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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2017-06-05 City Council Summary MinutesCITY OF PALO ALTO CITY COUNCIL TRANSCRIPT Page 1 of 77 Special Meeting June 5, 2017 The City Council of the City of Palo Alto met on this date in the Community Meeting Room at 6:10 P.M. Present: DuBois, Filseth, Fine, Holman, Kniss, Kou, Scharff, Tanaka, Wolbach Absent: Special Orders of the Day 1. Interviews of Candidates for the Library Advisory Commission. The City Council interviewed the following applicants for the Library Advisory Commission: 1. Amy Murphy 2. Brigham Wilson Council took a break from 6:27 P.M. to 6:31 P.M. and reconvened in the Council Chambers. 2. Proclamation Honoring the Comprehensive Plan Update Citizens Advisory Committee. Mayor Scharff: Now, we're here for a Proclamation honoring the Comprehensive Plan Update Citizens Advisory Committee (CAC). I wanted to say it's so nice to see all of you here. We really did appreciate all of your service. I'm going to read the Proclamation, and then we have some Proclamations to hand out, group photos, those kind of things. If the two Chairs would like to say anything, we'd be happy to have you say a few words. Mayor Scharff read the Proclamation into the record. Again, thank you all very much for your service. If you'd like to come up, I'm going to come down and hand out the Proclamations. Then, if the two Co-Chairs want to say a few words, that would be great. I wanted to recognize Dan Garber, the Co-Chair. TRANSCRIPT Page 2 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 Dan Garber, Citizens Advisory Committee Co-Chair: Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Members. Arthur and I will both speak a little bit. We don't truly have prepared remarks, not really expecting to speak all that much on this. First and foremost, I would like to thank all of the members of the CAC, the Staff, and in particular Arthur Keller, whose friendship I have truly appreciated and who has been instrumental in making this the success that it has been. It has been very rewarding for me personally. I think that is in large part to do with the work that we've done together. At the last CAC meeting, we did discuss the things that we had done well and the things that we wish we could have changed. I wanted to share some of those things with you. Here's the headline: we agreed on a lot. While there's considerable perhaps political hay that can be made by pulling issues and sometimes us and the community apart, for all but a very few number of the topics the CAC found ways to come together. In fact, if you look over the elements, with very few exceptions we all agreed on the elements that we recommended to the Council. There were only a couple of issues regarding rates of growth and growth in general that we had forwarded to the Council for further discussion. Over time, we got better at our work. The subcommittees built trust by having more detailed, issue-focused discussions that needed to happen but couldn't happen in the larger committee meetings. We were mostly successful in creating a forum that each of us felt we could share our views safely with each other and found that we could support each other in our differing views on various topics. As a group, we did have some suggestions about how the process could and should be improved next time. It will come as no surprise that the appointments had some bumps along the way that we ideally could have avoided. We all felt that there were many in the community that could have been represented, the young, the old, renters. Most of us felt that Stanford and the Chamber of Commerce probably should have had a vote. We all agreed that the number of members in the Committee were too many and made our meetings very cumbersome and difficult to get through. We were all frustrated by the Committee being limited to only dealing with policy and programs. Not being able to talk about vision and goals precluded larger topics that many of us wanted to address. Ultimately, we managed to deal significantly with content and substance and found synergy in our interests. It was a long process, sometimes frustrating but satisfying in recognizing that the future of our City was something that we could affect, and we had greater confidence going out than we had coming in, in the process. For that, I want to thank you and the Council and in particular the Staff for their stamina and focus and support of the work of the Committee and all of us individually. Arthur. Arthur Keller, Citizens Advisory Committee Co-Chair: Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to have been involved. I also enjoyed working TRANSCRIPT Page 3 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 with my Co-Chair, Dan Garber. We worked together on the Comprehensive Plan (Comp Plan) back when it was a creature of the Planning and Transportation Commission (PTC) some years ago. Somehow it drifted, and then we got to do it through the Citizens Advisory Committee. What's interesting is that the Planning Commission process was too slow and didn't have enough citizen involvement and didn't have enough Council feedback. We did a Citizens Advisory Committee process that was kind of compressed. It turned out it was a little less compressed than we expected because it did drag out a little bit. We were certainly learning along the way. More could have been learned from the time that the 1998 Comp Plan was put together in terms of understanding that process. When we start the process for 2030, we should start a little bit earlier and make sure that that process is deliberate, properly funded through the whole process so that it happens, and that people have an expectation to be on it for several years, so that that process can continue to its completion. There was some expectation that this would be less time. Some people were not able to continue. Fortunately, most people were able to continue. What we did well is achieve a great deal of consensus, more than I would have expected. We also did well in teeing up the issues for the Council when we did not have consensus, clearly identifying the issues and the various points of view. I think that we perhaps could have done that a little better and a little bit more analysis. Our subcommittee structure and how we recommended didn't allow us to have enough input into the process of teeing up the various pros and cons of the various alternatives that we did in the Council. Sometimes the Council took our consensus and moved on them. Sometimes when we had hard- fought consensus, the Council choose something else. That, I guess, is to be expected with an elected Council and an appointed Committee in some sense operating as an Advisory Committee. I thank you for this opportunity. I'm probably the only one who has been involved with the Comp Plan all from the beginning through today—some people have left in the middle— from the beginning, when the PTC started with it. I appreciate the opportunity. Obviously, nothing is going to satisfy everybody. Not everybody is completely satisfied, but I think the result is as good as could be expected at this stage. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you very much. Again, thank you all for your service. It really is very much appreciated. I think you guys did a great job on it. A couple of Council Members wanted to speak. Council Member Tanaka. No? Your light was on. Council Member Filseth, did you put your light on or is it just on? With that, thank you very much. Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions None. TRANSCRIPT Page 4 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 City Manager Comments Mayor Scharff: Now, we'll move on to City Manager Comments. James Keene, City Manager: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of Council. Certainly, the next Comprehensive Plan (Comp Plan) won't take as long as this one. If it does, we'll have to ask Arthur and the Citizen Advisory Committee (CAC) to reconstitute themselves next year, so we get it done by 2030 since the last one took such a while. I'm so glad to see the CAC really get it ready for the Council. Next week, you actually take up the last portion of the Comp Plan, the governance and implementation part of it. Of course, it'll be back in the fall, as it moves through the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) process, for you to do the final wrap-up in 2017. I did want to say that, thanks to Palo Alto Neighborhoods (PAN). The Mayor and Council Members and community members attended PAN's workshop on May 25th about accessory dwelling units. Attendees were able to get background information about the City's Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) Ordinance as well as have their questions answered. The Mayor gave a great intro explaining the State laws that led to the City's ADU Ordinance and that really put the ball in our court, so to speak, to try to craft something more locally suitable to our own town. Thanks also to Assistant Planning Director Jonathan Lait, who spent over an hour answering questions, many of which were how the new ADU Ordinance would apply to specific site conditions. Based on the interest expressed at the meeting, we expect to receive quite a few applications for new ADUs after the new Ordinance becomes effective this month. Our Staff will be tracking them and preparing a report to the Council and the Planning & Transportation Commission (PTC) within 6 months or so. Thanks again to Planning Staff for their work on the development, administration, and monitoring of this new Ordinance. A 1- year traffic safety pilot starts this week on Middlefield Road with the removal of existing striping and installation of new pavement markings. Temporary, rubberized median islands will also be installed, and the existing time-of-day turn restrictions on Hawthorne and Everett will be modified later this week. The turning prohibitions will be made effective all day, not just for the hour limitations that are presently there. We'll be collecting additional data throughout the pilot project including traffic counts on adjacent and parallel neighborhood streets. We also welcome public input and comments throughout the pilot, and we'll provide additional updates over the next several months. Information on the project can be found at the City of Palo Alto website, cityofpaloalto.org/middlefield. Hopefully, we've got some slides here, David. The first one is the Code:ART project that we had the past few days. Hopefully, many of you had the opportunity to experience Code:ART in Downtown last week. We kicked off the 3-day event with a great discussion about artists as futurists at the Institute for the Future on TRANSCRIPT Page 5 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 Thursday. By Saturday, thousands of people had interacted with the eight installations that members of our community created and installed in alleyways, in plazas Downtown. Our Public Art folks conducted more than 300 surveys about people's experiences with the pieces, engaged lots of residents and visitors in discussions about creative place making. There was an overwhelming positive response to the event. We even had a flash mob turn up on Lytton Plaza compliments of Uforio Studio. The only problem is the public wants us to do this again soon. Kudos to our Public Art Staff who worked with them to bring all this together with a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts. A special shout-out to Elise DeMarzo and Rhyenna in the Community Services Department. Now, we have some other public art that is not temporary. We thought you might appreciate seeing the final updates to the California Avenue (Cal. Ave.) underpass mural that artist Morgan Bricca has been working on and the assistance in getting bike riders to walk in the tunnel. Hopefully, you can see "slow down" there in the weeds. The artist reports that lots of people have given her feedback as they have a chance to see the new work and lots of great comments. She started by adding fish, including 85 minnows and a dozen fish, swimming from the burst of light to complement the many stenciled, flat, sideways fish that were already there. There is also a public service announcement in the kelp, which you saw—see if you can spot it—and a surfer on the ceiling. A woman and her son stopped by and thought it would be a good idea to paint the ground as well but thought maybe the City hadn't included it in the budget. Ms. Bricca got out her pavement paints and ended up painting about 45 seashells and starfish on the ground on the spot. Finally, after noticing all of the bikers, kids, and pedestrians going through the tunnel, the artist was inspired to reinforce City rules and write "walk your bike," as you saw, in the artistic sand. It looks like that was a favorite idea among the community. Real art happening real time interactively with the public. I really encourage folks to walk your bike through there as soon as you possibly can. When I run through the underpass regularly with some of the Staff Colleagues, I'm always yelling at everybody to get off their bike and walk it. Staff is really embarrassed that I'm doing that. In any case, we've got a lot of signs, but it still doesn't seem to work. Just a reminder that the City is hosting a series of public open houses to share information about upcoming infrastructure and street improvement projects beginning this year in and around the Downtown Palo Alto area. It's a project called Upgrade Downtown. The first open house is this Friday, June 9th, from 4:00 to 6:00 P.M. It'll be at Johnson Park over on Everett. Please join us if interested at any of these open houses on June 9th, 13th, or 15th. Details are available at the cityofpaloalto.org/upgradedowntown. I did want to comment that the Council has recently received some petition information related to the difficulties that La Comida has been having in finding a new location. Of course, the Council has been aware of the issue and asked me to look into it. TRANSCRIPT Page 6 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 I assigned some of our Staff, particularly Rob de Geus from Community Services, to see how the City could help out. We did want to clearly let folks know that we're not only aware of the petition but we're already working closely with some La Comida Board Members to find a workable solution. We think there are some short-term and long-term options that look promising. The Avenidas Board, my understanding is, will meet on June 12th to discuss some of this. In addition, our Staff is scheduling a meeting with the Board Chairs and Vice Chairs of La Comida and Avenidas along with the Executive Director of Avenidas and Mary Batchelder of La Comida late next week to help facilitate and work towards a sustainable solution. I know there are some things in the works. I did not want the Council or the community to think we were not paying attention to where we are. Thank you. All I have to report. Mayor Scharff: Vice Mayor Kniss, I know you're the liaison to Avenidas. Vice Mayor Kniss: Just to bring us completely up to date, I had a meeting this afternoon with the President of the Board, Jim Phillips, of Avenidas and Amy Andonian, who is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for Avenidas. They have assured me that as well as we can anticipate at this point, Stevenson House will be accommodating La Comida at least for the next year and a half while Avenidas is located at Cubberley. We think that will work out very well. The next area for them to work on is how to get to Stevenson House. That will either be through a City shuttle or some other arrangement. A number of people do come from outside our community and actually take Valley Transportation Authority (VTA). It would look very positive at this point for La Comida to start in at Stevenson House at the end of August/beginning of September as Avenidas also closes down and moves to Cubberley for at least the next year and a half. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Oral Communications Mayor Scharff: Now, we're moving on to Oral Communications. I have over 25 speakers at this point. You'll each have 2 minutes. Our first speaker is Fred Balin, to be followed by Mark Nadim. Fred Balin: Fire Department, $1.3 million proposed cut, no details in Budget nor probe at Finance Committee. It is equivalent to a reduction of about ten full-time firefighters, and would create a significant impact in response services. How might it play out? You could shut down an engine at one of our six stations in the flats. At the Foothills Station, you discontinued fire engine service last year. That ladder truck, you could drastically curtail its availability or reduce ambulance service, but ours is far superior to the TRANSCRIPT Page 7 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 County's. Yes, it is a big income generator now at over $3 million a year for emergency transport. A win-win as long as it does not impact other apparatus. Currently, three ambulances are available around the clock, two with dedicated staffing, but the third is cross-staffed. Ambulance and fire engine share the same crew of three. If the ambulance is out on a call, the fire engine is out of service for an hour if there is transport to emergency care. 5:00 A.M. December 30th, department responds to a full first alarm on Louis Road with report of resident trapped inside. Fortunately, cross- staffed ambulance not out on call. All worked as you'd hope. When cross- staffing increases significantly, what is the recalculated risk from fire? Still low, but when it hits you, you assume it all. Correcting a false rationale for the cuts. It has nothing to do with the Stanford contract renegotiations. Beginning May 2012, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) discontinued our department's fire engine service, and correspondingly in the City's fiscal year 2013 Budget the nine full-time equivalents are removed, a wash. It appears the City wants to save money at the expense of public safety, under the radar, and behind a false premise. With a combination of cross-staffing and apparatus reduction, maintaining revenues while creating a subtle but real brown-out that folks may not immediately notice. Before you consider deducting a penny, hold a public hearing to clearly specify deployment changes, impact on service, and valid rationale, and then provide adequate time for the public's response. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Mark Nadim to be followed by Dan Garber. Mark Nadim: Honorable Mayor, City Council Members. Fire protection is very important to everyone, especially for us residents in the Palo Alto Hills neighborhood; that's west of Highway 280. We are always worried about wildfires since our neighborhood abuts open space. The City has been allocating funds in the Budget to control vegetation in the Foothills Park and along major roads in the area. We used to have a sense of safety with the staffing of Fire Station 8 during summer months. Last year, Station 8 was not staffed. I was told that regular trips by a fire engine would be done daily. The closing of Station 8 was a measure to reduce costs. The Proposed Budget cuts to the Fire Department of $1.3 million in the coming fiscal year gets us in the Foothills even more concerned as this will lead to even less available Staff to man engines or even less number of available engines. I urge you to take a closer look at the Budget and make sure that there is no cut to the Fire Department Budget. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Dan Garber to be followed by Sea Reddy. Dan Garber: In April and May, I brought to you my concern regarding derelict trucks and cars on Encina Avenue, which is in front of my business. TRANSCRIPT Page 8 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 This is an update. The truck that had burned about a year ago and remains on that street and is being slowly rebuilt remains there. The truck that someone is living out of, who had been tossed out of the Opportunity Center because he assaulted one of the people there, is still there. The white truck still makes their dinner by plugging into the utility outlet that's on one of the light poles in Town and Country and is still there. I did ask the City to see a copy of the agreement with the towing company. I have learned that there is no towing company agreement, at least not yet. As of this afternoon, I did receive an email from someone in the City regarding proposed signage that will go up along the street. It's not clear to me whether this is to help the City be able to finally tow these or not. One of the signs will say that there's only 2 hours that you can park on that street, which is great for my clients because there's an opportunity that they will have more parking. It'll be more difficult for my employees because they cannot park in Palo Alto Medical Foundation (PAMF) or in the Town and Country Shopping Center. I'll work with the City and see what we can do about that situation as well. I'll see you next month with another update. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Maybe the City Manager could respond. This has been going on since what, April? James Keene, City Manager: I'll have to look at Mr. Garber's latest concerns. I know that the plan that Staff had said—told me they thought the installation of new signage to clear up the situation would be beneficial. I'll have to have a three-way conversation. Mayor Scharff: Sea Reddy to be followed by Andrew Milne. Sea Reddy: Good evening, Mayor and the City Council and the citizens of Palo Alto. I do want to thank you for having our garage sale last weekend. What's important is to get to know more people at different levels. That enables us to do that. Thank you. I'm not sure what level the City was involved, but it was a good thing. Going to the serious subject. No statement can express the atrocity and the sadness that happened in Manchester and London Bridge. It all boils down to the family and the grandparents, the community you live in, the parents, the cousins, the brothers, the friends. It needs to be communicated to my Muslim friends, Christian friend, Jewish friends that we all are in this world. We're not here to die. We're here to respect each other. You have grievance; you have Twitter, 140 characters. You can say whatever you want to say. I think it needs to get back to the families, and we need to communicate. The United Nations (U.N.) needs to take action to hear the grievances, why are they doing what they're doing. They have to be held accountable at the family and community level. Thank you. TRANSCRIPT Page 9 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Andrew Milne to be followed by Elisse De Sio. Andrew Milne: Good evening. I've been a Palo Alto resident for 19 years, and I'm here tonight to talk about a budget issue. In a larger sense, I'm here tonight because on March 26th, 2016, clinically speaking I died. Fortunately for me and my family, my death was only a temporary condition. That's because of where I live in Palo Alto. My story illustrates some realities about Emergency Medical Services (EMS) deployment that I think it would be important for the Council to consider in their deliberations. At about 8:30 P.M. that night, my wife was putting our 3 and 6-year-old boys to bed, and my 12-year-old was in her room doing homework when my body went into sudden cardiac arrest as I lay on the couch. My heart stopped pumping blood; my bodily functions began shutting down. My brain was starved of oxygen, and the last air in my lungs began escaping my body. Luckily, many things went right that night. My daughter heard my body gasping for air; my wife called 911 while she sent my daughter to get help. My neighbors were outside and rushed in to do CPR. The Fire Department and Police Officers responded quickly. Our house is only 9/10 of a mile from the Mitchell Park fire station, so an engine company arrived within 5 minutes of the call. A Palo Alto Police Department supervisor was also on the scene and was able to help with CPR. As it turned out, there was another medical emergency within a block of our house 2 minutes before ours, but that person had a do not resuscitate order. That meant an ambulance was already half the distance to our house when my wife called, and an extra Police Officer from the first call diverted to ours. We had an engine company of three, an ambulance crew of two, three patrol officers working my emergency. During the approximately 12 minutes they were in our house, each was doing something critical, whether it was taking care of me or directly managing the scene with my wife and children. In my kind of emergency seconds really do matter. Only 6-10 percent of people who suffer an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survive at all, and bystander CPR is important. Many times, bystanders are not involved at all. Given my experience, I'm concerned that Palo Alto may be heading in a direction that's counter to the needs of residents. I want to point out two issues. First, looking at historical data, the period from 2009 to 2016, medical call responses from Palo Alto Fire—thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Elisse De Sio to be followed by Judy Andrews. Elisse De Sio: Good evening, Honorable Mayor and City Council Members. I'm Elisse De Sio, and I'm a concerned American citizen and also a citizen of our great State of California. I'm speaking on behalf of La Comida. As a young at heart senior, I am very concerned about the situation between Avenidas and La Comida. I wish to state that, if this wonderful organization TRANSCRIPT Page 10 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 with talented people did not exist, a person like myself who was homeless for 6 years would be starving. I do hope that the City Council works with La Comida in the best possible way and helps and has compassion toward the citizens. Lydia comes and volunteers and helps out. We appreciate her being there. I thank you for listening and your compassion. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Judy Andrews to be followed by Shani Kleinhaus. Judy Andrews: Hello, good evening. I am speaking in regard to La Comida. I am in a creative writing class at Avenidas. Many of my members can't be here tonight. You would have a much larger audience if people who use La Comida could be here at this time of night. I attend a creative writing class that ends at noon. Directly downstairs is La Comida lunch, and many of them go to a self-run current events class. This combination literally saves their lives. I am very concerned. I had dinner with Gloria Hom, who's on the Avenidas Board and is for La Comida. She told me Saturday night that the architect has plans for only half the size of a kitchen necessary for La Comida to return to Avenidas. They have about a month to change that plan. That seems like the foremost concern. The second is that Stevenson House is very far from Cubberley. I really do believe that maybe the meals could be cooked at Stevenson House, but it would be just a miracle if the food can be served at Cubberley so that this same miracle of restoration at a cheap price can continue. I hope that will happen. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Shani Kleinhaus to be followed by Bonnie Packer. Shani Kleinhaus: Thank you, Mayor Scharff and Council. I hunted out a few of those little plastic bags that we get a few times a year. Each little plastic bag—I don't know how many of them. They're here. Can I have one? I don't have nine of these, but each one of these has a little colored piece of paper that advertises a business that has a few pebbles in it in a plastic bag. We get these, I'm assuming, about four times a year. There's about 60,000 homes in Palo Alto. You can do the math of how much this is. This goes directly to trash or it goes into our storm water. I did approach Staff about this, and they said they weren't sure how to deal with this. I'm here to ask you to stop it. We know exactly who to call and say, "You can't do this in our City. This is wrong." Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Bonnie Packer to be followed by Davina Brown. Bonnie Packer: Good evening, Mayor and City Council. I'm Bonnie Packer; I'm President of the League of Women Voters of Palo Alto. I just returned from the State convention of the State League of Women Voters in TRANSCRIPT Page 11 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 Sacramento. The State League believes it is essential to preserve the physical, chemical, and biological integrity of the ecosystem with maximum protection of public health and the environment. Climate change is by far the greatest challenge to the balance of our ecosystem. In March of this year, the State League of Women Voters released its climate change action policy to support actions to mitigate and adapt to climate change in order to protect our State from the negative physical, economic, and public health effects. The details of that policy can be found on the League of Women Voters website. Accordingly, on behalf of the League of Women Voters of Palo Alto, I commend Mayor Scharff for joining last Friday with 60 other Mayors, over 1,200 leaders of cities, counties, states, businesses, investors, and educational institutions to continue to support, lead, and uphold the commitments of the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015. Thank you for that, and thank you for the City's work on the Sustainability/Climate Action Plan. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Davina Brown to be followed by Cherrill Spencer. Davina Brown: Good evening. I'm here again to talk about La Comida. Liz Kniss said that we were going to Stevenson House. As the lead negotiator in that effort, it's not final. It's in negotiations, and it's not a year and a half. If we get in there at all, it'll be for a year. That is not a solution. Stevenson House dining room is too small to accommodate all the people that La Comida serves. If we can get in there, it'll be a blessing, and we'll take it because we have no place else to go. We do need the City's help. I just want to remind you that most of the senior nutrition sites in the County of Santa Clara are in city-owned facilities. Otherwise, we can't afford rent. There isn't a way we can afford to keep this going. If you want to feed seniors and help them socially, you will help La Comida. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Cherrill Spencer to be followed by Linda Jolley. Cherrill Spencer: Good evening, Mr. Mayor, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Cherrill Spencer, a resident of Palo Alto for the past 42 years. I am the Chair of the Disarm Committee of the Palo Alto branch of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), which we call WILPF for short. Our branch of WILPF, which has been working on peace and justice issues for the past 95 years, has made a request to the City Council via letter I sent to you last week, that you arrange for Palo Alto to rejoin the international organization called Mayors for Peace, which Palo Alto belonged to for 28 years. In 2013, then Mayor who is again Mayor wrote to the Mayors for Peace to withdraw Palo Alto from membership for reasons we have not been able to ascertain. The mission of Mayors for Peace is to raise public awareness around the world regarding the need to abolish nuclear TRANSCRIPT Page 12 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 weapons. The members of Mayors for Peace are cities. Currently, there are 7,355 member cities all over the world. There are 31 cities in California such as Berkeley, Carmel-by-the-Sea, Fairfax, Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco, and Santa Cruz, but not Palo Alto. Mayors for Peace organizes a significant grassroots effort to urge governments towards a world free of nuclear weapons. There are 15,000 nuclear weapons in the world today. Russia boasts that their new smart missile could reach America and wipe out parts of the earth the size of Texas or France. For sure, one of their missiles could wipe out northern California. The United Nations General Assembly is about to continue negotiating a treaty to ban nuclear weapons. Mayors for Peace will be in New York advocating for the passage of this most important treaty. WILPF and residents of Palo Alto who have come here to back me up urge the Mayor to look into this. Please, I will be meeting with you, Mayor Scharff, on Wednesday. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Linda Jolley to be followed by Jan Holliday. Linda Jolley: Council Members, I appreciate your dedication to the positions that you hold. Part of that dedication should consist of the willingness to reverse mistakes that you have made. I was here over a year ago when the people who run Avenidas came here with signs waving at you, saying that Avenidas was crowded. This was the justification for the $40 million expansion and destruction of the building that you folks have approved. I asked you at that time to examine the roots of this. I told you I had explored the building. I'm a former news writer, and I am investigative, and I'm honest. I explored the building, and so did many people who wrote in on the internet. We have verified that the building is not crowded. There is a popular word for what was done to you by Lisa Henderson and her staff with their signs saying crowded. The word is liars. You have approved a $40 million project that is going into the hands—going to be run by people who are not truthful. I want you to reexamine the roots of this. We've heard many users tonight tell you that this is a project that's very troubled. We've been talking among ourselves, those who use this program. We do not like it; we do not feel that it is necessary; we do not feel it is justified by future increases in the aging population. You need to reexamine that. 60- year-olds run through this City; they don't need to go to a senior center. Please, reexamine this project. It's wasteful. Mayor Scharff: Jan Holliday—we actually have a rule against clapping. I've been lenient on it. I just want to remind everyone that we actually do. Jan Holliday to be followed by Stephanie Munoz. Jan Holliday: Mr. Mayor, Council Members, thank you very much for the opportunity. I am on the Board of La Comida, and I can tell you we've been TRANSCRIPT Page 13 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 working on this relocation ever since we were advised that our dining room space would be limited under the new plan for the remodel. We agree that the remodel is necessary in the old building to bring it up to different kinds of standards, safety, convenience, and modernization for the City of Palo Alto. I'm here tonight to remind you that Avenidas has been given the de facto responsibility for delivering senior services for the City of Palo Alto. Should you call the City Manager's Office and ask for the senior services department, you will be told there is no senior services department. It's handled by Human Resources, which is a very broad spectrum of service providing. We have been working with Avenidas for the last 3 years. We started in 2014. We've been trying to find new locations, temporary as well as permanent. We have come up with one alternative which we're still negotiating at Stevenson House. At the moment, we have no permanent location for the La Comida program in the City of Palo Alto. We are the most popular, very well attended. Over 160 people eat in the dining room every day. Under the remodel plan, we have space for 90. With limited resources for volunteers, it becomes a very difficult situation, but we'll work with Avenidas to make that 90-person dining room be successful when the remodel is completed. However, it's urgent because the Council is on vacation in July. The wrecking ball starts the remodel September 1. When the kitchen is gone, so are we. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Stephanie Munoz to be followed by Joan Larrabee. Stephanie Munoz: Good evening, Mayor Scharff and Council Members, particularly Liz Kniss. I was struck the night the City of Palo Alto was confronted with what seemed to me a particularly obnoxious use of the density bonus. I felt then and I feel now that the density bonus concept needs to be reworked a little bit so that the affordable housing itself is the density bonus. It is counterproductive to have the density bonus be even more density in exchange for a little scrap of affordable housing. I mention it this evening because I believe you have before you a final approval of a hotel. The hotel, as usual, is a little bit larger than what the guidelines have provided for. I believe you could reasonably ask the hotel in every single case to provide senior housing the same as a hotel room, just a hotel room and bath, nothing more. This would be compatible, and the hotel would make more money than it would make if it didn't have the affordable housing. Although, not as much money as if it had, say, 10 percent more of $400 a night rooms. You could get some of your unhoused people who could afford a certain standard out of the way. It wouldn't hurt the hotel at all. It would be very satisfactory on all counts. I think they need— affordable housing does need a partner. La Comida could be that partner, not in the hotel but in some other structure. Thank you. TRANSCRIPT Page 14 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Joan Larrabee to be followed by Reda Carr. Joan Larrabee: Good evening, Honorable Mayor and City Council Members. I'm Joan Larrabee. I am a longtime resident and homeowner in Palo Alto. I've a Master's Degree in urban and regional planning, and my Master's project was an Environmental Study. I live in Green House I across the street from the two proposed Marriott hotels, 744 to 750 San Antonio Road. I was very interested to read the Draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR), and the Final EIR, which came out Wednesday at 5:00. I urge you all to read the Final EIR. It will be before you at next Monday's City Council meeting. The applicant has asked you to certify it and approve the hotel's proposals. The EIR is a deeply flawed and incomplete document. It cannot be certified in its present state. The most glaring concern is that in some places it proposes a single story of underground parking. In other places, it says two floors of underground parking. The soil and water studies were completed in 2015 for only the single underground parking floor. Now, the developer says two floors but with no additional studies for the extra 20 feet of excavation and dewatering. This is a classic bait and switch. There are several other contradictions too. I mailed you an email several weeks ago outlining several others. This one is the most egregious and possibly dangerous. I urge you to return the EIR to the applicant for further study. I sent you all those emails. I hope you review them all. Seventeen people spoke against the hotels at the Architectural Review Board (ARB) meeting last week; not one person got up and spoke in favor of it. Thank you for your attention. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Reda Carr to be followed by Stephanie Beach. Reda Carr: Hello. I'm Reda. Thank you for hearing me out. I'm an artist and a creator. I enjoy critical thinking, solving problems. That's one of my favorite things to do. I've spent a lot of time solving the problems of the world because I'm a compassionate person that cares about everyone. Divestment is a good solution. Divestment means that we're not investing in things that do harm. If it does harm, it's not good for everyone. People say that we don't have an alternative to fuel, but there's zero point energy. There's also radiant energy. There's also plasma generators. All of these things are really good solutions. They're not competition. They blow oil and gas out of the water. Oil and gas can't compete with that. That's why the monopoly makes sure that this information is stifled. That's why oil and gas makes sure that government knows what they want. The people need—they don't want; they need-something better. Mayor Scharff: Stephanie Beach to be followed by Keith Bennett. TRANSCRIPT Page 15 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 Stephanie Beach: Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. Thank you very much for your support for the last 42 years for La Comida. For the last 39 years, we've been co-located at the 450 Bryant building, sharing a City building. At that time in 1978, when La Comida moved there, there was a dining room that was built specifically for the use of La Comida with funds donated to the City by the Rotary Club. The commercial kitchen that was installed at that time was installed with County funds specifically for the purpose of La Comida. In the afternoon, when La Comida no longer needed it, if the Senior Center needed that kitchen, they were free to use it. Over the years, we have paid for our maintenance costs and our utilities costs but no rent. If we are faced with going to a non-City facility, we're going to be facing upwards of $6,000 a month. I wish that weren't true. I'm here to encourage you to support La Comida again by helping with the City Staff to find a long-term solution to a cooking site that could be commercial and a dining room that can serve at least 150 people a day. We're serving 45,000 people a year. Thank you very much for your support. I look forward to your continued support. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Keith Bennett to be followed by Richard Alquist. Roberta Alquist: Roberta Alquist. Mayor Scharff: Roberta. Ms. Alquist: Thank you. Keith Bennett: Hello. I'm Keith Bennett, speaking tonight on behalf of Save Palo Alto's Groundwater. The City Staff and ARB have recommended approval of the final Environmental Impact Report for the proposed Marriott hotels on San Antonio. However, this EIR does not include any—I repeat any—quantitative analysis of the impacts of these hotels on our groundwater. Groundwater is not treated as a resource. The proposed structures have over 14,000 square feet of underground parking extending two levels below ground. In addition, there is a much larger, single-level underground parking structure. Groundwater will need to be pumped at least 20 feet below the ground surface in the two-level underground area for 36 cars, which is 13 feet lower than the current water table. In comparison, dewatering to construct a single, 10-foot deep, 3,500-square foot residential basement last year was over 30-plus million gallons of groundwater pumped. This project is much larger, and there is not any estimate of the amount of water. There is simply a statement of no significant impacts. Approving this project without changes to either the project and/or the EIR is equivalent to carte blanche to pump as much water as needed independent of the environmental impacts. Furthermore, the impacts of TRANSCRIPT Page 16 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 very larger, impervious, underground concrete structures on storm water storage and flows are not considered at all. The plan includes provisions to percolate storm water into the ground onsite, but where does the water go? Much of the site will no longer be able to absorb groundwater underneath the buildings, not because the surface is impervious but because the underground storage place is replaced by a basement. What are the impacts on short-term storm water flows through our soils of such a large structure? Palo Alto needs to require careful analysis of the impacts of underground construction when reviewing EIRs. EIRs lacking data and quantitative analysis to support their assertions should not be approved. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Roberta Alquist to be followed by Erika Escalante. Roberta Alquist: I've been a resident of Palo Alto for over 50 years. I'm a university professor. I teach people how to unlearn their racism, classism, homophobia, Islamophobia, etc. I'm speaking tonight on behalf of the housing subcommittee of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, otherwise known as WILPF. We have some questions for you. We want to know when this City plans to build low-income housing, not high- income hotels but low-income housing. We have a very unequal distribution of people in this City. Do you know, any of you, what the median income of Palo Altans is? Male: $148. Ms. Alquist: How much? Male: $148,000. Ms. Alquist: No, it's less than that, but that's high. About $128,000 a year. We want to know why you are advocating five-story hotels and no low- income housing. We want to know why you haven't talked about rent control. Mountain View has done it. Emeryville's done it. Richmond's done it. East Palo Alto's done it. Right now, big landlords in Palo Alto can go from $800 for an unfurnished one-bedroom or studio to—in the last 2 years, the increase was to $2,800 a month, from $800 to $2,800. Why are you not working on a shelter for the homeless? We have a critical problem in this State and in this town. This City could be a role model in these areas during these crisis times of growth inequality. WILPF wants answers. We are also sponsoring a couple of events. Join us Saturday, June 17, for a Ban the Bomb March at the Town and Country Shopping Center at El Camino and Embarcadero, and another film showing at the Los Altos Library at 3:30 to 5:30 of the Nuclear Requiem. We hope that you will act instead of talking about acting about low-income housing. Thank you. TRANSCRIPT Page 17 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 Mayor Scharff: Erika Escalante to be followed by Dr. Maria D. Michael. Erika Escalante: Good evening, Mayor, City Council Members. I'm here tonight—Erika Escalante, President of Buena Vista Mobile Home Park Residents Association. I have some Board Members with me and some residents of Buena Vista. We're here once again, and this time we just want to thank you for all the support you have provided throughout this difficult journey that we've had trying to save Buena Vista. We really, really appreciate everything you have done. I would also like to thank the City Manager, the Human Relations Commission, and all the City Staff. I can't describe how happy we are at Buena Vista, all the residents. Thank you, thank you very much. We have something for you on behalf of all the residents. Thank you again. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. You can hand that to the City Clerk. Dr. Maria D. Michael to be followed by Mark Grossman. Dr. Maria D. Michael: Honorable Mayor, Council people, and all my relations sitting here. I am not a resident of Palo Alto. I am a resident of grandmother earth. I'm here to speak for her because she cannot speak in a language that you can understand. I ask that you touch your hearts and understand that we are in a difficult time where climate is changing. You can set the stage. You can be the leaders that we need, not some of the leaders that we have, that got in by surprise, but leaders that we need. We were blessed to speak at Berkeley City Council on May 30th when they divested. They said, "No more oil. We only want to invest the City's money in things that will support grandmother earth and all the people so that everyone can have food and water and shelter." Without a clean earth, none of you can enjoy and be sustained. No one here can be sustained without a clean earth. I come representing my people as a Lakota Dene elder. I humbly beg you and present and give you a hardy, heart-felt handshake. Please help for the next seven generations. Set the stage so the children can follow your lead. Let them understand the seriousness. Please take this into your hearts. Please understand that we only have one grandmother, one mother earth, and we all need her for food, water, and shelter. Please help support the climate change by also making sure that the water is clean. Thank you for the way that you have supported and joined the other mayors as a Council. We humbly thank you for that. Take it to the next step because we all need to live. You can set an example. Follow Davis, follow Berkeley, follow Seattle. Stand up, standup and take a stand. [Foreign language.] Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Mark Grossman to be followed by Michael Gonzales. TRANSCRIPT Page 18 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 Mark Grossman: Thank you. It's really hard to follow Dr. Michael, but I will try. I want to thank the Mayor and the Council on behalf of my family in Palo Alto and 350 Silicon, the local grassroots climate change group, for affirming your support for the Paris Climate Agreement. It's a great first step, and it is an agreement with ourselves to take action. The affirmation cannot stand alone; it has to be followed with action. We know that Palo Alto is doing a great job on sustainability. We have clean energy. We're working on cleaner transportation. Where we put our money, City funds, is important. It affects not just Palo Alto. That money can be used all over the Country to fund pipelines like the Dakota Access Pipeline, Keystone Pipeline. The banks where some of our money is being held, tens of thousands of dollars—since the reserve requirement is only like 10 percent, and Wells Fargo, for example, has an 8 percent reserve requirement, our money is being lent out over and over to some of the dirtiest projects in the Country. We need to move our money to banks that do not fund that kind of activity. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Michael Gonzales to be followed by Melanie Liu. Michael Gonzales: Hi there. My name's Mike Gonzales; I'm with the Green Party of Santa Clara County. Thank you for having us here today. Divestment is not new. I know that some people here—I think you've seen their faces before. They've come and approached you before. I think there's an aversion for government to divest because of obviously financial reasons maybe. People in the industries of fossil fuels and oil back you. I know that Palo Alto and the Bay Area is very progressive in this. They've done a lot of good things. I want to emphasize the need to not wait on this. The Dakota Access Pipeline, one of the arguments was they're using the best technology and latest technology, that it's not going to leak. In Ohio, 10,000 gallons of drilling fluid last month as reported by The Guardian leaked in Ohio. According to a June 2nd article by the Sierra Club, the Energy Transfer Partners is operating without even a Clean Water Act permit there. Also, the Dakota Access Pipeline itself, a brand new pipeline, like I said that they said was the newest technology, wouldn't leak, has had three leaks in the past 2 months reported by Science Alert. The Associated Press reported two barrels of oil—what I'm hoping is that you guys do not delay agendizing this divestment and voting on it. Hopefully when you do vote on it, you vote to divest. Time is critical. I was going over about five leaks; I just ran out of time. How many more will happen in the next month? Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Melanie Liu to be followed by Waverly Long and Rafi Long. TRANSCRIPT Page 19 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 Melanie Liu: Money makes the world go round. Follow the money. Our indigenous relatives call the pipeline the black snake. It is the green snake, the banks, that makes the black snake possible. The big banks, big oil, and big greed are funding the destruction of our planet. From [foreign language] dot org, which means money talks in Lakota, communities, tribes and cities are divesting billions from the Dakota Access Pipeline. The fight is not over. These same banks that are funding the expansion of the Dallas Association of Petroleum Landmen (DAPL) system and four proposed tar sands pipelines have learned nothing from Standing Rock. They are flying in the face of this movement and of climate reality. Together their proposed tar sands pipelines would add over 3 million barrels of the dirtiest oil in the world to flow across Turtle Island every single day. City initiatives like high efficiency water heaters are needed. Unless we align our money with our values, it's akin to trying to swim with a ball and chain around your torso. That's why divestment is the best way to resist Trump backing out of the Paris Climate Accord. Our family has divested from United States (U.S.) Bank. I cut up my U.S. Bank card here in the lobby in April. It's time for Palo Alto to take bold action and divest our relationship with U.S. Bank and our investments with Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Chase, and the Tennessee Valley Authority. All of those other than Tennessee Valley Authority are funders of DAPL and many other pipelines. This is not unchartered territory. Other cities have done so already. If you divest tonight, you will be the first to lead Silicon Valley to being true climate action champions. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Waverly Long and Rafi Long to be followed by Bob Jung. Waverly Long: My name is Waverly Long, and I'm a resident of Palo Alto. Rafi Long: Hello, my name is Rafi Long; I'm also a resident. Today, we would like to read to you a petition signed by over 436 individuals regarding divestment. We, the undersigned, urge Palo Alto City Council to direct City Staff to expeditiously divest the City's financial portfolio of all entities providing financing to the Dakota Access Pipeline and Energy Transfer Partners as well as any other infrastructure construction designed to extract or consume fossil fuel. Ms. Long: Furthermore, we urge the City of Palo Alto to conduct its business with financial institutions that have values aligned with ours and lending practices that support rather than harm our communities and our shared climate. Mr. Long: Finally, we would like to ask all those who are supporters of divestment to stand. Thank you very much for your consideration. Mayor Scharff: Bob Jung to be followed by Barbara Criner. TRANSCRIPT Page 20 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 Bob Jung: Hi. Thank you for letting me speak. I wasn't planning on speaking, but I got inspired by all my fellow climate defenders here. I thought I'd get up and say something. I don't think I need to convince you that the science is irrefutable. I don't think I need to convince you of that. This is the moral thing to do. As we as individuals have been taking our part, trying to reduce our carbon footprint, I'm sure most of you have. The power that we have is so little compared to what the fossil fuels can do. They are supported by many banking institutions. Unfortunately, they are not driven by morality like we are in terms of reducing our carbon footprint. They are driven by the quarterly return. They are driven by their shareholders, financial rewards. You as civic leaders can translate this moral imperative into a statement that will force these companies to do the moral thing just as we've done in the past, apartheid. We enact social justice with divestment. Here we can take divestment and enact climate justice. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Barbara Criner, our final speaker. Barbara Criner: Good evening. I'm Barbara Criner. I'm here to speak about La Comida. I've been a resident of this City for the past 55 years and am concerned and want to talk about those concerns related to the lunch program and what it's facing in not having a permanent home. I cannot comprehend how we got to this point with all those design and redesign plans that were made for the old police station. To my way of thinking, it would have been easy enough to add a third floor to the design to accommodate everyone including La Comida. I visited the Mountain View Senior Center for the first time on the very day that they were closing that building to demolish and make room for their new facility. I must say it's a wonderful facility. They have something they can be proud of, which is not the case with us. I ask how we even got into this position. I think it's due to elitism. When the Senior Center opened in the '70s, I imagined that it would be open for me when I reached the age when I would need it. Unfortunately, it's a shame that it doesn't and that that's going to happen. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Now, turning to Council—thank you all very much for your comments. Minutes Approval 3. Approval of Action Minutes for the May 15, 2017 Council Meeting. Mayor Scharff: We need a Motion to approve the Minutes. Vice Mayor Kniss: So moved. TRANSCRIPT Page 21 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 Mayor Scharff: I'll second that. MOTION: Vice Mayor Kniss moved, seconded by Mayor Scharff to approve the Action Minutes for the May 15, 2017 Council Meeting. Mayor Scharff: If we could vote on the board. That passes unanimously. MOTION PASSED: 9-0 Consent Calendar Mayor Scharff: Now, for the Consent Calendar. We have a couple of speakers. Council Member DuBois, did you have your light on? Our first speaker is Rita Vrhel on Consent Calendar Number 6, to be followed by Greg Schmid on Consent Calendar Number 10. Rita Vrhel, speaking regarding Agenda Item 6: Good evening. I wanted to speak for a couple of minutes on Track Watch. When is the City Council going to ask the School District to contribute to this? In the past, I had heard that 50 percent of the money was going to come from the School District. To date, I don't think they have been asked for anything. I know they have budget problems. Perhaps, if they had to pay for part of Track Watch, they would be a little more careful with their money. If you're going to continue this program by going into electronic surveillance, the time is now to ramp up the School Board's contribution. You can start at 25 percent and work up to 50 percent in a couple of years. The School Board needs to be involved in this. Thank you very much. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Former Vice Mayor Greg Schmid. Greg Schmid, speaking regarding Agenda Item 10: Good evening. Delighted to support the Baylands Park Ordinance, Item Number 10 on your Agenda. The building in the middle demands serious attention. It has an important story to tell. It's probably the oldest commercial building in Silicon Valley that's at the roots of much of the technological wonders we came to see over the last century. The company that built it, Federal Telegraph, was established in Palo Alto in 1909 to provide wireless services on the Pacific. They immediately introduced the Poulsen Arc Technology to the United States. In 1912, one of its employees, Lee De Forest, produced a major innovation in vacuum tube technology. The Baylands Transmission Building, built in 1921, provided a key link in the emerging technology behind intercontinental wireless. The tech linkages of Federal Telegraph is an early history of Silicon Valley, Lee De Forest to Frederick Terman, who happened to work there while he was an undergraduate at Stanford, to Litton to Eitel and McCullough to Varian. Besides being the oldest important TRANSCRIPT Page 22 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 Silicon Valley commercial building, the Federal Telegraph Building has a critical story to tell to all of us. I encourage the Council and the Staff to set up an effective process to discuss how we can respect our most important buildings so that future generations can share important parts of our history. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Council Member Holman, you have your light on. Council Member Holman: Just a very brief question for City Manager on that or maybe it's for Director Gitelman. If we dedicate the land tonight, which I'm presuming we are, there may be County funds available for restoring that building. Just wanted to make that comment. James Keene, City Manager: Thank you. That's good to hear. One step at a time. Mayor Scharff: Now, if we could have a Motion on the Consent Calendar. Vice Mayor Kniss: So moved. Council Member Wolbach: Second. MOTION: Vice Mayor Kniss moved, seconded by Council Member Wolbach to approve Agenda Item Numbers 4-15. 4. Approval of: (1) a Construction Contract With O'Grady Paving, Inc. in the Amount of $3,686,766 for the Fiscal Year 2017 Middlefield Road and Lincoln Street Paving, Capital Improvements Program Projects PE-86070, PO-89003, PL-05030, PL-00026, PL-12000; (2) Deductive Change Order Number 1 With O'Grady Paving, Inc. in the Amount of $165,280; and (3) Approval of Budget Amendments in the General Fund, the Capital Improvement Fund, and the Transportation Impact Fee Fund. 5. Acceptance of State of California Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC) Grant Funds and Approval of a Budget Amendment in the Amount of $109,876 to the General Fund. 6. Approval of Contract Amendment Number 3 With Cypress Security, Inc. (C16160138A) in the Amount of $1,240,000 for a Total Not-to- Exceed Amount of $3,332,216, and Extend the Term of the Agreement to June 30, 2018 for Track Watch Guard Services for Caltrain Monitoring. TRANSCRIPT Page 23 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 7. Approval of Contract Number C17167790 With Palo Alto Housing Corporation for the Provision of Below Market Rate (BMR) Administration Services for $274,000 Over a Two-year Period. 8. Approval of Conforming Changes to the Gas Utility Long-term Plan (GULP) Objectives, Strategies and Implementation Plan to Reflect Prior Council Action. 9. Approval of a Construction Contract With Alcal Specialty Contracting, Inc. in an Amount Not-to-Exceed $261,227 to Replace the Existing Roofs at the Rinconada Pool Buildings, Capital Improvement Program Project PF-00006. 10. Adoption of an Ordinance Dedicating 36.5 Acres of Land at the Former ITT Property Antenna Field to Become Part of the Baylands Nature Preserve. 11. Approval of Amendment Number 2 to the Promissory Note and Amendment Number 2 to the Agreement Between the City and Palo Alto Housing Corporation (PAHC) for the Acquisition of the Sheridan Apartments at 360 Sheridan Avenue; and Approval of an Expenditure of Funds Held by PAHC for the Acquisition of Property Interest in the Sheridan Apartments. The Project is Exempt From the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) per Section 15061 (b)(3). 12. Policy and Services Committee Recommendation to Accept the Revised City Fraud, Waste, and Abuse Hotline Administration Policy. 13. Approval of Amendment Number 2 to Professional Services Contract Number C14150008 With Sandis Civil Engineers Surveyors Planners for the Preparation of an Environmental Assessment and Final Plans, Specifications and Estimates for the Churchill Avenue Improvement Project to Extend the Contract Term Until June 30, 2018 at no Additional Cost to the City. 14. Resolution 9681 Entitled, “Resolution of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Approving the Support Services Program Agreement With the Northern California Power Agency, Identifying Designated Representatives and Authorizing Annual Not-to-Exceed Amounts of $250,000/$85,000 Under the Agreement for a Term of ten Years.” 15. Approval of Construction Contract Number C17168059 With Tochi in the Amount of $273,680 to Provide Construction Services for the Zero Waste Office Renovation (CIP PF-16006). TRANSCRIPT Page 24 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 Mayor Scharff: If we could vote. That passes unanimously. MOTION PASSED: 9-0 Action Items At this time Council heard Agenda Item Numbers 16 and 17 concurrently. 16. Annual Earth Day and Sustainability and Climate Action Plan (S/CAP) Update. 17. Discuss the Draft 2017-2020 Sustainability Implementation Plan (SIP) and Direct Staff on Next Steps. Mayor Scharff: With that, we move to the main event, the Annual Earth Day and Sustainability and Climate Action Plan, (S/CAP), update and discussion of the draft 2017-2020 Sustainability Implementation Plan. Welcome, Gil. Gil Friend, Chief Sustainability Officer: Good evening, Mayor Scharff. Good evening, Council Members. I'm Gil Friend, Chief Sustainability Officer for the City. I'm joined here at the table with Phil Bobel, Assistant Director of Public Works, and Christine [phonetic] Long from the Sustainability Staff. Also, in the audience, Hillary Rupert [phonetic], our consultant on mobility and Electric Vehicles (EV), and quite a number of City Staff. I won't introduce them all at this time, but they'll be available for our discussion to come. This meeting is a continuation of our work on the Sustainability and Climate Action Plan initiative. Just to recap, April a year ago, the Council unanimously endorsed the 80 by '30 greenhouse gas reduction goal, targeting 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, 20 years ahead of the international goal and the State of California goal. In November of last year, the Council approved the Sustainability and Climate Action Plan framework and directed Staff to return to you with the Sustainability Implementation Plan, which is what we're bringing to the table today. This discussion had been scheduled for April at Earth Day, which is our traditional time. Because of the needs of that meeting, it's been postponed but this is a fine thing. We join you today on World Environment Day, June 5th, and also in the middle of a week of some remarkable developments around climate in the United States and internationally. As you all know, last week the President acted to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Accord, leaving 195 other countries around the world in an unprecedented agreement that we have stepped out from. That's the bad news. The good news is that there's been a remarkable outpouring around the Country. As you all know, Mayor Scharff, you are one of what is now 181 mayors who have signed on for City commitment to the Paris Accord. This is really a reflection of decisions we've already made in your TRANSCRIPT Page 25 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 decisions about the Sustainability and Climate Action Plan. In addition to those mayors, more than 150 college and university presidents, more than 800 corporate Chief Executive Officers (CEO), the governors of states that represent 36 percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and you saw the sentiment here in this room. It's a great time to be thinking about what's our next step, how do we move forward on the commitments that we've made and the aspirations that we share. I think you've seen this slide before, just to summarize what we're trying to do with all this effort. We're, of course, trying to build a healthy, safe, resilient, and prosperous climate and do our part as one small city that traditionally, as the City Manager says, punches above its weight to set an example that other cities can emulate in both facing the climate challenge and inspiring by example. To summarize very briefly the S/CAP. The goal 80 by '30 you can see here on the screen. I'm not going to read all these slides to you, but you can see some of the key strategies that we have in the Plan. It encompasses many strategies, dozens of them, and hundreds of Action Items. These are the core. Let's get carbon neutral and do it fast. Let's explore whether this City can be net positive in relation to climate. How do we reduce our dependence on the private automobile, reduce our dependence on our remaining fossil fuel consumption and natural gas? Rethink about what we buy both as a City and as residents of this City with the election that we participate in everyday, not just every 4 years, as we vote our values at the marketplace. How do we start to line up the pricing of the things we buy and the economic decisions that we make so they can reflect our values and the strategies and risk mitigations that we're trying to build for the future? Here you see just an overall picture of our greenhouse gas trajectory going back to the 1990 baseline. Slow declines 'til 2005 when we built our first Climate Action Plan, one of the first in the Country for a City. You see a sharp drop at 2013 when Council decided to make our Palo Alto Utilities electricity carbon neutral. Then, a schematic trajectory from here forward to the 80 by '30 target. That's not exactly the line that we will follow, but it certainly shows the direction and the slope that we need to average. We'll talk tonight about the 2017-2020 Sustainability Implementation Plan, which focuses on the actions that Staff proposes to take in these next few years. In the following period, '20 to 2030, we imagine there will be revisions of the overall Plan as well as further elaborations of Implementation Plans. Frankly, this is something where we will learn as we go. We set a direction that's clear. We'll dive deeper, do these analyses, bring proposals back to you, see what their effects are, and then tune and revise course as we go. Just to summarize, greenhouse gas emissions are down now about 37 percent from the 1990 baseline. That's a good first step on the way to the 80 percent reduction. These are based on a reporting under the U.S. community protocol for accounting and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions. All of this supports three key commitments that we've talked TRANSCRIPT Page 26 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 about from my very first conversation with you in early 2014: to improve the quality of life in this City, to protect the prosperity that supports that quality of life, and to enhance the resilience that we will need to face the expected and, frankly, unexpected perturbations that climate change will bring to us over the course of this century. The Earth Day report, which you have in your Packet , summarizes the activities of the last year, substantial progress. You approved the Climate Neutral Natural Gas Plan. Our water consumption declined substantially in the face of the drought challenges. We're on track to reach an impressive renewable portfolio standard. We adopted a green building Ordinance and Energy Reach Code; that process starts again this year on the next phase of that. Received a substantial grant from the Federal Transit Administration to pursue mobility as a service pilots with a dozen other cities and several major employers in this region. Dozens upon dozens of sustainability initiatives across City departments and participation in these multicity initiatives like the Mayor's Climate Action Agenda. By the way, just a couple of weeks ago we were awarded the Green California Summit in Sacramento Sustainability Community Leadership Award for the work that we have done to date. If there's any questions on that, we can certainly talk about it, but I'd like to focus more tonight on the Sustainability Implementation Plan. These cover eight areas of activity. They are at different levels of detail; they are all connected. Our usual practice of looking at things element by element may be challenged here because these things have repercussions for each other. The key elements among these eight are carbon and water and adaptation. That's where the lion's share of our focus is, but these are supported by the other activities. You can see in Appendix B on Page 4, I believe, a summary of the goals that we have set out. As you look through the Implementation Plan and as we talk about it tonight, you'll notice that there are three key moves that we make, three different kinds of initiatives. The first, traditional environmental efficiency is reducing resource use for a better benefit. We also are looking at shifting how we do things, shifting from natural gas to electricity both in our homes and in our vehicles, shifting from fossil fuel- powered cars to EVs, from the use of potable water for activities that don't require it to recycled water where that makes sense. There's a third domain, which is an even bigger shift that we're calling transform, which is working at systems level to change the way that we do things. Participating in the shift that we see happening in the United States from car ownership to mobility services, embedding sustainability in basic nuts and bolts operation of City government, and aligning the financial incentives that we provide with the aspirations that we're trying to achieve. We do this with four concentric zones of influence. At the center, where we have the greatest degree of control, is our City's own operations, what we buy, what we spec, how we build. The next circle out around that, which is a broader reach but less control, is the mandates and Ordinances that we promulgate TRANSCRIPT Page 27 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 to our community. Beyond that, again wider circle, less control, is the incentives and rebates that we provide through utilities and other programs, education and outreach to encourage community engagement and community action. Beyond that, more broadly again, less direct influence but a big reach because of the reputation that we have in the world, is participation in regional and statewide policy to achieve the goals that, frankly, we can't achieve by ourselves at the scale of a small City. Let me just roll through, without reading, the eight slides that summarize the key actions and new actions that you'll see in the Sustainability Implementation Plan (SIP), the Sustainability Implementation Plan. We specify new actions because many of these things are continuing from activities already underway in departments over the past few years. In mobility, the key concerns here will be electric vehicles and how we expand the proportion both of the vehicles in Palo Alto and the vehicles that commute here that are EVs. Support and enhance the Transportation Management Association. Development of paid parking strategies that can become one of the funding sources for the Transportation Management Association (TMA) and those activities. Mobility as a service as we've discussed several times before. Here as well as in each of the other areas, determining what are the appropriate mandates or incentives or educational strategies that we need to pursue those. With energy, it's a three-part set of priorities: maximize efficiency; explore and advance electrification where that makes sense economically; and examine how to accelerate the retrofitting and upgrading of our existing building stock. We've done a very good job with new and retrofit buildings, but that's a tiny fraction of our stock. Thinking about how we move that forward is a key question here. With zero waste and the circular economy, we will do new inventories of waste streams, in particular around construction and demolition waste. Explore the appropriate requirements to advance our already Country-leading waste diversion success to the next step. Around water management, of course we've done major gains on water efficiency. In this next period, we look hard at recycled water and how to extend that. We look at green storm water infrastructure to both minimize impact on the Bay and also provide a vehicle for water capture and reuse. Municipal operations is where we get to walk the talk. Embedding sustainability in everything from our procurement practices to our Capital Improvement Budgets to the way that we evaluate our programs and, in fact, do the cost effectiveness assessments that support our decisions. Doing evaluations of City buildings to ensure that they are up to the State of practice on efficiency and sustainability. Continuing to improve our procurement practices along the lines that City Manager Keene said a couple of years ago, to move from environmentally preferable purchasing to a default to green strategy. With regard to climate adaptation and resilience, a number of efforts here. The key, as you have directed us before, is to come back with a sea level rise policy, how we'll TRANSCRIPT Page 28 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 address this issue prudently and proactively in coming years. In regeneration and the natural environment, continuing to pursue the Urban Forest Master Plan and its integration with other plans that we have in Motion. Exploring the possible role of our urban forest in the local offsets that you asked us to look at late last year. Understanding the common wealth, the natural and created infrastructure that we share together, and how to ensure that our policies do the best we can to support the wellbeing and growth of that common wealth in the future. Last but not least, a focused effort around financing strategies. We recognize that General Fund and Enterprise Funds can only go so far. We're looking at the use of carbon offsets as a capital formation mechanism to support the kind of programs that we need to see. New financing options, you'll recall that we built a toolkit last year, looking at 30 or 40 other kinds of potential financing options for cities. Examining the possibility of adding a carbon price to our internal decision criteria so we can actually start to reflect these concerns as we do our financial analysis, probably starting with our vehicles and electric heat pumps and some other measures to look at. You'll recall in the governance framework in the S/CAP that you adopted back in November we set out some guiding principles, overarching guiding principles, specific design principles that can be a touchstone for Staff over the coming years. As we face the inevitable difficulties and challenges, we can come back to first principles and say does this option help us advance, for example, the use of local energy and water as a fundamental design strategy. We laid out a set of decision criteria that, of course, include cost effectiveness and the financial rigor that this Council has so aptly demonstrated, but a number of other criteria that we should add to the mix. With all that accomplishment, there are some significant challenges ahead of us, including matching the pace of change that's required. We're not typically a fast-moving organization. The world is going to challenge us to learn how to move faster than we've been historically comfortable with. We'll need to consider water issues beyond the drought. I think people have breathed a sigh of relief that the drought is apparently over, but we know we face long-term water challenges in California. We'll need to be thinking about how to address those appropriately. We've talked in the past about the utility of the future. That's not included in the SIP because Palo Alto utilities is launching a strategic planning process as we speak. Those issues are going to be reflected there. There are, of course, challenges around Federal and State and regional policy. Federal I don't need to say anything about. Regional my group faces every day when we consider that there are dozens of transit agencies in the Bay Area, and we have to find a way to find a solution that will work across all of them. The implementation of the S/CAP, we're focused on that here tonight. Scope 3 emissions, something we've just hinted at before. This is the emissions that result from people's purchases and the City's purchases because each of those purchases triggers upstream TRANSCRIPT Page 29 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 use of energy and emissions of carbon. If you can see this chart, you'll notice the line at the lower right marks what we have been reporting under the protocols that we use. It's about a third of the total emissions of this community. In the coming period, we're going to want to think about what do we do about the rest of that, how do we address those other domains. We'll this year, hopefully, finally be deploying a sustainability dashboard that gives us a view across all these activities in a way that's easy for Staff and Council and community to understand and see our trends. We'll be looking at how do we build our agility and find ways to experiment, do rapid experimental cycles as we move into territory that, frankly, no one has ever gone into before, and see how we can learn effectively and adapt from that learning. We'll have difficult choices to face around adaptation and resilience, where we site buildings, how we do that, how we protect them, where we retreat, and so forth. Last but certainly not least, the challenge of financing the future that we're trying to build. I just want to say that the course to the goal isn't always a straight line. I don't know if any of you are sailors, but you know the image of someone trying to sail into the wind. You have to tack; you can't go directly into the wind. You have to go back and forth along the course. Over time, you're going in the direction that you want to go. At any given moment, you might not be strictly speaking on course. I think we'll need to develop a comfort for that kind of somewhat wandering path rather than a direct path for some of the things that we're looking at. The principles and criteria are in place to help us both be flexible and stay on course as best we can. To summarize the key topics that we will expect to be coming back to you with in the course of FY '18, you can see here on screen in these five areas. Mobility, EV charging stations, TMA funding, and paid parking. Around energy, the question of what we regulate and what we incent, in particular with regard to net zero energy buildings and more rapid upgrading of our building stock. Around water, recycled water and green storm water infrastructure. Sea level rise policy with regard to adaptation and resilience. In financing, the utilization of carbon offsets and the exploration of internal carbon pricing as Microsoft and dozens of other companies and dozens of other cities have done. Our recommendation to you tonight is to accept the Sustainability Implementation Plan and key actions for the Sustainability and Climate Action Plan, and to acknowledge that Staff will return to Council in the coming year for approval of specific implementation items and budget requests as needed, as generated by the development work that we do over the coming months. That concludes my presentation. Mayor Scharff: Thank you for that. Before we go to the public, I thought we could do a round of questions, if any Council Members have any questions. Council Member Fine. TRANSCRIPT Page 30 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 Council Member Fine: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I assume some of these— would you like just general comments at the moment or … Mayor Scharff: Questions. Council Member Fine: Thank you very much for this report. I think it's really helpful. I want to re-emphasize what you said, Gil, that no City has really done this before in a big way. We're looking at new territory. That's exciting. It's a little frightening too. I know, given Palo Alto's environmental qualities and leadership role, this is something we have to do. I guess my question gets down to how. I'm assuming some of my Colleagues will have similar questions. This isn't a question to answer tonight. What are our priorities here and how are we measuring these? Should we as a Council pick some of these actions? Is it they're going to happen next year, they're going to happen over the next 3 years? When you built this plan, do you see this all happening in 3 years or are these the menu of options that we choose over the next 15, and each one of these is a little tack and correction? Mr. Friend: Council Member, the S/CAP itself is the menu of options. It lays out the whole boatload of strategies and actions that, from our vantage point today, look like the way to go to 2030. I say vantage point today because we know those will evolve over time. The SIP is a distillation of that, of the actions that we recommend taking over the next 3 years to both advance our practice and also advance our knowledge. We've highlighted in that document—I think we have a handout here—the ones that are the focus for 2018. Others will kick in over the succeeding years. I would also emphasize that this is a work in progress. We don't consider this as a lock in from now 'til 2020. It's where we'll start in 2018, but we may come back to you with proposed modifications, add certain items, accelerate certain items, drop certain items as we learn what works. Council Member Fine: Thank you. Phil Bobel, Assistant Director Public Works: Gil, if I could just … Mr. Friend: Please. Mr. Bobel: I just wanted to make sure you saw that document. Tonight, in front of you we've got this highlighted version that Gil talked about. It's the same text that's attached to the Staff Report, and it is the SIP, the Sustainability Implementation Plan. What we did tonight, anticipating a question like yours, Council Member Fine, was to yellow highlight the ones that were specifically for FY '18. You can think of it in layers. The S/CAP is TRANSCRIPT Page 31 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 a 2030 plan. The SIP is a 3-year plan. Even within that, the yellow highlights are the Fiscal Year (FY) '18 items. Council Member Fine: The question is, if I'm looking at a given page and I can see that the lead department is Utilities and Development Services for these highlighted actions, have these been vetted by those departments as well? Have they bought in to do them in FY 2018? This is kind of programmed work the City is already prepared to do? Mr. Friend: These, in fact, been built by those departments. (Crosstalk.) Council Member Fine: (Crosstalk) to lead on these? James Keene, City Manager: If I could just jump in here and also answer the question, but sort of expand it a little bit and almost get rudimentary with the Council for 3 or 4 minutes, then we'll probably have to come back to this later on. The S/CAP that you've adopted already has broad goals; it has guiding principles. You've been saying what are the specific actions that implement them. The idea of these Strategic Implementation Plans are the actions to implement them. We've got a 13-year period between now and 2030, which we're conveniently using as it relates to the S/CAP, a lot of it because of the carbon reduction goal of 80 percent by 2030. We've got a SIP for the next 3 years, through 2020. The anticipation is there would be a subsequent SIP for the next 5-year period, from 2020-2025, and a third SIP from 2025-2030 with each one of those SIPs building on the stuff that went before. Even though we are including in these sheets that Phil handed out— it's about half of what's included in this 3-year SIP, anticipates some work in the next Fiscal Year, 2018. It's quite conceivable that there could be things that are in here that will have to ultimately spillover into a subsequent Strategic Implementation Plan. That's the one main point I wanted to make. The second thing is the point of the report we're giving you here today really is part of the process on continuing to move forward on the S/CAP. There's two purposes. One is to report on what we can continue to do within existing policy and directives and resources already. When we look at many of the topics that are highlighted in yellow here, to a great extent we would see we already have existing policy or a resource capacity in the departments to continue working on those. The result of that work is you'll see a lot of things that say consider, explore, evaluate in this period. That could result in specific recommendations that will then have to come back to the Council. That's in the second part of what the SIP is designed to do, to identify new specific actions that can accelerate progress in the seven S/CAP areas and to return to the Council. If I could do one last thing, if you all wouldn't mind turning to your Staff Report. On the opening page of the Staff Report, it has some recommendations. They are slightly different than TRANSCRIPT Page 32 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 the recommendation Gil has up here on the screen right now. The first one is essentially the same, which is at the end of this evening, our hope is that the Council would accept the action plan, Strategic Implementation Plan report that we have here. Secondly, in the Staff Report, we had originally asked you to authorize us to proceed on key actions, including analytical work in consultation with stakeholders. We'd ask you to strike that. We want to substitute that you would acknowledge that the Staff will return to Council for approval of selected implementation actions and budget requests as needed. What that tries to distinguish is that there are within the SIP items in 2018 for which we can proceed apace already. There are a number of items that clearly we would have to come back to the Council during the course of the year. We may do that in segments and say, "In order to proceed on this, here's a policy decision you may have to make. By the way, here are the implications. By the way, here may be resources that are necessary for us to implement them." It was very clear to us that it was confusing and fuzzy that the list of the actions really didn't draw a good distinction between what we can do—I don't want to say put on autopilot— with existing direction and for which we will have to come back to the Council. That being said, the concept is for the most part—it may be a little frustrating because I know we're all raring to go. A lot of the work we anticipate in 2018 will still be in further evaluation and research. We would expect bigger, specific, maybe challenging recommendations to come forward in Fiscal Year '19 and '20, in the second and third years of the SIP itself. Council Member Fine: Thank you. That's very helpful, City Manager. I'll just leave with my last big question. I certainly don't expect an answer tonight. I'm wondering what are the specific reductions for each of these programs, which of them are on autopilot and already in flight for the City, what are the different priorities we have around them, what are the timelines, what are the feasibilities, what are the costs, potential cost recoveries for each of these? At least for me, I'd love to see, of these new or key actions that are proposed, a number of measures. What are the priorities? Which ones are funded? Which ones are staffed? Where is there a policy decision this Council may have to make this year or next year? I know that can't be answered tonight, but that would be helpful to me. Mr. Friend: The short answer is that the priority is transportation and buildings. If we think about carbon, that's pretty straightforward. We have in the S/CAP itself—I know you weren't on the Council back in November when we looked at it—a Greenhouse Gas Reduction Budget that proposed the specific reductions we would expect to see from each of the different sets of actions. We can certainly break that out for you. We don't have that with us tonight. I'm happy to go through that in detail. There's a pretty TRANSCRIPT Page 33 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 rigorous set of analysis that went into the Sustainability and Climate Action Plan, looking measure by measure at existing technologies, potential rates of reduction of emissions, perspective costs as best we understood them, what's the mitigation cost or cost per ton of carbon reduction of different strategies, which becomes one of our prioritization tools. Now, granted that analysis was done in 2015. We're in the land of very rapidly changing technologies and prices. We imagine that some of these will need to be refreshed, as the City Manager pointed out, in this coming year. Council Member Fine: Just last comment. It would be nice if some of those metrics surfaced in this Plan. Thank you. Mr. Friend: We have them, and we can put them in here. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Filseth. Council Member Filseth: A quick question. There's a note in here that the estimated cost of SIP actions for FY '18 will be $1.5 million, not including a few things and so forth. If we approve this tonight, are we approving that $1.5 million? Mr. Friend: No. Mr. Keene: What page are you on, Council Member? I'm sorry. Council Member Filseth: Packet Page 589, which is Page 2 of 15 of the Sustainability Implementation Plan key actions. Mr. Bobel: Let me start off with this. That reference is to measures that are already approved and in the current budget. They're not in addition to the current budget. That's the short answer of where I think you're … Council Member Filseth: Thanks very much. Mr. Keene: To my point obviously, if there are changes, we would have to be coming back to the Council in the course of FY '18 beyond that $1.5 million that's already, in a sense, part of the existing budgets across the departments. Mayor Scharff: Vice Mayor Kniss. Vice Mayor Kniss: A semi question. Looking at the Palo Alto zones of influence in your presentation, you list City, so on and so forth, and regional and statewide policy. As the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (Air Board) just set the stage last week for capping greenhouse gas emissions from the Bay Area refineries, I hope we will keep track of that kind of action. TRANSCRIPT Page 34 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 That was very bold on the part of their Board and certainly will be a lawsuit in the end, without question. It's strongly supported by the California Air Resources Board as well as the local board. That's the first board that's passed that. I would like us to remember that the regional and the statewide policies can make a big difference on our greenhouse gas emissions and hopefully our ability to see this go down even further than we might anticipate. Mr. Friend: I appreciate that, Council Member. I would note also that the plan that the Air Board released, I guess, just a few weeks ago really echoes a lot of these strategies and directions that Palo Alto has adopted in its own Climate Plan. I think there's really compatible direction. Vice Mayor Kniss: Just so you don't miss it, that's it. It's called Spare the Air and Cool the Climate. Again, it's a long and detailed guideline, hopefully something we can accomplish within the next few years. It's very extensive, as you know. Mr. Friend: Yes. That's a good piece of work. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: Thanks for the presentation. I'm going to try to get through four questions, so I'd appreciate short answers. Inclusion of the Scope 3 emissions. I'm wondering how does the Council, how do you balance the desire to include those with this discussion about priorities and focus. Mr. Friend: As you heard from my comment, it's not one of the top priorities. It's something that we think it's time to start thinking about because our reportable emissions are about a third or so of our total emissions. If we're concerned with not just having a good report but having a beneficial impact on the climate, this is something we need to address and think about as both the City budgets money and makes purchases and as the members of a relatively wealthy community spend and invest their money. What we do this year is we start to get our arms around the scale of it and start to talk about it and just explore what do people think, where might there be leverage. This is not a place where it's appropriate for us to tell anybody what to do. It may be appropriate for us to share with our community "here's the impact of what you're doing, could that inform your choices in a more effective way." Council Member DuBois: Packet Page 506, you had a comment about managing implementation and used something like constraints in departments and the Office of Sustainability require coordination and TRANSCRIPT Page 35 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 performance tracking. There's a paragraph there. I wondered if you had— what do you need there? Do you have ideas? What do you envision? Mr. Friend: Which paragraph are you in, sir? Council Member DuBois: About managing the implementation. Mr. Keene: This is part of the Earth Day report itself. Council Member DuBois: I think it's a general comment. It's really about coordination and communication. Mr. Friend: We're going to, first of all, continue to do what we've been doing, which is have regular interdepartmental management of this work through the sustainability board, a number of staff-level committees. Phil has led the work around the Sustainability Implementation Plan with probably 30 people. Mr. Bobel: Let me just chime in here. The structure of it is, at the highest level, the department heads form this sustainability board and Jim and Ed. The next level down, what we've done is we've divided the work into the eight chapters you see here, the seven what I call content chapters and then the financing chapter. We have a team on each of those. We have a team leader. We'll use that structure going forward to deal with implementation now that we've built it using those internal teams. Council Member DuBois: That's very helpful. It sounds like you're saying you need further improvements. Do you think … Mr. Keene: Yes. There's prioritization, sticking to the knitting. I would disagree with Gil a little bit about veering off into Scope 3 emissions even in this next year while we're trying to deal with some of the basics that we've got to drive and achieve in the organization. We've got to stay focused. That means a focused effort around the specifics of what we want to achieve within 2018 and how that gets nested within the things we want to do over the 3-year SIP. Council Member DuBois: I think you partially answered my next question. Who's on the Sustainability Board? I'm curious who's on it, how often do you meet? The same question for the executive advisory group, who's on that? Mr. Friend: The Sustainability Board is most of the department directors, not all. We meet monthly and additionally as needed. The advisory board has not met in the last few months, but it's about 20 people or so. I don't TRANSCRIPT Page 36 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 have the list with me. We brought it to you at a prior meeting. As we were in active development of the S/CAP, we were meeting about every 4-6 weeks. Council Member DuBois: Is it mostly corporate representatives or is it just a … Mr. Friend: It's a mix. It's some corporate, some engineering professionals, some environmental activists, some community activists. We tried to get it—some academics as well from Stanford. We tried to have it be diverse to bring us the multiple points of view to find the best pathways on these. I'm happy to share the list with you at another time. Council Member DuBois: Just a curiosity question. Where are we on the solar canopies/EV charger project that was listed there? Jonathan Abendschein, Resource Management Assistant Director: I believe we're talking about the solar canopy EV projects at the City parking garages? Is that right? Council Member DuBois: Yep. Mr. Abendschein: We have four of those. They're being finished in sequence. One of the Downtown parking garages is complete. We are starting the next one, and then we have two for California Avenue that are in progress. Council Member DuBois: Progress means under construction? Mr. Abendschein: Planned for construction after the two University Downtown garages. Mr. Keene: We'll have a ribbon cutting or whatever it is on Bryant Street. Jon, did you have the golf course parking lot in that list? Mr. Abendschein: The golf course parking lot is a potential community solar project we're considering, that we're talking to the UAC about right now. It's in preliminary planning stages. Council Member DuBois: Thank you. Mr. Friend: In addition to the energy generation capacity of these projects, we'll wind up with about 93 electric vehicle chargers at City garages and lots. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman. TRANSCRIPT Page 37 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 Council Member Holman: Thank you. There have been some very good questions asked already. As far as the Implementation Plan is concerned—I think Council Member Fine brought this up too. It seems like in terms of prioritization, even if we look at what we have tonight At Places, this is an inordinate number of Action Items. It would be helpful for us to comprehend and prioritize for Staff to know where we are, what the current status is of these and to put some prioritization to them. It's one of those things like if everything is an emergency, nothing is an emergency. If everything's a priority, nothing is a priority. It's sort of like that. While there are some things that aren't on this list—we could go on and on and on for the next 3 years—there are some things, for instance, in Scope 3 that already have some activity going on about them. It seems like the Council ought to, in concert with Staff, be establishing what their priorities are. I feel like, with this presentation, we're being told here's what we're doing and here's what we want you to approve. That's one question. I can just put out three questions at once, if I could. That's one question. The advisory board, you said you did. I'm sure you did present that; I just don't remember it or who's on it. Is that different than the stakeholder group that you've referenced on Packet Page 583 that was previously Number 2 in the recommended actions? That's the second question. Third question. The sustainability board is most department directors. I have a particular interest for many reasons, including Carbon Dioxide (CO2) advantages. Is the Urban Forester a part of that group? Mr. Friend: The Public Works Department where the Urban Forester sits is a part of that group. The Urban Forester comes to the meetings on an on-call basis. Council Member Holman: Why wouldn't the Urban Forester? He's a specialist. Mr. Keene: We're using some hierarchy as it relates to the department directors, and we're able to pull people in. We're able to bring experts in their field, in utilities as needed. Same thing with the Urban Forester. This is, in a sense, a governing and decision-making board, not necessarily a tactical board all the time. That's going to be important with the other folks. Guarantee you people are not being forgotten or left out. Mr. Bobel: Could I just add a thought about the Urban Forester in particular? This next level down from the Sustainability Board that I talked about, where we have these teams for these eight chapters, the Urban Forester is the lead for the natural environment chapter, given that most of the urban forest programs are in that chapter and support it. He is the lead for that group. I wanted to point that out. Another thing is, while I'm TRANSCRIPT Page 38 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 talking, the priorities, your first question. Again, we're taking this thing in layers. We have the full list of items. We have the key items, which are the 3-year SIP. Then, we have the highlighted actions, which are for FY '18, still a pretty long list. We gave you this slide here, which is an attempt on our part to synopsize the ones that are key for FY '18, that we envision interaction with the Council most on, and the ones where we're going to get in FY '18 most of the action at the Council level. Mr. Keene: I really think that some of the issues here are how we communicate about what's in the SIP. I do agree when you look at 75 or whatever it is, 100, particular actions, it's hard to see the forest for the trees. I think we should leave this up there for a while. It's even more complicated than I was trying to think about it. We should also realize that there are many things within the Strategic Implementation Plan that really cross out of the realm of sustainability, and there are initiatives that are being managed or led by departments. There are separate discussions that the Council is already having. For example, just in the first one on mobility, the TMA funding issue, paid parking, those are all issues that are before the Council in parallel to this. This is subsumed under the umbrella of the Strategic Implementation Plan. We'll have other streams, I guess, that we're working on. One of the things we definitely want to do at the start of this fiscal year is identify the 2018 projects we see and build a dashboard reporting system to be able to report to the Council on a quarterly basis what the progress is looking like. Then, that will start to take shape as to not only what we're doing but whether or not we're making adequate progress. Council Member Holman: That's all helpful. Just akin to that is how we are measuring success. What are we using to measure success? Mr. Friend: At one level, we're looking at actual greenhouse gas reductions. Second, we're looking at the identification and implementation of effective programs that meet our other goals, that fit within the City's management schemes, that are doable by our Staff, that are adequately and efficiently resourced. There's a whole tier of specific goals for each of those projects. The greenhouse goals are the overarch, and then you have different kinds of goals for each of these. In the case of mobility, it's going to be reduction in vehicle miles traveled and shift of fleet to electricity. In the case of buildings, it's going to be the energy utilization index, the percentage of City buildings that are at the standard we want them to see, the pace or promulgation of these throughout the City. We can go on and delineate those for each of these areas. TRANSCRIPT Page 39 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 Council Member Holman: I'll stop here. The whole goal is to reduce greenhouse gases, I guess, in some areas. It's not quite clear how those positive impacts or reductions are going to be measured. Mr. Friend: I'm not sure I understand your question, Council Member. The reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, there's a pretty straightforward measure. Some of the actions in the SIP don't have direct greenhouse gas reduction impacts. That's why we called this thing at the start a Sustainability and Climate Action Plan. Not all the actions are specifically climate related. Some of them go to overall sustainability and resilience in the community. They'll have different metrics for them and then purely carbon. I'd like to return to your second question also. You have something else on this one? Council Member Holman: Yes. I was just going to say it's like when we're looking at what we want to fund, we're going to need to have some understanding of what the impact is for what we're funding and how we (crosstalk). That's why it's important. Mr. Friend: As we bring projects to you, each of them will have specific goals, metrics, budgets, implementation strategies, and so forth. We understand your need for that rigor, and we'll deliver that. With regard to your second question about the advisory board, the advisory board is not equivalent to the stakeholders; it's one of the stakeholder groups. I think of it as a subset of a stakeholder universe. In the course of developing this work, it has included 40 community members at a design charrette, 80 at an ideas expo, 350 responded to some very sophisticated polling, 500 at the Climate Summit that we held a year ago. There's a broader reach. The advisory board is a group of dedicated people who were willing to make a focused effort on an ongoing basis to dive deep with us. Mr. Bobel: Could I just add on the subject of metrics and goals? Let me just admit we struggled with this too, especially where they're totally different areas, trying to come up with something that would allow you to compare apples and apples. A good example is the zero waste portion of this effort and what I'll call the carbon portion of this effort. As Gil points out, the carbon things, it's pretty clear how to measure greenhouse gas emissions, but it's not clear how we would compare those to our activities on zero waste, where a major goal is the diversion of waste from landfills. As you know, we've used this metric of diversion rate for zero waste. We'll continue to use that metric. The State is shifting to a different metric, which is the amount of waste produced by each resident, sort of waste per capita. You'll see us using that metric for zero waste. For water, we're struggling a bit now because the drought forced us into a percent reduction metric. Now, TRANSCRIPT Page 40 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 we're looking to reevaluate what is the best metric to use for our water efforts, for example. As Gil points out, they're going to be a bit different. With some of them, we're going to struggle with some way of letting you compare apples and what are, in some cases, oranges. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Tanaka. Council Member Tanaka: Thank you for your work on this. I just had a few quick questions. If you look at the chart on Page 590, from 2007 when Palo Alto first started to today, what do you think the total cost that we spent on this program has been so far? Mr. Friend: On this program so far? Council Member Tanaka: Mm hmm. I guess what I'm trying to get at is I was thinking about what Council Member Holman was saying about how to prioritize this. I was just thinking that—maybe you've already considered it—looking at it in terms of dollar per emission or some sort of metric where you could compare them against each other to see which one's getting the biggest bang for the buck, so to speak. I was curious to know, first of all, what's the average been so far and then could you rank the various programs because you have a lot of them in terms of which one has the biggest bang for the buck, what is the dollars per emission. Mr. Friend: I'm hearing two different questions, if I'm understanding correctly. One is the Staff cost of moving these programs forward. Second is the comparative mitigation cost of different measures. Did I understand you correctly? Council Member Tanaka: I'd actually be interested in both. To me what's interesting is the concept of leverage. How do we get the maximum benefit out of our resources? One way to compare programs against each other is to look at, let's say, dollars per emission, dollars per amount of CO2, whatever the metric happens to be. That way you could rank the programs against each other to see which one is yielding the most for the amount of resources we're putting in. Mr. Friend: If you'll give me a minute to find that. While I'm looking for the dollars per ton cost, with regard to the investment in this work so far, the consultant costs for the Sustainability and Climate Action Plan was about $230,000 if I remember correctly. Give me a minute to find this here. Mr. Keene: While he's looking at this, there are some measures of leverage and return on investment that are easier to figure than others. Let's just take, for example, the carbon reduction goals that we have right now. We're TRANSCRIPT Page 41 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 at roughly 37 percent; that's what our numbers tell us. We've got an 80 percent reduction by 2030. We already have an approved policy that is focused on buying offsets to green up our natural gas portfolio. We can have a debate now and in the future as to whether or not offsets are the right way to go or the long-term way to go. That's the policy direction we have right now. I think that's the direction that was essentially pretty inexpensive, a slight adjustment to our utility rates. The estimates are that what that will do, even within this next 3-year period, is bump up our carbon reduction to over 60 percent. The other big remaining area is in transportation as in mobility. The fact of the matter is over a period between now and 2030 you could almost make the case that the marketplace may solve almost all of that problem as it relates to carbon, not as it relates to sustainability, as far as congestion or quality of life. In our S/CAP right now the estimate is that by 2030, 90 percent of Palo Alto would be electric vehicles and 50 percent of the surrounding region would be electric vehicles. In one sense, a lot of things are going to happen that are big at very low cost. The other question is how much do we want to spend a lot on for slight returns. In some ways, that's almost what we ought to be really paying attention to as a Staff, that we don't get into a feel good thing that may actually cost us a whole lot and have very little return. Council Member Tanaka: I think your point is well taken. There's a natural decline just because technology is getting better. We're going to get an automatic reduction just by doing nothing, just because of the progress of technology. It's definitely good to look at the incremental reduction that we get by our spending. The one way to normalize these programs—you could think about it; I don't know if you have the dollar figure—would be how much reduction do you get incrementally per dollar. That way you could help prioritize which one looks like it's going to have the biggest impact. I think the City Manager's right. There are probably some small things that have very big impacts. We should be focused on those. Mr. Friend: We have done that analysis. It needs to be taken with several grains of salt because these are very sensitive to assumptions, and the assumptions have changed in the 2 years since we did this. Here we've got costs per ton ranging from $19 to $44 to $165 for different measures. That's one of the things that we'll use to guide us as we go through doing the more detailed work in this coming year, updating these assumptions based on new technology. We'll continue to have that mitigation cost efficiency in mind as one of the guides that we use. Mr. Bobel: I would just add that you used the word "leveraging." It's good for us to keep in mind, but it also compounds the technical difficulties in making an estimate. Let's assume we do something that enhances the TRANSCRIPT Page 42 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 number of electric vehicles that our residents buy. That's great. Can we take credit for that small thing that we did that encouraged our residents? No, we can't take 100 percent credit. We can't say that because we installed some charging stations, all of our residents purchased electric vehicles. There were far more forces at play than our action. It prevents us from saying we spent X dollars, and look at what we got because we leveraged it. On the other hand, as you pointed out, that's the kind of thing we want to do. We want to leverage something small that will help make a bigger sea change in the real world. We can't take credit for that whole sea change, if you know what I mean. We can't say we spent $1, and it achieved this monumental success. It contributed to it, but we have trouble teasing out what percent we can take credit for, for our expenditure. Council Member Tanaka: My point is it's better to make some sort of estimate so you have some idea versus having no idea. Mr. Friend: We have done that, Council Member. I'd be happy to share that with you at another time and more detail. Council Member Tanaka: It'd be great to see total cost. I guess my questions are it would be great to see the total cost to date. It looks like there's about (inaudible) thousand megatons of carbon or CO2 (inaudible) been reduced over that time period. For the various programs, how much do they cost and what do you think it'll do? I know it's going to be a rough estimate, but it's better than no estimate. Mr. Friend: We agree. We have rough estimates. We'll continue to refine them. I would add a word of caution. Economic efficiency is one of our critical variables. We need to be very responsible about that. It's not the only guide for these programs. There is some strategic guidance as well. It's not only that we will do the things that are most economical; we should also do the things that are the most important but in the most economical way, if you follow the distinction. I think we need to look at both of those as we go forward. In one of our earliest exercises, we estimated the cost per ton of carbon reductions across, I think, 30 different strategies, and that's our starting point for that prioritization. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Kou. Council Member Kou: I was just wondering most of the report speaks about carbon. Are you measuring the other gases as well that are greenhouse gases? Mr. Friend: The greenhouse gas emissions are expressed in metric tons of CO2 equivalent. The emissions of other gases are included in these TRANSCRIPT Page 43 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 analyses, but they're normalized to the CO2 standard. That's the common reference point globally. Council Member Kou: Does the airport factor into the mobility part of this Plan? Mr. Bobel: The airport isn't currently included in the estimates. That's the protocol that we—we use the standard protocol that all cities in California do. Under that protocol, airports aren't included. The theory being that the emissions were actually generated by not just people within that city or that jurisdiction but all over. The planners and estimators are struggling with how are we going to deal with air travel. Council Member Kou: That's going to be a factor in not being able to say that we're net zero. Mr. Bobel: Because we're an affluent community, we fly around a lot more than some places. We have to figure out how to take that into account, but we can't do anything completely independent of our regional partners, or it would throw everything out of kilter. When we're doing with these estimates that cross city lines, we have to make sure that we're following protocols that everybody is using or we'll make ourselves look either bad or good disproportionately to reality. We're waiting and hoping that—we're participating, but we're needing the State system if not the national system to figure out how to count these emissions. Mr. Friend: We're also talking with the carbon reporting agencies that we report to, the Climate Registry here in California and Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) internationally, for their guidance about how best to handle that. Vice Mayor Kniss left the meeting at 8:54 P.M. Council Member Kou: Thank you. One more question. Under water management, why is dewatering not part of it? That's a large resource, and water that we are not accounting for. Mr. Bobel: We didn't call it out specifically, but we did call out the capture of storm water and other sources of water. When you get down in the details of it, we're definitely talking about groundwater as a resource and how to utilize it. You don't see it at this level of detail, but it is embedded in all of this. I guess the way you do see it is we talk about a water management strategy that cuts across storm water, groundwater, recycled water, potable water, an integrated plan that the Utilities Department takes the lead on. We're about to begin another cycle—I guess we have started another cycle TRANSCRIPT Page 44 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 on that. That's where we've got to make sure the groundwater is an integral part of the planning. Council Member Kou: On Packet Page 499, I see you have measurements for City emissions as well as for the residential per capita utility consumption. Do you guys follow commercial businesses, offices, restaurants, all of that for what their consumption is and how they're using energy? Mr. Friend: We don't look at them individually. Their consumption is reflected in here because this is using the Palo Alto Utilities data, which is serving all those companies. It's in there, but we're not looking at them individually. Council Member Kou: It's in here … Mr. Friend: We are beginning a project—Peter, do you want to say anything about the benchmarking project? We're beginning a pilot project this year that's going to look at individual businesses in more detail. Peter Pirnejad, Development Services Director: Good evening. I'm Peter Pirnejad, Development Services Director. As Gil was mentioning, we are kicking off a project to look at zero net energy road map and benchmarking. That will include looking at our existing construction stock or building stock to see where the energy users are, the heavy energy users. As part of that, as we mentioned, we're looking at a Benchmarking Study like many cities have already initiated to require a certain threshold of buildings, usually based on size, report their energy use. We haven't really ironed out the details yet. This is a conceptual plan. We will be coming back to Council with a more ironed-out proposal but initially following some of the direction that some other cities have followed. Fifty-thousand square-foot buildings and larger is what the benchmark has usually been in requiring that they disclose their energy use. Mr. Friend: One of the values of this is that making available to building owners their comparative performance, compared to other building owners, seems to be a very good way to motivate them to make improvements in their own buildings. Just the competitive spirit that comes into play there. Council Member Kou: Is that the same way that the residences were receiving that leaflet from Utilities, saying how they compare to the next door neighbor? Mr. Friend: Yeah. It's a graph printed on their bill. It's a similar concept. TRANSCRIPT Page 45 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 Mr. Bobel: Just to come back to your initial question, let me just assure you and remind you that Gil said while we're going to focus on individuals in the future, the aggregate emissions are estimated and reflected in this because however much energy they use in aggregate, the utility summarizes that. Then, we compute what is the percentage that are City facilities. Frankly, it's a small amount; it's a couple of percent of the total that are City operations facilities. The rest, 97, 98 percent, are private-sector emissions. Council Member Kou: Lastly, Packet Page 580, that governance structure for achieving sustainability. The left side, the sustainability executive advisory group, is that the same as the stakeholders group or is that different? I'm kind of confused on all the different groups. Mr. Friend: The one on the right is the sustainable advisory board. This is the 20 or so citizens. Council Member Kou: Is that one of the stakeholders or is it … Mr. Friend: It's one of the stakeholder groups, yes. Council Member Kou: Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: Thank you very much for bringing this to us. I noticed in one of your earlier slides under key strategies you listed align investment to match our goals. I first wanted to ask is that referencing where we invest our resources within the City or does that refer to where we invest our finances, where we bank, etc.? Mr. Friend: I think the item that you're referencing said align incentives to meet our goals. Council Member Wolbach: What I'm looking at is in—your slide actually says align investment. Mr. Keene: It would be for the former of those two. Council Member Wolbach: We've obviously had some discussion in the past and other cities have already taken the step to align their external investments to match their values. We all know that's an important part of what the City does. It's an important function that we serve, given especially the size of our City Budget and how much banking we do, how much investing we do. I was wondering if there has been any discussion of incorporating that into this Plan, into these actions or if that's something that we're planning to do sooner rather than waiting to be part of this. TRANSCRIPT Page 46 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 Mr. Friend: I'll defer to Lalo Perez, our Chief Financial Officer (CFO), to give you the detailed answer on that. I've had a number of conversations with him. I know he's talked with a number of investment professionals around this. As you know, the City does not significantly invest in equities. We're not directly invested in oil companies and so forth, but he has been looking at the banks that we do business with, what their relationship is to things like the Dakota Access Pipeline and so forth. As you probably know, more than $5 trillion of investment in the United States has been divested from fossil fuel as of December. We expect that number is going to continue to rise. The specifics of different cities—a city that manages its own Pension Fund is going to have a very different relationship to those questions than we do. I think we have a narrower window of influence, but it's certainly something to look at. Again, I'll defer to Lalo to bring you up to speed in more detail on that. Council Member Wolbach: I didn't see Lalo's (inaudible), so I wouldn't expect him to run back to City Hall to address that at the moment. The question is if that's not necessarily something that's incorporated into this Plan, what would be the appropriate way—this may be more of a question for the City Manager—for us to move that issue forward to have a clarifying moment for Council to discuss what our policy should be around that and to get Staff feedback on that as well. Mr. Keene: Let me huddle with the Staff just in general. On the other hand, I could imagine that the Council could want to bring this issue forward even if we didn't have an S/CAP. It's a matter that doesn't require a Sustainability and Climate Action Plan for you to be considering it. I'll talk with our Staff first. Council Member Wolbach: Thank you very much. Mayor Scharff: I wanted to tee off a couple of comments by the City Manager. If we look at the chart you have—do we have a page number for this chart? When I look at this chart, the first question I had was now that our gas utility is carbon neutral by buying offsets, does the blue go away in 2017. Mr. Friend: The blue sort of goes away. We're going to have to keep two sets of books. Our standard reporting under the greenhouse gas protocols will include the actual emissions from natural gas. We'll make a parallel report that shows the impact with the natural gas offset. As we remember in our prior discussions, we see the offsets as a bridge strategy while we continue to drive down the actual emissions. TRANSCRIPT Page 47 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 Mayor Scharff: We have a standard protocol for all cities on how they report this. Does buying offsets count towards reducing it or not in the standard protocols? Mr. Friend: It's a yes and no question. Christine, could you speak to this? Mayor Scharff: A yes and no question. Mr. Friend: It counts but we have to report two ways. We have to report the actual physical emissions, in which case it doesn't count. We can also in parallel report the reduced emissions reflected by the offsets. We'll have to keep our eye on two balls when we do that. Mayor Scharff: If the blue went away, at least under that one scenario—I'm not sure what Tesla stock is right now, but it was reported at some point that it went above General Motors. I saw that it was above Ford, I think, at the moment. That implies that the market believes that electric cars are the future in a big way when you look at their price to earnings ratio and all of that. If 50 percent of the people in Palo Alto drove electric cars, for instance, does that roughly mean that the red goes away by half? Mr. Friend: No, it doesn't because most of that red is inbound commuting. Probably about 80 percent of that is inbound commuting. Mayor Scharff: If 50 percent of the State drove—if 50 percent of the cars on the road—let me rephrase … Mr. Friend: Then that would sort of go away by half; that's a good rough guess. Mayor Scharff: By 2030, it seems to me that we would probably be—we may very well be at least 50 percent or better for the cars in California. That's at least what the market thinks when you see a cap on Tesla that high. You're at least that. My question is if you get rid of most of the red, aren't we automatically getting there. That's what I heard the City Manager say. Since most of this is the—over 300,000 out of 500,000. If you get rid of the blue based on greening it up, which we've done to that point at least under one set of books, you've pretty much got rid of almost 100 percent of your emissions. Mr. Friend: Under one set of books, we're a long way from there. I don't think I'd use the word automatic, that the City Manager used. There are trends in motion in the world that are going to take us in that direction. As you guys stipulated when you adopted the Climate Neutral Natural Gas Plan, the offsets are not the end state around natural gas. We still want to reduce TRANSCRIPT Page 48 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 the actual natural gas use through efficiency and electrification consistent with the California Energy Commission's strategy for the State, which is emphasizing efficiency, renewables, and electrification as the core three measures. As of July 1, you could say that by one set of books we're at 62 percent reduction. Awesome. We still need to drive that gas down and in fact use some of that offset money perhaps to help us do that. Vehicles, a similar phenomenon underway. Mayor Scharff: I get it; let's not go on forever. The next thing the City Manager said, which really struck me, is how we drive the rest of it down to be cost effective, since the market's driving most of it down anyway with electric vehicles. That's the prioritization Council Member Tanaka spoke about a little bit. That should definitely play into it. How do we get the most bang for the buck? We don't want to spend a lot of money for minimal gains, frankly, when we seem to be moving in that direction. Mr. Friend: There's an example, if I may add, where there's automatic trends in the world, but there's a role for the City to play. For example, to improve the utilization of EVs, we need to improve the EV charging infrastructure in the City. That's a City role. We're upgrading and expanding the number of chargers. We're doing it largely with grant money, so it's a very cost-effective way of getting there. To your point, we need to look at the leverage moves we can make, that can either … Mayor Scharff: I understand that, Gil. That's pretty much laid out here. It's more things that are—I could go through each of these individual goals, but I don't think that's the role of the Council. I don't think we should be prioritizing these ourselves. We should be giving broad direction to you. Some little questions. Of the highlighted ones, I think there are 49 in the next 18 months. It just strikes me as too many. It strikes me that if you had these are the three things we're going to complete under each of them, I would have been like, "Great, go." This is what it's going to cost us, and this is what we're going to get in terms of reductions for it. This feels more like a 20-year plan that you have condensed to a 3-year plan. That's how it feels when I look at it. I want to get some sense of if we said, "Prioritize what we're going to do"—the stuff we're already doing, if it's already being done, then you could say that's being done, it's in the works, we're expecting it. It's sort of focused on the new things we're going to do in 2018 or what are you looking for. I'm looking for a way—if we were to phrase it as come back to us with something that looks more like here's the action plan, what would that look like? How would you approach it? I don't want Council—I hope we're not going to do that tonight—to say these are the priorities, these are what we want you to do, and go through each of these. I guess I'll point out that under mobility, for instance, which may be TRANSCRIPT Page 49 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 the most important one I look at, you have upgrade the Class 2 bicycle lanes to Class 4 separated bikeways. What comes into my mind is we've just done a Pedestrian and Bicycle Master Plan. If that's in the Bicycle Master Plan and we're just following our Bicycle Master Plan, is that really something that needs to go in here or is that just confusing to people as an action? Here's another one that has confused me: re-establish and expand the Citywide bikeshare program. I don't remember exactly where that was, but that got pulled from Consent. I'm not sure Council's moving in that direction right now. I'm not sure that's the one that should be planned for 2018. It doesn't say consider; it says re-establish. Consider redesigning existing streets to promote active and (inaudible) transportation modes. I'm not sure what that means. If that means putting a dedicated bus lane on El Camino, Council has not been positive towards that. I don't know what some of these things mean. At least, I have some concern about that. I saw something in here about going ahead and redesigning our traffic signaling system to focus on greenhouse gas emissions, and then it said and congestion and time. The question was is there a tradeoff there. If so, how much incremental gas—I don't want people waiting in line at lights forever or even for an extra 30 seconds if we're getting very minimal reductions in greenhouse gases. Is that a tradeoff or are they not a tradeoff? There's a lot of that stuff that I worry about in here that frankly takes a lot more vetting. I just wanted you to respond to that. Mr. Keene: Mr. Mayor, let me make a stab at it. Those are really good points. I would go back to the comment I made about us building a reporting system, at least on a quarterly basis. Even the FY '18 items are going to come sharper into focus or go out of focus as we look at them. I'll be honest with you. The consider redesigning existing streets, my view right now is I'll be in one or two meetings, and we'll say, "We considered it. That's isn't going anywhere this year. That's the extent of that work." Interestingly enough, the bikeshare program very well may resuscitate itself by the fact that there are alternative, competing free bike models that are emerging. Again, within the first quarter, we could be in a position to say this is back without this $1 million cost; therefore, we think it's a good return on investment. We ought to proceed with that. Just out of practicality, over the course of this year, this list is going to shake out and ultimately it's going to get much smaller. Hopefully, we're going to be able to—of the things that are possible, to be sure we focus on the things that have the biggest outcome return on investment as it relates to carbon under sustainability. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. I know the public has been waiting really patiently. We have a number of speakers. You'll each have 2 minutes to both items. We're calling them together, which we've already done. If you TRANSCRIPT Page 50 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 wish to speak tonight, now's the time to get your cards in. Our first speaker is Keith Bennett, to be followed by Sandra Slater. Keith Bennett: Hello. My name is Keith Bennett, and I think you know me. It was worth the wait because Lydia Kou and Phil Bobel brought up an issue about which I am concerned. I'm glad to know that groundwater will be explicitly considered as you work through the S/CAP. I would like to point out one other point about groundwater, which is under-recognized, and it relates particularly to the adaptability part. Sea level rise will cause groundwater inundation and potentially saltwater intrusion. Our soils are extremely porous, and groundwater doesn't respect aboveground dikes. This has impacts and implications for flooding, but it also has implications for where and how we should be siting underground construction. The impacts of climate change on groundwater are quite far reaching. I just want to say think about it carefully and don't just hand-wave it off, which I've seen in lots of cases when it comes to groundwater. "No problem. Everything's fine." It's not. Thanks. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Sandra Slater. Sandra Slater: Thank you, Mayor and Council. I'd like to first commend the City Councils both past and present for making some really crucial decisions over the last few years that have been a beacon to other cities in the realm of sustainability. That our electricity is carbon neutral sent a signal to other municipalities in community choice and all that, that that would be an option. Our green gas program is now implemented, but of course it's just a first step towards electrification. California's going to show the rest of the world, and we in Palo Alto can show California what's possible. Thank you to Mayor Scharff for your letter about Paris and to Vice Mayor Kniss for the air quality report. Given the news out of District of Columbia (DC) last week, we know that the stakes are even higher now. We know the moral imperative. We know we have to change our ways. We know we have to dramatically reduce our carbon footprint. You have the levers to use them. There's no time to kick the can down the road. Delay is the enemy. Every action the Council takes should be viewed through the lens of sustainability implications. Funding for more parking structures or funding for more transit. Less housing for lower and middle income workers or congested freeways. Smart meters to help us with distributed energy or reliance on grid power. These are your choices. We could set the out-of-pocket price of transit alternatives to be lower than the out-of-pocket costs of parking. We could use parking revenue to fund access alternatives. Rebalance incentives so there's a level playing field with automobiles. How about giving universal transit passes to residents and employees in areas served by transit? I'm not suggesting that everyone sell their cars or to grow the City by leaps and TRANSCRIPT Page 51 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 bounds, but I am suggesting to use all the levers at your disposal to give incentives to do the right thing. Empower each department to be bold and to get onboard. We can really change things. I leave you tonight with a quote from Al Gore. Will our children ask "why didn't you ask" or will they ask "how did you find the moral courage to rise up and change"? Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Diane Bailey to be followed by Shelly Gordon. Diane Bailey: Good evening, Mayor Scharff and Council Members. My name's Diane Bailey. I'm Director of Menlo Spark, a nonprofit community group aimed at making the City of Menlo Park climate neutral by 2025. I'm here in strong support of the S/CAP proposal to meet 80 by '30, and I really want to applaud the City of Palo Alto for its unwavering leadership on sustainability and renewable power and carbon reduction efforts. We need local leaders like you now more than ever in the face of the Federal backsliding that we're experiencing. Palo Alto's Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO), Gil Friend, and all of his Staff have done a phenomenal job lining up this Plan. These measures incorporate new innovations; yet, they're all feasible, they're all cost effective. As we work in Menlo Park to pursue our climate neutral goals, it's really wonderful to see if similar measures advance in Palo Alto. We're really in this together. Every sustainability measure that Palo Alto adopts not only benefits your community and cements your role as a leader on sustainability, but these actions have positive ripple impacts throughout neighboring communities, helping us become more sustainable. For that, we thank you. I hope you'll adopt these recommendations this evening. Thank you so much for all of your work. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Shelly Gordon to be followed by Tanli Su. Shelly Gordon: Good evening. Thank you for this great report. I'm here representing the Sierra Club, the Executive Committee. We are certainly behind the 80/30 goal, 100, 200 and 300 percent. The area that we want to look at, that I think may be overlooked by the City, is in the area of building and deconstruction and reuse. I'm going to read a letter that the Sierra Club put together for the Council around this. This pertains to building, but it's not about recycling. It's actually about reuse and deconstruction. Let me just read this. The chapter urges the City Council to prioritize deconstruction in preference to demolition and reuse of building materials for commercial and residential construction projects as part of the City's goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We're not talking about zero waste; we're actually talking about greenhouse gas emissions. Palo Alto has a landfill diversion Ordinance for waste management of these materials. I know that's mentioned in the Plan. Demolition versus deconstruction is an TRANSCRIPT Page 52 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 important aspect as it relates to carbon emissions and should be factored into the City's 80 by '30 goal. While employing energy efficient and climate- friendly lean building practices are the expected part of every construction project now, new residential and commercial buildings, no matter how energy efficient they are or how benign the building materials, will not produce a net carbon reduction if it is replacing a building already containing salvageable materials that is then fully demolished and the detritus hauled off to a landfill or recycling center. It is estimated that a square foot of commercial building space under construction produces about 75 pounds of CO2 calculated by the weight and volume of steel and cement. This adds up to about 750 tons of CO2 for a 20,000-square-foot commercial building. In contrast, reuse from existing homes could yield an initial savings of 35 tons of CO2 per property by removing the need for energy locked into new building materials in construction. I just wanted to say one more thing. You should take a close look at the impact of demolition of buildings being replaced. There's a lot of wealthy people here who remodel their homes and then they get torn down and everything gets discarded in a landfill or recycled, which takes up energy. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Ms. Gordon: Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Tanli Su to be followed by Lisa Altieri. Tanli Su: Good evening. My name is Tanli, and I'm a high school student at Paly. I'm also the Youth Chair of the Sierra Club local chapter's Climate Action Committee. I'm aware that there's a Colleagues' Memo about an anti-idling Ordinance. I just wanted to talk a bit about the anti-idling campaign that I have been working on with a few others, including Shelly, at Hoover Elementary School. Idling is a really significant issue at schools, since many parents idle unnecessarily when they go to pick up their kids after school. Since children's lungs are still developing, they're especially at risk of developing health issues like asthma. The greenhouse gas emissions from idling cars contribute to this. Our team went to several elementary schools, and we found that idling was especially common at Hoover, which is a choice school, so more families drive rather than walk or bike to school. We filmed a short video at Hoover about idling, which Shelly actually showed you in May. Then, we met with the Hoover principal, Katharine Bimpson. She was very supportive of our campaign. On Earth Day this year, the teachers at Hoover showed the video we made to their students and then passed out pledge cards, which the students took home and got their parents to sign, promising to turn off their engines when picking up their kids from school. We plan to continue our educational program in the fall, TRANSCRIPT Page 53 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 but it would really make a difference if we had the weight of the City Council behind us. We really hope you'll consider passing an anti-idling Ordinance and start to educate our community about the harmful effects of idling. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Lisa Altieri and Marianna Grossman. Lisa Altieri: Hi. I'm Lisa Altieri. I'm a resident of Palo Alto and a member of the Advisory Committee for the S/CAP and a member of Carbon Free Palo Alto. First, I want to say thank you to Mayor Scharff for signing on the letter in support of the Paris Agreement and to all the Council Members and Staff for all the work that you've done to date to move our City forward to this point. I'm very proud of what we've done already, but we must do more. The remaining part of our footprint, as you all know, is primarily transportation and natural gas. I urge you to set priorities and make bold steps to move these two sections forward. Anything that's going to increase vehicle electrification, anything that's going to increase non-vehicle or non- carbon-related transportation like alternative transportation options, and anyway that we can remove barriers and we can provide financing options to residents and businesses to move fuel switching forward, I encourage you please don't just adopt this. Get engaged in the process and look for bold ways to move these emission reductions forward. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Marianna Grossman to be followed by David Coale. Marianna Grossman: Hi. I'm also a member of the Advisory Committee and have a background in sustainability, having put together the Sustainable Schools Committee back in 2000 between the City and the School District, run Sustainable Silicon Valley for 7 years, and in the last year served on the technical advisory group for Governor Brown's climate adaptation effort for the State. I bring that background. It's been really an honor and privilege to be part of the Advisory Committee. I wanted to commend the Council and Staff on your visionary leadership. As many people have mentioned, Palo Alto really sets a standard that other people are following. It's important to think about leadership as a resilient and sustainable community. I really urge you to support the Implementation Plan. From your comments, I think you're there and just trying to refine and improve. It's also important when you're talking about Return on Investment (ROI) on measures to consider a holistic approach. Take for example storm water management. If you use green infrastructure, you're making the community more beautiful, you're infiltrating groundwater, you're providing flood protection, carbon sequestration, improved salinity balance in the wetlands and the Bay, noise reduction, many, many benefits from an investment TRANSCRIPT Page 54 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 strategy. It's really important to think holistically and not just are we going to take a certain amount of carbon or greenhouse gas emissions out, but what else are we going to do in addition to that. Most resilient measures improve community neighborhoods. For example, it's great to have parents not idle, but you build resiliency by having carpools or by having kids bike. I also want to encourage the bike infrastructure to be a regional consideration so that people can commute from Mountain View to Facebook through Palo Alto. Silicon Valley should be a mecca for biking, and we're not. Copenhagen, 60 percent of the Parliament bike to work, and they have terrible weather. That's really important for us to have that vision. That's it. Thanks. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. David Coale to be followed by Mary Okicki. David Coale: Hello, Mayor and City Council. My name's David Coale. I'm a member of Carbon Free Palo Alto. First, I'd like to thank the Mayor for his Mayor's Message last Thursday, reaffirming Palo Alto's commitment to addressing climate change and intensifying our efforts in this area. I think this is exactly what we need to do. One of the ways Palo Alto can do this is to better engage the Office of Sustainability in our major decisions. I would use the decision to build the parking garage as an example. Even though there was a study done to determine whether the garage was needed, the Office of Sustainability should have been asked to comment on this. The answer might have gone something like this. While the study suggests we might need to provide more parking, before we do we should like at more sustainable solutions to building garages that will encourage people to drive less. For the same amount of money, Palo Alto could fully fund the TMA effort and all the bike and pedestrian projects for at least 20 years. These projects would reduce traffic, parking, greenhouse gas emissions, and increase the quality of life in Palo Alto. Along with the Council's decision to have paid parking and with the increased use of rideshare services, it would be unwise to build a parking garage at this time where they would likely be obsolete in just a few years. Even though the Council feels that these other programs can be fully funded, perhaps the Council should consider building affordable housing instead of a parking garage when spending this much money. This would be a much more sustainable use of our resources. That's the kind of thing I'd like to hear from the Office of Sustainability. This is type of thing I would like to see the Council and the Office of Sustainability do in the future. Sustainability must be addressed at every point, not just a few times a year with a large complicated program that has yet to make any real progress in addressing climate change. The program should be simpler and address the larger mission factors first, transportation and buildings. The other items can be addressed as they come before Council as long as the Office of Sustainability is also engaged in the Council process … TRANSCRIPT Page 55 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 Mayor Scharff: David, thanks. Mr. Coale: … as are the other Commissions and Committees. In short, how do we build a parking lot that is sustainable? Mayor Scharff: Mary Okicki to be followed by Frank Waske [sic]. Mary Okicki: Hello. Thank you, Mayor and City Council Members. I am both a resident and a homeowner here in Palo Alto. I actually have two comments, but I think I only have time for one. First, I was surprised to see or rather not see a single component in the Sustainability Plan that addresses some of the impacts the agricultural industry has on our environment. Meat production alone accounts for 15 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and uses a disproportionate amount of natural resources including water. Transportation accounts for 14 percent; that's less. Those are Environmental Protection Agency (EPA's) numbers. Those are not my numbers. Technology has enabled meat to be produced at an unprecedented level in concentrating feeding operations or CFOs. Government subsidies have made meat very cheap to buy. Reducing people's reliance on their gas-guzzling, single occupancy vehicles and incentives for electric vehicles are key components of the Plan, but there's not a single action to educate people about the impacts of food production or how individuals can make healthy, low-carbon food choices. Why not try a weekly or monthly veggie food cart night Downtown? Why not make all municipal meetings where food is served vegetarian? In countries all over the world, from New Zealand to Japan to Slovenia, many cities all have adopted meatless Monday programs to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve human health, and conserve natural resources. Please note I'm not advocating that Palo Alto go vegetarian; I'm not even vegetarian. I have to ask how can Palo Alto consider itself a leader in the fight against climate change if the City's Sustainability Plan ignores addressing the impacts of the agricultural industry. Again, transportation is 14 percent; meat production is greater than 15 percent and rising. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Frank Waske [sic] to be followed by David Page. Frank Wasko: Good evening, Honorable Mayor and Distinguished Council Members. I'm Frank Wasko, Director of Programs with the Clean Coalition. We, the Clean Coalition, support the framework of the draft 2017-2020 Sustainability Implementation Plan or SIP, which proposes specific steps for the path to achieve 80 by '30. As you probably know, the Clean Coalition is keen to facilitate local energy solutions. Key opportunities exist for supporting local electrification measures, including prioritizing electric vehicle TRANSCRIPT Page 56 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 purchases when fulfilling the City's vehicle needs going forward, and incentivizing broad community adoption of electric appliances, including heat pumps, electric dryers, and so forth. Additionally, this Plan is in line with our Peninsula Advanced Energy Community (PAEC) Initiative or PAEC, of which the City is a partner. One of the commonalities of the proposed Plan and PAEC is that PAEC is anticipated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 800 million pounds through the addition of local solar electricity, energy storage, and other distributed energy resources, low or zero net energy buildings, solar emergency micro grids for power management and islanding of critical loads during outages, and EVs for much of the transportation needs. Finally, the SIP is both critical and timely to meeting Council's aggressive sustainability goal to reduce the City's greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2030, 20 years ahead of California's 80 by '50 target. Thank you for your time and consideration this evening. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. David Page to be followed by Becky Sanders. David Page: Hi, everyone. Thanks for having the patience to listen to all of us tonight. One thing I want to say is to give you a shout-out and appreciation for all the work you do when you're not in public. I know you've got a million different reports you have to sift through and read closely. I appreciate your efforts with all that. I'm a longtime Palo Alto resident; I'm also a retiree from San Francisco civil service. San Francisco manages their own Pension Fund. I want to talk a little bit about both of those issues. In terms of the 80 by '30, I want to commend everyone for moving in that direction. I know it's not easy, but I also want to say it's too little too late. For example, it's too late for the half million Sri Lankans that lost their homes last month from one storm. I don't know how many of you heard about that. The thing I'd like to urge is that we do more sooner. It's up to you guys to figure out the details. My hat's off to you for looking into that. The second thing I want to address is San Francisco's Employee Pension Fund commissioners are going to vote on whether to divest from fossil fuels next Wednesday at their monthly meeting. I have the email address for the board. I'm hoping there's people here in the room tonight that can help me out by sending an email. They're accepting public input about what they should do regarding divesting from fossil fuels. If there's people here in the audience that could help out with that, I'd really appreciate it. Thank you very much. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Becky Sanders to be followed by Bruce Hodge. Becky Sanders: Good evening. Yesterday, Karen Holman was our special guest at our monthly meeting of the Ventura Neighborhood Association. Karen mentioned tonight's agenda items, and then we had a super lovely TRANSCRIPT Page 57 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 discussion. Our conclusions echo those espoused by the Sierra Club. Very cool to be in such company. We talked about what it would be like for Palo Alto to be at the forefront of meaningful measures on sustainability. Karen introduced me to the out-of-the-box way to measure environmental impact of new construction when evaluating the lifespan of a building in adding the actual construction impacts of a new building to an Environmental Impact Report. We all thought that made sense. We voted and asked me to look into this further and get behind it if, upon more research, it made sense. I did some research, and I've got a whole bunch of tabs here with academic papers from Europe and industry trends from construction industry organizations talking about this exact way of dealing with Environmental Impact Reports and maybe making some allocation for the costs. I did that layperson digging, so I'm not an expert. I figured out that EIRs are externally focus. They focus on traffic, parking, water, trees, and don't usually add in the carbon impact of new construction or even the more dramatic negative effect of tearing down an existing building and sending the material to the landfill, and then building even new construction. Also, I found that it's not unusual in Palo Alto that a perfectly sound building be torn down and replaced by something different because owners want something different. That's their prerogative and their right, but shouldn't we add the impacts of such choices to EIRs? Adding impacts of teardown and construction would give a more accurate and meaningful Environmental Impact Report (EIR) plus it would help to raise awareness and perhaps even change the way people think about buildings by no longer pretending such impacts do not exist. Thank you. This is the Ventura Neighborhood Association. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Bruce Hodges to be followed by Lisa Van Dusen. Bruce Hodge: That's Bruce Hodge with Carbon Free Palo Alto, not Hodges. The consideration of this Staff Report comes at a time when our climate crisis has reached a new and most distressing fever pitch. The climate crisis grows more profound as each year ticks by and the response of the governments of the world remains tepid at best. Ice shelves are collapsing into the sea. Our coral reefs are dying, and climate-induced threats are multiplying. Climate change is not some distant, abstract event in the future. It's happening now. To its credit, Palo Alto has made some very good decisions in this arena and has, at least on paper, adopted an aggressive goal that comports with the best guidance provided by the scientific community. By now, the City has reached a stasis, which we in the environmental community find alarming. To make good on its promises, the City needs to formulate a plan that puts us on the 80 by '30 pathway. The plan needs all the elements that any actionable plan should have, detailed program descriptions, prioritization, funding levels, staffing levels, TRANSCRIPT Page 58 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 assessments of likelihood of success, and mechanisms for tracking the implementation progress. It should be transparent, subject to independent analysis, and communicated to the community at large. Sadly, we see very little of these standard planning elements in the Staff Report. It's perhaps easy to blame the messenger, but that would be misguided. This kind of planning activity is particularly difficult because of the nature of the problem, which crosses multiple disciplines, departments, and areas of authority. It requires leadership and coordination among Council Members, department heads, and Staff in general. Unfortunately, City government is usually not structured to operate in that fashion, and thinking out of the box has often been unrewarded or even frowned upon. How can the City tackle these issues and find the necessary staffing and funding? How can the City Staff move out of its silos and produce coordinated plans that are sensible and understandable yet aggressive and with a decent probability of success? These are all difficult questions, and we in the environmental community understand this. Collectively, we need to formulate a plan of action that we can start making progress on immediately. We ask that the City recognize this and rise to the occasion. We're ready to help to the best of our abilities. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Lisa Van Dusen to be followed by John Kelley. Lisa Van Dusen: Good evening. I'll echo various people that have thanked you, Mayor Scharff, for your letter. Appreciate that. I think we all do. I'd also like to say that I am also a member of the S/CAP Advisory Council. You've heard a few of the 20 appear here. There are a number of us in the room tonight. Another thing I'd like to echo is the fact that I was involved with Sandra Slater of bringing the—it was originally opt out, but it became the 100 percent carbon neutral natural gas supply. The spirit of that, I think, from the Council and the Utilities Advisory Commission and everyone else is very much that that was a beginning, not an ending point. I just wanted to re-emphasize that. One thing that I'd like to say is it's extremely exciting to be in a City in California at this time. We have our own utility. We have all the pieces to be a leader here. Never has there been a time when it is truly all about the cities. You've heard a lot of suggestions. I've been part of the development of this Plan in a small way. I trust us and all of you to move forward as expeditiously as possible and to take advantage of that unique opportunity. Not everybody has all the parts that we do. I just want to thank you and say go forth and let's make it happen. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. John Kelley to be followed by Arthur Keller. John Kelley: Mayor Scharff, Vice Mayor Kniss, Council Members, I'm going to make my thanks just that. Thank you for what you've done thus far. It TRANSCRIPT Page 59 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 was really interesting hearing you talk tonight. What I heard is that each of you is struggling in different ways to make sense of the many options that are before us as we move forward. I just want to note a few of these. Mayor Scharff, you seemed to be asking whether or not the market's going to do the work for us. Council Member Holman, you seemed to be asking whether or not we've failed to set a priority, because otherwise everything's a priority. Council Member Tanaka, you were asking about trying to obtain leverage on policy actions. Council Member Kou, you were asking about the airport and indirectly about flying. The City Manager was talking about what the Council is being asked to do, mentioning consideration, exploration, evaluation. The Chief Sustainability Officer was talking about it's important to do things in the most economical way and perhaps pricing is an important issue. What I'd like to submit to you tonight is that there is one extremely important—I believe the most important—thing you can do as you move forward. That is to set a clear, definite, meaningful and realistic price on carbon. The City in the 2007 Climate Protection Plan had a figure of, I think, $20 per metric ton equivalent that was going to go up 5 percent per year. I don't know what it is today. I would submit to you that whatever it is today, it is far, far below what it should be. Major oil companies throughout the world are using internal costs in excess of 50 and perhaps in excess of $60 a metric ton equivalent. I believe the actual number is somewhere north of $120, maybe north of $150. When the ice sheets actually do begin to fall off Antarctica, that number is going to approach probably $200 or $300 if not more. If you want to get the most bang for your buck for policy action, use the resources that are before the City, get the people from Stanford, and put a meaningful number that Palo Alto says is the price of carbon. That is also the thing by which you will get the greatest leverage with other communities throughout the world. It will do nothing if we go to zero carbon for Palo Alto, and the rest of the world goes to hell. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Arthur Keller to be followed by Debbie Mytels. Arthur Keller: Thank you. I'm not speaking under the official capacity even though I'm a member of two subcommittees on climate change or the Environmental Underwater Resources Committee of the Santa Clara Valley Water District. It's hard to follow along with Council because the document I downloaded on this agenda does not have highlighting, and there's no Packet Pages when we download agenda items either. It's kind of hard to follow. In terms of mobility, in 2014 I participated in the electric vehicle task force. We need to reconvene that in order to expand the requirements for new construction and also to institute requirements for remodeling. We deferred remodeling, and I think we have learned a lot in terms of new construction. Shuttle expansion, we need to coordinate better with the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA). We need to have a funding plan TRANSCRIPT Page 60 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 because it's going to cost a lot of money. We need to do that. Also, think about making sure that the cross-town shuttle doesn't cannibalize the VTA 35 bus. I agree with the comments on idling. In terms of utilities, think about giving people the choice of whether they have a winter rate for natural gas, which they have now, or a winter rate for electric. If we electrify space heating, then we should have a winter rate for doing that. Think about the endgame for the death spiral and elimination of the natural gas utility as fewer and fewer customers are on it. Think about excluding electric vehicle charging from higher tiers of electricity pricing; otherwise, people are pushed into higher prices. Think about time of use metering with photovoltaics and especially electric vehicles. As was mentioned, the comments about reuse of materials for buildings that are taken down. Also, we should think more about adaptive reuse of these buildings in order to be able to retain the embodied energy in these buildings. Thank you very much. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Debbie Mytels to be followed by Bob Wenzlau. Debbie Mytels: Good evening, Council Members. Thank you for your attention tonight. It's been a long evening already. Thank you, Mayor Scharff, also for the statement you made, putting Palo Alto on the map where we need to be. Thank you to Council Member Wolbach for bringing up the issue of divesting Palo Alto from the banks that are supporting the fossil fuel infrastructure. I'm here, though, mostly to thank Council Member Holman for her work in bringing to your attention the issue of engine idling in cars. Shelly Gordon, who's with the Sierra Club but also a member of the City's Human Relations Commission, has done a lot of work to bring this to the attention of the community, including the high school student who you saw earlier this evening. Among you, I'm one of many people who breathe. I think it's really important that we begin to look at all these aspects, as Marianna Grossman said to think about the holistic approach. It's not only carbon emissions that would be reduced by an Ordinance that has to with stopping engine idling, but it's also the particulates that are in the atmosphere. My youngest sister, who lives in suburban New Jersey, told me that in their neighborhood elementary school they had a sign along the street that reminds parents "to turn off your engine, children are breathing here." I think it's really important that we remember that the particulates that come from idling cars at school waiting zones are particularly noxious since kids are closer to the level of those tailpipes. They have to breathe that bad air when they're leaving school. I think the purpose of an Ordinance is largely an educational one, giving both citizens and law enforcement the opportunity to remind people that they should be turning off their cars and not sitting there with the engines on. As you may know, eliminating engine idling at truck stops was one of the first components the TRANSCRIPT Page 61 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 California Air Resources Board tackled when implementing Assembly Bill (AB) 32 as it tried to reduce the emissions not only of CO2 but also the damage to air quality. It's now time for us who are suburbanites to look at our own behavior and recognize that we too are contributing to bad air all over the planet and in our communities as well. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Bob Wenzlau to be followed by Rita Vrhel. Bob Wenzlau: It's a pleasure to be here tonight. Thanks for taking the remarks. The capacity that I was coming here tonight to visit was actually through our Sister City programs. One of the things that you know about our Sister City programs is it's an issue of sharing culture. I've come to realize that Palo Alto's culture is sustainability in many respects. In terms of rejuvenating and bringing spirit to our Sister Cities, I've discovered that sustainability as a topic has been really inspirational to our base. Some of the things we're discovering that we could just—this is at a higher level. We can bring ideas when we talk to Heidelberg, a potential new Sister City, or Enschede about how they're already at 50 percent of the carbon capacity that we're striving to reach, and they still have a really vital and exciting lifestyle. We can talk to Oaxaca about opportunities for carbon offset. Visiting a little bit with Jim about this, we don't have to try and touch the whole world. When we have six, possibly eight, Sister Cities, it gives us almost another small advisory board that can make us feel that we're working in partnership on this. We've got a long haul to go, and no one's hitting the ball out of the park tonight. Many of the community organizations can find revitalization when we start thinking about sustainability. As Neighbors Abroad goes, perhaps the Rotary, Kiwanis, and our entire community as a network can be working on this, so it's not just you as Council. Again, those are my remarks, no pieces of paper. Take care. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Rita Vrhel to be followed by Dr. Maria D. Michael. Rita Vrhel: Hello, again. I feel like everybody has already spoken about what I'm going to speak about, but I'm going to do it anyway. I think there was not enough attention in this report regarding groundwater, the extraction of it, especially with the Marriott Hotel coming up and expecting to extract for 16 months. The EIR report should be looked at again. Also, the preservation of groundwater is really important. There is a house on Churchill as you go off Embarcadero; it's on the left-hand side going down towards the train tracks, which is going to be demolished. That means that it's probably going to be just totally destroyed. Many of these older homes are being demolished. Nothing is being salvaged or reused or extracted. In TRANSCRIPT Page 62 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 these homes are lead glass windows, beautiful built-in cupboards, pine and redwood floors. Again, I'd like to join the people that have already spoken about demolition. I would hope that the City would sincerely look at a tax. If you are going to demolish a useful home by 99 percent of the standards of the world today, you will pay a carbon emission tax because all the new materials take up carbon, and all the old materials had carbon. The other thing is I'm really in favor of an idling Ordinance. The Zuckerbergs, who are wonderful people, have several cars up on Hamilton most of the time, idling constantly. I spoke to their security man, a very nice man. That car was going all the time. Also, buses should be included in an idling Ordinance and private cars because many people have their cell phones hooked up to their car and are using their cell phone idling. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Dr. Maria D. Michael followed by Melanie Lu. Dr. Maria D. Michael: Honorable Mayor and Council Members and everyone that's still here, all my relatives, I want to thank Mr. Wolbach for bringing up the whole issue about aligning investments for the City. You are a leader. It's remarkable to listen to this 80/30 project and what you're trying to do to set the stage to save the planet. Without saving the water, with all the fracking that's happening in California, if we do not have clean water, we don't have to worry about emissions. We won't have to worry about much of any of this because we will not be able to sustain our bodies or our children's or the plants or the animals. It's how we put our money, where we support it. We want to have all these electric cars, but where is our money going? How is it keeping our water clean? How is it supporting the things that we need to live, to maintain ourselves? We implore you and we implore Council Member Wolbach or anyone to please support a measure to divest, to have the money match the values of what you're trying to create. If we don't stop the fracking, if we don't have clean water, and we don't stop dirty oil, it won't matter. All this hard work won't matter if we can't drink. We cannot drink oil. Keep it in the soil. Please, help not support taking it out of the soil. Take your money, align your investments with your heart and with the future generations so that all these other things that you're trying to do will really matter. I ask you to search your souls and hearts. Keep the oil in the ground. Clean our water. Find where you can take the money and make it work for you. Mayor Scharff: Melanie Lu to be followed by Stephanie Munoz. Melanie Lu: As we try to move forward on climate action, let's make sure our money is working for us not against us. From Jamie Hen [phonetic] of the Guardian a few days ago, the best way to resist Trump ditching Paris, divest from fossil fuels. We appreciate all the work that went into S/CAP and TRANSCRIPT Page 63 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 SIP and the team that is behind that. We appreciate what the City Council has done at this City Council and all previous City Councils to lead on climate action. I'm saying to you today that the S/CAP and the SIP are missing one key component that you guys can rectify tonight. That key component is you have not put into effect divestment from fossil fuels. Our two hands are not working in conjunction. We are pushing one step forward and two steps back. We thank Council Member Wolbach for raising this vital issue. I say to you that our investments matter, no matter how small. We have $7 million invested in Wells Fargo and other pipeline financiers. We have 10 million invested in U.S. Bank, our main banking partner and pipeline financier. We have $16 million invested in Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which operates numerous coal and fossil fuel power plants and the controversial Watts Bar Nuclear Power Plant. TVA's Kingston fossil fuel coal ash spill was one of the worst environmental disasters in the history of the planet. Do these investments matter? When will we divest? When we will align our money with our values? Two years ago, Palo Alto City Council passed a Resolution calling CalPERS to divest from publicly traded fossil fuel companies. It's time to align our money with our values. We've collected nearly 400 signatures in support of this divestment of Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) and socially responsible banking. We have collected 16 endorsements from local, regional, statewide, and global organizations with 3 days lead time. Please take action tonight. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Stephanie Munoz. Stephanie Munoz: Again, Mayor Scharff and Council Members. I believe that as I hear you talking you aren't thinking about whether anybody is going to follow your Comprehensive Plans that you spend so much time on and so much effort on. I thank you for putting in that effort. I believe the root of all these problems, the transportation problem and the housing problem, comes from a Comprehensive Plan, which was not followed. In 1959, there was an opportunity for a small college town to become a world- class industrial center. They took it. They thought they had the modification that they needed. They thought, because it was clean industry, that you could mix it up with houses, but then they didn't mix it with houses, did they? They left it all industrial. I believe your first step is going to be to insist that the large employers build housing. I would include the City also. The Palo Alto School District should build housing for its teachers, nice housing, not some kind of crummy housing, beautiful housing. Thereby, they should fix the cost of the teachers and be able to have them. The other companies would also benefit by that. Perhaps they don't know it, or perhaps they do. Google at one time was very willing to make more houses. I think that's what you have to do, and then you have to put housing in public buildings where it doesn't offend anybody. Thank you. TRANSCRIPT Page 64 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Now, we'll return to Council. Council Member Fine. Council Member Fine: Just two comments, kind of queuing up a few things I heard from some people in the public and two that I wanted to make and didn't make earlier. Two actions that really stood out to me as things that we could do, whatever we do with this Plan tonight, are on Packet Page 596. One of them is, as Mr. Kelley mentioned, develop an internal price for carbon so that we can measure ourselves against what we're doing and then share that information with other cities. The other one is that last point there, add sustainability impact section to Staff Report templates. I just wanted to comment that I think those are two really strong drivers of what we may be able to do. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Filseth. Council Member Filseth: Are we ready for Motions? Mayor Scharff: Yes, we are. Council Member Filseth: I want to move that we return the SIP to Staff for greater specificity. Council Member Fine: Second. MOTION: Council Member Filseth moved, seconded by Council Member Fine to return the Sustainability Implementation Plan (SIP) to Staff to develop greater specificity. Council Member Filseth: Can I speak to that for a second? Mayor Scharff: Absolutely. Council Member Filseth: Particularly given all the excitement in the world this last couple of weeks, it's incumbent on us that we ought to move forward as fast as we can. We've already adopted the 80/30 goal and the broad strategy. The discussion tonight isn't about that; it's about how we actually get there and how do we get to a document that's really to be adopted as the practical blueprint for how we manage that journey. We need it in order to move forward. What we have here in many ways feels like we're still talking about policy and broad direction. What we need for the next step is a sense of what kind of investments we're looking at over what period of time, what we're going to get out of those investments that leads us to our sustainability goals, and enough detail that we can understand what we're buying into, what the risks are, how we're going to TRANSCRIPT Page 65 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 monitor the progress, that we're on track for reaching the goals. The list of 49 programs that we've got generally looks reasonable; although, it's pretty high level, and it's kind of effort-based. What we need is the specifics that lets us answer these questions. How much are we going to spend? What are we going to get for it? How do we know we're on track? What we need in the Implementation Plan in the next phase—I was hoping it would be in this phase—is more like the following. "Here's how many gas water heaters there are in town. Here's our Implementation Plan to get two-thirds of them off gas by 2030. This program will give us 50 percent of the new construction ones each year, and it'll cost this much. This other program will get us 10 percent of the replacement ones each year, increasing 5 percent a year. It'll cost that much. If we did all this, we'll save X amount of emissions toward our goal by 2030. Here's how much Staff effort it'll take. Here's when we think it'll be operational. Here's how we measure progress." Something like that would give us a framework that we can proceed and say we think it's worth it or do we need to try another approach. This is what I think we need in this document to determine which of these actions are we going to tackle first. For that initial phase of actions, I think even 49 is too many. Maybe a much smaller number. How much are they going to cost? How long will they take? What impact will they have toward the S/CAP goal? When will they start? What will the milestones be? Who will own it? What are the risks and dependencies, if there are any? Just basic management 101 stuff. Again, not for all 49 programs at least for now, just for the first phase. Without this, you can't tell what we're committed to spend or what we're going to get back for it. The way this document is going to get used is that next year or whenever, S/CAP programs are going to come to us on Consent or in the budget. We want to be able to say, "This item's in the approved Implementation Plan. Please proceed." We need more information to do that. The sooner we can get this the better. I'll stop there. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Fine, did you want to speak to your second? Council Member Fine: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. To echo Council Member Filseth, there are a lot of good programs in here, 40 out of 80 maybe. We need to prioritize, but it would be interesting for us to see which are in flight, which are things that our City is already doing. I just saw this Implementation Plan as a bit more of a menu and a little bit less on the implementation side in terms of what we should be looking at, what gains we're looking at, what are the costs, what are the revenues, and how actionable are they. To Council Member Filseth's point again, what's the management strategy here? His example of the gas heaters was a nice one. I feel we have done that specificity of work. It would be nice to surface it to this Council. I would just advise of a couple of things that I've been keying TRANSCRIPT Page 66 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 on, just writing down over and over, priorities, timelines, feasibility, cost, financing, and the potential reductions we're looking at. This is the right way to go for now. Just one last comment. I'm a little disappointed that we're doing this. Actually it would be great just to kick this off and say, "Let's go do all these things." I'm just not there yet. I would encourage us to still think fast and figure out how do we do this rapidly, particularly given last week's news. We need to put some fire underneath this. Maybe fire is not the right metaphor. We need to put some legs in here. I'd encourage Staff to work quickly on this and come back to us rapidly so that we can move forward with many of these programs. Thank you. Council Member Filseth: Can I make one more comment? I have a lot of confidence in Staff. Staff knows what to do and how to do it. We could spend a lot of time in this Council adding Amendments and specifying this and that and the other thing onto this Motion. It's pretty straightforward. I think Staff knows what to do. I think we should move expeditiously here tonight on Council. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: Thank you for the Motion and for the comments by the seconder. There are some things, though, that we should add in terms of Motions. I do have a list of those. The things that Council Member Filseth has brought up in terms of what we're looking at in terms of timelines, what we're looking at in terms of investment, what we're looking at in terms of return on investment—I'm not sure I heard quantifying the results as part of that list—are integral and critical to the core of being able to accomplish what we're after here. I do have some Amendments to add, though, because there are some things that are critical and achievable, and some of them even low-hanging fruit that we don't have here. David, if you could put up 1-11, we can look at these in total or one at a time. While he's putting those up, there are a few things that I did want to comment. There are four of us who are signing onto—Vice Mayor Kniss isn't here at the moment. There are four of us who will be submitting tomorrow an anti- idling Colleagues' Memo. Happy to do that. Some people in the public have already spoken to this, the impacts that—again it's low-hanging fruit. A lot of it is education probably, but having the enforcement mechanism of an Ordinance to be able to speak to people about idling and the impacts of that would be most helpful. This has to do with the specificity that's lacking. The clarity in the action plan, I think, would help us because there were comments made earlier during our discussion phase and question phase. It was like, "What does this mean?" I think some clarity needs to be added to that. That has to do with a lot of things. When it comes to, for instance, the natural environment and water conservation, I imagine that it's in there, but TRANSCRIPT Page 67 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 there's no way to know if consideration of the water needs of trees along with water conservation is included in that. We lost 400 trees last year. Many of those were due to drought circumstances. The issue of Construction & Demolition (C&D) and looking at what the impacts are of development, whether it's reuse or redevelopment or whatever, we ought to look at what we might do. John Kelley did mention the metric ton cost. I think that's really considerable, and I think it's worthy of consideration. There are a few others I put here mostly just for clarification. With regards to the construction and demolition, we're missing the boat here. We could be leading the way, and we are missing the boat. We aren't looking at what the true impacts are or what the true cost is. Where there is an impact, we could evaluate that and look at whether we should be charging impact fees or carbon offsets that we could use to support other environmental programs. We need to do that. For Palo Alto to have a legitimate Sustainability Plan, it needs to include the known and true impacts in order to calculate savings or reductions. To do so, it must include all known impacts and beneficial programs. There are a lot of these that are certainly beneficial programs in addressing impacts, but there are some here that we're missing. In terms of mobility and financing strategies, we don't mention the VTA and working with the VTA in terms of shuttle expansion. Something that we are loathe to address, but somebody in the public—I don't remember who—brought up to coordinate with Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) to identify funding for shuttles for schools, for instance. I've had David put these all up at once. We can take them one at a time if the maker and seconder are agreeable to accept these. One of the other ones that I did add because it's, again, very low-hanging fruit has to do with—I think I put it in there; I'm sure he did somewhere. It's our food choices. I thought I put it in there. There it is. Thank you, David. The climate adaptation and resilience incorporating food program such as meatless Monday to address greenhouse gas emissions created by food choices. It's really low-hanging fruit; it's quite low-hanging fruit. I'm not quite sure why it's not in here. We aren't going to have everything done in 3 years, but that's the reason we want the Staff to come back with a prioritization and better description and reward for our efforts. I look to the maker to … Council Member Filseth: I would ask the proposer of the Amendment, are you asking that Staff consider these things for the next rev or are you moving that they should be added into the list of 81 key actions as written? Council Member Holman: Not necessarily as written. Some of them may already be incorporated, but it's not clear. They could be already incorporated, and just the clarifying language could come back to address TRANSCRIPT Page 68 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 them. Some others are not incorporated, and I would like those to be added, anti-idling being one. Council Member Filseth: I would consider this list as a Motion that Staff considers these things as they generate the next version of this. Two thoughts occur on this. First of all, the Implementation Plan really needs to be focused on what's the path to hitting our goals. Phil's point is correct that some of these are pretty hard to get our arms around exactly, but we need to do that. How else are we going to make the decision of do we put the next $500,000 into this or do we put it into aquatics? We have to know what we're going to get for this in the practical world. The Implementation Plan needs to be really focused on how do we reach our goals. They're easily understood when it's 80/30. As you pointed out, there are other ones around as well, the zero waste and so forth. Some of these things need to be scaled against that yardstick. The second issue is Staff and the Office of Sustainability and the Utilities and so forth ought to be the architects of this. I'm uncomfortable having Council line-by-line this and that one and the other thing on these kinds of things. It makes a lot of sense for Staff to consider these things as they come up with the next rev. I'm less comfortable having us give direction to Staff to please come up with the next rev, but you need Number ix and Number iv in there. That's my two bits. Mayor Scharff: Are you also suggesting that Staff would then be able to reject them as well? Council Member Filseth: Yes, sure. Mayor Scharff: For instance, mobility, Palo Alto airport, missions Staff talked about. Council Member Filseth: We'll have another crack at that when it comes back. I Staff should be the architects and the owners of this. If Staff owns it, then they would take that into their consideration. Mayor Scharff: You're not suggesting that we're putting an imprimatur on this, that we would want this in here? We're just saying Staff should consider these and come back to us (crosstalk)? Council Member Filseth: I think Staff should consider these. I think Staff understands there's considerable interest on Council for a lot of these things as well. Council Member Holman: Can I get clarification of what you mean by next rev? You mean when they come back—the original part of your Motion says TRANSCRIPT Page 69 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 return to Council. You're saying at that next rev, come back with comments on these? Council Member Filseth: Yeah. We've asked Staff to come back with greater specificity on an implementation path. I assume that part of that is going to be they're going to go back and relook at this list and refine it as appropriate. I think it's a living document. I think of what Staff has done as sort of a 0.5 rev of an SIP. We're saying, "That's good. We want to see the 1.0 rev." That's my mental model here. Council Member Holman: If I understood that correctly, I'm fine with these coming back when the Staff comes back next time with this and with their comments. Council Member Filseth: I would accept this as a friendly Amendment if it's phrased as "Staff consider the following actions now absent from the SIP." Council Member Holman: That's fine with me as long as they come back with comments about why they did or didn't. Mayor Scharff: Staff shouldn't have to do that. Council Member Holman: They're going to have to evaluate them anyway. Why wouldn't they comment on them? Mr. Keene: May I just offer some thoughts? The framework that we're looking at is the 3-year SIP with special attention to the first year of the SIP, this next upcoming year. In a lot of ways, a lot of what the Staff on this menu of items identified was doing a deeper analysis about what it takes and what the Return on Investment (ROI) would be. I'm hearing the request—the original Motion trying to drive towards some specific recommendations in this first year that are more than just analysis, but really saying, "We really think these are priorities that we need to invest in and move ahead. That will move the needle this far." I was fine with the basic Amendment with this understanding that I don't think the Motion is directing us to look at the universe of everything we've identified in the SIP and go into great detail about the tradeoffs on each one of those and then come back and say, "After we've looked at all of those," as opposed to a more partly intuitive, sometimes just saying, "That's just so difficult, forget that for right now." Here's what it would take if we were really to say, "We could leverage X amount of change. Here's what the cost is. Here's what we could do." When we bring back 20 things that are prioritized, and we've said a bunch of these other things look like they need a lot more work than where we are. If we're really being assigned to provide a transparent public analysis of the cost benefit of everything, forget it. We won't get anything TRANSCRIPT Page 70 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 done. I would say the same thing in response to these 11 additions. It very well may be we would just look and say, "That just looks too difficult." In some other cases, explain—I don't want to have to lawyer up almost and really give a lot of rationale. I just say that because there—I mean this very respectfully—are a lot of presumptions in even the requests that the Council makes. Low-hanging fruit doesn't mean it's the best tasting fruit; it's just the easiest to pick. We may really say, "That's easy to do, but it ain't worth anything. What we really need to work on is something up here. This may be a little bit more difficult. If we get the right ladder, we've got a whole big, better return." I just want us to have that freedom. Honestly, the Council hasn't done the analysis to be able to say whether something is easy or not. You're asking us to do that. If it's too difficult for us to do something that, on face value, looks like it might not be a lot, I'd rather us come back sooner than later and say, "Here are ten things that could really start to make a difference." We can quantify them, and we can give you the estimates. Let's get you’re okay and some direction to move on those as opposed to spending a whole year studying 50 different things. Council Member Filseth: That's sort of where my head was at. I assumed that what you're going to come back not with a deep dive on 49 things. It's going to be five or ten or something like that. The rest we'll get to … Mr. Keene: There could be something in this list, and the 11 is in that list. I don't want to have to account for every comment that the Council makes and explain why we chose that and justify the analysis on the return and that sort of thing. Council Member Holman: What I'm looking for is not the deep dive. What I'm looking for is to learn if some of this is already considered in what's in the SIP. That's fine and good. It's just I can't tell that. Some of the other is I wouldn't want to just be like—let's just pick one, five; I don't even know what five is. Let's just say five doesn't even show up again. I'd like a couple of sentences anyway about why did Staff not think we could approach five. That kind of stuff. It's not deep dive. I don't want the Staff to come back with this in a year. I want the Staff to come back as soon as possible. Hopefully something like maybe a 3-month timeframe. I don't know; Staff has to determine that. The reason I mention low-hanging fruit was like the meatless Monday. If the Council just passed a Resolution that we supported, for instance, Meatless Monday, somebody else is already carrying that out. All we'd have to do is support it. Just using that as an example of low-hanging fruit. Mr. Keene: I would say meatless Monday actually would be low-hanging fruit. In any case … TRANSCRIPT Page 71 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 Council Member Holman: It's low-hanging meat, but that's what I mean. Council Member Filseth: Meatless Monday is low-hanging fruit, but that's (crosstalk). Mr. Keene: That's really going to be important in us doing the evaluation. That really is the opportunity cost of the capacity that we have. That's really what the real key is going to be. You're going to have to trust us on that. When we say, "With the people and the resources we have to be able to work on this, we think there would be a return if we focused on this project or whatever as opposed to that one." Council Member Filseth: From a practical perspective, the alternative is we're going to vote on each one of these tonight. Council Member Holman: I'm fine with the way it's stated. Quickly, while I have the floor, and then I will hush. Council Member Wolbach earlier mentioned having a discussion about supporting the divesting discussion. I would support that coming to the Council. It does relate certainly to energy and greenhouse gas production. I would support that. Council Member Filseth: I think where we are is the Amendment is—yes. I would accept that as a friendly Amendment. The seconder has to discuss it too. Council Member Fine: I will not because I don't like these ideas. I think there's a lot of good in there actually. I just think it's a little cleaner if we just ask Staff to come back and furnish some kind of plan here. At that point, I would love to discuss each of these. If we get into this tonight, I'm a little worried that I'm going to look through the Plan and find little ones that I want to nitpick and add and throw in. That's dangerous to me tonight. Council Member Filseth: Which I think we want to avoid. Council Member Fine: Yeah. I'm not going to accept it. Council Member Filseth: The Amendment is not accepted as a friendly Amendment. Is there a second? Council Member Holman: I will put it out there for a second. Council Member Kou: Second. AMENDMENT: Council Member Holman moved, seconded by Council Member Kou to add to the Motion, “add the following considerations now absent from the SIP: TRANSCRIPT Page 72 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 A. Water Management: Address public and private tree care in conjunction with water conservation; and B. Regeneration and Natural Environment: Plan for increasing financial investment in the urban forest given the Carbon Dioxide (CO2) benefits; and C. Quantify benefits of open space and identify potential investment opportunities to expand existing land resources; and D. Mobility and Financing Strategies: Add reference to working with the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) to fund shuttle expansion and coordinating with the Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) to identify funding for shuttles that serve schools; and E. Mobility: Incorporate an anti-idling ordinance to address needless Green House Gas (GHG) emissions; and F. Zero Waste: Develop a metric and tracking of diversion rates tracked by: waste reduction (materials not entering the waste stream), reuse (salvage), and recycling; and G. Zero Waste and Energy: Investigate how new buildings can be designed to be adaptable to different rather than single uses; and H. Zero Waste and Energy: Incorporate true impacts of construction and demolition and ways to compensate the environment for those impacts; and I. Zero Waste and Energy: Elevate salvage or deconstruction requirements in the Construction and Demolition (C&D) Ordinance; and J. Climate Adaptation and Resilience: Incorporate food programs such as Meatless Monday to address GHG emissions created by food choices; and K. Mobility: Palo Alto Airport emissions tracking and fuel requirements.” INCORPORATED INTO THE AMENDMENT WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER to replace in the Amendment, “now absent from the SIP” with “Staff to consider the following actions.” Mayor Scharff: Care to speak to your Motion? TRANSCRIPT Page 73 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 Council Member Holman: I think there's already been a fair amount of discussion about this. Mayor Scharff: Fair enough. Council Member Holman: I'm fine with the approach that Council Member Filseth put forward earlier. The discussion we've had with Staff, I think that's—the intention isn't to nitpick everything, but it is to bring forward some of the things that I noticed is absent. It's not a comprehensive list. Mayor Scharff: Do you care to speak to your second? Council Member Kou: I agree with what Council Member Holman said. This is the intent, the way I see it, to make sure that Staff also looks at that. It's left out of this whole Plan. I second that. I'd like to also ask if I might make an Amendment and add something in. Since we're 11, we make it a dozen. Council Member Holman: Okay with me. Council Member Kou: Under water management and also it would be under climate adaptation and resilience, I'd like to ensure—I realize that dewatering is already in your Plan, but I want to make sure … Mayor Scharff: You need to state your Amendment. Council Member Kou: The way that you have it written, it would be water management and climate adaptation and resilience for dewatering to be addressed for commercial and residential properties. Council Member Holman: That's fine with me. INCORPORATED INTO THE AMENDMENT WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Amendment, “Water Management and Climate Adaptation & Resilience: Dewatering to be addressed for commercial and residential properties.” (New Part L) Mayor Scharff: Seeing no lights, I'll just speak briefly to this. I think this undercuts the entire purpose of your Motion, which is to go back to Staff, tell them to focus, from what I understood, and decide how we're going to get there. I think this creates a laundry list of things. I think every Council Member on here could add things like Council Member Kou did. I think it's a bad precedent. We could spend all night doing that. I think it's much better for Staff to go back. I agree that I trust Staff to come back with a list to achieve what we want to achieve. I think they know what that is. I'm going to vote no. Council Member Wolbach. TRANSCRIPT Page 74 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 Council Member Wolbach: My thoughts on this proposed Amendment are similar to—I think it's more between what I heard from Council Member Fine and also from the Mayor. I'm very sympathetic to several of these, especially things like working with PAUSD to identify funding for shuttles. There are several, though, that we might be able to consolidate with different wording. Lots of these are very interesting and worth exploring, but I don't think tonight's Motion is the place to include them. As the Mayor said, I can come up with several and do have several that I'd consider adding. I'm going to try and show some restraint and not add them to the list. I will not be supporting the Motion even though several of the concepts are worth consideration. Instead of including them in the Motion, I think Staff will hear our comments in general. When it comes back to the main Motion, I'll make a couple of comments about the direction this is heading. Even if this Amendment is not included in the final Motion, it's been documented. Staff has access to it. It's out there for discussion. I'm sure it will not be the end of the discussion for several of these. AMENDMENT AS AMENDED RESTATED: Council Member Holman moved, seconded by Council Member Kou to add to the Motion, “Staff to consider the following actions now absent from the SIP: A. Water Management: Address Public and private tree care in conjunction with water conservation; and B. Regeneration and Natural Environment: Plan for increasing financial investment in the urban forest given the Carbon Dioxide (CO2) benefits; and C. Quantify benefits of open space and identify potential investment opportunities to expand existing land resources; and D. Mobility and Financing Strategies: Add reference to working with the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) to fund shuttle expansion and coordinating with the Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) to identify funding for shuttles that serve schools; and E. Mobility: Incorporate an anti-idling Ordinance to address needless Green House Gas (GHG) emissions; and F. Zero Waste: Develop a metric and tracking of diversion rates tracked by: waste reduction (materials not entering the waste stream), reuse (salvage), and recycling; and G. Zero Waste and Energy: Investigate how new buildings can be designed to be adaptable to different rather than single uses; and TRANSCRIPT Page 75 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 H. Zero Waste and Energy: Incorporate true impacts of construction and demolition and ways to compensate the environment for those impacts; and I. Zero Waste and Energy: Elevate salvage or deconstruction requirements in the Construction and Demolition (C&D) Ordinance; and J. Climate Adaptation and Resilience: Incorporate food programs such as Meatless Monday to address GHG emissions created by food choices; and K. Mobility: Palo Alto Airport emissions tracking and fuel requirements; and L. Water Management and Climate Adaptation & Resilience: Dewatering to be addressed for commercial and residential properties. Mayor Scharff: If we could vote on the board. That fails on 5-3 vote with Council Members Holman, DuBois, and Kou voting yes. AMENDMENT AS AMENDED FAILED: 3-5 DuBois, Holman, Kou yes, Kniss absent Mayor Scharff: We're back to the main Motion. Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: Thanks for the main Motion, I just wanted to make a couple of comments. Mobility is our biggest bucket. If you come back with a specific plan, I think it'd be useful—the 66 percent road travel, it sounds like you have the numbers, so it'd be useful to see how much of that is traffic within the City, coming in, going out, broken out in a little bit more detail, and even potentially how much of that is commercial trucking versus automotive versus buses. Also, given the size of the 66 percent, I'd really like to see more emphasis on the EV programs. I disagree a little bit that electric cars will just happen. I think we can play a role in accelerating the adoption. I don't think it has to cost much money. A lot of private companies offer group buying discounts. It'd be very cool if the City had group discounts with Nissan, different car companies. I think that's only possible if we do it sooner rather than later. As the market matures, those opportunities are going to go away. Some of the mobility key actions get really jargon-y. I think it'd be helpful if some of it was written in plain English. City Manager mentioned one about redesigning streets as it's not going to happen, but the wording of that is confusing about what it means. The second area, I asked some questions about organization and governance. Again, asking for a more detailed plan would be more detail in TRANSCRIPT Page 76 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 roles and responsibilities, maybe how projects are defined with who's the project owner, and what's the role of the Office of Sustainability. It's a supporting role. Some projects, you may be very active. Other projects, you might not be involved at all. To your point about ambiguity and flexibility, we get that. We would like to see maybe some separation of projects that are more defined. Hopefully that's most of the projects for next year, and maybe 20, 25 percent that are experimentation. It's not all experimentation. Lastly, I think you said that Utilities was pulled out. I would like to see something in here about smart grid investments and the value of that to these efforts. Mr. Keene: That doesn't necessarily preclude everything in Utilities. It was this broader, kind of (crosstalk). Council Member DuBois: I could see an infrastructure section that would say the value of a network extended out to residences and offices for a smart grid, what's the value of that to sustainability. Overall, I support the Motion. Mr. Keene: Mayor, may I just comment? Mayor Scharff: Sure. Mr. Keene: I'm glad that wasn't in the form of a Motion. I feel like all those comments are natural components of what we would be doing. I did not mean to misspeak about saying EVs are automatically going to happen. This is one area in particular where we think there are a lot of strategies that the City should proactively deploy that can accelerate what we would do. Mayor Scharff: Thanks. Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: Like a lot of my Colleagues, as much as I'm disappointed that we're not rushing forward, I've been convinced by listening to the maker and the seconder that this is the right Motion at this time. Just a couple of comments to put out there for Staff to consider and for Colleagues to consider. I agree with Council Member Fine that a couple of potentially significant changes we could make. Really want to at least lend my voice to saying I want to seriously explore them. Things like internal price for carbon, domestically within the City. Adding sustainability impacts to Staff Report templates. I appreciate Council Member Fine identifying those. I think they're also worth investigating. Again, even if we are able to adopt the SIP sooner than 2030, I don't think it hurts to consider for the SIP divesting from direct and indirect investments in fossil fuel industries. Berkeley's done it. Davis has done it. Hopefully we can move forward with it quickly, but backing that up in the Climate Action Plan wouldn't hurt especially as we move forward. I also think it's important to emphasize TRANSCRIPT Page 77 of 77 Special City Council Meeting Transcript: 6/5/17 resilience against sea level rise as one of the existential threats to the future of our community surviving as we know it, as we recognize it. Palo Alto will survive sea level rise, but it may be unrecognizable unless we are truly prepared for it. That does include—I'm drawing a blank on the phrase— saltwater creep or saltwater intrusion. As just some comments on a general approach to leveraging the Staff resources that we have. I'd rather implement a couple of policies with really big impact on carbon production within the community of Palo Alto rather than study and maybe implement a very long laundry list where each one has marginal impact. To the degree that studying and comparing, doing cost benefit analyses on different options allows us to then really highlight a couple of big impact options, it's useful. I am sensitive to the concerns of Staff and others that we can have paralysis by analysis on this. Again, my sense is let's focus on a couple of big things that are going to have big return and actually get them done. MOTION RESTATED: Council Member Filseth moved, seconded by Council Member Fine to return the Sustainability Implementation Plan (SIP) to Staff to develop greater specificity. Mayor Scharff: Thanks. Seeing no other lights, if you want to vote on the board. That passes unanimously with Vice Mayor Kniss absent. MOTION PASSED: 8-0 Kniss absent Inter-Governmental Legislative Affairs None. Council Member Questions, Comments and Announcements Mayor Scharff: Council Member Questions, Comments. Any of those? Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: Just wanted to support what City Manager made comments about in his comments. Code:ART was really quite a success. I came by three or four times at least. Pretty much every time I went by, there was a collection of people around any and all of the installations. I'm hoping some of those will become permanent and more long-term. It seems like there was a lot of activity around them and a lot of support and interest for them. Mayor Scharff: Seeing no other lights, meeting adjourned. Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 10:35 P.M.