they are with their parks and so forth. Just as the City Manager TRANSCRIPT      Page 39 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    would say, just saying. Let me ask two or three things. Rob, I asked you this before. I don't recall seeing in here the number—first of all, if we look at our parks by acreage, which park would you say is used the most? By acreage. Of course, Mitchell and Rinconada are the two biggest ones overall. Mr. de Geus: Rinconada and Mitchell are certainly the most highly used parks. I'd say Rinconada on top of the others because it's surrounded by so many amenities with tennis courts, pool, Art Center, libraries, and you name it. That's not even—the Junior Museum. That gets highly used. Pardee Park also is up there. It gets a lot of use. Hoover and Seale also get a lot of use. Any park that has more facilities, parking, a restroom will get more use. It's hard to track. We track obviously organized sports use where we provide permits for use of the park. Much of the park usage is drop-in, so that's hard to monitor. We don't have good data there. Vice Mayor Kniss: We have 4,200 acres of parks and open space and so forth, roughly. I think it's 4,202 or something like that. If we look at cities surrounding us, particularly those in our county, are we among the largest as far as what we offer our population in the parks and open space arena? Mr. de Geus: It varies dramatically from city to city. We have more parks than most. I know we do in the really urban areas of the Peninsula. Some place like San Francisco that actually has even more parkland, that's pretty urban. I think we're above average to answer your question. Vice Mayor Kniss: We're never average, but we're always above average. I would say, in addition, people often look at us as a city and say, "With your 66,000 people"—in here, by the way, you have two different populations. The latest one is 66,000, I think, that's showing up on the U.S. Census. If I look at that and look at the intensity of what we offer, particularly in this area, this is a "nice to have" area. You have to have police; you have to have fire; you have to have certain other things. We don't have to have 4,200 acres of parks and open space. One of the things we forget is there's a major cost in maintaining parks, open space, trails that we have and so forth. I think that's one of the things that Palo Alto has to offer, that's really unique. We stand out among other cities as far as our maintenance and costs and so forth. Would you disagree? Mr. de Geus: I'm not sure if I disagree. What I can tell you is that the residents that we speak to a lot and with our outreach, it was pretty clear that people feel parks are a must-have. They're not a "nice to have." It's a TRANSCRIPT      Page 40 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    critical part of life here in Palo Alto and extremely important to the residents. What is the right number of acres? I don't think there's any one formula for that. What we've tried to do is provide a very good inventory of our park system, identified some areas where it takes a little longer to walk to a park than maybe it should. There are areas where we might look at trying to do some things. Vice Mayor Kniss: As I read this, I thought there really is a tradeoff. When you have your—I don't remember which page it's on—a very good map of exactly where everything is located, and there are just a few outside the gray area. It occurred to at the same time that we have to make choices. The maps are around Page 79, 80, and so forth. We make choices about whether or not we are going to improve one of the parks versus add parkland some place. I think that's a real balancing act as we go forward. Do you add more to the parks? Do you perhaps do one of the exercise—I'm not sure quite what they're called. Mr. de Geus: The outdoor adult exercise circuit. Vice Mayor Kniss: Outdoor exercise, whatever they're called. Do you put those in? Do you add an improvement like that, that's probably low cost? Do we really look for more parkland to buy? Parkland to buy is pretty expensive. As we said earlier tonight, when we add this 36 acres that's in the Baylands, that'll be the first time we have added anything in a number of years. As I went through this, I thought there's so many tradeoffs. The only thing I would ask you specifically, which is somewhat lighthearted—I did see that all the dog parks are in the south, and the community gardens are all in the north. Do we have any plans at this point for altering that? As Council Member DuBois said earlier, I didn't realize that two community gardens had closed in the south. I know one did at Midtown. There's another one as well? Council Member DuBois: One was at a church, and one was at the shopping center. Vice Mayor Kniss: They were both privately owned. If you have anything to add to that, I think that would be interesting. Community gardens are very popular. Mr. de Geus: I appreciate that question, Vice Mayor Kniss. It certainly is something that became very clear throughout the Master Plan process. That is in our Plan, to add community gardens to the south and dog parks to the TRANSCRIPT      Page 41 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    north. We've identified locations where we think that has the most probability and will get the most support. We're actually underway pursuing that as we speak. There's interest in a dog park at Peers Park, that we've already had one community meeting about. Looks like that … Vice Mayor Kniss: I think I heard about it. Mr. de Geus: That might be an opportunity. To your other point about balancing the tradeoffs, I think it's a really good one. I don't think we can say and we don't say in the Master Plan that we should just pursue purchase of parkland at whatever cost because there are really big tradeoffs. We're facing some big ones even now with some of the projects that are unfunded, let alone what's in the CIP now. The 10.5 acres at the Baylands, adjacent to the golf course for example, is a great opportunity, but there's not current funding to support that. I think it's a good question. We need to evaluate every option independently, but really consider the tradeoffs. That's a very good point. Vice Mayor Kniss: I appreciate Council Member Holman's question about pocket parks. Yet, when you can't buy a house for under $2 million, I don't know how you can find the land for a pocket park. I presume most pocket parks have at least half an acre. Correct? Mr. de Geus: We've seen them smaller than that. Vice Mayor Kniss: Yes, but meaning … Mr. de Geus: You'd be surprised how small a plot can be to be a respite and a pocket park that people appreciate. They could be quite small. Vice Mayor Kniss: What's our smallest park? Mr. de Geus: Probably Scott Park at a quarter acre. Vice Mayor Kniss: I think at the end of Webster, that's on Palo Alto Avenue. Mr. de Geus: Scott Park, I think, is probably one of the smallest. Vice Mayor Kniss: A little, tiny one. Thanks very much. Mayor Scharff: There's the park on Palo Alto Avenue. Isn't that the smallest? Vice Mayor Kniss: Yeah. Someone just mentioned it. TRANSCRIPT      Page 42 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: A few questions and a few comments. On Packet Page 76 or the list of tables, which is on page IV, it refers to a Table 7 on Page 115, but there's no Page 115. Is there a reason? Should I be looking forward to that in the future? Ms. O’Kane: The reason is likely that it went through multiple drafts. That was one page number that didn't get corrected. Council Member Holman: I didn't find a Table 7 either. Ms. O'Kane: We'll double check all those. Council Member Holman: Appreciate that. A couple of quick comments. Pocket parks, just to follow up on Vice Mayor Kniss' comment. I mentioned to Commissioner Cribbs, who has a background not only in parks and recreation but also in fundraising, that my thought about this was maybe the City could buy a parcel for a pocket park, but also people have in the past willed property to the City. They might be more willing to do that if they had an understanding that, if it was their desire, it could be dedicated as parkland. Another thought is when we have park space or there's a development—I think it's on East Meadow by the famous and favored Sterling Canal. There was some open space that was—I call it open space— required as part of the development. The former Community Services person was saying it was really hard on the City because we don't have the money to maintain it. I guess it's a legal question that the City Attorney could come back. When we have a situation like that, can we require the property owner to also maintain it or fund the maintenance of that property? The benefit of the development continues on. In a number of the maps and also on Table 1, the Palo Alto Parks and Natural Open Spaces Inventory on Page 13, it mentions Williams Park. The only Williams that I know about is the donated Williams property where the Museum of American Heritage is. It's not park, and it's not dedicated. It's listed actually in the maps that go forward as having all kinds of facilities it doesn't have. Mr. de Geus: I invite Daren Anderson, our Division Manager for Parks, Open Space, and Golf. Daren Anderson, Community Services Division Manager: Good evening. Daren Anderson. In 1996, Council dedicated that land across the street from Heritage Park as a park and named it after Thomas M. and Dora Moody TRANSCRIPT      Page 43 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Williams. At the same time, it was dedicated and leased to the museum of American Heritage for 20 years. It's a 0.687-acre park. Council Member Holman: That's interesting because I think it shows up on other records as not being dedicated. You might just go through the maps and make sure that the facilities it says are there, are actually there. It seemed to be inconsistent. Just the same thing that Vice Mayor Kniss noticed, which was dog parks versus community gardens. Again, on Page 41 or Packet Page 129, reference to Cubberley, no reference to Fry's. If this is our Master Plan, I'm not sure why Fry's isn't also mentioned. I covered that. Another question is whether our—I know this has been brought up— impact fees are adequate and up to date. In the black and white versions of this—I'm not sure how much this is going to be distributed in black and white—it's really nearly impossible to ascertain what the colors mean because it's that gray scale thing. There's not much differentiation. I really appreciated that City natural open space has got a dot pattern. Something like that really is necessary to differentiate one from another. Another thing is in the bound copy that we have it's really hard to read because the maps spill over to the next page. When you're reading it, you're not reading it in book form like this. You have to flip over to the next page. It took a while to understand that. I think those are my only comments and questions, other than show me the money. Great vision. Some comments that were made in the other room I would apply to this as well. Appreciate all the good effort. I think those are my questions and comments. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: I think maybe no one's here because it's such an awesome Plan potentially. I think you guys did a great job. A couple of comments. We do clearly have some underserved areas of the City in terms of parks. When Vice Mayor Kniss was talking about that, I was googling Mountain View and other cities. Mountain View has 750-acre Shoreline Park; it goes a long ways. We may be above average, but I don't think we're doing extraordinarily well. We do have areas where clearly it's pretty far to get to a park. Some specific comments. On Packet Page 73, we listed Parks and Rec Commissioners, and then we had past members. I think it's an artificial distinction; we should just list all of our Parks and Rec Commissioners that worked on this Plan. Some of the ones that are listed as working on it throughout have actually left the Parks and Rec Commission. Other people put in a lot of effort. I don't know if we need motions for that kind of thing or if we can just … TRANSCRIPT      Page 44 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Mayor Scharff: Yes, you can make a motion to that kind of thing. Council Member DuBois: Do you want motions on everything? Mayor Scharff: No. On something like that, I think Staff gets it. If anyone is going to speak—if anyone has a problem with something like that, I think they should speak against it. Council Member DuBois: That would just list everybody. I would also echo the comment on black and white printing. I had the same response; as somebody said, they're really hard to distinguish without color. We do have a big need for a gymnasium. In the back where you have the implementation plan, I thought that was a good one for potentially a private partnership. I don't have a specific motion, but on packet page 146 you talk about culture diversity. I just felt like it was a little weak, but I don't really have a suggestion on improving it. I'll see if any of my colleagues do. It just says we need more diversity. I'm jumping around a little bit. On Packet Page 59 … Mr. de Geus: Council Member DuBois? Council Member DuBois: Yeah. Mr. de Geus: We don't have the packet page numbers. If you could reference the number on the … Council Member DuBois: 58. On Page 59, the next page, 2.A.7 talks about mitigating conflicts between different user groups. You talk about Pearson- Arastradero. Again, I personally see an issue. There's a lot of seniors who walk in Bol Park. It's one of our parks. We actually have a bike path that goes through the park. I see conflict there as well. I would add Bol Park to that bullet as a place to look for conflicts. If a path is in the middle of a park, it should be managed by Parks and Rec; I'm not sure how that's managed. On the next page, Page 62, there's the policy on community gardens, which you've heard from a couple of us. We should look into adding some community gardens. Jumping forward to Page 72, this may be on that may generate a motion. This is where it talks about the policy for exclusive use of Palo Alto parks. We've heard from the community that we should have a pretty high bar and limit the use of our parks for private events. It talks in here about cost recovery fees. I wonder if that goes far enough. If we allow private use of a park, should we have some kind of higher fee based on the size and duration of the commitment? I was just going to make a motion that you come back to Council with some TRANSCRIPT      Page 45 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    strengthened language around the policy in this section and maybe look at strengthening our ordinance, which is not very specific. Specifically, looking at all the programs here, 6.C.1, 2 and 3. That's a motion. Vice Mayor Kniss: I'll second it. MOTION: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Vice Mayor Kniss to direct Staff to strengthen the language of Programs 6.C.1, 6.C.2, and 6.C.3 to minimize private, exclusive use and when such uses are allowed, charge significant fees. Council Member DuBois: Do you want to stop and vote on that Motion? Mayor Scharff: Yeah, let's do that. You're motion is to move, seconded by … to incorporate the following change. It's to come back to … Council Member DuBois: To have Staff come back to Council with … Mayor Scharff: With suggestions of tightening … Council Member DuBois: Strengthening the policy language in Section 6. Mayor Scharff: What I heard you particularly say, which I supported, was higher fees. That's what I heard you say. I heard you say not just cost recovery but, if you do it, it should be a higher fee. Council Member DuBois: I think we should consider strengthening discouraging it in the first place. If we do allow it, you have higher fees. Mayor Scharff: Can we vote on that without much discussion? James Keene, City Manager: Yes, please. Mayor Scharff: Go ahead. Council Member Holman: I have a comment on that. I know we typically do outreach. In the recent example, there wasn't good outreach. Could I ask the maker if you would include having them return with some kind of specific outreach requirements for this section? Council Member DuBois: Outreach and revising the language or as part of the policy? Council Member Holman: Outreach as a part of the policy. TRANSCRIPT      Page 46 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Council Member DuBois: Yeah. If we want to offer ideas … Mr. Keene: Can I jump in? Council Member DuBois: Sure. Mr. Keene: I have no doubt that whatever we're going to bring back you guys are going to debate on this topic and modify. The general intent is what we want. This isn't a problem, but I don't think you should start hanging a bunch of ornaments on this right now. We understand what the idea is the impact of private, exclusive uses on public space, and how do we want to treat that. We may come back with different options, a gradation of recommendations. Council Member DuBois: Again, as an idea, public notice should be included in that. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “and include specific outreach language.” Mayor Scharff: Are we ready to vote? Council Member Tanaka: No (inaudible). Mayor Scharff: You want to comment on it? Go ahead. Council Member Tanaka: Generally, I think this Motion I'm okay with. The one part that I wonder about is to minimize private, exclusive use. We heard from the Park and Rec Commission that there's a desire to have more revenue to be able to fund things that we want. I'm all for charging fees or even fees beyond what it takes to do cost recovery because it could help the City fund things that we want. I wonder why we would want to—I'm not quite as supportive of minimizing the private, exclusive use. I do think if we want to get things that we want, we should think about that carefully. MOTION AS AMENDED RESTATED: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Vice Mayor Kniss to direct Staff to strengthen the language of Programs 6.C.1, 6.C.2, and 6.C.3 to minimize private, exclusive use and when such uses are allowed, charge significant fees and include specific outreach language. Mayor Scharff: Are we ready to vote? TRANSCRIPT      Page 47 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    MOTION AS AMENDED PASSED: 7-2 Fine, Tanaka no Mayor Scharff: I wanted to get—Council Member Wolbach, you were next. You're not done. Council Member DuBois: Sorry. I'm almost done. Again, I really like the implementation chapter. I thought it was very … Mayor Scharff: Wait a minute. Let me just read out the vote. It was 7-2 with Council Members Tanaka and Fine voting no. Council Member DuBois: I just wanted to say I really liked the implementation chapter. I liked how you talked about short-term and critical but longer-term projects. The golf course, it didn't call it out. The golf course facilities could be one for a public-private partnership in particular. My last major one is on Packet Page 218. It's A.3; you're listing facilities. You have this section called—have you guys found it? You have a section called other recreational facilities. I noticed you added some of the things we talked about last time this came to Council. You added the Ventura Community Center, but it's still missing things like Winter Lodge and Gamble Garden. The whole discussion about park-like facilities is a discussion we should have, but we should at least list those kinds of facilities. It seems like they should be listed here. Mayor Scharff: What page are you on, Tom? Council Member DuBois: Packet Page 218. I remember at the time Enid Pearson gave us a fairly long list, which you guys had. It looks like some things made it, some things didn't. Mr. de Geus: We'll take another look at that and see what can be added. Mayor Scharff: You're on Packet Page 218, the chart? Council Member DuBois: Yeah. It has that "other recreational facilities in Palo Alto" category. It includes things like the little league park, which isn't even owned by the City. Listing other facilities … Mayor Scharff: The Dish. Council Member DuBois: We've mentioned Gamble Garden, Winter Lodge. Mr. Keene: I think we should look at the things that we have public access to in the community, even the fact where we've got a trail that links out of TRANSCRIPT      Page 48 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    our City into, say, Mountain View or whatever. We ought to recognize that those things have some external value to us. Council Member DuBois: I wanted to be clear. I do support keeping these facilities as park-like uses. I thought your summary—hopefully there wasn't confusion that many of us want to make sure that these facilities remain in use. I think the discussion was around if we dedicated it, does it limit what they can be used for. I'd like to see places continue to be used the way they are. If we have weddings at Gamble Gardens, great. I just don't want to see it disappear as a public facility. If there's a way to capture that, I think that was more the intent. Just one last thing. I really think Boulware Park needs help. I think I mentioned it last time. I continue to get emails about the condition of that park. It may be one of our worst parks in terms of condition of the park. Thanks. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: To reiterate some of the things I had mentioned during our Study Session, some things I just think are important to continue to emphasize as you finish this up. Accessibility and geographic distribution, which is important for people who walk or bicycle in particular. That reduces congestion on our roads, reduces greenhouse gas gases, and really just improves quality of life, and improves accessibility for people who don't drive. That geographic distribution and increasing park access in the future in neighborhoods that don't have a lot of parks right now, as Council Member DuBois pointed out, I think that's really important. I'm glad that's one of the foci of this Plan. Again, bathrooms as we discussed earlier are very important for accessibility for families, seniors, and people with disabilities. I very much support more dog areas, again the off-leash areas and/or additional—making sure we still have on-leash trail access for dog owners. Parkland acquisition and the difficulties around funding, I really appreciate the focus on that. The question of accessibility and also the preferences of the immigrant communities and language barriers and things like that and also the different preferences of different members of our community is worth continuing to explore. I do support looking further at expanding aquatic opportunities, whether through construction of new swimming pool facilities or through partnerships with Palo Alto Unified or other private swimming pools that could be made more accessible to the public. I really support more nature in our parks and that diversity of nature, of natural plants, and the wildlife that comes with natural plants, birds, insects, etc., and also diversity of facilities topographically and also in the structures and facilities and playgrounds for kids of all ages. I did want TRANSCRIPT      Page 49 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    to pick up this question of Foothills Park. I could tell from our Study Session earlier that there is not a majority of this Council that seems interested in even having much of a discussion. I heard that the Parks and Rec Commission basically punted the issue and didn't want to talk about it. I understand because it's considered a third rail. I did want to ask a couple of questions, pose a couple of questions just for us to think about. Just to really think through. I know this is an issue that we revisit from time to time. It's been a while since the last time we revisited it, and I think it's time to have that conversation again, wherever we decide to go with it. I'm not going to be offering a motion, but I do want to make sure these questions are considered by my colleagues and by the public and perhaps by Parks and Rec. I guess my first question for Staff is did we consider prohibiting car access for nonresidents to any other parks. Byxbee Park is a jewel or, say, Mitchell Park or Rinconada, which is a quite heavily used facility. Have we considered prohibiting nonresidents from parking at Rinconada or Rinconada Library or Mitchell Park Community Center? Mr. de Geus: No. We give residents first opportunity to reserve those spaces, but anyone is available to drop in as well if they're not permitted. Council Member Wolbach: Our parks are considered public facilities. Is that fair to say, that Rinconada Park is a public park? Is that a fair term to use to describe it? Mr. de Geus: Yeah, I think so. Council Member Wolbach: Byxbee Park the same thing. Montebello is not one that we operate, but it's within the City of Palo Alto, open to the public. The question is what is Foothills Park. It's clearly not a public park because it's not open to the public at large; it's only open to Palo Alto residents. I'm not sure if Staff would know the right phrase to describe it. It's not quite private because it's open to Palo Alto residents, but it's not quite public because it's not open to the general public. Mr. de Geus: I think Vice Mayor Kniss made a good point earlier in the Study Session, that it is accessible by nonresidents to walk into the park. They can't drive in. Council Member Wolbach: That's a good point. As we're considering this, I have a difficult time describing it as a public park when access is limited to nonresidents, and particularly limited for people who are not able-bodied. I'm not going to say that it violates the letter of the Americans with TRANSCRIPT      Page 50 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Disabilities Act, but it flies in the face because the only way to access Foothills Park, if you're not a Palo Alto resident, is to ride your bike or to walk in. It's some distance from the nearest parking facility. That raises a question of who is this intended to serve if we still claim it is a public park. I do think there are—when we make public policy decisions or when we revisit them, we should consider values that drive them. Values like accessibility and inclusivity are important to Palo Alto as are equity and sustainability and honestly, of course, quality services for our residents. I do think it's important to consider all of those. If we apply that to this particular case, I think the point was well made in our Study Session earlier that, if we were to change our policies regarding Foothills Park, it is very important to think about not overtaxing the natural resources, the resources of the park, and not to degrade the experience for Palo Alto residents who enjoy that park. We can see some other excellent parks in the region that are quite full, Rancho San Antonio in particular. I don't think any of us would want to see something like Rancho San Antonio become the new normal at Foothills Park. Avoiding that should be an important consideration as we have any discussions. I think there are a couple of things maybe we haven't really thought about. One is what if we only—I guess right now we don't have as strict enforcement sometimes, as we know, during the day, during the week. What if we just charged for nonresidents and waived the fee for residents for parking in Foothills Park only on weekends and on holidays? Those are the times we generally do have full staffing at the front gate. It wouldn't require additional cost of any significance but would still, through cost deterrence, reduce the number of people during those peak times, those high-demand times, deter people from driving if they were not Palo Alto residents. Something else we could do would be, that I don't think we've explored in the past, using new technology like an automatic license plate reader, positioning that at the entrance and then only sending a bill to car drivers with addresses which are outside Palo Alto. Again, I'm not going to make a motion now, and I don't think we should rush to change this. I understand it is very contentious. I may end up agreeing, after a good discussion, that we should stick with the status quo as Council Member Kniss encouraged earlier, as did Mayor Scharff. I do think it's important to think through these issues. I hope we're not afraid of having this conversation in a reasonable way and thinking about how we take all of our values into consideration with this or with any other matter. Mayor Scharff: We all want to have different conversations about these items. The conversation I want to have—I can't have it tonight because I think it would take too long and we don't have enough time and don't have enough information—is how the items were prioritized. When I looked TRANSCRIPT      Page 51 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    through the items in the implementation plan, which you guys did a great job on, I don't know what the thought process was behind it. When this comes back to us, I want to know what the thought process is. Some of the things I see as really low—it says here low cost, but it still turns out to be low urgency. I'm thinking of seating in parks. It didn't seem like a lot of money; it seemed pretty easy, not much planning effort, but yet it was low urgency. I wasn't sure why that is. I thought maybe we should be doing that quickly. I wanted to understand how we're going to use this. Are we going to base our CIP off this, which means we will probably never get new seating in parks if it's low urgency and we do stuff in our CIP? I wanted to have that conversation so that we prioritize this right and, when we do our CIP, we don't come back and say we're taking something that's the lowest urgency and doing that first, and why we're doing that. I wanted us to think through that process. I'm going to want to have that conversation the next time this comes to us. I think that could be a fairly long conversation because there's lots of things. The more you can put it in the Staff Report, explaining why things were the order they were. When we agreed as the Council to go back and redo our golf course, what we talked about is creating one of the best golf courses between San Francisco and Monterey. Yet, I notice in this that it's low urgency, low priority to go ahead and redo the clubhouse and those kind of things. My concern is—I don't play golf; I'll put that out right now—we've put a lot of money into this golf course. We want it to be successful. If people don't go play rounds there, it won't be successful, and we will have spent money that we probably shouldn't have spent. I am concerned that we don't make this the golf course we envisioned, and then we complain about why it is not as successful as it should be. I think that was the lowest priority on the big capital projects. I had a concern that we were being penny wise and pound foolish in putting it in that order, and that we'd be better off having the golf course make a lot of money, which maybe then we can use on other things. I just want the golf course to be successful, and I'm concerned about that. I'm not going to go through all of these, but that's really what I'm looking for. I'm looking for thought as to why we're prioritizing in this way. As I said at the Study Session, I really do think that Council needs to give some direction about how to fund this and invite the Parks and Rec Commission to look towards a bond measure in 2018, which is coming up, and come up with a schedule so that we can go ahead and ask the public what they want to pay for, get it paid for, and get this implemented. I think that's really important. I was thinking about our motion we made a little bit, to come back to us about the items in terms of we look at private events and stuff. That reminded me of the golf course. I actually would have much less heartburn, frankly, about TRANSCRIPT      Page 52 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    leasing out the golf course for a private event than I would Rinconada Park. I have tried to make this point. When Staff looks at that—I didn't put it in the motion—and it comes back to us, at that point I'll discuss it. I think there should be different visions for some of our different parks. As I said in there, I think of Lytton Park in Downtown Palo Alto very differently than I think of Johnson park. I just hope Staff takes that into consideration because that's one of the things I'm going to want to talk about when we come back on this. I did really want to give kudos to the Parks and Rec Commission on this. When I read through this, it really is a nice job. I think that's reflected in that Council Members had an opportunity up here to go forward and wordsmith your language and compare this to what we do with the Comprehensive Plan. It's completely different. I'm not saying you did a bad job on the Comprehensive Plan, I'm saying you guys did an amazing job. I think it's really well thought through and done really well. That's really all I wanted to say. Thanks for sitting through tonight. We really appreciate it. Vice Mayor Kniss: Could I add one thing? Mayor Scharff: You can add one thing. Wait. Now the board has lit up. The board has just lit up. We're going to have a hard stop at 9:15, but I'll let Council Members talk some more. Go ahead. Vice Mayor Kniss: Cory, you have brought up an interesting topic. I wanted to reaffirm that Foothills Park is open to foot traffic. You can come in from Arastradero; you can continue on through the park, and you can head up toward the top of the mountain if you wish. I remember this very well because, when the County loaned some money to the City to buy the Bressler property—were you here then, Jim? I don't know, maybe not. There was an agreement made that Foothill would be accessible, particularly on County maps. While you may not be able to drive in, you can certainly drive in during the week. I'm sure almost everyone knows that. You really can't on the weekends when there's usually somebody there. Letting somebody think it's private and not accessible is really erroneous because it absolutely is accessible. You'll see it on any of the County maps. One other thing. Do we not have an RFP that's going out on the golf—whatever we're calling them—facilities? Mr. de Geus: We do. We're working with the National Golf Foundation and putting out an RFP for a new operator. The current operators can also apply to win that. We're writing the RFP broadly intentionally to allow for some creative proposals that may include some capital to support the restaurant TRANSCRIPT      Page 53 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    and pro shop, which do need to be replaced. That whole area is quite an opportunity, I think, if we wanted to be bold and do something with the parking lot, the pro shop, the restaurant, and then across the little street, the airport and those set of shops there. There's a lot of space there. I think it could be something quite special for Palo Alto if we would invest in something comprehensive in that front end of the golf course. Vice Mayor Kniss: Is the RFP open now? Is it live and out there and being … Mr. de Geus: Not yet. It'll be out over the summer. Vice Mayor Kniss: Thanks. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Kou. Council Member Kou: Did you capture everything I said in the Study Session so I don't have to repeat it again? Mr. de Geus: We did. We got it. Council Member Kou: Just one thing. On the Cubberley lease, when you guys get ready to work on Cubberley, the engagement process, you engage the community. I was hoping that we could also engage the previous committee that had worked so hard to come up with a plan on that. I don't know if that's possible. Mr. de Geus: We certainly will. Council Member Kou: If you captured everything, then I won't say anything more. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Tanaka. Council Member Tanaka: My comments are going to be pretty brief here. I think it's important that we have excellent parks. This is something that Palo Alto's known for, and so we want to make sure it's well funded. With that said, before I would support a bond measure or additional taxes for our residents on this, I would want to see—maybe something that the Parks and Rec Commission can work on—make sure that we've exhausted any and all revenue-generation ideas, be it naming rights, nonresident usage fees, Cory's idea about using an LPR for Foothill Park. I would really want to make sure we did our darnedest to … Mayor Scharff: What's LPR? TRANSCRIPT      Page 54 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Council Member Tanaka: License plate reader. The idea he mentioned earlier. I would really want to make sure that we did our darnedest to make sure that we really tried to figure out the best way to make this is self- sustaining and able to financially support itself before we go to our residents for higher taxes or bonds because we owe it to them. I would want to see that before I would support any bond measure. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman, you want to speak again? Council Member Holman: Yeah. A clarifying question that Council Member Kou touched on. The things that we said in the other room, that apply to this, you are capturing those, so we don't need to repeat those. That's good to know. One clarifying thing. The vehicle issue that I brought up in there, I neglected to say that they told me they had a permit. Having to do with the bond measure, to follow up on what Greg Scharff said, some clarification around that. As part of the Stanford GUP, their comments when they came forward were that Palo Alto has enough parkland for their expanded population with their GUP expansion, but they're counting our open space as that parkland. It's a County project, so I'm not sure that Palo Alto gets any kind of park fees as part of the GUP. Can Staff look into that? I would agree that, also to what Greg Scharff said, not all parks are created equal. The parks (inaudible) created equal. Like the golf course, you can have fairly lucrative golf tournaments. When the golf course plans came forward, the designer of the golf course—apologies, I don't remember the name of the designer—discovered the original plans for the golf course, and they had really—I don't know if you remember this—beautiful, original A. Quincy Jones designs for the clubhouse and such. They're really beautiful. Mayor Scharff: I do remember that. Not to interrupt you. I actually would support that as well. We talked about maybe doing that. Council Member Holman: The designs in all theory wouldn't necessarily—at least we wouldn't have to start from scratch. They're just beautiful, beautiful. One comment that I neglected earlier was on Page 9 of the Plan, the last paragraph. It's the second page of Chapter 2. The last paragraph doesn't read to me. It says "to facilitate the analysis and understanding of Palo Alto's resources, the project team defined three elements that make up the Citywide system of parks, natural open space, trails, and recreation facilities, and programs. These three elements were," and then it drops off. That's again Plan Page 9, last paragraph. It doesn't list the three, and then it drops off at the last sentence. I think that's all for me. TRANSCRIPT      Page 55 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Mayor Scharff: Thank you for (inaudible). Mr. Keene: Mr. Mayor, could I just make one comment without … I just wanted to put in perspective that we haven't been operating in a vacuum over the past 7 or 8 years as far as our parks, even in the height of the recession, coming out of the recession. We made improvements to Greer Park, to Hoover. Of course, the golf course is almost a $10 million project. Built El Camino Park, which is a gem of a park. All the work that we've done in the Baylands including the Interpretive Center. All those sorts of things, and then ancillary items like we spoke about earlier, the improvements to the Art Center and all the great things the Friends have done. The first round of the JMZ improvements and now what's going to happen all over town. We've not been sitting on our hands by any means in parks and recreation. Thanks. 8. Comprehensive Plan Update: Review of the Draft Business & Economics Element Recommended by the Citizens Advisory Committee (Continued from May 15, 2017). Mayor Scharff: Thank you. For our next item, which is the Comprehensive Plan Update, a review of the draft Business and Economics Element, which was continued from May 15th. Does Staff have a presentation on that or are we … James Keene, City Manager: There is a brief presentation. I'm trying to remember if we went through all of them. Mayor Scharff: Wait. You guys are leaving for the economics section? Mr. Keene: Interesting situation. I guess I could do the business and economics section. Mayor Scharff: Jim, it's a packed chamber. Why don't we take a 3-minute break while they're coming. Mr. Keene: Thank you. Vice Mayor Kniss: Who's coming? Mr. Keene: Hillary and our consultant. Council took a break from 8:59 P.M. to 9:04 P.M. Mayor Scharff: Presentation? TRANSCRIPT      Page 56 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Hillary Gitelman, Planning and Community Environment Director: Mayor Scharff and Council Members, I'm Hillary Gitelman, the Planning Director. I'm joined by Elaine Costello and Elena Lee, who have been helping tirelessly on this project. We're here this evening to finish up what we started last week. If you remember, last week we had three draft elements for you to look at. We made it through two. The last one on the list is business and economics. We're here to discuss that today. We had a few slides. I'll just cut to the chase here to identify some of the key issues in this revision. First and foremost, I think the CAC spent a good deal of time talking about how we could characterize the relationship between businesses and neighborhoods being one of mutual interests rather than being in conflict or in competition. There was a subcommittee for this element that worked long and hard on how to characterize those goals and policy statements. We also introduced into the element a goal and policies around fiscal responsibility, which the CAC felt was an important element of this subject. Finally, the CAC spent quite a bit of time talking about business diversity and characterized the desire for diversity among different retail and employers in a variety of places throughout the element. We're happy to go into more detail on this. Essentially, what we're asking of you this evening is if you would direct Staff to prepare a revised version of this Business and Economics Element for referral to the Planning and Transportation Commission, incorporating any specific revisions or suggestions that you have this evening. I should say one other thing. I noted that in your packet last week you received updated information on the sales tax generation by district in the City. Obviously, we would incorporate that updated information in the figure on the element page B5. I'm looking in the packet from last week, so I'm afraid I can't quite give you the page number. It's the sales tax data by geographical area. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. I wish to note that there is not a soul in the chambers besides Staff and Gianotti. Would you like to give a public comment? Either of you wish to do any public comments since there's no one here? Vice Mayor Kniss: Where's Stephanie? Mayor Scharff: I saw Stephanie walk out, and Bob Moss left, I think. I don't recall—maybe Karen does—ever having no one in the chambers when we did something. James Keene, City Manager: I am a resident. I'd be happy to get up to speak if you would like. TRANSCRIPT      Page 57 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Mayor Scharff: That brings us back to Council. I will just simply move the business and economics section. Do we have a second? Council Member Wolbach: Second. Mayor Scharff: Second with Council Member Wolbach. I'm not going to speak to it right now. The floor is open to Council Member Wolbach. Do you wish to speak now or do you want to wait? MOTION: Mayor Scharff moved, seconded by Council Member Wolbach to direct Staff to prepare a revised draft of the Business and Economics Element for referral to the Planning and Transportation Commission. Council Member Wolbach: Great job CAC and Staff and consultant. Mayor Scharff: Do we have any comments on this or any lights? If not, I will speak to it. Council Member Filseth, did you put your light on or did you just reach over? Council Member Filseth: I did not. If you want to go first … Mayor Scharff: No, no. Council Member Tanaka then. Council Member Tanaka: Definitely want to thank Staff and the CAC for their work on this element. It's a very important element for Palo Alto. I did actually send it around to various members of the business community just to get their feedback. I was, I guess, not surprised, but I definitely got a lot of feedback about general unhappiness. Maybe I could go through some of the policies. What's written is not so bad, it's more about some of the concerns about the City's actions. When I look at this, probably the most concrete one on Policy B-6.1, which is page … Mr. Keene: Packet Page 261, Policy B-6.1. Council Member Tanaka: You're right. I don't know if Staff could talk a little bit about the rationale of having small office on B-6.1. What is defined as small? Elaine Costello: This was an important issue for the CAC. They wanted to make sure that there were spaces for professional offices. They didn't want to lose some of the professional services in town, like psychiatrists, dentists, that kind of thing. Also, they wanted smaller spaces to support startups. They saw Downtown as more of an area for startups. As businesses got TRANSCRIPT      Page 58 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    bigger, it was more appropriate for them—this was the CAC talking—to move to areas like the Stanford Research Park. The small businesses was meant to promote a mixture of startup culture, startup businesses, professional services Downtown. Council Member Tanaka: Do you know what the vacancy rate is right now in Palo Alto for office? Is it trending upwards or is it trending downward? Do you know? Any ideas? Ms. Gitelman: I don't know offhand. We could look that up for you. We had a lot of data that we presented to the CAC that didn't make it into the text and figures here. Council Member Tanaka: These are just anecdotal comments I'm getting from people in the real estate business. They're saying that it's at a 5-year high, the vacancy rate. Is that true? Mr. Keene: Don't know (inaudible). Council Member Tanaka: At the same time, Redwood City is at an all-time low vacancy. Mayor Scharff: (inaudible) Motion. Council Member Tanaka: I can make a Motion that we strike … Mayor Scharff: To remove the word small? Council Member Tanaka: Yes. Mayor Scharff: I will accept that. Council Member Wolbach: I'm open to persuasion on this one, but I'm not going to accept it. I think we would need more discussion before I'd support it. Mayor Scharff: I will second your Motion to remove the word small. You want to speak to it? AMENDMENT: Council Member Tanaka moved, seconded by Mayor Scharff to add to the Motion, “including the following change, replace in Policy B-6.1, ‘small office’ with ‘office.’” TRANSCRIPT      Page 59 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Council Member Tanaka: Yeah. We've been blessed with incredible demand for our property in Palo Alto. We in general have seen a lot of benefits in general from that. At the same time, we're surrounded by other cities, and there is competition. The harder we make it for our businesses to survive in Palo Alto, few of them are going to be in Palo Alto. I think it's important that we want to let people know that, while traffic and parking are always a concern, business is welcome to Palo Alto. I don't think anybody here on Council wants Downtown Palo Alto to be just residential, at least I don't think so. I think it's important that—it's definitely a revenue generator for the City. It's important that we have the policy that businesses are welcome here, not just certain businesses. Mayor Scharff: I'll speak to my second. This jumped out at me as well. I actually support, obviously, having small office space Downtown, but I also support having big office space Downtown. We do have big office space Downtown. I actually viewed this as an attack on our Downtown, rightly or wrongly so, in terms of having large companies Downtown. I think larger companies have a right to be Downtown. We have large blocks of office space Downtown. That doesn't mean I don't support having small offices. In fact, I'd be fine with saying small offices, large offices. When people talk about psychiatrists, professional offices which would be lawyers, accountants, those kind of things, that sort of falls under professional services, I think. I know, as a lawyer, I'd provide a professional service. I'm open to other language that would say we also want to encourage startups and that. I don't want to send a message that we dislike companies that are not small offices. I don't think Downtown should be filled completely with sole practitioners like myself. That's my sense. Just having the word small is weird in there, small office, given that we also have a bunch of other office. I don't see where it fits. I would take it out. Who else do I see with their light up? Vice Mayor Kniss. Vice Mayor Kniss: Talk to this one? Mayor Scharff: Yes, this one. You don't have to talk to this one. I'm just looking at my lights. Vice Mayor Kniss: (inaudible) I support it. Mayor Scharff: You support it. Council Member Fine. Council Member Fine: Speaking to the main Motion? TRANSCRIPT      Page 60 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Mayor Scharff: Yes, you're speaking to the main Motion. Council Member— let's see. I'm having a hard time here. Who wants to speak to this? Just raise your hand because all the lights are on. Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: I think this is actually pretty important. We have zoning and land use for a reason. We want to encourage certain things in certain parts of the City. Just to say we want anything Downtown is I don't think accurate. I think we really risk our Downtown vitality if we say we want single, large uses. Council Member Tanaka asked about vacancies. I've heard office vacancies are going up in San Francisco and in San Jose. Again, if we have a large company leave our Downtown, it could be devastating. Downtown makes sense to have small businesses. We've had the psychiatrists and others come and say that they're being pushed out by long-term leases that only large companies can afford. Just mixing everything in one place, I don't think it works. We risk the diversity of our Downtown by saying that. I really think it's imprudent actually. We're not kicking out anybody that's Downtown, but the Comp Plan is just saying what do we want to encourage. Saying that we want to encourage small office so that we can have a portfolio of businesses and a variety of businesses, to me, makes a lot of sense. I'm not supportive of the Motion. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: I agree with the comments that Council Member DuBois made. Over time, one of the things that has made Downtown so vital and—some people do or don't like the word—vibrant is the activity and the excitement about having entrepreneurial new companies and having this influx of new thought and energy. That happens when we're supporting these small, entrepreneurial businesses. Director Gitelman said that this was something that was really important to the CAC. It's here because it was agreed upon. Not only do we have a different feeling in our commercial area Downtown if we have a number of large companies, but right now we have a phenomenon, for instance, where one of the larger companies Downtown is leasing up space and leaving it empty. That's not good for either our economy. It closes out opportunities for other uses, other sizes of uses. Just to reiterate what Council Member DuBois said also, if you have a large tenant and that large tenant leaves Downtown, it can be really devastating. It can be very devastating to the local economy. You want those businesses to support the other businesses Downtown. If you have a large, large presence and it leaves, you don't have the support for the other businesses. Then, what happens to the restaurants, the personal service? They don't have economic viability any more. TRANSCRIPT      Page 61 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Mayor Scharff: Council Member Filseth. Council Member Filseth: I just wanted to ask again—Council Member Holman touched on this, and DuBois. You said that the CAC's intent with this was that Downtown ought to be a place for basically incubation of companies. When they hit a certain scale, then they ought to be encouraged to go someplace like the Research Park or, even in Facebook's case, Menlo Park or something like that. Did I understand that correctly? Was that a long and deliberate conversation and people argued it back and forth and so forth? Ms. Gitelman: I think the CAC had quite a robust conversation about that. The end result was this policy and a number of other policies on diversity in the element. I would say that where they ended up is not exclusive. It's not saying only small businesses or small offices Downtown. They crafted what I think is a compromise position between the two positions that the Council is now articulating. Council Member Filseth: If we make a change to this language, are we basically reversing that entire discussion which in itself is, by the way, a policy that didn't exist before this cycle? Two years ago, there was no policy encouraging or discouraging big companies from Downtown. I'm sorry, go ahead. Ms. Gitelman: Just as I don't think the policy, the way it's drafted, is exclusive, it doesn't exclude large businesses. I don't think the change … Mayor Scharff: It does. It doesn't say big business. Mr. Keene: The change does the same thing in a way. Ms. Gitelman: That's right. Mr. Keene: If you struck small, it doesn't preclude small offices. It really is to what extent you want to emphasize this. Council Member Filseth: I read the small as not precluding small offices but precluding big offices. Mr. Keene: No, it just says support and enhance the area as a vital mixed- use area containing retail, personal services, small office, restaurant, residential. I don't think our Staff would ever interpret that as excluding absolutely. Separately, the zoning itself is going to determine even more. I TRANSCRIPT      Page 62 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    don't want to open this can of worms. I probably shouldn't say it. This isn't even defining the boundary between what's small and isn't small. You can have—any startup's going to have to grow to some size to be able to even survive enough. We're not going to be out there saying, "You're no longer just—you're bigger than a guppy now, so you've got to leave." Council Member Filseth: Big enough to have your own cafeteria, so your employees don't go to the restaurants or whatever it is. Mr. Keene: No cafeterias allowed. That's the new policy. Council Member Filseth: Thank you. Mayor Scharff: On that comment, I just will basically say if we wanted to add the word startups, I would be good with that. I think that's probably a good thing to do. Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: A couple of things. Having listened to this discussion, thinking about the context, we recently had a discussion where the idea of nascent startups in homes was raised. I'm not super enthusiastic about turning single-family homes into nascent startups, but I was thinking, "If it's your own home." I was open to the discussion. If it's your own home and you want to have a couple people come over and work in your living room or around your kitchen table on your startup, a couple of people, that happens a lot in Palo Alto. Let's be honest. I would define nascent as really, really small. Where we want people to go is places like Downtown. Once you've got more than a couple of employees, you should be able to find a place in an area like Downtown to have your startup. I think that's really important. That's an important component of what Downtown should be. The crux of the question here is really this question of whether you interpret the language here as drafted by the CAC, Staff and consultant as exclusive or inclusive language. That was the question we heard addressed by Staff. The Mayor has a different interpretation, and that's fair. Reasonable people can disagree about interpreting the language. That happens all the time in all levels of government. I don't read the language as exclusive and prohibiting large offices. I'm okay with one or two bigger companies having some presence in Downtown Palo Alto. When the SurveyMonkey building went up, we were thinking SurveyMonkey would go there and hopefully stay longer than they did. I'd call that more than a small office. I think that's okay. I don't think that this language prohibits that. Again, it's inclusive. Because different people are—as I've listened to this discussion, I've heard people offer different interpretations of the same language. What that TRANSCRIPT      Page 63 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    suggests to me is not that there's such a difference in what we're looking for. I think the priority is small business, small offices like that. I think the issue is clarity. I'd actually like to offer an amendment to the amendment that hopefully we can get unanimous vote on. I'd really hope people will consider this. Vice Mayor Kniss: An Amendment or a Motion? Council Member Wolbach: I'm going to offer an Amendment to the Amendment. That would be, rather than the change offered in the original amendment, to replace the word "containing" in the second line with the word "prioritizing." I think that would clarify that this is an inclusive list but show our priorities, things like residential, restaurants, small offices. If that would be acceptable by the maker and the seconder, that would be my suggestion. Mayor Scharff: That would be acceptable. We'd leave the word "small" in, correct? Council Member Wolbach: That's right. Mayor Scharff: But we'd keep "prioritizing." Council Member Wolbach: The only change to the language as printed would be to change the word "containing" to "prioritizing," but "small office" would remain "small office." Mayor Scharff: Would you consider adding, because I can't make an amendment to an amendment, the word "startup" in there somewhere, since people talked about that? Male: That's a different word. Council Member Wolbach: Yes. I would also be okay with adding that too. Mayor Scharff: I would accept that. Greg, are you fine with that? Council Member Tanaka: Where would that go? Council Member Wolbach: We could add "startups" after—"small office, startups, restaurant." That seems the best way to put it. TRANSCRIPT      Page 64 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Mayor Scharff: They would say "prioritizing," which would get away with the sense that larger companies are not welcome. It would (inaudible) clarity. I agree with Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Tanaka: That's fine. SUBSTITUTE AMENDMENT: Council Member Wolbach moved, seconded by Mayor Scharff to add to the Motion, “including the following change, replace in Policy B-6.1, ‘containing’ with ‘prioritizing’ and add to Policy B-6.1, ‘startups’ after ‘small office.’” (New Part A) Mayor Scharff: I have all the lights lit up, but I think they're lit up to speak to the main Motion. Council Member Wolbach: I want to just make sure, as this gets changed, that we would retain—there we go. That's what I was looking for. Thank you, Staff. Mayor Scharff: Can we vote on this or does anyone else need to speak? Seeing no hands, let's vote. Just on the amendment. Vice Mayor Kniss: We're voting on Tanaka's amendment. Mayor Scharff: As modified by … Council Member Filseth: As modified by Cory. Mayor Scharff: That passes unanimously. Good job, Cory. SUBSTITUTE AMENDMENT PASSED: 9-0 Mayor Scharff: Now, let's see. Council Member Tanaka: Hold on. Should I keep going or … Mayor Scharff: Yep, you can keep going. I'm sorry. Council Member Tanaka: Packet Page 258. I'm a little bit obsessed today about the word "small." On Policy B-4.2, this says "attract and support small business, nonprofit organizations, personal services," etc. For similar reasons, if we're going to have a word there, I would rather have "startup businesses" than "small businesses." I think we want to have successful businesses in Palo Alto. I don't think we want necessarily businesses that are always going to be small. I think we want—I'd rather get rid of "small" TRANSCRIPT      Page 65 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    or have "startup businesses." Either one is fine with me. I wanted to see if the maker of the motion would accept either. Mayor Scharff: What was the question? Council Member Tanaka: On B-4.2, either remove the word "small" or replace the word "small" with "startup." Mayor Scharff: I would be fine with adding the word "startup." I don't see any reason to take out "small business. Mr. Keene: "Attract and support startup businesses," is that correct? Mayor Scharff: It's "small businesses and startups." They actually could be different. Council Member Wolbach: As a separate item? Mayor Scharff: Yeah, as a separate item. You're fine with that, Cory? Council Member Wolbach: Yes, I would accept that. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “add to Policy B-4.2, ‘start- ups’ after ‘small businesses.’” (New Part B) Council Member Tanaka: The same change on 4.2.1, right below it. Would the maker accept that one? Mayor Scharff: It would say "comma small businesses comma startups and other services"? Council Member Tanaka: Yeah. Mayor Scharff: I'm fine with that. Council Member Tanaka: The last one is Policy … Mayor Scharff: (crosstalk) Cory, I was waiting for you. Council Member Wolbach: The first one was under 4.2. This is now in 4.2.1. Yes, that's acceptable. TRANSCRIPT      Page 66 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “add to Program B-4.2.1, ‘start-ups’ after ‘small businesses.’” (New Part C) Council Member Tanaka: The last one is 4.3 for the same reasons as we were talking before. Rather than just "small business," let's say "small and startup businesses." Mayor Scharff: It's up to you. Council Member Wolbach: (inaudible) Mayor Scharff: I'm fine with it. Council Member Wolbach: I would accept that addition. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “add to Policy B-4.3, 'and startups’ after ‘small businesses.’” (New Part D) Council Member Tanaka: That's it. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Fine. Council Member Fine: Thank you. Just two, one on Page 257. Policy B-3.1 talks about comprehensive approach to fiscal sustainability … Mayor Scharff: Wait. Where are you? Sorry. Council Member Fine: Page 257, B-3.1, a comprehensive approach to fiscal sustainability. Having just gone through Finance and our budget, one of the things we were quite focused on and may be worth including here is including a real accounting of pension and benefit costs. I'd like to add to Policy—I'd like to move that we add to Policy B-3.1 … Mayor Scharff: Can you just tell me the Packet Page? People kept … Council Member Fine: 257. To include "a fair and real accounting of the unfunded pension liability and pension benefits." Vice Mayor Kniss: I'd second that. Mayor Scharff: I would accept that. TRANSCRIPT      Page 67 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Council Member Wolbach: As seconder, I just want to ask where would that go? Did you want to add that (crosstalk) … Council Member Wolbach: (crosstalk) policy or as a new program under B- 3? Council Member Fine: Part of Policy B-3.1. It says "careful monitoring of revenues and expenditures, including a real accounting of unfunded pension liability and benefit costs." Council Member Wolbach: I think that is an important thing and happy to see that added. I'll support the amendment. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “add to Policy B-3.1, ‘adds real accounting of unfunded pension liability and unfunded benefit costs.’” (New Part E) Council Member Fine: Only one other. On Goal B-4, Page 258, just a comment to Staff. Goal B-4 is written with an inactive voice. It's just really hard to understand what the point is until you go and read the policies beneath it. I think the goal would probably want to read something like "support diverse commercial retail and professional services through business policies and a culture of innovation." It just seems like it's worded backwards. I'm not going to wordsmith it up here. Mayor Scharff: You sort of have to wordsmith it if we're going to vote on it. Council Member Fine: It's not worth a Motion up here. That's it for now. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mayor Scharff: Vice Mayor Kniss. Vice Mayor Kniss: I have several comments. Do you want it on this or not? Mayor Scharff: On what? There's no Motion. Vice Mayor Kniss: I want to make some comments. Mayor Scharff: Go ahead. Vice Mayor Kniss: Maybe they're to the main Motion. I don't know. Mayor Scharff: We're at the main Motion. TRANSCRIPT      Page 68 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Vice Mayor Kniss: They're the right comments. Mayor Scharff: They're the right comments. Vice Mayor Kniss: I'm back at Page 232. After you look at employment distribution on 230, you go to Figure B-2. You come down to B-3, which talks about sales tax over time, and it's flat. That would say that, when I look back at thriving economy, I'm wondering if we have a thriving economy if we have a flat sales tax. I think it's flat again this year. Let me ask. In budget, have you looked at this year? Mr. Keene: It's a slight increase. It's slow growing to flat to certainly susceptible to disruption and recession. Vice Mayor Kniss: Since we just talked about what actually is the vacancy rate in retail Downtown and we don't know at this point, I'm seeing empty stores, which makes me uneasy. I'm going on to the next page. Without looking through this, where is the section that talks about economic development? Got it. It's Page 236. We just talked about innovation, business, diversity, and so forth and so on. On B-1.1.1, it says "to direct the Palo Alto Office of Economic Development to implement the economic development policy." Help. Mr. Keene: (inaudible) Vice Mayor Kniss: No, 236. I'm on B-1.1.1. Council Member Wolbach: I think she's looking at the clean version. Vice Mayor Kniss: Maybe I am. Maybe I'm looking at the other version. Trust me, it's on Packet Page 236. Where would I find this Office of Economic Development or where would I find the officer of economic development? Mr. Keene: I think that's accurate. That's actually also later repeated under Program B-1.1.1. I don't know why I've got it in two places. Maybe I've got the marked up one and (inaudible). A couple of things. Actually, you wouldn't be directing any office, even if it existed, directly. At most, you would say "direct the City Manager to implement the economic development policy as periodically amended" or you'd strike that. We don't have an office. Even when we had an office, it was a quasi-office. TRANSCRIPT      Page 69 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Vice Mayor Kniss: What troubles me is we don't have somebody who's now—Greg said he found the section where we talk about economic development person or officer, whatever we may call him. What I'm concerned about is, if we're beginning to alter economically as a City without somebody who is tracking what actually is happening, it makes me very uneasy. Maybe I'm the only one that feels uneasy about that. If you go on to B-1.2, where it talks about assuming an active role and fostering businesses including small startups, entrepreneurs, innovative businesses, etc., who's going to be doing that? Mayor Scharff: I will just step in on this. I believe Finance has had these discussions. This is really an issue for Finance in terms of—and then for Council when it comes to us with the budget. We will discuss this when we do the budget about whether or not to add a position to this or not. Now is not the time to have the discussion. Your point was well taken, which was does this belong in the Comp Plan. The City Manager's point was well taken that if people do want to have it in the Comp Plan, it shouldn't say "direct the Office of Economic Development." It should be "direct the City Manager." Vice Mayor Kniss: In that case, I would suggest changing the wording. Mayor Scharff: Or removing it. Vice Mayor Kniss: No. I think you've got to direct somebody to look at the economic development policy. Otherwise, you're just leaving it hanging. Mr. Keene: I think that's the easiest way to clear it up for now. You have subsequent discussions. Even if we have a mini Office of Economic Development or an economic development manager or director, we're not going to rely solely on that one position to implement our economic development policy. When planners are meeting with—the whole point of you guys adopting this Comp Plan is somebody is actually going to share it with somebody. They would be talking with folks, saying, "Here's what we do. Here's what we're looking for." I'm going to be out talking to people about stuff. Actually, you all as Council Members will. You have a role in business attraction and retention at times, saying "We'd love to have your company in our City." Vice Mayor Kniss: That may be, but under a thriving economy, where we're looking at directing somebody, we should say "direct the City Manager to implement the economic development policy." TRANSCRIPT      Page 70 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Mayor Scharff: Is that a motion? Vice Mayor Kniss: Yes. Mayor Scharff: Take out "Palo Alto Office of Economic Development," and write "direct the City Manager to implement the economic development policy." Vice Mayor Kniss: Given that we don't have anyone in that role, then that's what we need to do. Yes. Mayor Scharff: You're not going to accept it. Council Member DuBois: I'll second it. I'll second the Motion. AMENDMENT: Vice Mayor Kniss moved, seconded by Council Member DuBois to add to the Motion, “replace in Program B-1.1.1, ‘direct the Palo Alto Office of Economic Development to’ with ‘direct the City Manager to.’” Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you. It doesn't seem like it's complicated. Do I want to speak to it? Yes. When we look at something, which has a goal and then a program with it, and it's dangling out there without anyone being responsible for it, you need at least to put some direction in here until there is an economic business development person. Maybe there will be at some point in the future. For now, we are going to have to rely on the City Manager to carry that out. Therefore, he becomes responsible for having a thriving economy. Mr. Keene: I don't want to get into semantics. I don't know who the invisible who is who is directing anybody. This is in a plan. Vice Mayor Kniss: I think it's you. Mr. Keene: If it is anybody, it's the Council as a corporate decision-maker. The only people you can direct are the CAOs technically. You should say the City Manager in this case. Mayor Scharff: I was going to direct the Auditor. Vice Mayor Kniss: However you'd like to be listed. It would seem to me the City Manager makes the most sense, to be honest. Council Member DuBois: Just real quickly, this isn't really a question of this year's budget. This is in the Comp Plan. Whether it's funded this year or 5 TRANSCRIPT      Page 71 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    years from now, it belongs in the Comp Plan. Again, maybe it's misnamed. We don't really have economic development in the traditional sense, but we want to manage our retail mix and our business portfolio. I think Los Gatos has a similar position. They call it something else, and they manage their downtown shopping district very well. That's something we can aspire to. Vice Mayor Kniss: Sunnyvale has the same. Mayor Scharff: Does anyone else want to speak to this? I'm just going to clear the lights, and you can all tell me if you want to speak to it. Council Member Filseth. Council Member Filseth: We're going to direct the City Manager to implement the economic development policy, but do we actually have an economic development policy? Mayor Scharff: It says "as periodically amended." Mr. Keene: In here and … Ms. Gitelman: The CAC actually had a draft policy that had been promulgated in the past. They recognized that maybe it wasn't up to date, maybe it wasn't the perfect thing, but it was important to reference. Council Member Filseth: Should the program be have an economic development policy? Mr. Keene: Why don't you just say to implement an economic development policy rather than that. It says "as periodically amended." To me, that just signals the fact that … Council Member Filseth: "An" helps, not to overwhelming wordsmith here. "An" helps. Vice Mayor Kniss: You're making it neutral now. Mayor Scharff: Were there word changes to this because I don't think there … Vice Mayor Kniss: We just added "an." Instead of "the," it's an "an." Mayor Scharff: I wanted to make sure it was captured there. TRANSCRIPT      Page 72 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    AMENDMENT RESTATED: Vice Mayor Kniss moved, seconded by Council Member DuBois to add to the Motion, “replace in Program B-1.1.1, ‘direct the Palo Alto Office of Economic Development to implement the’ with ‘implement an.’” Vice Mayor Kniss: The reason I think this is so important is we function because we're economically vital. As I've heard often from all of you, even though I wasn't here in '10 and '11, '08, '09, '10, and '11, things were bleak. I heard that today. For us not to recognize that is really sidestepping an important part of the Comp Plan. Mayor Scharff: Cory. Council Member Wolbach: I do think it's important to have an economic development manager or office. I can't see how all these programs could possibly be done without one, but the budget isn't agendized tonight. A little preview of where I'm going to be going when that comes up. That's vitally important. If we're going to make this read like other programs—that's the reason I'm open to some kind of change here—we should just start with implement. Forget directing, and just say "implement an economic"—it should say "develop and implement an economic development policy." I would say just start with the word "implement." Another amendment to the amendment, if it's acceptable to Vice Mayor and DuBois. Vice Mayor Kniss: As long as it's understood what the intent is in the Comp Plan, I'm fine with it. Mayor Scharff: What's the language you wanted to add, Cory? Council Member Wolbach: To begin Program B-1.1.1 at the word "implement" and change "the" to "an." Mayor Scharff: Get rid of the word "direct," just start with the word "implement." Council Member Filseth: Get rid of the part about directing the City Manager. Mayor Scharff: I'm fine with it. I don't know. It's up to you, Liz and Tom. It's your amendment. Council Member DuBois: It's okay with me. TRANSCRIPT      Page 73 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Mayor Scharff: Is it okay with you? That's fine. Vice Mayor Kniss: It's not going to make a big difference in the long run. Council Member Wolbach: Again, you've heard my preview for when we talk about the budget. Vice Mayor Kniss: This is not about this year's budget. Mayor Scharff: Can we vote on the Motion? Council Member Holman. Sorry. Council Member Holman: I wanted to offer a Substitute Amendment. Mayor Scharff: Do we have Substitute Amendments? I don't think so. Council Member Holman: We just did earlier. Mayor Scharff: We don't have Substitute Amendments. Council Member Holman: We just did earlier tonight. Vice Mayor Kniss: No. You amended an Amendment. Mayor Scharff: You can amend the Amendment. You can try to amend, but you can't just … Council Member Holman: It was an amendment to an amendment, but then it became a substitute amendment is what I saw on the screen. Mayor Scharff: There was no Substitute Amendment. Council Member Holman: I swear that's what I saw on the screen. Anyway, I will offer an Amendment to the Amendment. It would read like this: the Palo Alto Office of Economic Development implements the economic development policy as periodically amended to guide business activities in the City. Mayor Scharff: We don't have such an office. Council Member Holman: This was a really big deal at the CAC, this Office of Economic Development. Mayor Scharff: Seeing no second, this fails for lack of a second. TRANSCRIPT      Page 74 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    SUBSTITUTE AMENDMENT: Council Member Holman moved, seconded by Council Member XX to add to the Motion, “replace in Program B-1.1.1, ‘direct the Palo Alto Office of Economic Development to implement the Economic Development Policy, as periodically amended, to guide business development’ with ‘the Palo Alto Office of Economic Development implements the Economic Development Policy, as periodically amended to guide business activities.’” SUBSTITUTE AMENDMENT FAILED DUE TO THE LACK OF A SECOND Mayor Scharff: Do you have anything else? Council Member Holman: Not on this Amendment. Before we vote on the main Motion, I also wanted to see if some of these can be broken out separately for voting, for instance "E." AMENDMENT RESTATED: Vice Mayor Kniss moved, seconded by Council Member DuBois to add to the Motion, “replace in Program B-1.1.1, ‘direct the Palo Alto Office of Economic Development to implement the’ with ‘implement an.’” (New Part F) Mayor Scharff: Let's talk to the Amendment right now. If we could vote on the Amendment. That passes on a 7-2 Motion with Council Members Fine and Holman voting no. AMENDMENT PASSED: 7-2 Fine, Holman no Mayor Scharff: Back to the main Motion. Who was speaking last? I want to make sure we're finished. Was it you, Vice Mayor Kniss? Vice Mayor Kniss: I was. Mayor Scharff: Are you done? Vice Mayor Kniss: I was. I was then calling out the sales tax, which is not going to change any Motion. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Filseth. Council Member Filseth: I've got a little bit of commentary on this. Overall, I thought this was generally good, this section. I think it was—I read it as a little bit cluttered. It probably just didn't have as many people going over it line by line as some of the other ones did. I thought it showed a little bit the process. There's a little bit more generic jargon in here than in some of the TRANSCRIPT      Page 75 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    other draft elements. If you dropped it, it probably wouldn't make a lot of difference. Stuff like that. I did think there were a couple of concerns about it. It seemed to me there was a little bit of land use policy creeping into here. In general, we should try to keep that separate. The Staff touched on this in the presentation, the brief presentation this evening. There was some discussion about confrontation versus mutual goals between business and residents. That wasn't so much how I read the original. I thought the existing Comp Plan—that wasn't how it struck me. It struck me that it had some clear guidance on resolving priorities when actually there were conflicting issues. I thought that this version waters down and muddles that prioritization some. On the topic of—I thought there was some well- meaning but over-exuberance maybe on how much impact municipal government could have on developing private sector tech business, fostering innovation and so forth. Government's ability to do that kind of stuff in the private sector may be a little more limited than we'd hope. Some of that's in there unless we want to start doing R&D tax credits in the City or something like that. I don't know. On the topic of sales taxes, since it came up, I believe sales taxes are forecasted to go up 4 1/2 percent next year or something like that. It's not zero. I think they were actually down a little bit, but up a little bit. 4 or 5 percent is not out of typical. I actually think it's worth observing that one of—to be really quantitative about this—Palo Alto's biggest businesses actually isn't in here. Bear me with a second. It's actually the School District. The City's biggest revenue source is actually residential property taxes. We do about $30 million a year in that. Given that the School District's brand image is one of the main contributors to home prices in Palo Alto, if you do the arithmetic, you can actually make a case that the School District is one of the top sources of the General Fund. It doesn't appear anywhere in the Business Element. Worth perspective on it. I had a question about Goal B-1. First of all, I think that goal is really well worded. What I like about it is it relates the Economic Element to what's good for residents. The only change from the original language is "enhance the City's physical environment." I'm wondering what does that mean, for economics to enhance the City's physical environment. Ms. Costello: The kinds of things that were talked about at the CAC were businesses that would really get involved in reducing single occupancy vehicles. When they do new development, they would really look at things that are environmentally sensitive. The idea was businesses would have a role in protecting the quality of the environment and decreasing congestion. They would actually be positive players in that work. TRANSCRIPT      Page 76 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Council Member Filseth: Thanks. That's helpful. On Goal B-2, this is one of those that seems like minor word changes. I don't want to go tremendously down the minor word rat hole here. It seems to me that we've changed "compatible" to "complement," and we've eliminated the word "character." It seems to me that changes the meaning of that goal. Something that's compatible with means one thing, and something that complements it means it's different. It seems like that's a considerable—it's tiny word changes, but it actually means something. I wasn't sure that was a good thing. On 2.3, this is the one I think I'm going to make a motion on. Mayor Scharff: 2.3? Council Member Filseth: On Policy B-2.3. It is on page … Mayor Scharff: I see. 257, 238. Council Member Filseth: 238. I'm on the redline 2.3. "Recognize that employers, businesses, and neighborhoods share many values and concerns, including traffic and parking issues and preserving Palo Alto's livability and need to work together" is generic, good-sounding jargon. It basically says neighborhoods ought to compromise on livability. It implies the policy is that we all meet in the middle of everybody's ask for. That sounds a little pejorative. If you contrast that with the existing policy, which is support commerce but not at the expense of neighborhoods, one of those policies says "neighborhood priorities first," and the other one says "it's all up to negotiation." For example, during the whole parking stakeholder meetings and initiative, a lot of the commercial property owners and the Chamber of Commerce strongly opposed having RPPPs. This provision as written would have provided justification to water them down in the Comp Plan. I don't think this is a policy that's good for residents. In fact, if we proposed this policy as its own ballot measure, I think it'd go down by a landslide. I don't think we ought to make policy that residents would oppose. I think we should remove this policy. I think I'll actually make a motion to do that, that we eliminate Policy B-2.3. Mayor Scharff: I won't accept that. Council Member Holman: I'll second. AMENDMENT: Council Member Filseth moved, seconded by Council Member Holman to add to the Motion, “remove Policy B-2.3.” TRANSCRIPT      Page 77 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Mayor Scharff: It's seconded by—do you want to speak to your Motion further? Eric, that's you. Council Member Filseth: No, I think (crosstalk). Mayor Scharff: Karen. Council Member Holman: I think Council Member Filseth has spoken to it very well. It is counter to other policies. I think it basically deletes the polices that we had in here before that protected neighborhoods. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: Let me see if I can do again what we did earlier with the small businesses and startups and try to find a compromise we can all get behind. On the one hand—just speaking to the values. On the one hand, sometimes we have to make hard calls even if they're politically undesirable, even if it's a hard sell. At the same time, I agree with Council Member Filseth's point that we shouldn't do things that would get defeated in a landslide at the ballot. We should be respectful. There is value in the original language. Some of Council Member Filseth's points are well taken. I also think there's value in the existing one. I'm trying to come up with a suggestion. I'm wondering if there's a way we could amend 2.3 to have it more reflect what the previous language did. The amendment that Council Member Filseth and Holman have offered here wouldn't restore the old language. I can't support that amendment as it is. I don't really think we should just return to the old language. I think there's a way to compromise here. Pardon me for trying to think on my feet. Mr. Keene: Could I make a suggestion? Do you mind? I'll let you think on your feet. Council Member Wolbach: Go for it. I might go with it or not. Mr. Keene: I actually thought "needing to work together" is a good thing to typically put in there. What if you just struck "and need to work together. Recognizing that employers, businesses, and neighborhoods share many values and concerns, including traffic and parking issues and preserving Palo Alto's livability." Council Member Wolbach: I appreciate, that but I would actually not agree with that. I do think we need to work together. I think that was an important priority; that's what I heard in the presentation, that one of the TRANSCRIPT      Page 78 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    key themes that we were trying to go for with this element was working collaboratively rather than competitively. That doesn't mean that residents should sacrifice just for the good of business. Maybe I'll make the same wording change that we made before, which is prioritize or maintain Policy B-2.3 but add at the end "and need to work together with the priority on neighborhood quality of life." I hope that would address the concerns of the maker, of the amendment, and the specific example of RPPP. I'd be open to other tweaks too. Council Member Filseth: That policy doesn't really actually say very much. It says can't we all be nice and work together. I was struck with the City Manager's suggestion of get rid of the last phrase. It reduces it to that without any specific directive. I guess I like Council Member Wolbach's addition better than the existing language. Mr. Keene: Could I put it in context? Council Member Filseth: Yeah. Mr. Keene: Just for a second? Council Member Filseth: Yeah. Mr. Keene: I think the whole category speaks to this; it's called compatibility and interdependence. If you read these things altogether, each one of the policies, it sort of weaves that together, the fact that there's an interconnection between livability in business and neighborhoods. Mayor Scharff: We'll see what you do. If you do accept it, the Clerk needs to fix the amendment to the amendment. Vice Mayor Kniss: Are you adding that after? Mayor Scharff: You can't remove the policy and then add those words. Council Member Filseth: Yeah, yeah. Council Member Wolbach: They would accept (crosstalk). Council Member Filseth: You're right, of course. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Filseth, you have like 2 seconds to make a decision. TRANSCRIPT      Page 79 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Council Member Filseth: I'll accept that. Council Member Wolbach: Would Council Member Holman as well? Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman, yes or no? Council Member Holman: What's happening here is—it really is a substitute amendment because it restores Policy B-2.3 with the additional language of "with a priority on neighborhood quality of life." Is that correct? Council Member Wolbach: That's the substance of what it would do, and I'm proposing it … Council Member Filseth: That's a heck of an Amendment (crosstalk). Council Member Wolbach: … as an Amendment to the Amendment. Mayor Scharff: You don't have to accept it. Council Member Holman: It's not the worst thing in the world, but it's a lot of words that don't have a whole lot of meaning. It's like talking through a hole in our head. I guess it's okay with that additional language. The amendment to the amendment does need to say that Policy B-2.3 is restored. Do you know what I'm saying? Council Member Wolbach: Correct, or retained. Mayor Scharff: It doesn't have to be restored. All you need to do is add the following words. That's what it should say. Council Member Holman: Except that the original Amendment says to remove the policy that we're now amending. We have to restore the policy. You can't amend something that doesn't exist. Mayor Scharff: Once you accept it, then you are no longer doing that. What you're really doing is changing your own motion. By accepting it as a friendly amendment, you're redoing your own motion. That's what you're doing. Council Member Holman: By restoring the original … Council Member Filseth: I'm accepting it as a friendly Amendment. TRANSCRIPT      Page 80 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Mayor Scharff: If you do not accept it as a friendly Amendment, you are correct. It would have to say "restore" as an unfriendly Amendment. As a friendly Amendment, it actually becomes the other way. Council Member Holman: You know there's no such thing as a friendly Amendment. There is no such thing. Council Member Wolbach: Let me be clear. I really intended this to be a friendly Amendment. Mayor Scharff: There is under our policies, which we've used for the last 10 years. Council Member Holman: I'm just trying to get it clear what we're doing. Again, you can't amend something that's been deleted. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman, do you accept or not accept? Council Member Holman: If the language is clarified, yes. Mayor Scharff: Let's clarify the language. Vice Mayor Kniss: You're not removing it anymore. You've left Policy 2.3, and now you've added real words. Right? Council Member Wolbach: Right. Mayor Scharff: It's still an Amendment. Council Member Wolbach: Would that be acceptable? Filseth's accepted it. Mayor Scharff: Yes. Karen, is that the language that you anticipated? That's accepted. AMENDMENT TO THE AMENDMENT: Council Member Filseth moved, seconded by Council Member Holman to add to the Motion, “add to Policy B- 2.3, ‘with a priority on neighborhood quality of life.’” Mayor Scharff: I see no other lights on. Can we vote on the Amendment? That passes 9-0. AMENDMENT PASSED: 9-0 TRANSCRIPT      Page 81 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Council Member Filseth: Thanks. I have a few more here. What time is it? Let's see. On 4.1, I want to comment on 4.1, which there was a number of amendments on. First of all, in Goal B-4, stimulation of diverse commercial retail and professional services business opportunities through supported business policies and culture of innovation, I think we overstate the City's ability to foster a culture of innovation in town. That comes from other places. That's more jargon. Mayor Scharff: Where are you? Council Member Filseth: Goal B-4. I'm not going to—those words should go away, but I'm not going to make a motion on it at the moment. What I do want to comment on is we had a bunch of discussion, a couple of amendments on B-4.1. Where is that? That's right. First of all, I think B-4.1, nurture and support Palo Alto's image as a global center of emerging technology by fostering innovation, supporting the established technology sector as well as attract new businesses, is just word clutter. If you guys want to keep it, we can keep it, but I think it doesn't add anything. The one thing I thought was material is, when we got down to the programs underneath it, 4.2.1 and 4.2.2 and Policy B-4.2. I read that—let me ask if the CAC took it that way. I read that as the CAC wanted to make sure that non-tech business—the ones they mention, small businesses, nonprofit organizations, professional services—wouldn't get crowded out by tech businesses. That was how I read that one. We all know there's this one guy on California Avenue, and he's got $50 million from NEA and a couple of other places. He can afford to pay whatever rent because he doesn't have to make a profit and stuff like that for a few years. Those kind of businesses can afford to pay more for office space than attorneys and so forth. I read that one as trying to make sure there was a diversity of businesses. We went through and said, "No, no. That counts for startups and so forth too." I wondered if we're not changing the intent of what the CAC meant on that. It's actually amendments B, C, and D. Mayor Scharff: You're going back to those. Council Member Filseth: Yeah. Ms. Costello: I don't think adding the word "startups" is a major change to this policy. It adds another aspect to it. The CAC was focused on making sure that nonprofits had places. They in general during conversations had an interest in small startups too. TRANSCRIPT      Page 82 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Council Member Filseth: If that's what they intended, then I'm good with it. I had a question on Policy B-4.3, promote the growth of small businesses. Is that actually a subset of B-4-6, which is encourage, support operation of small, independent retail business and locally serving professional services? I'm asking if those are the same actually or one's superfluous. Ms. Gitelman: The one is very specific to retail and neighborhood-serving uses. The other is any kind of small business and now startups. Council Member Filseth: That was that one. I felt on 4.6 that we're struggling for programs for that policy. The intent of the policy is right. We're going to develop strategies to help local retail adapt to online? The Mayor's going where I was going to go; why don't we just delete 4.6.2, 4.6.3 and … Mayor Scharff: 4.6.4. Council Member Filseth: Actually, I kind of like 4.6.4. I thought that one made sense. I was going to propose we delete 4.6.2 and 4.6.3. Mayor Scharff: I'll accept that. Council Member Filseth: Nope, okay. Mayor Scharff: Good. I'll second it. AMENDMENT: Council Member Filseth moved, seconded by Mayor Scharff to add to the Motion, “remove Programs B-4.6.2 and B-4.6.3.” Council Member Filseth: I'll speak to it just briefly. I agree with the intent of the policy. I don't think these programs say anything or do anything other than evaluate which types of business are most likely to be successful (inaudible) develop strategies for retail to adapt to online. I just don't think the ability of the municipal government is to do this. Mayor Scharff: I'll speak to it briefly. We do have a lot of programs in the Comp Plan. Some of these programs, the impacts of online shopping on local, traditional retail use, and develop strategies to help traditional retail adapt, talk about what a waste of money. When I look through our Consent Calendar and how much money we spend on consultants, most of it's justified and we should do it. If this came before us, that we were going to do a study on whether or not online retailing is hurting our retail, why spend the money? It's a complete waste of time. I think it takes away from other TRANSCRIPT      Page 83 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    things. I feel the same way about evaluate which types of business are most likely to be successful and where. Vice Mayor Kniss: That's what the economic developer does, seriously. Mayor Scharff: I don't think it's a big deal. If we actually decide we're going to spend money on studying the impacts of online shopping, I wouldn't do it. Vice Mayor Kniss. Vice Mayor Kniss: The reason that I want to leave this in is many people have said to me, "Aren't you concerned about what's happening in the real world," which is where so many people are using Amazon or something else. We eventually are going to feel the pinch of online shopping. We probably already are. I don't know why you—leave it in there as a program. We know not all these programs are going to get done. I would leave that one in there in particular to say we really did know online shopping could be a problem. I think it already is a problem, but who's evaluating it? Nobody. Mayor Scharff: Every newspaper in America. Council Member Filseth: Every newspaper, every (inaudible), every … Aren't we just saying we're going to throw some money at it for the sake of saying we threw some money at it? It's not going to do anything. Vice Mayor Kniss: I think if we don't include this, we've put blinders on and said, "We're not worried about that." If you want my opinion. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: If it's already been studied very carefully and very extensively, then it shouldn't take too much time or money for a future economic development manager or if we get Tommy back to summarize the research that's already been done and see how we can apply it to Palo Alto. When it comes to prioritizing these programs, maybe this isn't our top priority. We have a lot of programs in here. I don't think these need to be removed. Maybe they're lower priority. I'm not going to support the amendment. Mr. Keene: What if you just said "consider" rather than "study," "consider the impacts"? I'm going to bring an Atlantic article that's going to explain this whole thing rather than us going out and studying it. It's evolving. Vice Mayor Kniss: Where are we on this, Mr. Mayor? TRANSCRIPT      Page 84 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Mr. Keene: The first thing I would be doing is asking for an … Mayor Scharff: Right now we have remove Programs 4.6.2 and 4.6.3. It's up to Council Member … Council Member Filseth: (inaudible) Mayor Scharff: Do you want to—we could clearly vote on it. The question is … Vice Mayor Kniss: What did you want to do to this one to make it perfect? Council Member Filseth: I think we ought to remove Programs 4.6.2 and 4.6.3. We probably ought to vote on it. That would be my guess. Mayor Scharff: That's what I would do. Who else wants to speak? Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: I have no problem deleting B-4.6.3. I have no problem deleting that. B-4.6.2, I'm more in line with the thinking of Council Member Wolbach. What if, as an amendment to this amendment, we consider the impacts? I'm not quite sure what is meant by traditional retail. Does it mean brick and mortar? What was the intention here? Was it brick and mortar? Ms. Costello: Yes. Council Member Holman: "Consider the impacts" and change "traditional" to "brick and mortar retail." Mayor Scharff: I'm good with that if you are, Council Member Filseth. Council Member Wolbach: Would that still get rid of 4.6.3? Council Member Holman: It would still get rid of 4.6.3. Council Member Filseth: Are we still developing strategies to help local retail adapt? Council Member Holman: Yes. Council Member Filseth: I'm not going to accept it. I think we ought to split 4.6.2 and 4.6.3 and vote on them separately. TRANSCRIPT      Page 85 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Mayor Scharff: I'll split it when we vote. Does anyone else need to speak on this? Council Member Wolbach, you want to speak again? Council Member Wolbach: Yeah. It sounds like we're splitting them up. I would suggest, on 4.6.2, change "study" to "consider" and in 4.6.3 change "evaluate" to "consider" and keep both of them with the word "consider" on each. Council Member Holman: It was replace 4.6.2; I did say "consider the impacts." Mayor Scharff: I think we need to break these up. Can Staff do this, break it up? Where are we right now? Your Motion was delete 4.6.2. Council Member Filseth: Right. Mayor Scharff: That's really what that was. You did not accept "study the impacts of." Unless Karen wants to make that an amendment to that amendment? Council Member Holman: That was my intention. Amend that to say "consider the impacts of online shopping on local brick and mortar." Mayor Scharff: I'll take that one first. Then, we'll vote on the Amendment to the … Council Member Holman: Actually, it's just "to help local brick and mortar adapt." I don't think the word "local" is … Mayor Scharff: You need a second. Vice Mayor Kniss: I'm glad to second it if I can figure out why you need "brick and mortar." Council Member Holman: Because what does "traditional" mean? It's just "brick and mortar" instead of "traditional." Vice Mayor Kniss: You're just getting very precise. This leaves 4.6.2 in place, and it gets rid of 4.6.3. Right? Council Member Holman: Yes. 4.6.2 is changed to "consider the impacts." Vice Mayor Kniss: This still says "study." Now we're on to "consider"? TRANSCRIPT      Page 86 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Council Member Holman: Somewhere it's in here. The amendment says "consider the impacts of online shopping on brick and mortar." Vice Mayor Kniss: The third line should say "consider." If we're going to talk about consider the impacts—is that the one you want to change "study" to "consider"? Council Member Holman: Yeah. "Study" to "consider." Vice Mayor Kniss: That's fine. AMENDMENT TO THE AMENDMENT: Council Member Holman moved, seconded by Vice Mayor Kniss to replace in the Amendment, “remove Programs B-4.6.2 and” with “replace in Program B-4.6.2, ‘study the impacts of online shopping on local traditional’ with ‘consider the impacts of online shopping on brick and mortar’ and remove Program.” Vice Mayor Kniss: Are we done? Mayor Scharff: I think so. You seconded it, so it's Council Member … Vice Mayor Kniss: I did. Mayor Scharff: It's Vice Mayor Kniss. Let's vote on the Amendment to the Amendment unless someone needs to speak to it. That fails on a 5-4 motion. AMENDMENT TO THE AMENDMENT FAILED: 4-5 Holman, Kniss, Kou, Wolbach yes Mayor Scharff: Now, we're back to the amendment to delete. Anyone else to speak to it? I didn't mean to shut anyone off. Vice Mayor Kniss: Which one are we going to delete? Both of them? Mayor Scharff: We're going to vote on them one at a time. Someone asked for that. We'll vote on B-4.6.2 first. AMENDMENT SPLIT FOR THE PURPOSE OF VOTING AMENDMENT1 RESTATED: Council Member Filseth moved, seconded by Mayor Scharff to add to the Motion, “remove Program B-4.6.2.” TRANSCRIPT      Page 87 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    AMENDMENT2 RESTATED: Council Member Filseth moved, seconded by Mayor Scharff to add to the Motion, “remove Program B-4.6.3.” Council Member Wolbach: I think it's a simpler Amendment than the previously considered one, so it is a different amendment. I'd make an amendment to the amendment. We're just on B-4.6.2 now, correct? Vice Mayor Kniss: Right. Council Member Wolbach: Replace the word "study" with "consider" and the word "develop" with "consider." Council Member Wolbach: Is there a second or would it be acceptable? Vice Mayor Kniss: I'll second it. SUBSTITUTE AMENDMENT1: Council Member Wolbach moved, seconded by Vice Mayor Kniss to add to the Motion, “replace in Program B-4.6.2, ‘study’ with ‘consider’ and ‘develop’ with ‘consider.’” Vice Mayor Kniss: I want this to stay in, and I'm not beginning to care what it says anymore as long as it talks about what is (crosstalk). Council Member Filseth: Cory, I'll accept that as a friendly Amendment. Mayor Scharff: I'll accept it too. That gets incorporated too. You recognize that? Council Member Filseth: That's true. No, I'm going to reject it. Mayor Scharff: He's going to reject it. Council Member Filseth: Sorry. I'm going to reject it. Late at night, I'm getting confused. Council Member Wolbach: Kniss seconded it. Council Member Filseth: The Vice Mayor seconded it. Mayor Scharff: No, I didn't actually. Vice Mayor Kniss: I did. Mayor Scharff: Liz did. TRANSCRIPT      Page 88 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Vice Mayor Kniss: I seconded it. Mayor Scharff: Cory, just make sure your language is right. Council Member Wolbach: It was in B-4.6.2 replace the word "study" with "consider" and the word "develop" with "consider." It wouldn't be "replace in the amendment;" it would be "replace the amendment with." Hoping for a little more kumbaya on this one. Mayor Scharff: Let's vote. That fails on a—Council Member Kou is a no, right? Council Member Kou: Yes, it's a no. Mayor Scharff: If you actually do mean to abstain, just let me know. Otherwise, I'm always going to consider it to be a no. I know your light's broken. That's fails on a 7-2 motion. SUBSTITUTE AMENDMENT1 FAILED: 2-7 Kniss, Wolbach yes Mayor Scharff: Now, if we could vote on the original amendment. Vice Mayor Kniss: What was the original amendment? Mayor Scharff: We split them. Council Member Wolbach: We're voting on which one first? Mayor Scharff: We split it in two. I think you asked to split it. Council Member Holman: What are we voting on specifically? Mayor Scharff: Right now, we're voting on removing 4.6.2. Council Member Holman: I thought you were saying we're voting on the whole motion. Mayor Scharff: Nope, nope, nope. AMENDMENT1 RESTATED: Council Member Filseth moved, seconded by Mayor Scharff to add to the Motion, “remove Program B-4.6.2.” (New Part H) Mayor Scharff: That Amendment passes on a 7-2 vote with Council Members Wolbach and Holman voting no. TRANSCRIPT      Page 89 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    AMENDMENT1 PASSED: 7-2 Holman, Wolbach no AMENDMENT2 RESTATED: Council Member Filseth moved, seconded by Mayor Scharff to add to the Motion, “remove Program B-4.6.3.” (New Part I) Mayor Scharff: Now, we're going to vote on removing 4.6.3. If we could vote on the board. That passes on a 6-3 vote with Council Members Wolbach, Kniss, and Tanaka voting no. AMENDMENT2 PASSED: 6-3 Kniss, Tanaka, Wolbach no Council Member Filseth: Thank you. Vice Mayor Kniss: We kept a program and got rid of (crosstalk). Mayor Scharff: We got rid of two programs. Council Member Filseth: We got rid of two programs. I'm going to propose in Policy B-5.1, which is on Page 260—the policy reads: maintain a healthy business climate which provides for predictability and flexibility for those seeking City approvals. Mayor Scharff: Wait. Where are you? Council Member Filseth: On Policy B-5.1, top of Page 260. Mayor Scharff: Got it. Council Member Filseth: I'm going to propose that we change the word "flexibility" to "efficiency." Flexibility, who could argue against that? In this context, it's one of those magic jargon words. In this context, we're talking about seeking City approvals, which is what this policy is about. If you interpret it as Codes and rules are flexible, it's the opposite of predictability. It's that lack of predictability that leads to the Palo Alto process, which is things take forever. Mayor Scharff: "And efficiency"? Council Member Filseth: Not "flexibility," just "efficiency." Mayor Scharff: We changed the word "flexibility" to "efficiency." Council Member Filseth: That's correct. That's what we should be pushing for. People should get a quick answer. TRANSCRIPT      Page 90 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Mayor Scharff: I'm good with that. Council Member Wolbach: I will accept that also. Good catch. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “replace in Policy B-5.1, ‘flexibility’ with ‘efficiency.’” (New Part J) Council Member Filseth: Program B-5.1.2 says "improve design guidelines to reduce ambiguity and more clearly articulate design compatibility principles." I think there's actually a jargon word for that, which is subjective design criteria. Is there lust on this group to change that? I'm okay with "compatibility" if people want to keep that. I think there's actually a jargon word for that. Mayor Scharff: I think we should stick with "compatibility." Council Member Filseth: I'm okay with that. B-5.3, we don't have an Office of Economic Development. Mayor Scharff: Take it out. Council Member Filseth: We should excise that one until such time as we do decide we're going to have an office. Mayor Scharff: Where are you? Where is it again? Council Member Filseth: It's on Packet Page 261, the very top, Policy B-5.3. Mayor Scharff: I will accept removing it. Cory? Council Member Wolbach: I will not, but I'd be open to perhaps tweaking it. Mayor Scharff: I have no interest in tweaking it. Council Member Filseth: I don't either. Mayor Scharff: I'll second your Motion. AMENDMENT: Council Member Filseth moved, seconded by Mayor Scharff to add to the Motion, “remove Policy B-5.3.” Council Member Filseth: I don't think we should have policies in here about stuff that doesn't exist. TRANSCRIPT      Page 91 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Mayor Scharff: I also don't think we should lock into the Comp Plan, frankly, any … Council Member Filseth: I agree. Mayor Scharff: … City department ever. Council Member Filseth: City organization. Mayor Scharff: We might want to eventually—you might want to outsource that 50 years from now or 20 years from now. Who knows? Council Member Filseth: I think that's an excellent point. You're taking out of the City Manager's hand what his organization looks like. Mayor Scharff: Do you want to speak to it, Council Member Wolbach, or not? Council Member Wolbach: Actually, I was going to wait for you guys to speak to it. Council Member Filseth: I've spoken. Council Member Wolbach: I guess I'd suggest, instead of eliminating it, instead of the words "strengthen the role of the Office of Economic Development," just say "focus on economic development." That would be my amendment to the amendment, retain Policy B-5.3 but change the words "strengthen the role of the Office of Economic Development" to "focus on economic development." Council Member Filseth: I don't think I'm going to accept that. There's plenty of language in here about focusing on … Vice Mayor Kniss: I'll be seconding it. It's an Amendment. SUBSTITUTE AMENDMENT: Council Member Wolbach moved, seconded by Vice Mayor Kniss to add to the Motion, “replace in Policy B-5.3, ‘strengthen the role of the Office of’ with ‘focus on.’” (New Part K) Mayor Scharff: Do you wish to speak further to it? Council Member Wolbach: The concept is important, but I was persuaded that we shouldn't direct in nuance which offices, departments, etc., are TRANSCRIPT      Page 92 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    created. The goal here is still important. As a policy, it's reasonable to include. Mayor Scharff: Vice Mayor Kniss. Vice Mayor Kniss: I think we're sticking our head in the sand with some of this. We're pretending we don't need anyone overlooking economic development. Maybe we've just had too many years that are good. We somehow are ignoring the fact that most cities really do need to concentrate on economic development. Whether we talk about strengthening the role or whether we talk about—however we put it semantically, somehow in here for me the Office of Economic Development needs to exist. Mayor Scharff: I just want to clarify that we would actually be deleting "strengthening the role of the Office of Economic Development." The paragraph would start with "focus on economic development." I will support this. I just want to say that. Council Member Tanaka. Council Member Tanaka: I was confused. I was trying to get that clarified. I'm glad you clarified it already. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman, did you want to speak? Council Member Holman: Was that the intention of the amendment? I thought it was to focus the role of the Office of Economic Development to attract and retain. What was your intention, Council Member Wolbach? Council Member Wolbach: My objective is achieved by this language. Rather than directing here the creation or assuming here the existence of a particular office, we would instead focus on policy, not the mechanism for implementing that policy. The mechanisms we can leave up to Staff. Budget discussions again, you know how I'm going to feel when the budget comes to us. I'm again persuaded that the policies don't need to stipulate the nuance of the implementation. Council Member Holman: It's going to say "focus on attracting and retaining local-serving business"? Council Member Wolbach: It would say "focus on economic development to attract and retain local-serving businesses," etc., etc. Council Member Holman: I'm not going to support it because this was really important to the CAC. I think we do refer to other positions in the Comp TRANSCRIPT      Page 93 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Plan, for instance the Office of Sustainability. I think we do refer to those other offices. We have had not the best success with our economic development persons. I'll relate a story that I shared at Finance Committee. When there are businesses that might make good tenants in Palo Alto, because we don't have anybody in that position, I contacted a local property owner here who's very successful in retail. I suggested a potential tenant for a location, and he goes, "We need an Economic Development Manager to do that outreach." Council Member Wolbach: To be clear, I also think we need an Economic Development Manager or maybe a whole office. To me, this isn't the place to do it. Mr. Keene: Maybe we need five people. Seriously, we need to have that discussion somewhere else rather than making the conclusion right now to fit with the goals with you want to achieve. Council Member Holman: Just to finish it, I don't know how we can focus on that without having an Office of Economic Development, whether it's one person or whatever it is. It takes an experienced person to carry forward those tasks. Vice Mayor Kniss: Can I reply to that? Mayor Scharff: If you want to. Vice Mayor Kniss: Karen, I agree with you. When we had this argument about half an hour ago, there was no way that I could get Office of Economic Development in there. Instead, we got the CEO or our City Manager in there. My whole goal is simply to make sure that we are attempting to have somebody in that role that is paying attention to what is going on in the economy in our City. That person doesn't exist at the moment. Mayor Scharff: If we can vote on the amendment. Council Member Filseth: What are we voting on? Mayor Scharff: We're voting on the Amendment to the Amendment. Vice Mayor Kniss: We're voting on Cory's new language. Mayor Scharff: It's Cory's Amendment to the Amendment. TRANSCRIPT      Page 94 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Council Member Wolbach: If it was accepted by Scharff, was it also accepted by Filseth? Mayor Scharff: It was not. Council Member Filseth: If it fails, then what? Mayor Scharff: If it fails, then we go back to the Amendment. We vote on the original Amendment, which is to get rid of it. Vice Mayor Kniss: This saves it. Yours gets rid of it, to make it simple. Mayor Scharff: That passes on a 7-2 vote Council Members Filseth and Holman voting no. SUBSTITUTE AMENDMENT PASSED: 7-2 Filseth, Holman no Mr. Keene: Mr. Mayor? Mayor Scharff: Yes. Mr. Keene: May I just say something? I think we can assuage some of the concerns. This is the General Plan. This is not every decision the Council has to make. A good way to think about it is we don't have an Office of Economic Development right now. If we create one, I don't feel that we have to come back and amend the Comp Plan before we create an Office of Economic Development. You make lots of decisions outside of the context. That's in support of a goal that you clearly stated. Mayor Scharff: I think I'd like to add something that every time you add a position, we need to amend the Comp Plan. It would be a good plan. Go on. Council Member Filseth: I have one more. On Packet Page 262, Policy B-6.5 and B-6.6 seem like they're not even consistent with each other. I'm not sure what they say. One of them says—first of all, they both look like land use policies to me, not economic development policy. One of them says El Camino corridor should have well-designed retail, professional services, and housing. The next one says that corridor should have retail uses, housing, and office space. They can't both be right. They both look like land use policies, not economic policies. Can I ask Staff what was the CAC going for here? TRANSCRIPT      Page 95 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Ms. Costello: I think this might be one of those cases where something was done—this did not get a lot of attention. Quite frankly, I can't remember that it got—I think one policy got added, and then another time the other one got added. This is the kind of policy where you could give us direction to go in and just make it internally consistent and merge it. There is a lot in land use about the El Camino corridor. Council Member Filseth: Should I make a Motion here to direct Staff to go … Mayor Scharff: Why don't you do that? Direct Staff to (crosstalk). Council Member Filseth: Direct Staff to clean up Policies B-6.5 and B-6.6 and also determine whether it belongs in this element or in land use. There's a bunch of stuff in land use like this already. Vice Mayor Kniss: That's the kind of Motion I can support. Staff, go clean it up. I like that. Mayor Scharff: I'm fine with it. Are you? Council Member Wolbach: I'll accept it also as friendly. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECOND to add to the Motion, “clean up and potentially merge Policies B-6.5 and B-6.6 for consistency and confirm if these Policies belong in the Business and Economics Element.” (New Part L) Vice Mayor Kniss: We could have done that with a number of them tonight. Council Member Filseth: Thank you very much. Thank you for your indulgence, both Council and Staff. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach. Then, Council Member DuBois, you want to speak, right? Council Member DuBois: Yeah. Mayor Scharff: Then, Council Member Holman, you wanted to speak, correct? Vice Mayor Kniss: Have you got a few more? Council Member DuBois: I haven't spoken yet. TRANSCRIPT      Page 96 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Council Member Wolbach: I don't think it needs to be a motion. I'll just point out that this could use a once over for grammar and punctuation. Just as an example, Goal B-1 has a missing comma after "economic vitality," stuff like that. I'd just encourage a cleanup pass. I don't think it needs to be in the motion. Mayor Scharff: Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: I have some questions real quick. First of all, the redlines in the goals, were those edits to the goals that Council set? I don't think any other element edited Council's goals. Why did that happen in this element? Ms. Costello: There were edits to Council goals throughout the other elements as well. I think this is the only one where a new goal was added, the one about fiscal. Council Member DuBois: I thought the CAC was directed not to focus on the vision and goals, but to do the policies and programs. Mayor Scharff: They were. Council Member DuBois: Packet Page 252, maybe I'm misunderstanding these charts. They look like they show revenue in the same years, but they show different numbers. I was confused. Like 2009, one has revenue over $500 million; the other has it under $500 million. Mr. Keene: One's expenses and one's revenues. Council Member DuBois: The revenue line is the—most of the years, they're different numbers if you compare B-4 to B-5 for revenues. Ms. Gitelman: We'll look at that. Council Member DuBois: I had the same comment that Vice Mayor Kniss did. Sales tax has been flat through an economic boom. To me that was actually the most important issue in the Business Element, and it's really not addressed, that the City's revenue through sales tax is at risk as business shifts away from selling products. Ms. Gitelman: There was quite a bit of discussion of retail and what to do to reinforce and support retail services. That was a focus of the policy framework. TRANSCRIPT      Page 97 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Council Member DuBois: It's kind of late at night, and we're not going to get to it. We talked a lot about startups and other kinds of companies that actually generate no revenue for the City and balancing that with companies that actually do generate revenue. To me, that's the most important part of the Business Element. We don't really cover it. On 263, we lost—maybe it got moved somewhere else—a reference to the neighborhood centers. Did that get removed from the Business Element? The neighborhood centers, Edgewood, Midtown. Ms. Costello: These were moved to land use. Council Member DuBois: They're still there; they're just not in … Ms. Costello: This is just showing that they used to be here. We tried to show the changes from what was in the existing Comp Plan. They were previous policies, and we moved them to land use. Council Member DuBois: I spent a fair amount of time on the goals themselves, which changed. Looking at Goal B-2 back on Page 256, I would make a Motion that we revert that back to the Council written goal, which would be … Mayor Scharff: On 256? Council Member DuBois: Yeah, B-2. It talks about a business environment that complements the residential neighborhoods. We have compatibility ordinances; we don't have complementary ordinances. I don't know what it means. The language "business environment that is compatible with the residential character of the neighborhoods" is a better goal. Mayor Scharff: I'm not going to accept it. The reason is the term "compatibility" that we use is not in the context here. Compatibility, we usually use it in terms of what Council Member Filseth was talking about, subjective design criteria. That's not what this means. I think complements is a better choice. I think it's a more aspiring and welcoming choice that belongs in a Comp Plan. Council Member Kou: I second it. Mayor Scharff: It's seconded by Council Member Kou. AMENDMENT: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Council Member Kou to add to the Motion, “replace Goal B-2 with, ‘a thriving TRANSCRIPT      Page 98 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    business environment that is compatible with Palo Alto’s residential character and natural environment.’” Council Member DuBois: There's a heading here, compatibility and interdependence, but then we switch words. I think compatibility is much clearer. Council Member Filseth talked about this one, but he didn't make a motion. Again, I just want to make sure the Motion's correct. The motion as written is what I'm proposing. Go ahead. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Kou, would you like to speak to your second? Council Member Kou: I agree with Council Member DuBois. The word "complement" to me gives me the definition that it completes the other part, the other half. I don't think that "environment" completes the neighborhoods or the residential neighborhoods. I agree that going back to the original language is a lot more stronger. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: I'll offer another Amendment to an Amendment. I'm inclined to support this amendment, but I suggest a compromise that might get broader support on the Council. That would be "a thriving business environment that complements and is compatible with Palo Alto's residential neighborhoods and natural environment." That would keep the words "complement" and "compatible" but also keep the change that was proposed by the CAC from "character" to "neighborhoods." I think places like the Stanford Research Park or Stanford Shopping Center where there isn't a residential character … Council Member DuBois: I think you're on a roll tonight. I'll accept that. Council Member Kou: Me too. INCORPORATED INTO THE AMENDMENT WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Amendment, “complements and” after “environment that” and replace in the Amendment, “character” with “neighborhoods.” Council Member Wolbach: With that, I would accept it as friendly. Mayor Scharff: Not me. Shall we vote on it? Did you want to speak, Council Member Holman? I saw your light on. I wasn't sure. TRANSCRIPT      Page 99 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Council Member DuBois: It was accepted. The Amendment to the Amendment replaces the Amendment. Mayor Scharff: That's correct. Council Member Wolbach: Let's see that before we vote, if we could. AMENDMENT AS AMENDED RESTATED: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Council Member Kou to add to the Motion, “replace Goal B-2 with, ‘a thriving business environment that complements and is compatible with Palo Alto’s residential neighborhoods and natural environment.’” (New Part M) Mayor Scharff: That passes on a 6-3 vote with myself, Tanaka, and Fine voting no. AMENDMENT AS AMENDED PASSED: 6-3 Fine, Scharff, Tanaka no Council Member DuBois: Policy B-2.4 on Page 257, my Motion there would be to revert it back to the original language. Council Member Wolbach: Which one is it? Council Member DuBois: Policy B-2.4 on Page 257. It says "using a variety of planning and regulatory tools including growth limits to ensure compatibility, to ensure change is compatible with the needs of Palo Alto neighborhoods." Given the intense criticism of our jobs/housing imbalance, I don't think we should take anything off the table, including growth limits as a tool is important to consider. Council Member Holman: I'll second. Council Member DuBois: I'll do that as well. Instead of "use," just say "consider a variety of planning tools including growth limits." That was a friendly amendment. Mayor Scharff: I like the language they already have here. I'm going to say no. Council Member Wolbach: I'll second it. AMENDMENT: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Council Member Holman to add to the Motion, “replace Policy B-2.4 with, ‘consider a variety of planning and regulatory tools including growth limits, to ensure TRANSCRIPT      Page 100 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    change is compatible with the needs of Palo Alto neighborhoods.’” (New Part N) Council Member DuBois: I'm not going to speak to it further. Mayor Scharff: Shall we vote on it? Council Member Wolbach: (inaudible) second? Council Member Holman: (inaudible) my second. Mayor Scharff: If you want to. Council Member Holman: I did. I appreciate Tom bringing this up. I don't even know what healthy, stable neighborhoods—I'm not sure what that language means or indicates, which is the new language. I support what Tom has done here. Mayor Scharff: That passes on a 5-4 vote with Council Members Kniss, Scharff, Tanaka, and Fine voting no. AMENDMENT PASSED: 5-4 Fine, Kniss, Scharff, Tanaka no Council Member DuBois: I'll try to get (inaudible) quickly. Goal B-3, fiscal responsibility, was a totally new goal. It really seemed out of place to me. I want to ask Staff does this really belong in the Governance Element rather than the Business Element. Ms. Gitelman: There was some discussion of this. I think the CAC or at first the subcommittee and then the full CAC thought this was inextricably linked, as you had pointed out, to revenues that are generated by businesses and sales tax and the like. This was a good place for this thought. Council Member DuBois: We still have the amendment about pensions and things too, which seems out of place now. Again, it seems more of a governance issue. I'm looking at my colleagues to see if anybody else has any strong feelings about this one. Basically, in our Business Element, we now have a thing about fiscal responsibility and unfunded pensions. It seems like it belongs in the Governance Element. Nobody's nodding their heads. Council Member Filseth: Can I try? Mayor Scharff: Sure, go ahead. TRANSCRIPT      Page 101 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Vice Mayor Kniss: Where do you want to put it, Tom? Council Member DuBois: In governance. Council Member Filseth: For me, the fact that it's the Business and Economic Element makes a difference. I think it could go either place. If it was just the Business Element, I might feel more strongly. For me, since it's the Economic Element too, I was okay with it. Council Member Holman: Were you offering that as a Motion? Council Member DuBois: No. I was just going to move on. B-5.1.1, was there a reason that we struck the line about hazardous materials and the water quality regulations? Ms. Costello: As I recall, it's because it's in the Safety Element and to try to eliminate duplication. Ms. Gitelman: I think the way it was amended, it's a little broader. Council Member DuBois: It said just including but not limited to. You're saying it's included in the Safety Element? Ms. Costello: This was not the subject of great and long debate. It was just a way to make it, as Ms. Gitelman said, broader and not so wordy. Council Member DuBois: I would make the Motion to have—Greg? Mayor Scharff: I'm sorry. Council Member DuBois: Just make the Motion to have Staff take a look at this one and make sure it's consistent. Mayor Scharff: 5.1.1, what's your concern with it? Council Member DuBois: They deleted "including issues relating to hazardous materials and water quality regulations." I think they believe it's in the Safety Element. I'm just saying to have Staff verify it's consistency and that it's in the Plan somewhere. Mayor Scharff: You want to just crosscheck that it's in the Plan somewhere. Does Staff need direction to do that or can you just do it? TRANSCRIPT      Page 102 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Council Member DuBois: The last one. Thank you guys for putting up with me. I'm looking at Packet Page 264, the very last one, Policy B-7.7. We had talked about this quite a bit at some point. This was the idea of having—we talk about affordable housing. This was the idea of having affordable business locations. I would restore the struck-out line about discouraging actions that could increase the cost of business space. That's my motion. I don't know if you want me to talk to that. The idea here was that we have very few business areas that are more affordable in the City. This is one of the last almost semi-industrial parts of town. I think it's important to recognize it as such. I think that was the original intent of this policy. Ms. Gitelman: Mayor Scharff, if I can just interject. I think our thought was and the CAC agreed that we can't exactly preclude property owners from seeking to upgrade their buildings and renovate their buildings, which … Mayor Scharff: You took the words right out of my mouth. Is that really what we're going to do, discourage people from fixing up their property? Council Member DuBois: What is the intent of this policy? Ms. Gitelman: I think we tried to make it into something that was more like a balancing act. Yes, we want lower-cost space, but we do want people to be able to upgrade their space and have more buildings that meet contemporary needs. Council Member DuBois: I just wanted to restore the deleted sentence. It would be a combination of the new language. Ms. Gitelman: Again, I think we had a real concern that the City can't really be in a position to discourage property owners from improving their properties. Council Member DuBois: Thanks for explaining that. Thanks. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: To the last one, I think—correct me if I'm wrong. I look to the Director. I think the original was "discourage actions." I took that to be zoning changes. I would suggest to Council Member DuBois that we revert to the original language, discourage zoning actions that could increase the cost of business space in San Antonio and East Bayshore areas. TRANSCRIPT      Page 103 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Mayor Scharff: It's not because that actually would have precluded doing the JCC. It might preclude doing anything that's new, that we might want to change. I think it's too broad and could be too far-reaching without actually thinking about it. Council Member Holman: I think it's pretty important. As Tom said, it is the lowest cost … Council Member DuBois: This is an existing policy. Council Member Holman: Yeah, it's an existing policy. I'm just clarifying that it means zoning actions. Council Member DuBois: I'll second it then. AMENDMENT: Council Member Holman moved, seconded by Council Member DuBois to add to the Motion, “add to Policy B-7.7, ‘discourage zoning actions that could increase the cost of business space’ after ‘outdated space.’” Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman, would you like to speak to your motion? Council Member Holman: I think I've spoken to it enough because Tom had already spoken to it. Mayor Scharff: Council Member DuBois, would you like to speak to it? Does anyone want to speak to it? I see no lights, so let's vote on the board. That fails on a 5-4 vote with Council Members Kou, DuBois, Filseth, and Holman voting yes. AMENDMENT FAILED: 4-5 DuBois, Filseth, Holman, Kou yes Council Member Holman: On Packet Page 259, Goal B-5, to make this consistent with what we did earlier with Policy B-5.1, we need to change the word "flexibility" to "efficiency." Mayor Scharff: I would accept that, Council Member Holman. Council Member Wolbach: I just want to ask did you want to change it in the goal or in the heading before the goal? Council Member Holman: That's a very good point. We've taken out flexibility, so it would just be predictability then. TRANSCRIPT      Page 104 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Mayor Scharff: Or efficiency and predictability. Council Member Holman: I'm sorry. Efficiency and predictability. It's flexibility with efficiency. Also with the introductory words there, it's "efficiency and predictability." Council Member Wolbach: You'd want to change it in both places, the introduction and the goal? Council Member Holman: Yes. Then, we're consistent in all three places. Council Member Wolbach: Are you still good with that because she just changed her amendment? Mayor Scharff: Her amendment is … Council Member Wolbach: Now, she's saying she wants to change it in Goal B-5 and also in the heading before. Council Member Holman: Because "flexibility" doesn't refer to anything now. It's "efficiency." Does that make sense? Mayor Scharff: That's fine. Council Member Wolbach: Fine with me too. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “replace in Goal B-5, ‘flexibility’ with ‘efficiency’ and replace in Subsection Flexibility and Predictability, ‘flexibility’ with ‘efficiency.’” (New Part O) Council Holman: Thank you for that. On Packet Page 256, Policy B-1.7, there's some language under that. Why was all of that taken out? I'm especially pointing to the language that is previously Program B-3, on an ongoing basis evaluate opportunities for City involvement in public-private partnerships, blah, blah, blah. Why was that deleted? Ms. Costello: Most of this was changed because it's in other elements, like the fiber optics, electronic information. They're all in other places. Council Member Holman: I'm talking about just the one paragraph here. It's talking about public investment in infrastructure and other improvements, siting of public art and modification of land-use regulation and other development controls. That's not fiber. TRANSCRIPT      Page 105 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Ms. Gitelman: Some of the policies that proceed that deal with public- private partnerships. It may have been that the concern was the repetition. For example, Policy B-1.5 talks about public-private partnerships as does 1.6. Council Member Holman: It's talking about selected areas. This is more general. I don't see them as quite as duplicative. I would move that we revert and include the first paragraph under Policy B-1.7. Mayor Scharff: What do you want to do? Council Member Holman: I want to revert to—include the language that was previously here, in the first paragraph under Policy B-1.7, on an ongoing basis, blah, blah, blah. Mayor Scharff: What page is that on? Council Member Holman: Packet Page 256. Mayor Scharff: You want to put in "the ongoing" all that language? Council Member Holman: Yeah, just in that one paragraph. Mayor Scharff: No. Council Member Holman: Do I not see a second? Mayor Scharff: Not seeing a second … Council Member Kou: Just the first … Council Member Holman: Just the first paragraph. Council Member Kou: Give me a minute please. Mr. Keene: The Staff pointed out that Policy B-1.5 says most of the same thing. Council Member Holman: The paragraph I'm wanting to put back is more inclusive. Council Member Kou: I'll second it. Mayor Scharff: Seconded by Council Member Kou. TRANSCRIPT      Page 106 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    AMENDMENT: Council Member Holman moved, seconded by Council Member Kou to add to the Motion, “include in Policy B-1.7, ‘on an ongoing basis, evaluate opportunities for City involvement in public/private partnerships, including public investment in infrastructure and other improvements, siting of public art, and modification of land use regulations and other development controls.’” Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman, would you like to speak to it further? Council Member Holman: No, I think I have. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Kou, do you want to speak to it or not? Council Member Kou: No thank you. Mayor Scharff: Let's vote. That fails on a 7-3 vote—6-3. AMENDMENT FAILED: 3-6 DuBois, Holman, Kou yes Council Member Holman: Just for the record, I had similar comments as Council Member DuBois on Goal B-3 and also Policy B-3.1. I think that does go into governance. This is the business and economic chapter. Economics in this case is revenue-generation. It's not the City being fiscally prudent, which is where governance belongs and which is what this is. On Packet Page 258, Policy B-4.4 says "recognize that Stanford Research Park contains a concentration of some of the City's largest employers and seek to maintain a mix of office and research and development uses." I'd like to amend that to say "seek to maintain a prioritization of research and development over office." Mayor Scharff: No. Council Member Holman: The reason I'm putting that out there is because Stanford already does that. They've recognized the importance of keeping R&D there, not office. Mayor Scharff: Stanford has also recognized the importance of flexibility between switching back and forth between the two of them. In fact, it's been really important to people like Tesla. TRANSCRIPT      Page 107 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    AMENDMENT: Council Member Holman moved, seconded by Council Member XX to add to the Motion, “replace in Policy B-4.4, ‘a mix of’ with ‘a prioritization of.’” AMENDMENT FAILED DUE TO THE LACK OF A SECOND Council Member Holman: Sorry. I just want to make sure what's been covered already and what hasn't. That was asked. On Packet Page 263, why was the language under the first paragraph under Policy B-7.2, modify zoning regulations to allow convenience-oriented business such as restaurants and office support services rendered within the Research Park, taken out? Mayor Scharff: You're at Ppacket Page 263? Council Member Holman: Correct. Why was that taken out? Ms. Gitelman: That thought, I think, is in the Land Use Element. There's a section of the Land Use Element that talks about this. Council Member Holman: I think everything else that I had in my list has been covered. Mayor Scharff: I had just one minor thing, which I almost view as a typo. I'm going to mention it. On Packet Page 249, we say "currently retail sales tax provide approximately 5 percent of total revenues." I think it's misleading. It's roughly about 15 percent of the General Fund. We should base it on the General Fund, not on Utilities. I would just propose that we say "currently retail sales provide approximately" and Staff fills in whatever the number is based on the General Fund. Is that acceptable, Cory? Council Member Wolbach: That sounds very reasonable and acceptable. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “replace in Subsection Retail, ‘retail sales tax provides approximately five percent of total revenues’ with ‘retail sales tax provides approximately XX percent of general fund revenues’ and direct Staff to include the correct percentage.” (New Part P) Mayor Scharff: I think that's it. Can we vote on the whole thing? Male: (inaudible) TRANSCRIPT      Page 108 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Mayor Scharff: I'd just say replace on Packet Page 249—instead of saying "5 percent," whatever the amount is of the General Fund. MOTION AS AMENDED RESTATED: Mayor Scharff moved, seconded by Council Member Wolbach to direct Staff to prepare a revised draft of the Business and Economics Element for referral to the Planning and Transportation Commission including the following changes: A. Replace in Policy B-6.1, “containing” with “prioritizing” and add to Policy B-6.1, “start-ups” after “small office;” and B. Add to Policy B-4.2, “start-ups” after “small businesses;” and C. Add to Program B-4.2.1, “start-ups” after “small businesses;” and D. Add to Policy B-4.3, “and start-ups” after “small businesses;” and E. Add to Policy B-3.1, “adds real accounting of unfunded pension liability and unfunded benefit costs;” and F. Replace in Program B-1.1.1, “direct the Palo Alto Office of Economic Development to implement the” with “implement an;” and G. Add to Policy B-2.3, “with a priority on neighborhood quality of life;” and H. Remove Program B-4.6.2; and I. Remove Program B-4.6.3; and J. Replace in Policy B-5.1, “flexibility” with “efficiency;” and K. Replace in Policy B-5.3, “strengthen the role of the Office of” with “focus on;” and L. Clean up and potentially merge Policies B-6.5 and B-6.6 for consistency and confirm if these Policies belong in the Business and Economics Element; and M. Replace Goal B-2 with, “a thriving business environment that complements and is compatible with Palo Alto’s residential neighborhoods and natural environment;” and TRANSCRIPT      Page 109 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    N. Replace Policy B-2.4 with, “consider a variety of planning and regulatory tools including growth limits, to ensure change is compatible with the needs of Palo Alto neighborhoods;” and O. Replace in Goal B-5, “flexibility” with “efficiency” and replace in Subsection Flexibility and Predictability, “flexibility” with “efficiency;” and P. Replace in Subsection Retail, “retail sales tax provides approximately five percent of total revenues” with “retail sales tax provides approximately XX percent of general fund revenues” and direct Staff to include the correct percentage. Mayor Scharff: If we could vote on the whole Motion. Council Member Wolbach: I just want to point out how long a complex motion we are making after hearing from the public. This is our normal procedure. It's after 10:30 at night. Mayor Scharff: If we could vote on the board. That passes unanimously. Thank you all for that. MOTION AS AMENDED PASSED: 9-0 Inter-Governmental Legislative Affairs None. Council Member Questions, Comments and Announcements Mayor Scharff: Now, we're at Council Member Questions, Comments, and Announcements. Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: First of all, we had a community workshop on rail on Saturday. I think it was oversold. We had about 130 people show up. I wanted to thank Staff for running a good meeting. I think it was a good start. On Sunday, Barron Park had its May Fete Festival in Bol Park. A lot of fun was had by all. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Filseth. Council Member Filseth: A real brief question. There was an article in the Post this morning about AB 1250 in reference to Menlo Park, that would TRANSCRIPT      Page 110 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    prohibit cities from outsourcing certain kinds of work. Do you know anything about that? Is that something we should worry about? James Keene, City Manager: We'll do a little bit more of a checkup on it. I think Molly's take is, first of all, it's legislation that would only apply to general law cities. Whereas, Charter Cities should be exempt from that. The basic push on it is, for the most part, from labor. Mayor Scharff: You'll be bringing it back to us? Mr. Keene: Yeah. First of all, we'll double check to see if it affects us as a City and let you know. If you want us to bring it back regardless and let you take a position, we can do that also. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Tanaka. Council Member Tanaka: Last week, I was in Washington, D.C. I went to the Department of Transportation to see Secretary Elaine Chao with Jeff Gee, who chairs the Joint Powers for Caltrain. He's also on the City Council for Redwood City. Also with a Council Member from Millbrae, Wayne Lee. I was a bit encouraged from the meeting. The next day, I saw when Senator Harris asked the Secretary, Elaine Chao, about getting the funding, she just flatly said no. Basically the tone of it was that the Bay Area is a rich area. The Central Valley is poor. Why does the Bay Area get all the money? I was kind of bummed out. I later met with former Department of Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta. I was telling him about this. He says, "Just keep on bugging her. Have other people bug her. The more people that bug her, higher chance of this succeeding." Today, as the City Manager mentioned, it actually passed. The only issue, though, is only $100 million passed. It was supposed to be $647 million. That means there's $547 million to go. The rest of it should snake its way through Congress hopefully. There might be more lobbying needed on this. As we've been thinking about grade separations, some of the money is going to be needed for that, especially if we decide to eventually underground Caltrain. I think it's something for us to think about and to be, if we want to get money, vigilant about it. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Vice Mayor Kniss. Vice Mayor Kniss: I forgot what I was going to say. After we went to the rail meeting on Saturday—thank you, Tom, for your comments and so forth. Could you make available to us where the original study of rail was finished perhaps in 2014? Am I right? Is it online? TRANSCRIPT      Page 111 of 111  City Council Meeting  Transcript:  5/22/17    Mr. Keene: Don't know, but we'll go ahead. Vice Mayor Kniss: I'd like my own copy. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Seeing no other lights, the meeting is adjourned. Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 11:13 P.M.