HomeMy WebLinkAbout2017-06-19 City Council Summary MinutesCITY OF PALO ALTO CITY COUNCIL
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Regular Meeting
June 19, 2017
The City Council of the City of Palo Alto met on this date in the Council
Chambers at 6:00 P.M.
Present: DuBois, Filseth, Holman, Kniss, Kou, Tanaka, Wolbach
Absent: Fine, Scharff
Vice Mayor Kniss: Just so the audience knows, both the Mayor and Council
Member Fine are out of the Country and, therefore, are not here tonight
obviously. Welcome everyone. It's going to be an interesting evening. We
include in that—we will be honoring Penny Ellson after we go through
number one, which is our Safe Routes to School.
Study Session
1. Palo Alto Safe Routes to School Partnership Annual Update.
Vice Mayor Kniss: We're going to begin tonight with a Study Session, which
is Palo Alto Safe Routes to School partnership annual update. Welcome to
everyone from Safe Routes to School. When you sit down, if you would all
introduce yourselves, that would be very nice. Thanks, Josh. I've asked to
have us all moved in tight tonight so that you can see what it's going to look
like when we have a seven member Council instead of nine.
Josh Mello, Chief Transportation Official: Greetings, Vice Mayor, members of
Council. My name is Joshuah Mello; I'm the City's Chief Transportation
Official. With me this evening is Sylvia Star-Lack, Rosie Mesterhazy, and
Cherie Walkowiak, our complete Safe Routes to School team. This evening,
Sylvia's going to give you a detailed update on our Safe Routes to School
program.
Sylvia Star-Lack, Safe Routes to School Coordinator: Good evening. I'm
glad to be here to report on the Safe Routes to School partnership program
between the City, the Parent Teacher Association (PTA), and the Palo Alto
Unified School District (PAUSD) School District. This year, the partnership
developed a 5-year Plan. We'll go …
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Vice Mayor Kniss: Could you just introduce yourself? Thank you.
Ms. Star-Lack: Sylvia Star-Lack, Safe Routes to School Coordinator.
Rosie Mesterhazy: Rosie Mesterhazy, Safe Routes to School Coordinator.
Cherie Walkowiak: Cherie Walkowiak, Safe Routes to School Coordinator.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you all for being here.
Ms. Star-Lack: This year the partnership developed a 5-year Plan. We'll go
over the plan goals as well as what we accomplished this year and how we'll move forward. Key highlights include adding equity as the sixth "E" of our
program, expanding our education offerings to rising ninth graders,
sustaining our mode share results, and securing new funding for protected
infrastructure. I'll also talk about new directions and opportunities for
growth. Pictured here are the women who embodied the partnership for
many years, Kathy Durkin of PAUSD, Penny Ellson of the PTA, and Kathy
Durham of the City of Palo Alto. The partnership initiated a visioning
process in 2016 as leadership and Staff transitions provided an opportunity
to document the program for the next generation. The visioning process has
laid the groundwork for moving forward as we onboard new Safe Routes
Champions and identify program resources. Here's the process we used to
develop the plan. First, we told our story. We used a facilitator and a graphic recorder to help document the history of Safe Routes in Palo Alto. I
detailed much of this history in our report to Council last year. Today, I
want to share a story Kathy Durham told at one of our recent meetings.
Some of you may have been in town in 2003, at the time of the tragedy
involving a high school student driver and a first-grade bicyclist. Kathy
shared that this incident challenged the community to look inward and
consider whether the Safe Routes program should continue. Did this
community want to define road safety only through being passengers in
cars? It was around this time that Penny Ellson joined the program with
other parents who re-engaged in this work and helped expand the
conversation about road safety to children using all modes. In 2005, the
national partnership consensus statement helped focus the Palo Alto
leadership on what can be done to make it safer for children to walk and
bike to school, but Palo Alto's contribution to the national conversation is
that all users of all modes can participate in making it safer for children.
Today, we continue with this no-guilt approach that allows all families to do
what they can to reduce risk to students on their way to school and reduce
their reliance on the family car. After studying the history, we spent some
time thinking about the benefits and mission of our program. Our mission is
to enhance and sustain the community partnership to reduce risk to
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students in route to and from school and to encourage more families to
choose healthy, active, sustainable alternatives to driving solo more often.
We also reminded ourselves of the benefits of the program in three key
areas. The benefits to children and families include safer school zones,
lower rates of obesity, and improved academic performance. In addition, an
elementary school principal recently shared with us that for her students
walking and biking to school are key social, emotional learning opportunities that foster the skills of independence. Environmental benefits include
reduced traffic and air pollution since 25 percent of rush hour traffic is
school-related. Besides reducing traffic, transportation programs like this
one are key to reaching Palo Alto's Sustainability and Climate Action Plan
(S/CAP) goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 80 percent below 1990
levels by 2030. On the economic front, this program directly impacts the
quality of life in Palo Alto. One reason why people move here is that our
community supports children walking and biking to school, and they are
looking for that kind of community. Next, we enumerated our partnership
tasks. As you can see from this graphic, many responsibilities are
overlapping, and that is why we do this work through a partnership. Putting
thought into who does what so that we have accountability and transparency helped to establish the foundation of our 5-year Plan, noting that we all do a
lot. We are aware that the Safe Routes partnership embodies the notion
that democracy is not a spectator sport. The program relies on a
combination of civic volunteerism and professional resources that enable us
to sustain consistently high outcomes and exceptional levels of services as
we'll discuss throughout the presentation. Last, our six Es of education,
encouragement, evaluation, engineering, enforcement, and equity informed
our seven plan goals. These goals are what we're seeking your feedback on
later this evening. The first goal is to grow and strengthen community
support for the Safe Routes partnership and for sustainable, active, healthy
school commutes. The second is to update Safe Routes policies. Third, the
partnership will continue to provide and improve Safe Routes education in
schools and in the community. Fourth, we will develop and maintain a
Communications Plan to expand our online and educational materials. Goal
5 is to evaluate the program regularly and use the data to continuously
improve. Goal 6 is to engineer safer routes to school. Seventh, we will
integrate the Safe Routes program into the City's Comprehensive Plan and
across City departmental functions. This moves us into today's presentation
of a summary of each of these goals, what we accomplish, and what we
hope to accomplish in the next year. We wanted to share this particular
photo because it tells the story both of our success and the work we have
left to do. We are so proud of our secondary students for making scenes like
this one possible, whether it's East Meadow and Middlefield or Alma and
Churchill. As you see here, our biking and walking levels are unique to the
region and the country. However, with great numbers of bicyclists and
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pedestrians comes great responsibility. High numbers of student commuters
present education, infrastructure, and safety challenges. In order to
accommodate heavy flows of walking and biking students and to impact
mode shift further, we're focusing on protected infrastructure where
appropriate and expanded educational outreach, especially at the secondary
schools. The broad aim of Goal 1 is outreach to grow and strengthen
community-wide support for the six S-based Safe Routes program and for safe, active, sustainable school commutes. This goal includes adopting
equity as a program component and expanding our reach to leverage
resources at Stanford. Under the banner of equity, we're translating more of
our materials into Spanish and Mandarin. The photo on this slide is of our
outreach table at this year's Chinese New Year celebration at Mitchell Park.
We were able to recruit Mandarin-speaking parents to help inform their
peers about Safe Routes to School. We're also leveraging resources from
Stanford by collaborating with their community-engaged learning program.
This year, more than ten graduate and undergraduate students helped to
refine our evaluation and education outreach, including developing a Safe
Routes training for law enforcement and assisting in the analysis of collision
data. For Goal 2, our visioning process revealed the importance of establishing a Safe Routes to School policy for the School District. In
December, the partnership received direction from the School Board Policy
Review Committee to develop a policy that embodies Palo Alto's status as a
national leader in Safe Routes activities. Our goal for the coming year is to
flesh out this policy and seek Board approval. Under Goal 3, we delivered a
record number of educational trainings this year, 138. We've added
trainings up the grades from elementary to secondary schools, down the
grades to preschool, and across the City to law enforcement and the general
public. For the first time this year, Getting to High School events were
offered at all three middle schools for rising ninth graders. I want to
recognize and thank the Jane Lathrop Stanford (JLS) PTA for conceiving of
this event last year, and now we're rolling it across the District. We also
taught our Bringing Up Bicyclists class to elementary school parents, and
we've revamped our preschool presentation and delivered it to 30 families.
Feedback from the preschool included this from a mom who was inspired to
buy a child-carrying cargo bike: "Mays [phonetic] loves riding around on the
new bike, and I don't think we would have made such an effort to try this
out if it hadn't been for your presentation, so thank you." Think about the
number of trips by car that this family will no longer make because they
invested in a cargo bike as a result of this presentation. In addition, we
delivered Safe Routes law enforcement presentations to all dayshift police
officers. We also initiated a free holiday lights program that engaged
community members and former Mayor Pat Burt to distribute 300 bike lights
along with an educational insert about winter bicycling safety. Our goal for
next year is to expand opt-in programming at the high school level by
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gathering a Palo Alto contingent to participate in Metropolitan Transportation
Commission (MTC) Youth for Environmental Sustainability conference and
help cultivate voices for the next generation of active transportation
advocates. Goal 4 includes a Communication Plan that will expand our
online footprint. Additional educational materials about new types of street
infrastructure are also in development. The poster you see here explains
how to navigate a roundabout and was shared Citywide as a full-page ad in the Weekly. It was also shared as part of our Bike to Work Day outreach,
and it was shared through various trainings and presentations. Posters on
protected or Dutch-style intersections, raised intersections, and rolled curbs
are in the queue for development. We're excited to create Safe Routes to
School public service announcement videos to publicize this work and
deepen local and regional engagement. Goal 5 highlights program
evaluation. We gather data via our classroom tallies, parked bike counts,
and bike and pedestrian sensors. Classroom tally data is gathered by
PAUSD teachers through a show of student hands. New this year, the
responses were entered online. This year, the partnership also launched an
effort to assess transportation mode shares at all secondary schools in
addition to the usual elementary schools that we tally. Factors such as weather, special events, and especially classroom participation rates
impacted this year's online data pilot. We look forward to continuing to
partner with the School District to enhance and refine our data-gathering
efforts. We note that the active transportation mode share is holding steady
at the elementary school level. It is promising that the middle school active
transportation numbers are so high. In fact, these numbers, 78 percent,
approach the active transportation numbers for middle and high school
students in the Netherlands according to an European Union (EU) report on
walking and cycling transport modes. The high use of the family car
Citywide still continues to represent a growth area for the program. We look
forward to the continued promotion of all active transportation modes,
including transit and ridesharing, to help reduce reliance on single occupant
vehicles. Next year's goal includes ensuring that Safe Routes to School
numbers are included in the County's Safe Routes data reporting system.
This year's high school bike count numbers demonstrate sustained levels of
biking, 44 percent at each campus. Paly is green in the chart, and Gunn is
red. As planned infrastructure comes online via construction of the
Charleston-Arastradero Corridor project, the Churchill Avenue project, and
the Neighborhood Traffic Safety and Bicycle Boulevard project, we expect to
maintain these numbers during construction and move them forward once
these projects are built. Middle school parked-bike counts show similar
patterns to the high school counts and may be affected by various factors
like weather on the day of the count or special events. Jordan in this chart
is green; JLS is blue; and Terman shows up in yellow. It's important to note
that Terman's attendance area is very large and includes hilly portions of
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Palo Alto and Los Altos Hills, making for long and challenging bike commutes
for students. However, since it reopened in 2003, the Terman bike mode
share has grown an average 1 percent per year. With the planned
improvements in the Charleston-Arastradero Corridor, we hope to see
continued growth in active transportation commutes at this campus. The
real heroes behind this graph are the Safe Routes Champions at the
elementary schools, who lay the foundation for these numbers by offering robust education and encouragement programming that gives families the
tools they need to allow their children to independently commute to school
once they reach middle school. We want to take a moment to recognize our
elementary Safe Routes Champions who are here in the audience today.
Please stand if you are or have been an elementary school Safe Routes
Champion or traffic safety representative. Please remain standing. Please
stand if you are or have been a Safe Routes Champion at a middle school, or
raise your hand, or at the high school. These are the folks who are the
frontline in working with families on biking, walking, carpooling, taking
transit to school. Thank you for all you do and for showing your support for
this work today. Your hard work is borne out in this data. We can't do this
work without you. Thank you. Goal 6, to engineer safer routes to school, continues to be a large part of our program. In fact, the City and School
District recently applied for and will be recommended for funding of a
$919,000 Vehicle Emissions Reductions Based at Schools (VERBS) grant by
the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) Board in early August. VERBS
stands for vehicle emissions reductions based at schools. The grant will
enable the addition of protected bicycle infrastructure along Fabian Way and
East Meadow Road and provide for an upgrade of the Waverley bike path on
PAUSD property, which is pictured in the top right corner of the slide. The
Safe Routes to School team has been revising Walk and Roll maps and
refreshing our school community-based walking and biking needs
assessments that were conducted between 2 and 5 years ago. These maps
and assessments were funded by a VERBS grant in 2012 and have since
become one of our most highly requested communications materials by
principals and parents alike. For the next several years, at least two of
these reassessments will be completed each year; Duveneck and Ohlone are
the first to undergo an update for the 2017-18 school year. Goal 7 aims to
facilitate a more seamless coordination of Safe Routes to School functions
across City departments. Some examples of this coordination include a bike
safety training for Library Staff on how to use their new library bikes that
carry books and other materials. On a more granular level, Transportation
Staff are currently working to embed Safe Routes elements into the City's
geographic information system so that Public Works, Utilities, and other
project managers working in the right-of-way can quickly access campus
contacts to alert school communities of roadway changes. Finally,
strengthening the Safe Routes program policies in the City's Transportation
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Element is a key Year 1 goal. Safe Routes policies are now included in the
draft Comprehensive Plan. The team looks forward to the adoption of the
new Comprehensive Plan. Thank you for your attention. As has been
shared, a variety of factors contribute to the success of our partnership
including Council support for this work. Moving forward, the partnership will
continue offering a comprehensive slate of programming as referenced on
the second Page of the 5-year Plan. While large portions of the bicycle network are constructed over the next few years, the focus will be on
sustainability through program expansion, policy development, and
enhanced communications. Amidst the many transitions in 2017, the
partnership continues to thrive with new volunteer parent participation and
new Staff. Thanks again for your feedback on the 5-year Plan. Your support
for this program underpins Palo Alto's quality of life, but more importantly
your support of our partnership equips students with the independence,
healthy habits, and mobility skills needed to navigate active transportation in
the 21st century. Thank you.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you so much. Because we got started a little early
and hoping there is a TV audience somewhere, we are on Item Number 1.
We are about to hear from four members of the public, who want to comment on this plan. That was beautifully done. Thank you so much. We
have four people who want to speak on it. David Coale, is this the right one
for you, David? Are you here? Libby Lungren, Jim Pflasterer, and Jeff
Greenfield, if you can all get reasonably close by, that would be great. Hi,
David.
David Coale: Hi. Thank you. Thank you for your support. If you build it,
they will come. I would like to thank the Council and past Councils for
funding and building the bike and pedestrian projects in Palo Alto. With
overall mode share between 8 and 10 percent and a much larger share as
you had heard at the schools, between 44 and 50 percent, this is a huge
success story. Bike and pedestrian infrastructure is perhaps the most cost-
effective way to reduce congestion, traffic, greenhouse gas emissions, all
while increasing the livability in Palo Alto. I'm reminded of what Gil Friend
said earlier this month about voting for sustainability with every dollar we
spend. Please keep this in mind as you consider the upcoming budget
process and the success of the Safe Routes to School program, pedestrian
projects, and all. Thanks again for your support. Please fully fund these
efforts going forward. Thank you very much.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thanks for coming. Libby Lungren.
Libby Lungren: Hi. I'm Libby Lungren. I'm going to be helping with Safe
Routes to School. I'm happy to be joining the team here with the Safe
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Routes to School program. I'm just hoping to encourage more kids to bike,
and parents as well, getting to activities around town, to just using alternate
modes of transportation. I have three kids over at Walter Hays, and we've
been exploring our way around Palo Alto. We've really enjoyed the
convenience and the safety along the Bryant bike boulevard. We're really
hoping to see all these other bike boulevard projects and the Charleston-
Arastradero projects completed. I'm just asking you to make sure that those get funded, so that can empower more residents to get out there and
use alternate modes of transportation. Thanks.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thanks for being here. Jim—did I get close—Pflasterer.
Jim Pflasterer: Silent P, "flasterer." Good evening, Honorable City Council
Members. I'm Jim Pflasterer; I'm co-chair of the Palo Alto Council of PTAs
Traffic Safety Committee. I do have three children who have been through
elementary school, now middle school and high school. Since we're here
tonight to celebrate the Safe Routes to School successes and plan for the
future, this is a good opportunity to speak to the important upcoming budget
decisions relating to funding for transportation projects that directly affect
our bicycle and pedestrian school commutes. Specifically, the bike
boulevard and Charleston-Arastradero projects were developed through years of collaboration with the City, community, the PAUSD, and the PTAs. I
happen to live right next to Arastradero, so I'm directly affected by that and
get to see the success that's been integrated there. These are well thought
out school route safety improvements that are integrated into the plans. We
were excited to see this collaborative planning work completed, and we ask
Council to make sure funding is in place to build the projects, which the
Council has previously approved. The projects will enable significant,
concrete steps toward implementing the vision of the Citywide
bicycle/pedestrian network that's outlined in the 2012 City of Palo Alto
Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation Plan and directed by the goals and
policies of our Comprehensive Plan Transportation Element as well.
Together the bike boulevard and the Charleston-Arastradero plans are key
components of a complete, multimodal approach to transportation problem-
solving. They contain improvements that address the needs of all the road
users including people who drive, walk, and use mass transit as well. We all
thank you for previously approving the bike boulevards and the Charleston-
Arastradero projects and also for considering our request to complete
funding them. Thank you.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thanks for coming. The last person is Jeff Greenfield. If
anyone else wishes to speak, if you would come up and get a card from the
Clerk, we'd be delighted to hear from you.
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Jeff Greenfield: Good evening, City Council. I'm Jeff Greenfield. I'm a
member of the Parks and Recreation Commission (PARC), but I'm speaking
on my own behalf this evening. Palo Alto has a wonderful bike culture, and
the benefits are easy to understand and evident. An important part of our
bike culture is the infrastructure and the ability to move around safely from
one place to another. Lots of great progress has happened over the years.
I thank the Council and previous Councils for supporting these initiatives and encourage you to do the same. The Safe Routes to School program is a
model within the City. In fact, the Parks and Rec. Commission is using this
model as a guideline for putting together a Safe Routes to Parks program as
well. We want to go other places besides to school on our bikes. That's just
a nice example of how well thought of the Safe Routes to School program is.
Again, I encourage you to continue your support. I thank all the people who
have done all the hard work on the Safe Routes program over the years and
look forward to reaping many benefits of it in years to come. There's lots of
people who have biked here tonight even on an almost-too-hot-to-bike
night. It's great to encourage it and keep it up. Thank you.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thanks for your service on the Commission as well. Last
one, Deborah Bennett.
Deborah Bennett: Hi. My name's Deborah Bennett. I'm the Safe Routes
Champion at Jordan Middle School right now, and I was also a Safe Routes
Champion at Walter Hays Elementary School. My son was there. I was
recruited to this program by a friend who I'd been in a play date group with
when our kids were both toddlers. I've been involved with Safe Routes to
School ever since, starting when Penny and Kathy ran the show. I
remember when all these three ladies joined the department and when Josh
joined the department too. I think this is such a wonderful program. I've
been to Amsterdam, and I've been to Davis. I've seen what this kind of
program can do to make a city livable in a way that doesn't necessarily
involve car transportation. My personal story is that my son, who started
out as a first grader—he started out as a kindergartener at Walter Hays
School in 2009. I encouraged him to ride to school, and I accompanied him
up until third grade, when the rules allow you to let your child go
unaccompanied to school. He was ready and a safe rider. He's been riding
to school independently ever since. Also, he goes to choir, which is in
Downtown Palo Alto. He rides to the choir all by himself; I don't have to
drive him. When he goes to summer camp at the Junior Museum site or at
the Mitchell Park site, he rides his bike all by himself. When he has to go to
Study Sessions in the afternoon, he rides his bike home from school. The
main thing I get from my son is not "Mom, can you drive me somewhere,"
but "Mom, I'm calling you on the phone to tell you where I am." I think this
is wonderful as a parent, since I have only one child. As soon as my son
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learned to ride his bike independently to all these different activities, I got
my afternoons back. I think it's a wonderful program that we have here in
the City to educate our children on how to ride safely and to encourage
riding in ways that include prizes and events and encouragement, as well as
wonderful infrastructure. I actually was a bike commuter in Houston, Texas,
in the 1970s. Let me tell you it was nothing like here. The number of times
I got chased by cars, even in bike lanes, was terrible. In conclusion, I'd like to say I think this program is a great one. I'm glad to see the City Council is
supporting it so strongly and that we're continuing to get grants and budget
to build out wonderful infrastructure. Thank you.
Vice Mayor Kniss: You are a great advertisement for it. Thank you so
much. We've heard from the Safe Routes to School Staff. Josh, do you
have any comments you want to make before I bring it back to Council, or
Jim as well?
Mr. Mello: I would just say, as someone who rode his bike to school every
day as a child, I find it an honor to work with this program every day. I
think you all should be very proud to have such a program in this City.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Jim, do you want to make a comment as a biker?
James Keene, City Manager: I biked to school every day as a kid too. Just want to be in this, or walked. You will notice I still bike to school here, my
school, most days of the week. Thanks.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Bringing it back to Council for any comments, I think I
should reveal to you that it's probably a tie as to who rides the most, Eric or
Greg Tanaka. I'm not sure which. Greg has a fold-up bike that he can put
in the back of his car, and it quickly opens up again. Karen and I are not
known for being big bikers, but I'm sure we could. Cory certainly rides a
bike. Comments about this. You're out of line tonight, so I'm just going to
call on you going down the line. I think the first person who put their light
on is you, Karen.
Council Member Holman: I'm a walker, not a biker. One of the questions I
had was on Slide 13. It's more complete. The table at the top of Slide 13 is
more—thank you for the page numbers on here. It's very helpful. It's more
complete than the chart or table on Packet Page 12. A couple of things.
You've got walk and bike and carpool and transit. Is "other" things like
skateboard, scooter and, let's say, unicycle?
Ms. Star-Lack: Yes. That is "other." "Other" is part of that, yeah.
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Council Member Holman: Is there any other mode that we might not be as
familiar with?
Rosie Mesterhazy, Safe Routes to School: We attribute the majority of those
numbers to scootering, skateboarding, rip sticks, whatever kids are doing
these days, rollerblading. We haven't had any kayaks to school yet. We're
never surprised; people always think of new and interesting ways to get to
school.
Council Member Holman: As a part of the program, can you remind us of
something here? As a part of this implementation, have there been any
additional streets identified where there can be separated bike and
automobile/vehicle traffic?
Mr. Mello: Are you asking about separated bikeways?
Council Member Holman: Mm hmm.
Mr. Mello: We are currently looking for any opportunity we can to add
separated bikeways. Of course, the challenge often ends up being whether
or not we can feasibly remove travel lanes or parking. There are some
places where it would appear easy at first glance, but we'd have to come to
you for that decision-making. We did just recently receive a VERBS grant
from VTA; we're recommended for funding to construct separated bikeways along East Meadow Drive and Fabian. About a year ago, City Council gave
us direction to pursue a separated bikeway along East Meadow Drive. The
application for this grant was a direct result of that. We are looking for
opportunities to do that, but it takes quite a bit of right-of-way to add
separated bikeways, more than it does to add traditional bike lanes.
Council Member Holman: Thinking a little bit differently here. In
Washington, D.C., there are—and other places that I don't need to mention.
The traffic flows are different depending on what the time of day is. Is there
any feasibility to thinking about making the school commute times a
separated or dedicated lane—I know that takes effort and somebody's
time—to make the travel lanes different during the heaviest school commute
times than other times of the day? Would the result be to help encourage
people to bike and walk and other means as opposed to take their car or
would it just exacerbate traffic backlogs?
Mr. Mello: We do have part-time bike lanes on quite a few streets in the
City, which do not allow parking between 7:00 A.M. and 7:00 P.M. Those
serve a dual role; they allow residents to park in the lane in the evening if
they need the on-street spaces. Students and other cyclists are permitted
to use them as bike lanes during the day. We have done a little, very
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preliminary thinking about better ways to manage some of the lanes that we
have and do some of the things you mentioned, like using a lane as a
bikeway during commute hours and then maybe allowing general traffic in
other hours. That would take quite a bit of signing and some dynamic
message signs and some other things. We are thinking about some creative
things like that, but we haven't gone beyond just the initial thinking.
Council Member Holman: One last question from me. We got an email from—apologies to him; I didn't get a chance to respond to his email—from
Stan Hutchings. He talks about reducing the speed limit to 15 miles an hour
in Safe Routes to School bicycle routes. He mentions a second thing, which
is when we're identifying the 85th percentile to determine what the speed
limits are, to include bicycle traffic not just automobiles in that. I don't
recall that we did it that way. Can you comment on both of those things
please?
Mr. Mello: The first item. Recently State law was changed to allow cities to
set a prima facie speed limit of 15 or 20 in areas directly adjacent to school
properties. It's not exactly school routes. There's actually a clearly defined
distance from the school property in which you're allowed to set that speed
limit. We do have maps that we were able to develop as part of the grant that Sylvia mentioned earlier, the previous VERBS grant that we got, that
shows the actual street segments that are eligible for the 15 or 20 mile per
hour reduction. We'll be bringing that to you in late August or early
September to consider whether or not you want to move forward with either
15 or 20 miles per hour. That's part of the larger speed limit discussion that
we're going to be bringing to you in late August or early September. As for
the second question, I don't believe that State law—you have to use radar in
order to calculate the speed when you're doing the engineering and traffic
surveys. I don't necessarily know that radar can capture the speed of a
cyclist very effectively. I don't believe that bicyclists are included in that
calculation of the 85th percentile that's done as part of an engineering and
traffic survey.
Council Member Holman: I'll leave it at this. He does include a link to State
of California in his email. You have it as well. I'm curious about that, and I
think it's something we ought to look a little bit more deeply at perhaps.
Mr. Mello: We can check into that for you.
Council Member Holman: Last thing is thank you to everyone who's been
involved in this program. For some of you, many, many, many years. We
have Staff dedicated to this, but I don't know that they're any more
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dedicated than some of the members of the public. Thank you so very, very
much.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thanks, Karen. Tom.
Council Member DuBois: I just want to say that growing up, going to school
I didn't bike. I trudged through the snow 10 miles uphill both ways. At
least, that's the way I remember it. First of all, thank you all for your efforts
around Safe Routes and bike routes. I just want to say I agree with the primary focus on biking. I do believe that this Safe Routes to School
program is also focused on other modes, not just biking. This chart—I'm
glad you have it up. We see 4-5 percent of students using carpools and
transit. My thought was how can we move those numbers up. My suspicion
is that for kids that bike often, when they do need to drive, it's probably a
single occupancy trip because it doesn't happen all the time. On-demand
carpooling could be pretty fertile ground. Again, I want to keep the focus on
walking and biking. I'm not trying to take away from that, but I think the
bike efforts are mature. There might be some more fertile areas to explore,
ridesharing in situations where a bike won't work for whatever reason. How
do we get to busy parents that aren't as tied into the network? You still
want a trusted parent network for carpooling, particularly in elementary school. If there were some kind of apps or ways that parents could find
those opportunities, shifting some of that single occupancy vehicle into
carpooling could be really effective. We recently had a Colleagues' Memo on
anti-idling, and a lot of that's around schools. The other idea I had up here
just listening tonight was if we could incentivize carpooling, could we even
incentive electric vehicle carpooling by giving charging credits at charging
networks. It might be a cool way to have kids experience electric vehicles.
Just an idea to throw out there. I would like to challenge the team here to
think about the carpooling opportunities. Thanks.
Vice Mayor Kniss: We're going to see if anyone can challenge the 10 miles
uphill in the snow. Cory, you're next.
Council Member Wolbach: When I went to school, when I was at Gunn—you
look at this chart on Slide 14. It was at the real low point in the late '90s
and the early '00s. The count for '99, which was the year I graduated from
Gunn, says 180 students rode their bike to school a day. I believe it
because riding your bike was decidedly uncool way back then. It makes me
feel really old even as one of the younger members of this body. We saw a
similar chart last year, but it still continues to shock me and in a wonderful
way. The change over the last decade and a half, to go from 180 a day to
838 a day, is really remarkable. I was just speaking yesterday with
somebody who recently moved out of a neighboring city to another
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neighboring city. She's ecstatic that she can now ride her bike more, and
her kids can ride their bikes more. She's been an avid bicyclist her whole
life, is a big fan of Safe Routes to School. In the unnamed other community
in our region, where her family was living recently for several years, she
wouldn't allow her kids to ride their bikes in their neighborhood. They're big
bike advocates, but it just wasn't safe enough. She just said as educated,
skilled bicyclists, she didn't feel safe, and she didn't let her kids ride on those streets. It's a reminder that not every city is as lucky as us in having
such excellent bike facilities and bike culture. Of course, these all compound
onto each other and create a virtuous cycle that drivers see the bicyclists on
a regular basis and adapt their habits to recognize bicyclists, adapt how they
view their environment to be more cognitively aware and visually scanning
for bicyclists. All of this works together. Occasionally of course, we do have
somber reminders or close calls that do remind us that nothing is perfectly
safe and we do have a lot of work to do. We can continue to push the bar
on bike safety. We really are setting the example for neighboring cities.
When I talk to people from other cities, they know it, and they notice it. I
just want to really say thank you to the Staff and also to my current
colleagues and past Council Members who have supported this effort and, of course, to everyone in the community from the students who are making it
cool to bike again to the parents and those who support this. Thank you.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Eric and then Greg Tanaka.
Council Member Filseth: Thanks very much. By any metric you can
imagine, this whole program has been wildly successful. You guys have
done awesome work, and we're in awe. This kind of stuff just speaks for
itself. Congratulations and thank you. I'm curious. You folks have done a
lot of investigation and looked at other countries and other cities. You're at
the point where you've got 60, 70 percent of kids not in cars on the way to
school. From what you've seen, how much higher can it actually get? You
must ask yourself that a lot. What do you think?
Ms. Star-Lack: We think we can go a lot higher. While we've made many
strides in our biking infrastructure, there's a lot more that we can do and
that we are doing and that is planned and in the pipeline. The protected
infrastructure piece is going to be important for many parents who fall into
that interested but concerned bicyclist or parent of a bicyclist, where maybe
they're not so sure that they want their kids riding around on a bike lane
that just has a stripe. In key places where we can add protected or
separated bike lanes or buffered bike lanes, we will continue to see increases
where we have that. We are also looking forward to the new City shuttle
program and how that will support school commutes by transit and how that
will support our biking numbers. When it's a rainy day and kids can't bike,
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they might take the shuttle. I think it all works together, and I think we
have many—there's a lot of room to grow.
Council Member Filseth: If that can really be done, that's awesome. As you
folks have pointed out in the past, every one of those bikes takes a car off
the road, and it's a car that's on the same street as all the bikes are because
it's going to the same place.
Ms. Star-Lack: Just one more thing. It's not just one car. It's the parent car that drove to the school and then back, and then back in the afternoon
and back. It's a lot of trips. Thanks.
Vice Mayor Kniss: That's even more impressive. Another biker, Greg.
Council Member Tanaka: Just to try to top Tom here. When I was in high
school, I went to a high school called Dana Hills High. It literally was up on
a hill, and my house was on a hill. I literally biked uphill both ways, downhill
part of the way. Part of the reason why in high school—it was 6 miles, so it
was not short. One of the reasons why is because in elementary school I
biked. I forgot who was speaking about that, but definitely early education,
getting kids biking early on in elementary school is critical. You've become a
confident biker as an elementary school kid, and then by the time you hit
high school it's natural. I think that's really good. Even today, I almost never drive to City Hall. In fact, today I skateboarded; that's my new last-
mile solution. I'm really into this Safe Routes to School, and I want to
support it any way I can. I think it's amazing. As my fellow Council
Members have said, this is truly amazing. I want to see it continue, and I'd
love to see that we do more. I do have two suggestions. I don't know if
these are ones that are possible or not. This might help you get over the—
right now it's kind of flatlining. Maybe this will help you get more bikers. I
was giving a leadership talk to a bunch of high school kids on Saturday. I
was just asking them what are some of the things that they're concerned
about. Bike safety came up, and it was surprising because I thought Palo
Alto was pretty safe already. Kids are still getting hit. People showed me
the scars that they had. One of the things I wanted to just mention is you
have such a high percentage of kids biking right now. Would it not make
sense to perhaps consider temporarily shutting down portions of the street
during these commute times? I know this is a little controversial. Perhaps
that's something that could be discussed at the Staff level to see if it makes
sense. For instance, I see on (inaudible) driven on Churchill near Paly in the
morning. Literally, the whole street is taken up by bikes. If you look at
Jordan, California Avenue, there's tons of kids who almost take the whole
road. I think that's something to think about. The other thing to think
about is incentives. I like the idea of incentives and perhaps doing more of
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them. I also talk to parents who say that they have a hard time getting
their kids to bike because it's never a good day, too hot, too cold. It doesn't
rain, so that's not a good excuse. Anyway, that's the other thing to do, try
to make it—for instance, my daughter is at Escondido. One thing they
encourage to get fitness is if you run like 5 miles, you get a cap or
something. These are small, little things. It made my daughter do 5 miles
to get a cap. Perhaps there's things like that that can be done to get kids to do this. I know that this is only possible with all the volunteers that have
made this happen. I wanted to thank everyone for all your work. It's
amazing progress. Thank you.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thanks to all the Council Members for great comments.
A couple of questions but also a comment. I did ride my bike to school, and
I must say it was not all uphill, thank goodness. That was how you got to
school. When my kids first started elementary school here in Palo Alto, the
expectation was that you would ride your bike. There wasn't any suggestion
about it. If you were a second grader, you rode your bike. They all picked
each other up, and they went on their way. Somehow as time went on and
certainly in the late '90s, as Council Member Wolbach said, it became
uncool. You needed to drive. I would commend you for that above all else, for making it cool. It's only when it's a socially acceptable kind of behavior
that kids will do it. I don't know what it takes to be really cool. I don't know
whether it's the kind of bike or the kind of helmet or whatever it might be.
There it is. Something makes this really cool to do. Addressing Eric's
comments about you've gotten it pretty high, how do you get even higher,
I'm sure that's your goal. Also, thinking about something that I know I've
read about it. Eric said he had as well. I'm not sure of the terminology; I'd
call it swarming. What I know is that at least in one state, Idaho, I have
read that they allow kids who are going to school in a pack to swarm,
meaning that they go through the stop lights. I'm sure that's wildly
controversial, but I can also tell you they're all going through the stop lights
already, especially in the morning on the way to Paly. I don't live too far
from Paly. As they go down Bryant and turn on Churchill, they are
swarming. I don't know if anyone has any answer to that. I'm sure it's
illegal at the moment. I think in Idaho they actually did pass a law that
allows that in certain situations. Am I right, Josh?
Mr. Mello: Yeah. It's called the Idaho stop. Idaho is currently the only
state that allows cyclists to treat a stop sign as a yield sign. There was a
movement afoot in San Francisco last year to de-emphasize stop sign
enforcement for cyclists. It did not move forward. The Traffic Code is
dictated by the State under the California Vehicle Code, so it actually
requires a change in the State Code. It's not something the City could do on
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its own. San Francisco's solution to that was to de-emphasize the
enforcement of stop sign running by bicyclists.
Vice Mayor Kniss: What I've discovered is that, if I see a bicyclist, I usually
just stop anyway because I anticipate they may be going through the stop
sign.
Mr. Mello: I will tell you that we teach all of the students that we educate to
obey stop signs and traffic signals and all traffic laws. Whether that's always effective is a different story, but we do tell them to obey all the traffic laws.
They actually execute all those maneuvers in the rodeos.
Vice Mayor Kniss: It's hard if you're on the way to Paly or Gunn or wherever
you are and there's a huge group of you, it's pretty hard to be the one that
says, "Everyone's got to stop." That wouldn't be cool, I know. Anyhow,
thanks so much. Is there anything anyone else needs to add? That is the
end of Item—Karen.
Council Member Holman: Just one thing besides the fact that I think Idaho
has seven cars. There's a little bit of a difference there, but I appreciate the
concept. Didn't we, in some of our prior discussions, talk about making the
Safe Routes to School routes have fewer stop signs and have the cross
streets have stop signs? Didn't we have that discussion before?
Mr. Mello: The Neighborhood Traffic Safety and Bicycle Boulevard project,
which is coming to you in a couple of weeks to award the construction
contract, includes a lot of stop sign reversal and stop sign removal that will
make the bike routes more fluid, and the stop control be moved to the side
streets. In a lot of locations where we now have all-way stop control, we'll
be installing traffic circles with yield control. That will further reduce the
number of times cyclists have to stop when they're traveling along these
designated bike routes.
Council Member Holman: Sounds good. Liz, you're going to get your Idaho
stop one way or another.
Vice Mayor Kniss: I didn't realize there was an actual name for that. That's
intriguing.
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Special Orders of the Day
2. Proclamation Honoring Penny Ellson for 15 Years of Service to the Palo
Alto Safe Routes to School Partnership.
Vice Mayor Kniss: That takes us to Number 2 tonight. If there are public
comments on this, you might bring those up as well. We have this
wonderful opportunity tonight to honor Penny Ellson, who has not only been
involved in bike and bike safety for a long time but certainly has been one of
the most involved community members on many levels that I know. If you'll
indulge me, I'd love to read the Proclamation tonight. Penny, why don't you
come on up close to the mike while we read this? You can get the full force
of these wonderful things that are being said about you. Maybe Rich wants
to come too. He always says he's the silent partner, but I know that he's
very involved. Vice Mayor Kniss read the Proclamation into the record. I
will come down with this Proclamation.
Penny Ellson: I don't do this by myself. There are a few people in particular
I want to talk about tonight, Audrey Gold, Jim Pflasterer, Libby Lungren, and
Kathy Durham. There are a lot of people here tonight, and a lot of people
who are not here tonight who helped with this. We mobilize hundreds of
volunteers every year. These people in particular are very special, and I want to talk—first of all, I want to say thank you. I feel touched and
honored, and I really appreciate it. I want to thank all of you for the support
that you've given us all these years. To Staff who are over there now, I'm
just so grateful for the mentorship and the energy and really hard work you
all put into this program. Thank you for that. Your partnership, the City's
partnership, and the School District's partnership has been crucial to our
great success along with hundreds of Parent Teacher Association (PTA)
volunteers who create a synergistic power for this program. Some of them
are here tonight. I want to thank them all for saying yes when we call you
up and ask you to lead or volunteer. Saying yes is what makes this work.
As this marks my departure from the PTA, I want to focus on transitions.
This is not the first time a Safe Routes to School leader has retired. I was
preceded by Kathy Durham—come up here, Kathy—who served as the chair
of the PTA Council Traffic Safety Committee beginning in 1989. Kathy
spearheaded a collective effort between the School District, City, and PTA to
create an in-class bike/pedestrian safety education program for grades K-6.
She also helped generate buy-in for a comprehensive approach to traffic
safety problem-solving before anybody ever talked about Safe Routes to
School anywhere. Kathy's work was instrumental in creating Palo Alto's
nationally recognized Safe Routes to School partnership. I just want to say
right now I am grateful for your forward-thinking leadership, your
mentorship, and your friendship. Thank you. When I stepped into this role,
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I was a little overwhelmed. I was fortunate to find colleagues and mentors
who helped me, including Kathy, planning directors, and chief transportation
officials, transportation engineers, members—there are a lot of people—City
Council, School Board Members, all kinds of people who stepped up and
offered information, taught me how to navigate the system, taught me fine
points of engineering that I never knew I'd want to know. I just want to say
thank you to all those folks. Without you, this would not work. I'm stepping down, but people are stepping up. Those people are here tonight or some of
them; one's missing. Libby Lungren and Jim Pflasterer together with Peter
Phillips, who couldn't be here tonight—he's on the East Coast—will form the
new Palo Alto Council of PTAs Safe Routes to School leadership team. They
are joined today by Audrey Gold, who has been a longtime supporter of our
efforts as the Nixon PTA President and traffic safety rep. In her current role
as the Palo Alto Council of PTAs President, Audrey will provide great support
to our new team as she has provided support to me. Collectively, Peter,
Libby, and Jim have 16 years of experience serving as site reps, as Safe
Routes to School Champions. They each bring knowledge and gifts to this
program. Libby has already taken on volunteer recruitment and team
leadership. She did a great job this year. Her passion for biking makes her a natural to draw new volunteers to our program. She already has recruited
next year's school site Champions. We have a rock-solid team district-wide
for next year. Peter loves introducing kids to the fun of bicycling. He
created a wonderful Safe Routes to School program at Addison Elementary
School, but he also founded the popular Wheel Kids bicycle adventure camps
here in Palo Alto. Peter's a certified bicycling instructor who loves teaching
kids to bike safely and confidently. You've probably seen him at City Council
meetings because he's here a lot promoting Safe Routes to School. Jim
started bicycling with his kids to Juana Briones, as he's mentioned. I'm not
going to go into the big details, but since 2008 he has been volunteering as
a Safe Routes to School Champion, a member of the Charleston-Arastradero
Stakeholders Committee, as a member of the Palo Alto Council of PTAs
Traffic Safety Committee, and he's now a parent of students who bike
commute to Terman and Gunn. We have a great leadership team and a
roster of district-wide volunteers. We have a Transition Plan, which you've
just heard about from Staff. The Palo Alto Safe Routes to School group is
well positioned to take this program to the next level. I want to thank you
for this honor this evening. Really this is for all of us, all of us, the hundreds
of us who even couldn't be here tonight. I look forward to supporting this
amazing new team through their transition. I know Kathy does too. She's
already started helping out. We're not done; we're just getting started.
Thank you.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Let me double check. Were there any public speakers on
this one in particular? I see one light on. Is that you, Karen, or is that
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Council Member Tanaka or is it just not turned off from before? In that
case, this takes us to an unusual spot in the evening. As I mentioned
earlier, we started right on the button so that we could take about a 10-
minute break now. I'm going to confess we haven't eaten. That's why we're
going to take a short break. We will be back here by 7:20 P.M. We'll
resume at that point and start with our City Manager Comments. Stay in
your seats; you will not want to miss City Manager Comments.
Council took a break from 7:06 P.M. to 7:23 P.M.
Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions
None.
City Manager Comments
Vice Mayor Kniss: Welcome to those of you who have come in since we left.
For any of you watching at home, we are in the beginning of the agenda.
We're going to start with City Manager Comments and then go on to Oral
Communications. If any of you want to speak under Oral Communications,
please fill out a card now. You can get it from the Clerk, and they will bring
it to us. Thanks.
James Keene, City Manager: Thank you, Madam Vice Mayor, members of
the City Council. I did want to share more good news on the public art front. The City's Public Art Program received three awards last Friday as the
Americans for the Arts honored 49 outstanding national public art projects
created in 2016. The awards were given by the Public Art Network Year in
Review program, the only national program that recognizes the most
compelling public art each year. The projects were chosen by a jury from
325 entries submitted by communities across the country. The three public
art projects originated as part of the City's Percent for Public Art Program
and include Susan Narduli's Conversation, which is the video wall in City
Hall, Aaron Lee Benson's Running Wall, and Tabula by Charles Gadeken and
DV Rogers. Three out of 49 is quite an impressive accomplishment and is
really a testament to our City's and community's enthusiastic support for art
in public places. Kudos to our great Staff in Community Services
Department (CSD) and elsewhere who have been staffing these projects.
The City is looking for engaged community members willing to serve on the
Storm Water Management Oversight Committee. This new Committee will
provide citizen oversight of the funds that are collected as a result of the
successful Storm Water Management Election in April. Applications are
available on the City Clerk's webpage, cityofpaloalto.org/clerk. The
application deadline is August 1 at 4:30 P.M. City Staff across multiple
departments hosted three public open houses last week on the Upgrade
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Downtown Infrastructure and Street Improvement project in the Downtown
area. This week, the Water Main Replacement project on Hamilton Avenue
is starting construction. Based on feedback that we heard from the public,
our Staff continues to update frequently asked questions, Frequently Asked
Question’s (FAQ), on the website cityofpaloalto.org/upgradedowntown. We
encourage folks to subscribe to the Upgrade Downtown email newsletter,
which we will use to send out regular updates as the project progresses. We're also posting messages with neighborhood groups and on Nextdoor.
Those who are active on Twitter can follow us with the hashtag
#upgradedowntown. Also, the day before the 4th of July this year, we're
doing a special event actually down at the Municipal Services Center on East
Bayshore. This will be an open house with our Staff from Utilities, Public
Works, Administrative Services, Community Services, and our parks and
open space employees participating to showcase some of the behind-the-
scenes work that we do for the Palo Alto community every day of the week,
every day of the year. The Municipal Services Center will be open to the
public and employees' families from 10:00 A.M. to 2:00 P.M. Folks will be
able to enjoy food and music, fun activities, and take home educational
giveaways. Special project demonstrations and displays featuring informative messages relating to the dangers of high voltage, what's inside a
transformer, how all of our utilities are operated, where they come from,
utility metering, eco home and efficiency programs, and everything from
cybersecurity, bucket trucks and other heavy equipment operations, street
cutting and paving, and a history of the City and founding of our municipal
utilities. This event is an opportunity for our hardworking City Staff to share
the important and interesting work that they do with our community at
large. We invite the Council to join us and bring your families for this fun
and educational day. That's July 3rd from 10:00 to 2:00 P.M. You can RSVP
at cityofpaloalto.org/workshops. Lastly, the Music Is Magic Summer Concert
Series is back for the third year at the Magical Bridge Playground. This free,
family-friendly concert series takes place Fridays through September 1st at
the Levy-Huey Community Stage in Mitchell Park. The show goes from 6:30
to 8:00 P.M. and will cover nearly every musical genre. Award-winning
children's musician Andy Z kicked off this year's series on June 2nd and
returns for encore performances in July and August. Tim Cain is also an
award-winning children's recording artist who is making three appearances
at the concert series this summer. More to come later on. That's all I have
to report.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you so much. That's the end of the City Manager's
report.
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Oral Communications
Vice Mayor Kniss: That takes us now to Oral Communications. You can
speak on any item, as you know, not on the agenda. We have a number of
cards tonight, so we're going to limit this to 2 minutes. Acting Vice Mayor
tonight is Cory Wolbach, so he'll be keeping track of the time. I'm going to
read you three at a time. If you can get close to the mike, it helps move us
along. Becky Sanders followed by Stephanie Beach followed by Gale
Fullerton. Greetings.
Becky Sanders: Hello. Good evening, Council Members. My name is Becky
Sanders. I am the moderator for the Ventura Neighborhood Association. In
the next 2 years, we citizens have the opportunity to influence how the large
Fry's site will be developed by the owners, the amazing Sobrato family.
They own the property, and they have their rights. However, I am sure that
they would welcome building something that neighbors loved and supported,
that the whole community can get behind and be proud of. Let's help them
do that. I know it's on your radar. I know you're thinking about it. Lots of
us are sending in emails and getting involved. Let's go ahead and give Fry's
a Coordinated Area Plan. That way Ventura—you know we have an
inferiority complex in Ventura. We want to get SOFA red carpet treatment. That would really help us a lot just to feel that what we want is important to
you as much as any other citizen in Palo Alto. I know you all actually do
value our input. It's just a perception that we have in south Palo Alto.
Thank you very much. Please give us a Coordinated Area Plan. I do speak
on behalf of Ventura Neighborhood Association. We have voted to lobby,
rally, get out the votes. Also, BTWs, there was a fire in my neighborhood.
My neighbor, who lived across the street, did alert the City multiple times
that there was some hoarding and stuff going on there. Totally unrelated,
but it just makes us feel that our voices aren't heard when there wasn't a
response. I think there is a way to deal with trash and garbage buildup.
That's how it is in Ventura. Thank you so much for hearing my supplication.
Thank you for your service. You guys are really fabulous because I know
you have to read everything. Appreciate it.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thanks, Becky. Stephanie Beach.
Stephanie Beach: Good evening, Council Members. First, thank you to the
Council and to the City Staff for helping La Comida explore new possibilities
for our temporary and long-term needs. We have not yet signed an
agreement for the short term, but we do have negotiations that are ongoing
and are looking really promising at this moment. However, we've learned
we can't count our chickens before the eggs hatch. Looking ahead, I'm
hopeful that the City will help us find a site Downtown in City-owned
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property located in Downtown because that's where the most dense
population of senior citizens are. Downtown is easy to get to with public
transportation. Ideally, we would be close to the Senior Center so that the
seniors can enjoy the complimentary services offered by Avenidas as well as
La Comida. Again, thank you for your continued support of Palo Alto seniors
and especially the senior nutrition site, La Comida.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Our next speaker is Gale Fullerton. Gale Fullerton.
Gale Fullerton: Thank you, Council Members. I'm speaking for myself and
on behalf of La Comida, a place that I have attended probably for 15 years.
I'm almost 75, so I started when I was 60. It has meant so much to me in
two factors: the food because my wife isn't that good of a cook and the
people that you meet there, the food prepared by Mary Ruth and her staff
and the social activities that are there. You meet people of all different ages
and everything. They provide food for everywhere from wealthy people to
those that are homeless. This is where they get their only food of the day
and their only social activity. The social activity is extremely important. I
go to my friends over at Stanford when I work out. I say, "Have you ever
heard of La Comida?" "That's where all the old folks go, the one on Kains.
They serve some type of elementary food." That's not the case. The food is very important, and the social activities are important. The most important
thing is a symbiotic relationship between Avenidas and La Comida. They
work together, and it's very important. We get people there who go to
classes, come there, and then they go to classes in the afternoon. I give
travel talks. A majority of the people that attend eat lunch there. Thank
you very much. I hope you consider this because it is a serious subject for
your older population. Thank you.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Our next three speakers are Stephanie Munoz, Sea
Reddy, and Lorraine Brown. Whomever gets down there first can talk first.
Stephanie.
Stephanie Munoz: Good evening, Vice Mayor Kniss and Council Members.
Guess what? I'm here to talk about housing but different kinds of housing,
different kinds of housing for different populations. First of all, you have La
Comida here. I've asked the people from Windy Hill if they wouldn't
consider having teeny, tiny units, hotel-size units for single, Social Security
recipients, ones that make $800 a month. They could conceivably pay $550
or $600 a month if they had La Comida on the ground floor of their place. I
don't see that that's happening, but it could. If you put La Comida some
place, then put the senior housing on top of it so that people with a little bit
of money could pay for their housing. As you know, if push comes to shove,
the seniors have a right to eat for free, gratis, and for nothing. I have never
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seen anybody ask for that, but I know it's true. Usually they charge like $3
a week. The other thing is the teachers. The reason you need teacher
housing is to cap the cost of the schooling. That's the reason you need the
rental teacher housing. Once you get it, you've got it, and you don't have to
keep raising—you might have to keep raising the teachers' salaries, but not
to the extent the real estate goes up. The other thing is the homeless. It's
just beneath the dignity of Palo Alto to have homeless women subject to assault, subject to selling themselves because they need a place to stay for
the night. You could have a couple of modular buildings and put them out
where that recycling was. You could do that. Burlingame had a couple they
were giving away you could have had. Anyway, give housing some thought
as you go on your vacation. Have a very nice, restful time that will keep
able to think calmly about the housing crisis …
Vice Mayor Kniss: We still have one more meeting, Stephanie. We still have
another meeting.
Ms. Munoz: See you then.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you. Sea Reddy and then Lorraine Brown, in
either order.
Sea Reddy: Thank you, Vice Mayor and City Council and citizens of Palo Alto. As you have seen it, this weekend we had a wonderful, wonderful,
very outstanding Stanford graduation event. It could not have been done
without good help from Palo Alto citizens, City and police and fire and all
that stuff. I want to thank them. As far as I could see, there was no news
for the events. Everything was handled beautifully. Thank you. For any of
you that want to know more about that, I have the Stanford commencement
program and all that. It was (inaudible) by the University. The speeches
are marvelous. Judge Cuellar was wonderful as well as the new president,
Marc Tessier-Lavigne. He was excellent. Just like Liz, he speaks very well.
I always compliment her for her East Coast (crosstalk).
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you, Sea.
Mr. Reddy: There is room for negotiation with the new president on the
team. I parked underneath the trees, and I think we could figure out some
way to use—when we could handle 25,000 people without incident, we could
handle daytime parking for some of our City workers using Stanford
facilities. I think we need to think out of the box. Thank you. My prayers to
Otto Warmbier. This gentleman, 22 years old, went to North Korea and
came back in a coma condition. I think President Trump should take an
action to teach a lesson. That should never happen to American citizens.
Thank you.
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Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you. Next speaker is Lorraine Brown. I'm sure
you all know that your names are up on the board. Thanks.
Lorraine Brown: Good evening. I'm here to speak about Castilleja's
Conditional Use Permit (CUP) proposal. I want to briefly tell you a little bit
about myself. I moved to Palo Alto in 1974, grew up here going to Palo Alto
public schools, raised my family here, my kids went to Palo Alto public
schools. I've seen the intense growth in Palo Alto, and I see the frustrations of that. What I continue to really love about Palo Alto is the brainpower and
the innovation and our outstanding education, public and private, including
Castilleja. I work at Castilleja; I've worked there for the past 6 years. It's
in the context of my work at Castilleja and my being a lifelong Palo Altan
that I wanted to address this topic. Because I work at Castilleja, friends and
neighbors frequently ask me about our CUP proposal. Without exception,
I'm frustrated by the misinformation that they've heard. Opponents to our
CUP tell people that we're killing healthy trees, that Castilleja will require a
lane of Embarcadero Road to be closed, and that we'll bring more cars into
the neighborhood. They cite a ridiculously high and incorrect number of cars
that will drive to and from Castilleja every day. I think a good public
discussion of Castilleja's CUP proposal is really important, but it is so frustrating to me that our opponents often rely on spreading misinformation
to gain support. It's particularly ironic because they've accused Castilleja of
being dishonest. I also want to speak briefly about our traffic demand
management program. I think it's important for Council to know how
seriously Castilleja employees take the program. We bike, and that's
consistent with the program we heard before. We're bikers as well. We
carpool; we take the train; we park remotely; and we help manage traffic.
Many of us on a weekly basis wear those yellow vests to make sure that
drivers coming to Castilleja do not park on the opposing side of the street
and that they don't do U-turns. We try very hard to make sure that our
neighbors are respected. Working in admissions, which is the role that I
have, one of the first communications we have with our prospective families
is to make sure that they respect our Transportation Demand Management
(TDM) policies. I want to close by just emphasizing that I think the
neighbors are not acknowledging the significant improvements we've made
around that block. I hope that Council can recognize that. Thank you very
much.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you for speaking. Jim Hewlett, Alex—I'm not
going to try that one—and then Fred Balin. Jim Hewlett, welcome.
Jim Hewlett: Members of Palo Alto City Council, my name is Jim Hewlett. I
grew up in Palo Alto and went to Palo Alto High School. I have been
volunteering at La Comida for over 20 years. I think of the Palo Alto Senior
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Center in one sense as consisting both of Avenidas and La Comida. Seniors
come to the Senior Citizen probably most importantly to eat lunch and to
have the chance to visit with other seniors. Of course, there are many
classes, lectures, and entertainment events that are offered by Avenidas.
Still, in my mind, what is most important is that at the Senior Center La
Comida offers lunch. I hear clients at La Comida make comments.
Someone says, "Has such-and-such a person come in yet," or "I have an acupuncture appointment in one of the Avenidas classrooms. Will I have
time for lunch afterwards," "I'm taking a lip-reading class so I thought I
would stick around and have lunch," "Is there a movie showing in the La
Comida dining room?" All these people are at La Comida to have lunch and
then, either before or afterwards, do something at Avenidas. Avenidas and
La Comida provide an opportunity for clients to have a fulfilling morning and
lunch or lunch and afternoon. Avenidas and La Comida can provide these
services because they're in the same building. I think the lunch program is
a valuable service to the community. I hope the City Council will act to have
La Comida remain where it is at Avenidas. Thank you.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you for coming. Let me try this. Is it Pandrangi?
Alex Pandrangi: Not too bad. Hi, everyone. My name's Alex Pandrangi, and thank you for your time this evening. I want to talk briefly about a way for
the City to generate additional revenue at no additional cost. It's truly
frustrating to me when cities' facilities sit empty and underutilized during
various times of the day or various times of the year. Our platform can help
streamline the facility rental process for gyms, courts, fields, really any
space that you want as well as increase participation in existing programs
such as leagues, clinics, drop-in play, anything of that nature. Now, we do
this by allowing the City to market its spaces directly to an established user
base of hundreds of local coaches and thousands of local athletes that are
actively searching for such spaces but are very frustrated by the various
processes that they have to maneuver through in order to secure them. On
the administrative side, our platform is free for the City to use. Because it's
web based, it can work with any existing Information Technology (IT) or
technical infrastructure. We also provide personal injury and liability
insurance for all participating venues. Ultimately, we're looking to help the
City generate additional revenue not only to address ongoing maintenance
and operational expenses of these types of facilities, but also to reinvest in
new programs that can benefit the community going forward. I'm really
excited about the potential to partner with the City as well as the
community. I hope to be able to discuss this further with appropriate
members of City leadership. Thank you very much for your time once again.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you. Fred followed by—I think it's Eduardo.
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Fred Balin: Council Members, City Manager, Chief. Firefighters responded
to a full first alarm in the Ventura neighborhood last Tuesday shortly before
noon. Online dispatch archives indicate that the fire engines at several
nearby stations were not immediately available. Two may have been at the
regional wildfire drills in the Foothills. A press photo shows that the first
engine to arrive came all the way from the Embarcadero at Newell station.
Seconds count. Without an engine, there is no hose, no pump, no water. How elevated was this engine's response time? I have requested the
incident report. Fortunately, this fire was confined to area outside the
home. If inside, the house might have been lost. This situation is a clear
example of what could happen under the proposed $1.3 million savings in
deployment services. When two or more fire stations each share Staff
between engine and ambulance, if two ambulances are out on call, two
engines are out of service. The Department's fire call response call of within
8 minutes 90 percent of the time is based on the first emergency response
unit on the scene, not necessarily a fire engine but assumed to be when they
are strategically placed around the City and always at the ready. The
proposed cut to engine availability will increase their response times and
provide misleading results under this current success measurement metric. Significant cuts to engine service is the only way to implement the proposed
cuts. Don't believe me? Another reason to demand that the specifics of the
new deployment be released. Were you aware that your budget approval
last year led to the elimination of dedicated daytime fire season engine
staffing at the Foothills station? It's hot and dry this week, but not enough
for a red flag fire warning, so the station probably remains empty. City Hall,
release the secret deployment plans in this week's online Packet so the
public at least has some time to assess. City Council, you don't want to be
up here if that information is withheld and something serious and
attributable to these deployment service changes goes counter to
aspirations. Thank you.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Our last speaker is Eduardo. Is it …
Eduardo Llach: Eduardo Llach, it's castellan. I'm a Palo Altan for a while.
All my five kids went to Palo Alto High. I'm here to speak about the
Rinconada contract with Tim Sheeper. I have been a longtime Master
swimmer with Tim Sheeper, since 1995, and seen the progression of his
program, both in Menlo Park and in other pools. I've also swam at
Rinconada and been at several of their metes; although, I have not swam
their classic 1,650 butterfly event, which is pretty tough. I do 200 but not a
1,650. The point that I wanted to make is that Tim Sheeper and his
organization have done a phenomenal job in Menlo Park. I've seen them go
to Burgess Park when it used to be a 33-yard pool to now the new place.
I've been a mentor to kids in East Palo Alto who learn how to swim there.
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I've seen the community events and everything the team does from getting
up at 5:30 and being there at 5:45 for people to swim and then back at 7:00
and all the competitions and everything else that he does. I would highly
recommend both his organization and himself as a place to run Rinconada.
I'm sure that they can make accommodations to whatever swimmers that
want to be there. As I said, I've been a swimmer in both Rinconada and in
Menlo Park, and I really think that Tim and his organization do a phenomenal job. Thank you.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thanks very much.
James Keene, City Manager: Madam Vice Mayor, just real quickly before
you move on. I don't typically do this, but it's been 3 or 4 weeks in a row,
and I just did want to respond. Next week, you will be taking up the City's
budget. The City is not concealing any information. As a matter of fact, we
are in meet and confer with the firefighters' union right now. Any things
that we are looking at are not even in place yet. I think the Council will be
able, when we go through the budget next week, to have a clearer
explanation. The budget we put together every year is a plan for the year.
It doesn't necessarily obligate or put into place things that we are
considering. Next week, I think we'll be able to put this matter to rest. Thanks.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you, City Manager.
Minutes Approval
3. Approval of Action Minutes for the June 5, 2017 Council Meeting.
Vice Mayor Kniss: That takes us to our next item tonight, which is the
Minutes Approval. Could I have a Motion to approve the Minutes?
Council Member Wolbach: Second.
MOTION: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Council Member
Wolbach to approve the Action Minutes for the June 5, 2017 Council Meeting.
Vice Mayor Kniss: A Motion that is seconded. Would you vote on the board
please? I know it's awkward tonight. If you can guess where you're sitting,
that would be helpful. That passes unanimously. Thank you.
MOTION PASSED: 7-0 Fine, Scharff absent
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Consent Calendar
Vice Mayor Kniss: Going on to the Consent Calendar. A number of items on
this tonight, Items Number 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 are on Consent including 11
and 12. Twelve is a second reading of an ordinance that we passed on
June 5th. Could I get a Motion?
Council Member Holman: Move Consent.
Vice Mayor Kniss: I have a Motion to move …
Council Member Wolbach: Second
Vice Mayor Kniss: … Consent and a second.
MOTION: Council Member Holman moved, seconded by Council Member
Wolbach to approve Agenda Item Numbers 4-12.
4. Approval of Contract Number C17167812 With Truepoint Solutions,
LLC for a Three-year Contract, $400,000 Annually With a Not-to-
Exceed Amount of $1,200,000 to Provide Services in Scripting,
Reporting, and Other Technical Support of the City's Development
Permitting System, Accela, for Development Services and Planning and
Community Environment.
5. Approval of Amendment Number One to Contract Number C16161852
With PSC Industrial Outsourcing, LP (PSC) to Increase Compensation for the Second and Third Contract Years by $102,217 for a Total Not-
to-Exceed Amount of $585,920 to Address Higher Landfill Disposal
Costs for the Transportation and Disposal of ash From the Regional
Water Quality Control Plant.
6. Resolution 9684 Entitled, “Resolution of the Council of the City of Palo
Alto Approving a Professional Services Agreement Between the
Northern California Power Agency and the Cities of Palo Alto and Santa
Clara for Electric Transmission, Generation and Regulatory Consulting
Services in a Total Amount Not-to-Exceed $500,000 for a Three-year
Term.”
7. Approval of the Purchase of Police Radio Consoles for the Silicon Valley
Regional Communications System (SVRCS) Regional 700 MHz Trunked
Radio System in an Amount Not-to-Exceed $917,000 With an Option
for the Utilities Department to Purchase two Additional Consoles for an
Amount Not-to-Exceed $72,000.
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8. Approval of a Contract Amendment With Team Sheeper for Operational
Management of Rinconada Pool's Lap and Open Swim Programs as
Well as Oversight of Rinconada Masters and Palo Alto Stanford
Aquatics Programs.
9. Approval of a Purchase Order With National Auto Fleet Group, in the
Amount of $214,782 for the Purchase of a 2017 Ford F-550 XL 4WD
With a Knapheide 14' Value Master Platform With Weco Industries Equipment and Approve Budget Amendments in the Wastewater
Collection Fund and Vehicle Replacement & Maintenance Fund.
10. Approval of a Contract With G4S Secure Integration in the Amount of
$1,413,734 to Provide Design and Construction of a Video
Management System Along the Caltrain Corridor, Capital Improvement
Program Project PE-18001, and Authorization for the City Manager to
Negotiate and Execute Related Change Orders Not-to-Exceed
$136,246 in Total Value and a System Maintenance Agreement for a
Five-year Term in an Amount Not-to-Exceed $225,000 Annually,
Subject to Consumer Price Index (CPI) Increases and Appropriation of
Funds Through the Annual Budget Process.
11. Acceptance of the Institute of Museums and Library Services Grant and Sherrie Innis Estate Bequest and Approve Budget Amendment in the
General Fund.
12. Ordinance 5413 Entitled, “Ordinance of the Council of the City of Palo
Alto Dedicating 36.5 Acres of Land at the Former ITT Property Antenna
Field to Become Part of the Baylands Nature Preserve (FIRST
READING: June 5, 2017 PASSED: 9-0).”
Vice Mayor Kniss: Are there any lights on this? Tom, is your light on? In
that case, without any further discussion if you would again vote on the
board. That again passes unanimously. Thank you all.
MOTION PASSED: 7-0 Fine, Scharff absent
Vice Mayor Kniss: Taking us on to our first of four public hearings tonight.
The first one is going to talk about weed abatement. We're going to then
deal with a water issue, water rates. The one after that deals with
Southgate Residential Preferential Parking program. I know that there are
people who are at home and want to come in for that. We should get to that
by the time it's called for at 8:15 P.M. Then, we have the Human Relations
Commission on the Human Services Resource Allocation Process (HSRAP)
monies that will be allocated for this year.
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Female: Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) rather.
Vice Mayor Kniss: CDBG, sorry. Thank you. CDBG. Our final item tonight
is going to be on plane noise. That's the Policy and Services
recommendation to talk about the next steps in dealing with reduction of
airplane noise.
Action Items
13. PUBLIC HEARING: Resolution 9685 Entitled, “Resolution of the Council
of the City of Palo Alto Confirming Weed Abatement Report and
Ordering Cost of Abatement to be a Special Assessment on the
Respective Properties Described Therein.”
Vice Mayor Kniss: We are now, as I said, on Item 13. That deals with a
public hearing and weed abatement. Tonight, we're holding a public hearing
on a Resolution confirming the County weed abatement assessment report
for Palo Alto and ordering the cost of abatement to be a special assessment
on the respective properties that are described herein. Does the Staff have
a presentation?
Eric Nickel, Fire Chief: Good evening. Yes, Staff does have a brief verbal
presentation.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you, Chief.
Mr. Nickel: Let me go ahead and start. Good evening. I'm Eric Nickel, and
I'm the Fire Chief. I'm joined this evening by our Fire Marshal, James
Henrikson, and Albert Escobar from the Santa Clara County weed abatement
program, who we partner with. Typically this is a very routine matter that
we run through but, recognizing that there were several questions that came
out in advance of this meeting—we do have some new Council Members that
maybe this is the first time that we've gone through a weed abatement
process—I'm going to take a few minutes to walk you through the process
and why we do what we do. Weeds if not properly managed can become fire
hazards or threats to public safety. Weed abatement is an important public
safety priority approved by the City Council under the authority of the City's
Municipal Code, the adopted Fire Code, the California Health and Safety
Code as well as the California Government Code. This is where you derive
your authority. Nuisance weeds become a legal matter when they threaten
property or the community's infrastructure. For example, a small fire in an
overgrown patch of weeds on one property could extend into somebody
else's property or could extend into a large vegetation field and threaten the
community's infrastructure or whole neighborhoods. Weed abatement is
normally handled on an individual parcel basis where property owners are
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responsible. Every property owner is responsible for maintaining their own
weeds and keeping their properties in order. That is derived under the State
Codes as well as the City Municipal Code. If the City determines that a
certain parcel or a group of parcels presents a hazard or requires attention,
a notice will be mailed to the owner or posted on the property pursuant to
different Government Codes. If the owner does not correct the problem, the
City will clear the area at the owner's expense. This is why we have to do a public hearing because we are actually placing a lien on these individual
properties to recover the cost from abating the property. As you may know,
weed abatement is a routine business matter that the Fire Department
brings to the Council every 6 months. The parcels that remain on the list
have been notified multiple times via public notice, mailing of abatement
notices, requirements, assessments and two public hearings, the one tonight
and then the one that we held earlier this year where Staff brought forward
a list of properties identified for abatement. This is important to note. Not
all properties that require abatement are on the list. The two main reasons
for this are awareness of the abatement need—we don't know there's an
issue; it hasn't been reported to the City by one of the community
members—and timing. Perhaps it's been reported last week, but we can't immediately go out and abate without going through this important step-by-
step process, which takes about 6 months. We typically try to work with the
different homeowners to abate the property before they get on the list when
we're notified of them. If they don't work with us, then we do have to go
through this process. As your approval gives the City the authority to abate
the weeds and place a lien on the property to recover costs, the property
owner maintains many rights to object and appeal the process. Hence, the
approximately 6 months to complete the weed abatement process. Your
approval this evening at this public hearing will allow the City to abate the
properties included in the notice and preserve public safety from fire. This
concludes the Staff presentation. Without any questions, I return the floor
back to the Vice Mayor to open the public hearing.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you very much, Chief Nickel. Are there any
questions for the Chief while he is here regarding weed abatement?
Probably not our most glamorous issue. Tom.
Council Member DuBois: I was just looking at this one that's $1,100. Is
that really ours? It says South Dos Palos, and the ZIP Code is 93665.
Mr. Nickel: That's typically the mailing address of the property owner.
Council Member DuBois: Do you know why that one's so high?
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Mr. Nickel: The reason that you're going to see variations in price is it
depends on the amount of work that has to go to abate or the amount of
work behind the scenes with our partners from Santa Clara County to do the
administrative work. It's all 100 percent cost recovery, so the variations are
typically based upon the parcel size.
Vice Mayor Kniss: In that case, we will go back to the hearing for this
evening. Does Staff have any further comments? If not, I would entertain—hang on.
Molly Stump, City Attorney: Madam Vice Mayor, you can open the public
hearing and ask for comments from the public, if there are any.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you. I have briefly lost my cheat sheet. Sorry.
With four public hearings tonight, I don't want to lose my place. At this
time, we will begin the public hearing, and speakers will be limited to 3
minutes. Do we have any number of speakers on this item? In that case, it
appears there are no more members of the public who wish to speak. In
fact, there were no members of the public who wish to speak. The public
hearing on the weed abatement report and the special assessments is now
closed. Would the Clerk announce whether or not there are any written
objections?
Public Hearing opened and closed without public comment at 8:00 P.M.
Vice Mayor Kniss: There are no written objections. Let the record show that
no persons appeared or filed written objections against these weed
abatement proceedings. I'm looking at the Clerk; that is correct, right? Any
Resolution passed by the Council on this matter will reflect this finding. Is
there a Motion to adopt a Resolution confirming this report and ordering the
abatement costs to be a special assessment against the listed properties?
Council Member Filseth: So moved.
Vice Mayor Kniss: So moved and a second. I have a Motion and a second.
MOTION: Council Member Filseth moved, seconded by Council Member
Wolbach to adopt a Resolution confirming the Weed Abatement Report and
ordering abatement costs to be a special assessment on the properties
specified in the report.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Could we vote on the board? Unanimous support for the
weed abatement Item. That concludes the weed abatement Item for this
evening.
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MOTION PASSED: 7-0 Fine, Scharff absent
Council Member Filseth: I didn't get to speak to my Motion.
Vice Mayor Kniss: My apologies to the maker of the Motion who didn't get to
speak on weed abatement. Would you, after the fact, like to chat about
weed abatement?
Council Member Filseth: No thank you.
14. PUBLIC HEARING AND PROPOSITION 218 HEARING: Two Resolutions: Resolution 9686 Entitled, “Resolution of the Council of the City of Palo
Alto 1) Amending Rate Schedules W-1 (General Residential Water
Service), W-2 (Water Service From Fire Hydrants), W-4 (Residential
Master-Metered and General Non-Residential Water Service), and W-7
(Non-Residential Irrigation Water Service) to Increase Rates up to 4
Percent;” and Resolution 9687 Entitled, “Resolution of the Council of
the City of Palo Alto Repeal the Drought Surcharges Effective July 1,
2017; and 2) Amending Rate Schedule R-1 (Residential Refuse Rates)
to Increase Monthly Refuse Service Rates by 5 Percent Effective July 1,
2017.”
Vice Mayor Kniss: Taking us onto maybe a slightly more controversial item.
For those of you listening at home, this one deals with a public hearing and Proposition (Prop) 218 hearing regarding water rates, regarding repealing
the drought rate, and so forth. Tonight, we are going to hold a public
hearing on the proposed water and refuse rates, both so water and refuse.
Does Staff have a presentation?
Ed Shikada, Assistant City Manager: Thank you, Vice Mayor, members of
the Council. Staff does not have a presentation. Recognize that this public
hearing is required by statute pursuant to Proposition 218, also follows
discussion by the Finance Committee specific to the water rates, and the
City Council's upcoming consideration of the budget next week.
Vice Mayor Kniss: We will now, as it's a public hearing, address the
proposed water and refuse rate changes. Before we begin the public
hearing, the City Attorney will provide some background on how the hearing
will be conducted.
Molly Stump, City Attorney: Thank you, Madam Vice Mayor. Tonight's
water and refuse rate hearing will follow the requirements of the provision of
the California Constitution that's commonly referred to as Proposition 218.
Prop 218 sets forth rules that local governments need to follow before
increasing property-related fees. Notice of tonight's hearing was mailed to
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effected water and refuse customers on the 5th of May. The City Clerk has
been accepting written protests against the proposed rates and will continue
to do so until the close of the public input portion of this hearing. After the
close of the public input portion of the public hearing, the City Clerk will
tabulate all written protests for water and refuse separately. If a majority of
the effected customers have filed signed, written protests against either or
both of the proposed rate increases, they may not be imposed. Otherwise, the City Council may consider the rates as a policy matter and may adopt
the proposed water and refuse rates by Resolution. Thank you.
Vice Mayor Kniss: At this time, we're going to begin the public hearing,
covering the proposed changes to the City water and refuse rates. Speakers
will be limited to 3 minutes. If speakers wish to comment on more than one
rate and need additional time, please let us know before you begin your
comments. City Clerk? It appears there are no members of the public who
wish to speak on the water or the refuse rates. Before I close the public
input portion of this hearing, I'd like to remind everyone this is the last
opportunity to submit written protests on these two rates to the City Clerk.
I am now waiting to see if someone is going to come forth. I see no one.
I'll now close the public hearing on the water and refuse rates. Before we turn to Council questions and discussion, we'll tabulate the written protests.
Still aren't any written protests, right?
Public Hearing opened and closed without public comment at 8:04 P.M.
Beth Minor, City Clerk: We do have four written protests that came in via
the mail.
Vice Mayor Kniss: There are four written protests. Thank you.
Ms. Minor: Correct.
Ms. Stump: Madam Clerk, are those on the water or the refuse rates? You
should note that for the record.
Ms. Minor: Each of the four protests were for both changes.
Vice Mayor Kniss: We have four protests, and they are both for water and
for refuse rate changes. Correct?
Ms. Minor: Correct.
Vice Mayor Kniss: We're going to begin with water. There are 17,804
property owners and water customers subject to the water rate changes,
meaning that 8,903 protests are needed to create a majority. I will now ask
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the City Clerk to provide the number of written protests received against the
proposed water rate increases. Just water rate for this one.
Ms. Minor: There were four.
Vice Mayor Kniss: There were four. The total number received, four, is not
higher than the 50 percent of the total water customers subject to the rate
increases. If there is no majority protest—there is none—we will consider
the Resolution adopting a water rate increase after we tabulate the refuse protests. Before I move on to refuse, do Council Members have any
questions, comments, or further discussion on the proposed water rates or
Resolution? I've asked Eric Filseth if he would be willing to make some
comments. He headed up the Finance Committee this year. I could only
see a couple of times when there was some variance between the
Committee and the Staff.
Council Member Filseth: Just briefly, the Finance Committee actually looked
at this issue twice. Once on April 4th, when we looked at specifically these
rates, and again on May 18th, in which we reviewed the entire budget and
the entire Utilities budget as a whole. There was some discussion—there
was some latitude as to whether the recommended change would be to
eliminate the drought surplus and then also invoke a 3-4 percent regular rate increase. There was some latitude as to whether it was 3 or 4. At the
initial meeting, Finance recommended a 3 percent increase. When we
reviewed it again on May 18th in the context of the entire budget, we
approved the overall Utilities budget, which assumed a 4 percent increase.
At this point, our recommendation to Council is to proceed with the 4
percent increase, which was also covered by the notice to ratepayers.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you very much. Tom, I think that's your light on.
Am I correct?
Council Member DuBois: It is. I know we didn't have anybody show up, but
I don't want to be too cavalier about raising fees. It's not a process that
maybe lends itself to community feedback. I did see the Finance Committee
asked a question that's come up every now and then, which is why is Santa
Clara's water rates so much lower. The Staff Report referred back to a 2014
report that said there was going to be a benchmarking update. I didn't see
the actual update, and it then referred to a 2010 Benchmarking Study. It
seems like it's an issue that comes up again and again. I don't know if Staff
wanted to talk about that a little bit.
Mr. Shikada: Let me provide an overview and actually ask Jonathan
Abendschein, our Assistant Director over resource management, to elaborate
with a historical perspective. To your point, Council Member, and for the
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Council's information, the City does regularly review benchmarking. In
particular, our utility rates are topics that we can do comparisons with other
communities, and we do that periodically. In this particular case, there was
an initial, more-detailed study that was done back in 2010. In 2014, it was
more of a Staff-level review. Since it was at that Staff level, we really didn't
formalize it to the point of having a specific Staff Report brought forward.
The current year work plan does call for a more rigorous analysis of a comparison between differing agencies, so that we can provide some
additional information there. Anything you want to add, Jonathan?
Jon Abendschein, Assistant Director of Utilities Resources: No. Jonathan
Abendschein, Assistant Director of Utilities Resource Management. Nothing
to add on the historical benchmarking perspective. We've had several
different benchmarking efforts. As to specifically why Santa Clara's rates are
lower, there are a few very clear reasons for it. First off, they use
groundwater as opposed to importing water. That makes a big difference in
their rates. There are some other aspects that can be found in the
Benchmarking Study that we can share with you. The largest difference is
the fact they use groundwater.
Council Member DuBois: I realize the Hetch Hetchy water is more expensive. That 2010 report said they had very low leakage, loss rates.
That would be something we could look into. It also mentioned that we had
a lot more Staff involved then they do. I don't know whatever metric that
was measured under. The other thing I wanted to bring up was the new
rates include irrigation rates. It's not really tonight's topic, but it's come up
before. As we look at creating potable water from our wastewater, that
water does have value. There's some discussion at the Santa Clara Water
District; they're talking about the wastewater shed, similar to the watershed,
and actually possibly creating an entity around a recycled water district. I
think it would be a good thing for us to stay on top of and get ahead of,
where we typically have not charged for wastewater. I think it's going to
have value in the future. We're going to have to figure that out.
Mr. Shikada: I would just reinforce from the perspective of Staff that we're
definitely looking at it the same way as we look at all of the options available
to mitigate any potential rate increases. Again, with respect to potable
water, the extent to which recycled is a part of the same system and could
defer some of the costs, it's definitely on our radar screen.
James Keene, City Manager: If I could just add two things, one on that
same subject. As part of our follow-up work on the strategic implementation
plans for the Sustainability and Climate Action Plan (S/CAP), the SIPS,
actually the focus in water, one of the key initiatives we want to try to
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advance is our use of recycled or purified water in the very near term.
Secondly, when we share benchmarking info, I would have to think that the
comparison with Santa Clara, some of the water loss and leakage and that
sort of thing, I'm sure is due to the fact that a large portion of our City is
noticeably older than a lot of Santa Clara would be. I would also imagine, if
we were to look at our capital plant as far as reinvestment and maintenance,
that probably is a factor. We'll take a closer look at that. Thanks.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thanks very much. Are there any other questions from
us, from those of us sitting up here? In that case then—Greg, sorry. I'm
sorry, Greg. I didn't see your light.
Council Member Tanaka: On April 4th, when the Finance Committee looked
at this, we had a unanimous decision to do 3 percent increases instead of 4
percent because of the fact that, as Council Member DuBois mentioned, we
have much higher rates than our neighbors. That's been going up much
faster than our neighbors' as well. I'm interested in understanding why on
the 18th this was reversed. I don't know if somebody can share the
rationale behind that.
Mr. Shikada: Council Member, I'm sorry. Could you refresh my memory on
whether you were there on May 18th?
Council Member Tanaka: I was there, but you guys started at 2:00 P.M. in
the afternoon. I came in around 5:00 or 6:00 P.M.
Mr. Shikada: A key part of the discussion at the time we came back last
month, in May, was putting the water rates in the context of the overall
utility bills. We recognize that, while water in Palo Alto is higher than many
of the comparable agencies, the overall utility bill is lower, recognizing the
electric and gas as well as the wastewater rates in totality. That was a part
of the follow-up response. In addition, the initial action by the Finance
Committee did provide us the discretion to come back with both. We
provided that follow-up information in a benchmarking report.
Council Member Tanaka: I still don't understand why we increased it to 4
percent instead of 3 percent other than I know that we made a second
Motion so that in case we had to go up to 4 percent we could, but doesn't
mean why we should. The rationale why it was at 3 percent was because
we're already paying much more than our neighbors, and it's going up faster
than our neighbors'. Our residents have had this drought surcharge for
some time. We already have really, really high rates. I kind of want to look
out for our constituents and understand why we're raising the rates. The
answer you gave is not really sufficient for me.
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Mr. Keene: If I could just respond. My understanding, first of all, is that the
water surcharge rate is dropped in this proposal. Secondly, the Committee's
at least initial recommendation was driven—I don't mean that it was solely
provocative, but it was around this issue of the comparison of the rates. The
4 percent versus 3 percent, though, was related to generating the funding
necessary to fund the Funding Plan on the expenditure side of the budget.
The rationale is we're not raising rates just to take the money and set it aside. It's invested in our infrastructure and our Service Plan. As
Mr. Shikada said, when we next discussed this within the overall rate
structure, again the Committee felt that it was from a benchmarking
perspective for all of the utilities to be competitive.
Council Member Tanaka: Is the rationale that, because this is just 1
percent, in the whole scheme of things that's not a lot of money? Is that the
basic rationale?
Mr. Shikada: No.
Council Member Tanaka: What's the rationale?
Mr. Keene: I think it's the other way, which is to say why invest in needed
spending and reinvestment in our water services when our overall rates are
still competitive as opposed to just postponing some of that spending to the future.
Council Member Tanaka: I realize it's only a 1 percent difference, but my
thoughts are this. There are people in Palo Alto who are here by the skin of
their teeth. It's a pretty expensive place to live. Maybe to many this is not
a lot of money; yet, it's still an increase. I don't think it's a justified
increase. For me, I thought a 3 percent increase is reasonable; 4 percent
seems to be over the top at a time when we have the highest rates. To me,
it doesn't make sense.
Vice Mayor Kniss: We vote on this later. People will be free to vote however
they wish, of course. Lydia.
Council Member Kou: May I ask the City Clerk a question?
Vice Mayor Kniss: Sure.
Council Member Kou: Beth, how does it work with the number of
households or number of property owners that have to register their
protests? Do you have the number of how many we need to receive from
protests or percentage?
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Ms. Minor: Yes, there is a percentage. Vice Mayor Kniss read it off earlier of
what it's supposed to be.
Mr. Keene: It was over 8,000.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Just to refresh your memory, there are more than 17,000
property owners and water customers subject to that, meaning that 8,900
protests were needed to create a majority.
Council Member Kou: Thank you.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you. If there are no other comments from us,
then we'll go onto refuse. There are 17,560 refuse customers subject to the
refuse rate changes, meaning that 8,781 protests are needed to create a
majority. I'll now ask the City Clerk to provide the number of written
protests received against the proposed refuse rates.
Ms. Minor: There were four protests received.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Therefore, with four the total number of protests
received, the four, is not higher than the 50 percent of the total refuse
customers subject to the rate increase. Since there is no majority protest on
refuse rates, we will consider the Resolution adopting our refuse rate
increase. Before I entertain a Motion on this, do Council Members have any
questions, comments, further discussion on the proposed refuse rates or Resolution? Eric, would you be willing to start that conversation again for
us?
Council Member Filseth: I should have said that one of the issues on the
water rates was on the April 4th meeting there was considerable discussion
on why there were differences between our water rates and other
neighboring communities. One of the things that happened on the May 18th
meeting was Staff came back with a number of discussions about that, some
of which the City Manager said. There were some similar discussions on the
refuse rates, but those were by and large resolved to the satisfaction of the
Finance Committee on the 18th.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Are there any other questions regarding the refuse? If
not, I'm going to—anything else? Anyone want to make a comment? Tom.
Council Member DuBois: I was concerned that we are the most expensive
City with mini cans, but I'll defer to the Finance Committee, who delved into
that. I did have a question on why there was no change to commercial
rates. It was mentioned but not really explained.
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Matt Krupp, Environmental Services-Zero Waste: Vice Mayor, Council, Matt
Krupp with Environmental Services Zero Waste. The question, first off, on
the sheet that was discussed by Council Member Filseth, that we handed out
at the previously Finance Committee, that showed the rate comparison, that
actually shows that our mini can rate regionally is pretty competitive. It's a
little bit higher than Mountain View's rate, but it is competitive with the
other rates around the San Francisco Bay Area. We could share that with the Clerk and have that to you guys too. The reason for the residents' rate
increase was to balance our Prop 218 requirements, to make sure that the
residential sector was paying for its full share of costs. The commercial
sector had already been doing that, and we needed an inflationary
adjustment last year to account for some of the commercial costs. The rate
increases were part of a 3-year plan to increase rates. First, 2 years ago it
was 9 percent; last year, it was another 9 percent. We had initially planned
for an 8 percent rate increase on the residential side. We found that,
through some cost savings, we were able to reduce that to just a 5 percent
increase. I realize it's still a rate increase, but we were able to keep that
down. Essentially, the cost balance for now both sectors, the residential
sector and the commercial sector, are fully paying for their costs and in full compliance with Prop 218.
Council Member DuBois: Thank you. That was very clear.
Vice Mayor Kniss: I see no other comments, so we're ready to conclude the
public hearing on this adoption of the water and refuse rates. We can adopt
these tonight if you so wish. Since there is no majority protest, is there a
Motion to adopt the first Resolution amending water rates and repealing the
drought surcharge effective July 1st, 2017, and the second Resolution
amending residential refuse rates effective July 1, 2017?
Council Member Filseth: So moved.
Vice Mayor Kniss: I have a Motion.
Council Member Holman: Second.
Vice Mayor Kniss: And a second. Thank you very much.
MOTION: Council Member Filseth moved, seconded by Council Member
Holman to:
A. Adopt a Resolution:
i. Amending Utility Rate Schedules W-1 (General Residential Water
Service), W-2 (Water Service from Fire Hydrants), W-4
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(Residential Master-Metered and General Non-Residential Water
Service), and W-7 (Non-Residential Irrigation Water Service) to
increase rates up to 4 percent effective July 1, 2017; and
ii. Removing the drought surcharge effective July 1, 2017; and
B. Adopt a Resolution amending Utility Rate Schedule R-1 (Residential
Refuse Rates) to increase monthly refuse service rates by 5 percent
effective July 1, 2017.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Let's vote on the board. So sorry, Eric. I should have
asked you if you wanted to speak. Why don't you speak to your Motion first,
and then I'll have Greg speak?
Council Member Filseth: I'm comfortable with my Motion.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Any comments? Sorry, Karen.
Council Member Holman: No comments.
Vice Mayor Kniss: No comments. Greg.
Council Member Tanaka: For me, I'm going to vote no on this one because
Palo Alto has the highest rates. We've been having the highest rates, and
we've been increasing the fastest, which makes no sense to me. I think we
need to hold the line here and look out for our constituents, our ratepayers,
who entrust us with the funds to make sure we spend responsibly. I don't believe we're doing it responsibly here by increasing it to 4 percent. I'm
voting no.
Vice Mayor Kniss: With that, unless somebody else wishes to add to that,
could I ask you to vote on the board? That passes tonight on a 6—am I
right—6-1, six yeses, one no. Looking down the line, Council Members
DuBois, Kou, Wolbach, Kniss, Filseth, and Holman are voting aye. Council
Member Tanaka is voting no. That concludes our discussion of the water
and the refuse rates this evening. That's public hearing Number 2. We still
have a couple of others to go.
MOTION PASSED: 6-1 Tanaka no, Fine, Scharff absent
15. PUBLIC HEARING: Resolution 9688 Entitled, “Resolution of the Council
of the City of Palo Alto for the Creation of a new Residential
Preferential Parking (RPP) Program in the Southgate Neighborhood
Bounded by Churchill Avenue, Caltrain Rail Corridor, Sequoia Avenue,
and El Camino Real; and a Finding of Exemption From Review Under
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the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) Pursuant to Section
15061(b)(3) of Title 14 of the California Code of Regulations.”
Vice Mayor Kniss: Our next item tonight—for those of you who might be
watching at home and listening, the next Item is the Southgate Residential
Preferential Parking (RPP) program. The Resolution is before us tonight.
Again, another public hearing. This is to adopt the Resolution for the
creation of a new RPP program in the Southgate neighborhood bounded by Churchill, the Caltrain rail corridor, Sequoia Avenue, El Camino Real, and
finding an exemption from review under the California Environmental Quality
Act (CEQA) Act pursuant to Section so forth of the California Code. With
that, you have a recommendation in front of you. Could we get a report
from Staff?
Josh Mello, Chief Transportation Official: Greetings, Vice Mayor, members of
Council. I'm Josh Mello, the Chief Transportation Official with the City.
Tonight, I'm going to give you a very brief presentation on the Southgate
Residential Preferential Parking program. First, I'd like to give you an
overview of our Citywide RPP Ordinance. This Ordinance has several criteria
that need to be present in order to adopt an RPP program. First,
nonresident vehicles do or may substantially interfere with the use of the on-street or alley parking spaces by neighborhood residents. Second, this
interference by nonresident vehicles occurs at regular and frequent intervals,
either daily or weekly. The nonresidents' vehicles parked in the area of the
proposed district create traffic congestion, noise, or other disruption. Other
alternative parking strategies are not feasible or practical. A timeline for the
Southgate program. If you remember in April of last year, the Planning &
Transportation Commission (PTC) recommended to Council that we move
forward with RPPs for Evergreen Park and Southgate. In May of 2016, we
came to you with both Southgate and Evergreen Park, and you directed us
to implement RPP in Evergreen Park and Southgate but to start with
engineering and Transportation Demand Management (TDM) measures first
in Southgate before moving forward with RPP. In the summer/fall of 2016,
we consulted with Paly administration on their permitting process for student
parkers. They agreed to adjust that process to give preference to Paly
students who live further from campus, instead of distributing the permits on
a first-come-first-serve basis. We also were able to add roughly 90 parking
spaces on El Camino Real in front of Paly, which are now available during the
school day for students, visitors, and are temporarily being used by
construction staff that would have had to park on campus and take away
parking from students and visitors. In March of 2017, after we wrapped up
all the planning work necessary to implement Evergreen Park and Mayfield,
we moved directly into implementation of the Southgate RPP program. We
mailed out a resident survey, and then in April we went to PTC, and now we
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are before you this evening with a Resolution to implement an RPP program
in Southgate. If you do elect to move forward with that program, we
estimate that we could have it up and running by October of 2017. Back in
2016, concurrently with our occupancy survey for Evergreen Park/Mayfield,
we conducted an occupancy survey for Southgate, which showed a 71
percent morning occupancy; an 89 percent lunchtime occupancy, which is
very surprising for a residential neighborhood; and then a 54 percent evening occupancy rate. Our survey in 2017, a couple of months ago in
March, we mailed out 232 resident surveys. The question was very simple:
do you want to implement an RPP program under these specific parameters.
Ninety-five people voted yes; that's a rate of 75 percent of the returned
surveys; 128 surveys were returned. Now, I'm going to move into the draft
program design, and this is what was presented to the residents on the
survey when they voted yes or no. The boundaries of the program are
proposed to be the centerline of Churchill Avenue, the Caltrain railroad
corridor, the southern edge of the properties along the south side of
Sequoia—this is the property line that divides Southgate from Evergreen
Park—and then the centerline of El Camino Real. The enforcement hours for
the program would be 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. We had originally proposed 6:00 P.M. to be consistent with Downtown and Evergreen Park and Mayfield.
The residents of Southgate asked us to make that 8:00 to 5:00 P.M. instead
of 8:00 to 6:00 P.M., so we have done that in the Resolution. The resident
parking permits would be identical to Evergreen Park with one free sticker
and up to three additional stickers at $50 each and up to two transferrable
hangtags at $50 each. Residents would also be eligible to purchase up to 50
$5 daily parking permits for visitors, household employees, and other folks.
We do recommend that a maximum of ten employee parking permits be
available in the Southgate RPP program. There are two commercial
properties that are part of the Southgate subdivision at both the northwest
and southwest corner. We did speak to those businesses, and they actually
suggested they may need a number closer to 20 permits, but we think ten is
more reasonable given they both have off-street parking supplies. There is
an error in your Staff Report that says we're recommending 20 employee
parking permits. The presentation and the Resolution are correct; the
language in the Staff Report is in error. We're actually recommending ten
employee parking permits. We're starting to move to a place where after
the pilot programs expire we're going to set the permit fees in the Municipal
Fee Schedule. You'll talk more about that at your budget meeting coming
up. We're recommending setting the prices at what is currently available for
the Evergreen Park/Mayfield folks during the pilot phase. The fees would be
set by the Municipal Fee Schedule moving forward. The recommendation
before you tonight is that you adopt the Resolution included in Attachment A
to implement the Southgate Residential Preferential Parking program as a 1-
year pilot and direct Staff to make corresponding changes to the RPP
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Administrative Guidelines and find the program exempt from review under
the California Environmental Quality Act. With that, that concludes my
presentation.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Josh, before we go to the public, just one thing; you may
have said this. There were 232 surveys mailed out. Does that mean there
were 232 dwellings?
Mr. Mello: Each residential address is mailed a survey. Any address that's available …
Vice Mayor Kniss: Anyone who had a residential address got a survey?
Mr. Mello: Yes. Was mailed a survey; we can't guarantee that all 100
percent received them, but we did mail one to every residential unit.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you. Before we discuss this among us, we have
two people from the public who wish to speak. Am I right? If anybody else
who is here wishes to speak, if you would fill out a card and get that from
the Clerk, that will be appreciated. We have two members of the public to
speak, Keith Ferrell, Jim McFall. You each will have 3 minutes on this.
Greetings.
Public Hearing opened at 8:34 P.M.
Keith Ferrell: My name's Keith Ferrell. I live in Southgate. I'm requesting the approval of the program. We've been at it for years. The City, the
school, we've been in discussion. The school actually told us in person that
our only way for relief would be to get a permit program. In working with
the school over and over and over again, they said, "We can't do anything
here. It's going to have to go through the permit process." That's where it
started coming through here. We've had many years personally of losing
rearview mirrors, side swipes, probably $3,000, $4,000 in car damage just
for us alone. Other neighbors, the same thing. I note they're suggesting
ten permits for employees, which is probably good. My suggestion is
actually a little too high just because of where the access points are located.
You're going to look at—the businesses are here with the alleyways through
the neighborhood. The cars would be concentrated around probably two or
three houses. If that could get spread out, that would be awesome. They
are not neighborhood-serving businesses. One's a fertility clinic, and one is
a plastic surgery center. If they were neighborhood-serving, we would have
the youngest looking and highest density of children in the City. I don't
know of anyone who has gone there. Looking for approval. As you saw, I
think it was 80-some-odd percent at lunchtime, which is about correct. The
school's going to continue to get bigger. The school does a good job; the
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students do a great job of biking to school. It's just that a lot of them don't
need to and do. It'd be great to move them off. That is all. Thank you.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you. Interesting editing as well. Jim McFall.
Jim McFall: Thank you. Can I say it feels like déjà vu to say, "Good
evening, Vice Mayor Kniss and Council Members"? I'm Jim McFall; I'm a
Southgate resident and a member of the Southgate Parking Committee. I
want to thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. I think Josh has done a good job of laying out the timeframe and the history here as well as
some of the background information on the neighborhood. As you can see
on the map, it's a geographically distinct and well-defined neighborhood.
It's characterized by the very narrow streets. All the streets with one
exception are less than 24 feet wide, which means if cars park opposite each
other on the curb, we basically become all one-way streets, which has
caused much congestion. There's also a designated bicycle boulevard, which
adds traffic as well. With the proximity to Palo Alto High School, many
students walk and bike through the neighborhood. The addition of many
cars creates significant safety concerns, not to mention that Palo Alto first
responders have encountered difficulties reaching homes and medical
emergencies due to parking bottlenecks. As Josh mentioned, we had a good turnout on the survey, 55 percent responded, which is high. With the 74
percent positive response, I'm not aware of any other RPP surveys that have
had such a high level of support. With the Evergreen Park RPP program just
being rolled out as well as other pressures such as continued growth at Paly,
some 300 students over the next few years, as well as Stanford's Plan to
add over 2 million square feet of building space and over 3,100 housing
units, it suggests that we're going to experience significant parking pressure
for some time. I'd encourage you to review and approve the RPP for
Southgate this evening. Thank you very much.
Public Hearing closed at 8:39 P.M.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you so much. I would make one observation.
Having sat here through especially Crescent Park's RPP program, it must be
that this is a group from Southgate that's very compatible with the program
that's being suggested, which is nice to see. With that, I'm returning this to
us. I see lights from Council Member Filseth and from Council Member
Wolbach. Am I correct? Council Member Filseth, did you have your light on?
Council Member Filseth: I did. Thank you very much. I had a couple of
questions. First of all, thank you for clarifying the 10 versus 20 spaces
thing, which I noticed too and was wondering which it was. Thank you. Do
we know how many parking spaces there are in Paly?
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Mr. Mello: I do not. I know they have spaces set aside for employees and
students as well as a limited number of guest spaces.
Council Member Filseth: It's got to be a huge number compared to the ones
that are in that neighborhood. I wanted to ask about the ten permits. Ten
permits seems like a really, really modest number. Is there going to be an
effort to—I think one of the speakers alluded to this too—space those out
through the neighborhood like has been done in some other neighborhoods or is this simply small enough that you're just going to let it go?
Mr. Mello: As with any of the RPP pilots, we'll collect data throughout the
pilot. If we notice they're all clustering in front of one or two properties,
then we'll come back and make recommendations. As we've discussed in
the past, our show rate for employee permits is about 40 percent. If we still
have ten permits, that means only about four vehicles will show up on a
given day.
Council Member Filseth: One of the questions I wanted to ask is, given that
it's so few, I don't think anybody's going to complain about ten even if all
ten show up. From the City perspective, given that it's so few, is it actually
even worth the overhead of doing it?
Mr. Mello: Those two businesses are technically part of the Southgate subdivision. When the subdivision was platted, they were platted along with
it. In order to be consistent with our programs, I think we should include
employee permits for those two businesses given that they have no other
option. They're not eligible to purchase Evergreen Park permits nor are they
eligible to purchase College Terrace or Downtown.
Council Member Filseth: Downtown's a ways from there. I thought the
whole thing looked pretty reasonable. If there's a neighborhood that needs
a program like this, as one of the speakers said, those streets are really,
really narrow. I didn't realize 24 feet—I didn't know it was 24 feet. If you
have cars parked down both sides, it basically narrows the street by about
15 feet. If that's true, then they've got like 10-foot streets there. God help
you if you wanted to get an emergency vehicle down there. I think this is
the right thing to do. The only other comment I would make is once again
on the 85 percent capacity utilization, when people quote that number that's
the result of some urban planning studies cited by Don Shoup in his famous
book. The application is for commercial districts. The empirical observation
is you get above 85 percent, then cars trying to pull in and out of parking
spaces obstruct traffic flows. In residential neighborhoods particularly one
as narrow as this one, traffic flow isn't really the primary concern. I don't
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think we should be using that 85 percent number on residential
neighborhoods. I think that should just not come back. Thanks.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Council Member Wolbach.
Council Member Wolbach: A couple of things. One, when it's time for
motions, I'd be happy to make a Motion or, if somebody else beats me to it,
I'd be happy to support a Motion to move this forward. I think this is very
important for this neighborhood. Also curious if beyond the RPP how much consideration there is of additional either red striping in alternating places on
the narrowest streets or making any streets parking on one side only. Those
would be controversial as well. I'm just curious if that's something we've
considered doing in addition to this as a safety precaution again for
emergency vehicles. That's the only reason I ask.
Mr. Mello: Back last year, when you charged us with looking at engineering
and TDM measures, that's exactly what we did. We held a public meeting at
the Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) headquarters, invited the
Southgate community members out, and we proposed several different
options that would be strictly engineering, like additional red curbing,
prohibiting parking on one side during different periods of the day. There
was quite honestly not a lot of support for those kind of measures. We have added a little bit of additional red curbing on Castilleja because of the bike
traffic on that street. Wherever we do that, we try to preserve at least one
parking space per property. It can be contentious because you are
removing existing parking. I would be negligent if I didn't put in a plug here
for narrow streets as traffic calming. They may be inconvenient at times,
but the fact of the matter is the travel speeds on those streets are very, very
low. They're probably a lot quieter than some of the other streets around
Palo Alto because of that. There are pros and cons to narrow streets.
Council Member Wolbach: I appreciate that. Thank you for providing that
clarification and that update. I do remember we had discussed that a bit the
last time this came to us. Thank you for giving us more of the details about
how that went. Something that we talked about when we were discussing
our new Accessory Dwelling Unit Ordinance was this question of whether
accessory dwelling units are eligible for as many RPP units as the main
house on the property. I think what we heard at the time was we haven't
figured out yet how to differentiate those so that a property with a main
house and an accessory dwelling unit doesn't suddenly—when they add an
Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU), they don't suddenly get twice as many
permits. I'm not going to make it part of the Motion right now, but I just
want to remind Staff that we really need to keep looking at how to fix that.
I do think that's a loophole we need to close up as soon as we can on how to
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make sure that accessory dwelling units and main properties don't get extra
RPP permits, but they would need to share whatever permits would be
available even if there was not an accessory dwelling unit on that property.
I want to put in the plug for making sure we come back at some point and
close that up. Again, I'd be happy to make a Motion. If other people on the
Council have comments they want to make prior to that, I'm happy to hold
off on that for now.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you. Also, those narrow streets are very
neighborly, I've heard, as well. I have. It's easier to run across the street
when the street is—how wide, 24 feet? Tom, I think you're next.
Council Member DuBois: I see we have low-income business here like our
other RPPs. Where do we define low income?
Mr. Mello: I believe—I can double check this—it's $50,000 per year or the
hourly equivalent of that. It's based on paystubs that are submitted or
letters that are submitted by the employer.
Council Member DuBois: I was looking for it. I don't see where it is in the
Ordinance. This is more of a comment for Molly. There was a letter from a
public, which was interesting. It was talking about maybe matching our
definition of low income with other definitions, perhaps below market rate housing definitions. They mentioned some city in the Peninsula where
$65,000 was considered low income. If it's hard coded to $50,000, it's
going to become an issue over the years. We might want to look at that
definition.
Mr. Mello: I believe that's included in the Admin Guidelines, which can be
amended by the Director of Planning. We could certainly take that into
consideration as part of this program.
Council Member DuBois: It might make sense to align it with other
definitions we use. I don't know if you could quickly say what is standard
and what is custom in this RPP compared to our other RPPs.
Mr. Mello: The only real custom portion of this now is the 5:00 P.M.
termination of enforcement during the week. We've moved to 6:00 P.M. in
Downtown and Evergreen Park/Mayfield. The rest of it is fairly standard and
consistent with the other two programs.
Council Member Dubois: Are the prices the same?
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Mr. Mello: The prices are the same as Evergreen Park/Mayfield. They will
be subject to the Muni Fee Schedule after the expiration of the pilot, similar
to what we're recommending for the other two programs.
Council Member DuBois: Was Palo Alto School District included in the
outreach?
Mr. Mello: They were. We met extensively with Paly administration last
summer to talk about permitting and our plans to move forward with the RPP. We also have a fairly close relationship with the operations folks at
PAUSD. I've briefed them on this program several times, and they see it as
a fairly necessary evil in order for them to rein in some of the student
parking off-campus. They don't feel that they really have any recourse
beyond an RPP program.
Council Member DuBois: When we talked about this in City/School Liaison
Committee meetings, there was some concern that teachers were parking
over there. Unlike Downtown with Addison, Paly won't be eligible to buy
permits. Right?
Mr. Mello: The staff at the school did not express any concern around staff
having unavailable parking as a result of this program.
Council Member DuBois: Quickly, where does the funding for the RPPs come from?
Mr. Mello: The funding for the signage installation and other capital,
upfront, startup costs are included in the Capital Improvement Program
(CIP). There's an RPP CIP. The ongoing operating costs are—ideally we
want to get to a place where they're covered by permit fees and citations.
The programs are so young that we really haven't been able to come to you
yet with that calculation and where we need to be at with fees and citations
in order to do that.
Council Member DuBois: Basically it's the General Fund that covers the
initial rollout and the infrastructure?
Mr. Mello: The CIP covers the initial rollout. Operational costs, we're
moving toward getting them fully covered by citations and fees. I would say
that in the Downtown RPP, the sale of employee permits provides a lot more
revenue than the sale of employee permits will in Southgate, given that
we're only going to sell ten permits.
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Council Member DuBois: Council Member Wolbach started to touch on this.
It says it's defined as permits per dwelling unit, and it's defined in the
Packet. It wasn't clear to me is a junior ADU considered a dwelling unit.
Mr. Mello: We use postal addresses to verify dwelling units. If there was an
address assigned to a unit, then we would assume it was a separate dwelling
unit. There would be the max number of permits available for that
residential unit.
Council Member DuBois: My recollection was the same, that the Council
asked for clarification of whether ADUs would be the same number of
permits or if it was going to be per property. I would echo what Council
Member Wolbach said. I think we need to clarify that.
Mr. Mello: I think that would require us categorizing residential units in
some way. That wouldn't be done in Transportation; that would be done
through the development approval process and the ADU application process.
We can certainly coordinate and see if there's a way to do that.
Council Member DuBois: I did see in the PTC Minutes that the businesses
were zoned RM-15, I think, with conditional use permits. Thanks for
clarifying the 10 versus 20. I think we are creating potentially a lot of value
for these businesses if we give them more permits. They both have decent-sized parking lots. I too would err on the smaller side. I understand this
neighborhood is pretty self-contained, but we're developing more of these
RPPs. How are the boundaries for an RPP determined?
Mr. Mello: For Downtown, if you remember, it started smaller. It was based
on the streets that supported it when the mail survey was sent out. The
area was actually cobbled back quite a bit after the original proposal because
there wasn't a lot of support in the outer areas like Professorville and some
of the other neighborhoods that are close to Downtown. After we noticed
spillover into adjacent neighborhoods, we came back to Council with Phase
II and recommended expanding the Downtown RPP. Our recommendation
was based on the walking distance to the Downtown core. We wanted to go
beyond where there was current spillover and try to anticipate the maximum
distance somebody would park and walk to the Downtown core. That's how
the Downtown program boundaries evolved. Evergreen Park and Mayfield, it
started as a petition from the Evergreen Park neighborhood. Evergreen Park
is a distinct subdivision, so it was easy to craft the boundaries for that. Staff
believed that there would be a transfer of employee parking to Mayfield,
south of Cal. Ave., if we didn't include that as part of Evergreen Park, so we
expanded the boundary to include Mayfield. For Southgate, again it's a very
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distinct subdivision that was platted at one point in time. The boundaries
are fairly clear along parcel lines.
Council Member DuBois: When people apply, they suggest boundaries. Like
you said, Evergreen Park suggested boundaries based on their
neighborhood. I want to come back to it. When I get there, I hope Council
Members will pay attention. I'm also concerned about eligibility areas.
What if the traffic shifts over to Old Palo Alto? Those streets will not be eligible to petition to be added to this RPP.
Mr. Mello: With the implementation of Evergreen Park/Mayfield, we talked a
little bit about creating eligibility areas across the railroad tracks in Old Palo
Alto. If you remember, we recommended instead that that be taken up as a
separate, new RPP program if they do experience spillover from Evergreen
Park/Mayfield and Southgate.
Council Member DuBois: I am concerned. Particularly near Paly there, we
may see that happen there first. If you could remind me what are the
parking limits in Southgate during weekend football games.
Mr. Mello: I can verify this, but I believe the streets are barricaded and only
residents are permitted to drive from Churchill into the neighborhood and
from El Camino. I don't know that there are specific parking restrictions inside the neighborhood. I know there's access control erected around the
fringes of the neighborhood.
Council Member DuBois: The permits won't be enforced on weekends?
Mr. Mello: No, they will not.
Council Member DuBois: Again, this idea about boundaries, Eric and Liz, is
really an interesting point. You petition for a boundary. We've heard
concerns about boundaries Downtown where it expanded out to Crescent
Park. Evergreen Park submitted a boundary based on their neighborhood,
but it got extended to include Cal. Ave. and Mayfield on the other side. They
were allocated a lot of business permits, even though Evergreen Park itself
abuts Southgate. I'm glad that we're starting to standardize most things on
RPPs. I'm really concerned about this boundary process. I do think there
could be the appearance of some inconsistency. I support the Southgate
program. I think it should be primarily residential. I think Evergreen Park
that's also primarily residential did not get the same kind of program. I
think we need to think about that a little bit. If the traffic shifts over to Old
Palo Alto near Paly, how are we going to handle that?
Vice Mayor Kniss: You mean crossing the street into my neighborhood?
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Council Member DuBois: Yep. It's a little bit inconsistent because the
numbers of Evergreen Park suggested a boundary that was just their
neighborhood. Instead, it got expanded, and they got a lot more business
parking put into their neighborhood. When we get to motions, I too will wait
and see what other people have to say, but I may offer some amendments
depending on the Motion.
Vice Mayor Kniss: I'd remind us it is a pilot program. Josh, am I correct that all our RPPs are still pilots or have any of them become permanent?
Mr. Mello: The Downtown RPP is quote/unquote permanent, but we're
coming back to you early next year with an update on that. There will be an
opportunity to revisit that. Evergreen Park/Mayfield is a pilot program, and
we're proposing Southgate be a pilot as well.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Council Member Holman. I'm sorry, Tom. Were you
done?
Council Member DuBois: Yep.
Council Member Holman: Thank you. Thank you to Staff and certainly for
all the neighbors who participated, recognizing former Mayor Woolley in the
public seats. A few questions. I know you don't want to do a whole lot of
customization of the various RPPs. Given that there are only two commercial ventures in this neighborhood, is it possible to require that
their—it's such a few number of permits and you anticipate even fewer being
taken up—those parking permits be on El Camino instead of in the
neighborhood?
Mr. Mello: In that section of El Camino, there's actually residential
properties along the majority of the street. There is no parking allowed on
the main roadway of El Camino in that location because there's no sidewalk.
There's a planted median that divides the main line of El Camino from a
service road. The only parking currently is on that service road, which is
probably 90 percent residential. That would be disproportionately affecting
the residents that live on El Camino by pushing the employee parking onto
that particular frontage.
Council Member Holman: That answers a question I had about El Camino
because we don't have jurisdiction. That answers that question. A couple of
other questions. Bear with me here. They may sound like they're not
related, but they in my mind are. The neighborhood is kind of a unique
neighborhood as has been stated. It has such incredibly narrow streets. I'm
wondering how construction vehicles are handled, if they're any different in
that neighborhood. I know when there are construction projects in the
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neighborhood the streets can be nearly impassable. If there's a car parked
across the street from a construction vehicle—those tend to be much
larger—it really is almost impassable. I'm wondering if construction vehicles
can be handled somewhat differently. Can we require—maybe Hillary might
want to weigh in on this or not—if they can be given more stringent
requirements in terms of offsite parking and management of their
construction vehicles. I also wonder how that affects street sweeping in the neighborhood. Nobody mentioned street sweeping, but cars on the street
definitely affect street sweeping. Construction vehicles can show up earlier
than street sweeping actually commences. Is there a way you can roll those
altogether?
Mr. Mello: Sure. For the construction vehicles in the RPP program areas, we
issue what are called temporary work permits. Any contractor pulling a
building permit will be advised that they need to purchase temporary work
permits in order to avoid receiving a citation if they're parked on-street
during the RPP enforcement hours. We could certainly add some language
about vehicle width in there for the Southgate RPP program to try to deter
contractors from parking large vehicles within the Southgate RPP area. That
would be different than our protocol for the other RPP program areas. In regard to street parking, the Public Works Department in areas that don't
have the permanent RPP signage posts temporary street sweeping signage
well in advance. I think they sweep quarterly, if I'm not mistaken. They
post paper signs along the streets with enough adequate warning for people
to remove their vehicles before street sweeping days.
Council Member Holman: Posting is done for quarterly, but the street
sweepers, at least in neighborhoods I'm familiar with including my own,
come along every week.
Mr. Mello: There are neighborhoods that have more regular street sweeping
such as Downtown. With the Downtown RPP program, we actually installed
permanent street sweeping signage. The Public Works Department did not
ask us to do that with either Evergreen Park or Southgate because the
schedule is not as frequent.
James Keene, City Manager: If I might, I would just remind Council as a
point of clarification that a year or 18 months ago we moved away
permanently from weekly street sweeping. We're doing biweekly street
sweeping in most parts of the City now. We would still have the same
situation in almost any neighborhood where there is street sweeping taking
place, regardless of the width of the street. Obviously, we're trying to
sweep along the curb.
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Council Member Holman: Maybe I'm remembering wrong. I was
remembering it was every other week in non-leaf-drop. Otherwise, it was
every week.
Mr. Keene: You are correct. In the heavy leaf-drop period, we do every
week.
Council Member Holman: One other thing. Don't ask me to solve how this
would be employed. It's occurred to me before too. Paly does have students, maybe teachers, that park in this neighborhood. There's been
concern raised by Council Members about spillover into another
neighborhood not covered yet by an RPP. I'm just wondering if there was
any conversation with PAUSD to require students with cars register and
apply a bumper sticker. Hang with me for a second. The reason is, if a car
with a Paly bumper sticker is found parking in a spillover neighborhood, then
they get a ticket. It's another way to encourage students—looking at Molly
like is that legal. The purpose of it would be to try to encourage Paly
students to carpool at a minimum. We just had earlier tonight the Safe
Routes to School discussion for alternative forms of transportation besides
cars. Molly, would that be legal?
Molly Stump, City Attorney: What you're describing is really a residential permit parking scheme. Our ability to regulate parking is governed by State
law, and it does allow the City to prohibit or limit parking to certain hours in
certain areas and to provide an exception for residents and neighboring
merchants through a residential permit parking program. That would be
how we would do that. You're essentially describing an expansion of a
residential permit parking program.
Council Member Holman: The only way we could do that would be—could it
be an Information Item such that students who then parked in the
spillover—we'll call it the spillover—neighborhood be given not a ticket,
because that would require the RPP district it sounds like, but a letter to try
to educate students, maybe teachers again, to try to look at alternative
forms of transportation. Would that be doable, feasible?
Ms. Stump: It's legal to provide information. I'll let the Staff speak to
feasibility.
Council Member Holman: Was there any kind of conversation or anything
like this with PAUSD?
Mr. Mellow: We did not discuss affixing stickers to student vehicles and then
citing or providing information to the owners of those vehicles if parked on
City streets. I would say that an operation like that would verge on—the
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cost and resources required to operate an RPP program would be split
between the School District and the City. The provision of information would
be similar to the resources that are required to cite vehicles in an RPP
district, so there would be a cost associated with that. We'd probably have
to come to you to secure those resources. It wouldn't be much different
than implementing an RPP program.
Council Member Holman: Does PAUSD have a notion of how many cars park offsite?
Mr. Mello: No. When we collect our occupancy data, we don't know if
they're visiting homeowners or if they're student vehicles. We don't know
who the owner of each vehicle is. All we know is how many vehicles are on-
street overnight, which we can assume are resident vehicles. We don't know
who's there during the day.
Ms. Stump: Excuse me. One point of friendly information, Madam Vice
Mayor and Council Members. This item is agendized for the Southgate RPP,
so we need to focus our comments and questions on that program.
Council Member Holman: My questions are all intended to be relative to
that. I think that was my last question.
Vice Mayor Kniss: I have just one question, Josh. We had a communication that was regarding the sticker versus the placard that you could move
around. Have we agreed that the sticker is what the person gets for their
first ability to park in that area rather than something that hangs?
Mr. Mello: Consistent with the other two RPPs, our proposal this evening is
that the first permit be a free sticker. Each dwelling unit is eligible to
purchase three additional stickers at $50 each and/or two additional
hangtags for $50 each. Someone could get their free sticker and then buy a
hangtag for $50. You don't have to buy all three stickers before you can
access the two hangtags.
Vice Mayor Kniss: I know we've heard comments about that before. Once
again, this is a pilot. I hope included in the Motion tonight will be a time to
come back to us because that reassures not only us but those who live there
that we will be tracking it. With that, Council Member Wolbach, you
indicated you might like to make a Motion earlier.
Council Member Wolbach: I appreciate that. Thank you. Yes, I'd like to
move the Staff recommendation to adopt the Resolution included in
Attachment A to implement the Southgate Residential Preferential Parking
program as a 1-year pilot and direct Staff to make corresponding changes to
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the RPP Administrative Guidelines and to find the program exempt from
review under the California Environmental Quality Act.
Council Member DuBois: I'll support that. Second.
MOTION: Council Member Wolbach moved, seconded by Council Member
DuBois to:
A. Adopt a Resolution to implement the Southgate Residential Preferential
Parking (RPP) Program as a one-year pilot and direct Staff to make corresponding changes to the RPP Administrative Guidelines; and
B. Find the program exempt from review under the California
Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) pursuant to Section 15061(b)(3) of
Title 14 of the California Code of Regulations.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you very much. As soon as it gets up on the
board, which is going to look just like it does on Page 1 of your Staff Report,
would you like to speak to your Motion?
Council Member Wolbach: I don't think there's a whole lot more to say. I
think we've heard from the public. We've heard from Staff. We've all had a
chance to weigh in on it. I'm not looking for a lot of amendments. I might
be open to being persuaded but, if people have amendments that they want
to add, we'll probably want to vote on those separately. If I don't accept them as friendly, it doesn't mean I'm opposed. I want to stick with the main
Staff-recommended Motion here. This is going to be really important in
providing relief for the neighborhood.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Council Member DuBois.
Council Member DuBois: I just want to say I'm really happy this is here. I
know it's a lot of work to get to this point. Like I said, we had you guys
come into the City/School, and we had a lot of discussion. Congratulations
to Staff and to residents for getting this along. I know it probably took a lot
longer than you wanted. Hopefully, we're there.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Council Member Holman.
Council Member Holman: One question. Staff mentioned earlier in their
response to one of my questions about construction vehicles the potential for
restricting construction vehicle width. To what extent could you do that and
is that an issue that came up among the neighborhood or is that something
we should put this in place for a year and see if it comes up?
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Mr. Mello: We would just be limited to putting some advisory language on
the temporary work permit that they can't block a travel lane, which is
already a violation of the California Vehicle Code (CVC). It wouldn't be any
type of new Ordinance or anything like that. I think we would just put an
advisory on the permits that we issue to contractors.
Council Member Holman: Given that, happy to support the Motion and glad
that the neighborhood is hopefully going to be experiencing some relief.
Vice Mayor Kniss: I was just trying to figure out, Josh, how many RPP
districts do we currently have? How are you counting them?
Mr. Mello: We have the older programs in College Terrace and Crescent
Park. Those predate the Citywide RPP Ordinance that was passed, I believe,
in 2014. Post-Citywide RPP Ordinance, after the implementation of
Southgate, we will have three RPP programs, two of which will be in the pilot
phase and one will be in the permanent phase.
Vice Mayor Kniss: I would say congratulations to those of you in the
audience. The fact that there are very few of you is a great sign. That
means the neighborhood is probably pleased with where we're heading with
this. I know you must be pleased that it's a pilot as well, so that things can
be changed as we go along. Just to recollect that we made our decision about Crescent Park at quarter of 1:00 A.M., one morning after a very long
discussion. It reminds of how far we've come with this program and what a
good job you did on this, Josh, bringing this together. It can be very
contentious, and it's quite clear that this one seems to be quite the opposite.
That's really a pleasure. With that, if there are no more comments, let's
vote on the board. That passes unanimously. Thank you Staff. Thank you,
neighbors, for coming. Appreciate that.
MOTION PASSED: 7-0 Fine, Scharff absent
Vice Mayor Kniss: I'll give you just a few minutes to walk out if you wish
before we start the next item. That was Number 15, again for those of you
who might be watching us. That was Number 15, Southgate RPP program.
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16. PUBLIC HEARING: Human Relations Commission Recommends
Adoption of the 2017-18 Action Plan and Associated 2017-18 Funding
Allocations and Resolution 9689 Entitled, “Resolution of the Council of
the City of Palo Alto Approving the use of Community Development
Block Grant Funds for Fiscal Year 2017-18 Consistent With the Human
Relation Commission's Recommendation.”
Vice Mayor Kniss: It takes us to our next and fourth public hearing for
tonight, which is the fiscal year 2018 Community Development Block Grant
(CDBG) allocations. There is again a public hearing on this. This is a
recommendation from the Human Relations Commission to adopt the '17-'18
Action Plan and associated '17-'18 funding allocations and adoption of a
Resolution approving the use of the Community Development Block Grant
funds for this coming year consistent with the recommendations. With that,
City Staff, do you have a report for us?
Hillary Gitelman, Planning and Community Environment Director: Thank
you, Vice Mayor Kniss and Council Members. Hillary Gitelman, the Planning
Director. I'm joined by Eloiza Murillo-Garcia, who we are lucky to have as
our subject matter expert on all things related to Community Development
Block Grants. We're here this evening to do our annual allocations. Eloiza has a short presentation for you, and then we'd be happy to answer your
questions.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Welcome.
Eloiza Murillo-Garcia, Senior Planner: Thank you. Good evening, Vice Mayor
and Council. As Hillary said, I'm Eloiza Murillo-Garcia, and I work on the
CDBG on housing programs for the City. I'm going to just give you a really
brief overview of the fiscal year '18 CDBG process. The City receives annual
funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development or
Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as an entitlement City under the
Community Development Block Grant, also known as CDBG. CDBG is the
principle federal program that provides grants to improve physical,
economic, and social conditions primarily for persons of low and moderate
incomes. All of the activities funded by the City benefit low and very low
income persons. Currently, the CDBG program operates on a 2-year funding
request cycle, and Fiscal Year (FY) '17-'18 is the first year of the 2-year
funding cycle. I wanted to note that the recommendations that are in the
Staff Report are based on an estimated grant amount of $379,000 with
additional funding available from reallocated funds from previous years of
$329,000 and an estimated program income of $136,000 for a total of just
over $844,000. As I said, these were based on an estimated grant amount
because, at the time that the Staff Report was prepared, the City did not
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know what the actual CDBG allocation was going to be. The City was
notified just this past Thursday what the actual allocation will be, and that is
going to be $436,309. That's going to bring the …
Vice Mayor Kniss: Could you repeat that once more?
Ms. Murillo-Garcia: Yes, I'm sorry. The actual amount is $436,309. That
will bring the total amount available for allocation to $901,415, which is
$56,832 higher than the estimate in the report. I'll get into that in just a minute.
Ms. Gitelman: Just to clarify, the Council received an At-Places Memo with a
chart. The last column shows the adjusted amounts.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you, Karen. I still had the old one in hand.
Ms. Murillo-Garcia: The presentation has the recommendations that the
Human Relations Commission made. Again, these were based on the
estimated amount because the actual amount was not yet known. There are
five different funding categories for CDBG. The first one being public
services. According to federal regulations, public services have a maximum
spending cap of 15 percent of the entitlement grant and 15 percent of the
actual program income received during the previous fiscal year. At the time,
based on the estimate it was estimated that there was $76,489 for the public service cap. For planning and administration, this is another category
of funding, which also has a cap. This cap is 20 percent of the entitlement
grant and program income from the following fiscal year. Again, at the time
the recommendations were made, the cap was estimated to be $103,105.
The next category is economic development, and there are no caps placed
on this category. There was one applicant in this category, which was
Downtown Streets. Categories 4 and 5 are combined on one slide. There's
public services rehabilitation and housing rehabilitation, and there are two
proposed projects. One is for the Community Working Group to do some
rehab work at the Opportunity Center. Another program is the City is
proposing a pilot minor home repair program for income-eligible residents in
the City. There are no caps on these two categories. As previously
mentioned, the recommendations that are in the Staff Report were based on
an estimate. Because we did not know what the actual amount was going to
be at the time, the Human Relations Commission (HRC) came up with a
Contingency Plan in the event that the actual CDBG grant amount was
higher or lower. The Contingency Plan for the funding increase is here. For
public services, the plan was to distribute the additional available amount on
the public services cap until an applicant is fully funded. Once an applicant
reaches the funding amount requested, any remaining funds will be
distributed to other applicants who have not yet reached the maximum
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funding amount. For planning and admin, the plan is to prioritize funding
first for Project Sentinel and, once Project Sentinel is fully funded, any
remaining funds are to be allocated to the City for CDBG administration. For
economic development, the plan called to maintain the recommended
funding levels for the Downtown Streets Team. In housing and public
services rehab, the plan was to maintain recommended funding levels for
the Opportunity Center and to allocate any additional remaining funds to the minor home repair program. I'm not going to go into the funding decrease
since the City actually got an increase. As Hillary mentioned earlier, we
provided an At-Places Memo with a revised Attachment C. The last column
on that has what it would look like if we were to apply the HRC Contingency
Plan. The recommendation is to adopt the attached funding Resolution
allocating CDBG funding as recommended in the draft Action Plan and as
described in the report including the Contingency Plan policies recommended
by the Human Relations Commission and to authorize the City Manager to
execute the '17-'18 CDBG application and Action Plan for CDBG funds and to
authorize Staff to submit the '17-'18 Action Plan to HUD no later than August
16th, which is based on revised HUD guidance. I'm happy to answer any
questions that you might have.
James Keene, City Manager: Madam Vice Mayor, if I just might add, if I
could just re-summarize. First of all, I would think this is a slam dunk for
the Council tonight. First of all, we came in here with at least some anxiety
about whether or not the City would be actually receiving funding or what
the level would be. From my perspective, the HRC and the Staff had done a
really good job in trying to meet the requests of the various agencies within
some of the limitations they have on the caps, for example. The HRC came
up again, as was shared, with a good Contingency Plan. Then, extra funding
came in that the Staff has allocated according to the Contingency Plan and
essentially, the way I look at it, almost completely comes close to meeting
the requests from the different agencies with the understanding that there
are some limitations on the public services at 15 percent of the total amount
and the planning and administration. Pretty good news. Thanks.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Yes. Council Member Holman, I see your light on, and
I'm not surprised.
Council Member Holman: A couple of questions please. I'm actually really
happy to see the minor home repair program on here and understand it's a
pilot. We don't have any Minutes from HRC, so how is the City looking to
promote that and process applications? It says in the Staff Report
somewhere something about life safety and those kinds of things. What
would those be? Give me a couple of examples.
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Ms. Murillo-Garcia: The plan was if the funding was approved for this
program, the City will issue an Request for Proposal (RFP) to partner with an
agency that does these types of programs, Rebuilding Together for example
or Habitat for Humanity. We'll be reaching out to the different organizations
in the area. The plan would be that a third party would be administering the
program. Yes, the way we envision it is that the focus would be on health
and safety repairs or accessibility upgrades.
Council Member Holman: I was asking for a couple of examples like what
would health and safety examples be.
Ms. Gitelman: It could be something really basic like repairing a front stoop.
It could be something about ventilation or heating, something that makes
units livable and safe.
Council Member Holman: That's helpful to know. Just to be clear, CDBG is
separate from Human Services Resource Allocation Process (HSRAP). It's a
different funding source.
Ms. Murillo-Garcia: Yes, that's correct.
Council Member Holman: Just make sure everybody knows that. I had, I
think, one other question. We've maxed out—it looks like we've maxed out
the public services portion, the 15 percent. We've maxed that out.
Ms. Murillo-Garcia: Yes, that's correct.
Council Member Holman: For the CDBG administration, planning and
administration also have a cap. When we got the additional funding and—if
you have any insight about how we got the additional, that's great. Let's try
to do it again next year. The City portion went from 74,295—the City Staff
administration went from 74,295 to 82,460. I guess the question I have is
none of the entities changed. It's like it can increase, but it's a cap. Was
there any thought to taking that increase—I understand that was the HRC
recommendation--$8,165 and applying it to Community Working Group or
Downtown Streets Team or the pilot?
Ms. Murillo-Garcia: Community Working Group and Downtown Streets
Team, the recommendation is to provide them the full funding that they
requested. Actually, Downtown Streets Team at the request of the HRC did
submit a revised request, so they are receiving more than their original
application amount.
Council Member Holman: I understand, but nonprofits can always use
additional funding. If the number of entities are the same and the amount
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of effort is the same, is adding $8,100 extra to the City administration—is
there really that much increase in funding necessary or could that $8,100 be
distributed to other organizations?
Ms. Gitelman: I think the additional is about $8,000 that would go into City
of Palo Alto administration.
Council Member Holman: $8,165, yes.
Ms. Gitelman: It's a limited amount of funds. We've fully funded, according to the requests of Project Sentinel, Downtown Streets, and Community
Working Group. I guess in theory we could put that $8,000 into the minor
home repair program, but that's a pilot program which is already funded
with these new numbers at $145,000. We felt like that was sufficient, and
an additional $8,000 in program administration didn't seem to us to be a
concern.
Council Member Holman: In the Staff Report it talks about the previous
year. I think it was $65,000 that the City spent on administration, unless I
misread that somehow or other. I was thinking it's not a big deal, but it's
$8,000. To a nonprofit $8,000 is a lot of money or can be. That's why I was
considering putting it elsewhere, maybe in the pilot.
Ms. Gitelman: Again, we're fully funding the requests that we received from …
Council Member Holman: I got that.
Ms. Gitelman: … Project Sentinel, Downtown Streets, and the Community
Working Group.
Council Member Holman: I got that, but as you said the pilot could also take
more money, the pilot program. Just making the point.
Ms. Gitelman: Madam Vice Mayor, it is a public hearing. If you could open
the public hearing, we'd be delighted to hear the public's testimony and
questions and, of course, if there are any other questions from Council.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you. With that, we will open the public hearing.
We have only one speaker for tonight. If anyone else wishes to speak on
this, could you fill out a card with the Clerk? We will know you wish to
speak. Pamela Dorr is the one speaker we have on the public hearing.
Greetings.
Public Hearing opened at 9:30 P.M.
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Pamela Dorr: Hi. I'm Pam Dorr, and I work with the homeless services.
I'm here with Community Working Group. We just wanted to thank the
Council for supporting homeless. If you need us to do more work, we're
happy to. Appreciate it.
Public Hearing closed at 9:31 P.M.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thanks for being here. With that, I think we actually will
close the public hearing because I see no one else who is here. Once again, back to comments from us. Council Member DuBois, you're next.
Council Member DuBois: Thank you for the report. Is the total this year
higher than normal because of the reallocated amount? Is that a 1-year
spike or is that typical?
Ms. Murillo-Garcia: Last fiscal year we did receive an unusual amount of
program income. That's why we have that 329,000. That was not
previously allocated. That's not typical; it was an unusual amount
(crosstalk).
Council Member DuBois: Next year, do we expect it to be quite a bit less?
Ms. Murillo-Garcia: On an average year, we see maybe about $150,000 in
program income. In the prior year, we got about $380,000 in program
income. Like I said, that was an unusual year.
Council Member DuBois: I wasn't clear with these additional monies. The
Staff Report was talking about a 14 percent cut from the feds. Are you
saying that's not going to happen or is that still a possibility?
Ms. Murillo-Garcia: That is not going to happen. At the time that we
prepared the Staff Report, we did not have much information from HUD on
what was happening. The only thing that we knew is that the proposal at
the time was that the amount of HUD funding in total for all programs was
roughly 14 percent less than the prior year. That's what we used for our
estimate.
Council Member DuBois: I just had a couple of questions about the goals.
One of the goals was strengthening neighborhoods, and I saw the YWCA
program qualified under that. What other kind of programs would qualify?
Ms. Gitelman: If we were going to pursue programs for strengthening
neighborhoods, even that would have to be focused on low income
neighborhoods. Other agencies do a whole host of things. On the economic
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development side, you could be assisting small businesses in low-income
neighborhoods, just a wide variety of programs.
Council Member DuBois: Do we have any neighborhoods that would qualify?
Ms. Gitelman: I think in the past the calculation has been that really where
in Palo Alto we have an opportunity is serving low-income populations but
not concentrated in neighborhoods. Is that right?
Council Member DuBois: I was wondering if …
Ms. Murillo-Garcia: Yeah, that's correct. The City does not have any census
tracks that would qualify as a low or mod area, which is one of the HUD
definitions.
Council Member DuBois: Fixing up the Ventura Community Center would
not necessarily qualify?
Ms. Murillo-Garcia: It's a possibility. We would have to look at the
population that the community center serves. It wouldn't qualify based on
the area that it's located in. We would have to look at the clientele that is
served there.
Council Member DuBois: I had a question similar to what Council Member
Holman did. I guess we're allocating half of a full-time equivalent for the
City's administration costs. Is the 85,000 the total administration costs we have?
Ms. Gitelman: We do our best to cover administration of this program with
that amount of funding. The truth is this program is a heavy burden in
terms of the paperwork and administration. We're audited regularly by the
feds. There are all of these agreements that have to be executed. There's
this whole process for allocating funds, a competitive process for allocating
funds. There's a lot of recordkeeping involved. It does take a significant
amount of Staff time to administer a Block Grant program like this.
Council Member DuBois: The cap there—I'm similar to what Council Member
Holman was asking, I think. We're not paying ourselves, the City, more
than the costs we're incurring, right?
Ms. Gitelman: That's correct. If anything, we're subsidizing this program to
a small extent.
Council Member DuBois: Packet Page 789 showed the programs funded by
CDBG and HSRAP. I remember we had a Policy and Services discussion
about a $200,000 catch-up with HSRAP from cuts we made during the
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recession. I was just curious when that item is going to come to Council.
We voted on it at Policy and Services, but I don't think it ever came to
Council.
Mr. Keene: I'm confused here a little bit. To some extent, we're going to be
dealing with the HSRAP allocations in the 2018 budget. I don't know if that
somehow wouldn't be responsive to what your particular question was.
Council Member DuBois: It's part of the budget discussion?
Mr. Keene: Yes.
Council Member DuBois: We did talk, again, specifically about some catch-
up funding because we'd cut back at one point. Funding for our homeless
and mental health probably deserves a focused discussion at some point
separate from the budget.
Mr. Keene: My understanding is that in the proposed budget there actually
is an unallocated balance of available funding based upon what you had
directed of $111,000. We would be talking about Council considering
reopening the process to receive additional applications for the use of those
funds.
Council Member DuBois: Thank you.
Mr. Keene: That would be something you could take up next week.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Apparently, there's not another soul that wishes to speak
on this. Therefore, I am guessing that I could entertain a Motion. Karen.
Council Member Holman: I would move the Staff recommendation, which is
adopt the attached funding Resolution allocating—actually it wouldn't be the
attached. It would be the new and revised allocations that we received At
Places.
Vice Mayor Kniss: In Attachment C?
Council Member Holman: A new Attachment C. Without looking further, I
think it's a new Attachment C. Allocating CDBG funding as recommended in
the draft '17-'18 Action Plan and as—it's not described in this report either—
described in Attachment C, I guess I would have to say. Two, allocate CDBG
funding as recommended. Hillary, how do you want this worded? All of this
has to be amended because none of it is what's in the Staff Report now. It's
all changed because of what's in this.
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Ms. Gitelman: If you would just adopt the Staff recommendation, it includes
adopting the Contingency Plan to reallocate the additional funds. It would
be the equivalent of amending everything to reflect this attachment. What
we've given you shows you exactly how the Contingency Plan in Part II of
the Motion would be amended.
Council Member Holman: What she said. Two is to allocate the CDBG
funding as recommended in the 2017-'18 Action Plan and as described in this report including the Contingency Plan policies recommended by the
Human Relations Commission and authorize the City Manager, three, to
execute the applications and the 2017-'18 Action Plan for CDBG funds, any
other necessary documents concerning the application and to otherwise bind
the City with respect to the application and commitment of funds and, four,
authorize Staff to submit the 2017-'18 Action Plan to HUD no later than
August 16, 2017 based on HUD guidance.
Council Member Kou: Second.
MOTION: Council Member Holman moved, seconded by Council Member
Kou to:
A. Adopt a Resolution allocating Community Development Block Grant
(CDBG) funding as recommended in the draft 2017/2018 Action Plan and as described in this Staff Report; and
B. Allocate CDBG funding as recommended in the draft 2017/2018 Action
Plan and as described in this Staff Report including the contingency
plan policies recommended by the Human Relations Commission
(HRC); and
C. Authorize the City Manager to execute the 2017/2018 CDBG
Application and 2017/2018 Action Plan for CDBG funds, any other
necessary documents concerning the Application, and to otherwise
bind the City with respect to the Applications and commitment of
funds; and
D. Authorize Staff to submit the 2017/2018 Action Plan to United States
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) no later than
August 16, 2017 based on revised HUD guidance.
Vice Mayor Kniss: I have a Motion and a second. Council Member Holman,
would you like to speak further to your Motion?
Council Member Holman: I'm happy that—don't know why—we didn't get a
14 percent cut, that we actually got an increase from HUD. It gives some
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little measure of hope. Happy to support this. The one question I had was
again about allocations of City staffing and time, given last year's
expenditure, but I'm happy to go with what the Staff recommendation is
with the HRC Contingency Plan.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thanks. I don't know who seconded it. It was almost
simultaneous. Lydia, do you want to take the second?
Council Member Kou: Council Member Holman said everything. Thank you.
Vice Mayor Kniss: In that case, if no one else wishes to speak to this, would
you vote on the board? That passes unanimously, making it a lot easier to
report out. That takes us to our last item for this evening.
MOTION PASSED: 7-0 Fine, Scharff absent
17. Policy and Services Committee Recommendation to Reaffirm Palo
Alto’s Position to Reduce Aircraft Noise and Direction on Further Near-
Term Advocacy Steps, Including Sending a Letter From the Mayor to
the United States Department of Transportation and Other Federal
Officials (CMO).
Vice Mayor Kniss: The last item for this evening is on a separate piece of
paper. It's not attached to your booklet for tonight. This one is listed as
Policy and Services Committee (P&S) recommendation to reaffirm Palo Alto's position to reduce aircraft noise and direction on further near-term advocacy
steps including sending a letter from the Mayor to the United States
Department of Transportation and other federal officials. This is from the
City Manager. Would you like to begin the conversation on this, City
Manager? Also, if there are people who wish to speak to us, if they would fill
out a card so that we can hear from you after we hear from Staff. We have
several here but, if anyone else wishes to speak, please fill this out, and we
will call your name. Thank you.
James Keene, City Manager: Madam Mayor, maybe a brief Staff
introduction.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Please, if you would. Thank you.
Mr. Keene: Looking also at the Chair of the Policy and Services Committee,
which met on May 23rd and unanimously voted 3-0 with a series of
recommendations that we have attempted to generally incorporate into a
proposed letter that we're asking the Council to designate the Mayor to sign.
I would just say, when it was at Policy and Services, we had a lot more than
six people there to speak. There was certainly a lot of appreciation for the
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City's continuing work on this, but some sense of urgency of trying to get a
Council action before you go on recess, given the uncertainty of the timing
of the Federal Aviation Administration/Department of Transportation (FAA)
release of their report. We're here to talk in more detail, but I would invite
the Chair of the Policy and Services Committee to turn it over to you all.
Thanks.
Vice Mayor Kniss: As we did with Finance, would the Chair of Policy and Services make some comments before we go to the general public?
Council Member Wolbach: Sure, I'd be happy to. The way I see it is there
are three groups—three or four audiences that we need to focus on
communicating with. One is the communication, two-way as always, with
our own residents here in Palo Alto, making sure that they know that we're
hearing their concerns about airplane noise, and that we communicate what
we are continuing to do to work with others in the region and federally to
address that ongoing problem. Secondly is working with our regional
neighbors. In fact, I would say some of the comments, some of the letters
we've received from the public from outside of Palo Alto even since that P&S
meeting continues to drive home, to me at least, the importance—something
we discussed a lot at the P&S meeting—of being clear about what our position is as a City regarding this issue, that we do not want to force our
problem onto somebody else, that we do not want to have some other
community or other communities suffer instead of Palo Alto, and that we do
not want to have representation where other communities do not have
representation. That is not our goal. Since we've not given a clear and
updated position recently, it's left some ambiguity. That's one of the other
audiences we really want to reach out to, our regional neighbors, to show
that we do want to work together to find common solutions in the context of
the reports that have been done, in the context of the Select Committee
report and the Roundtable recommendations that the FAA is working with.
That comes to the third audience that we want to address, which is the FAA
itself. Of course, several of us on Council and our Staff and our lobbyists in
DC met in March with some senior people from the FAA and had a good
meeting with them. We want to continue that conversation, just again
emphasizing that this is a problem for Palo Alto; we want to work with you
and we want to work with our neighbors to find solutions that are fair and
have a win-win rather than a zero-sum game solution. Some of those will
be near-term and some of those will be long-term changes that we'll
continue to advocate for about how the FAA studies noise, how the FAA
thinks about noise, and how the FAA addresses noise through their policies.
The fourth audience along with that would be our own federal
representatives in Washington, DC, and most importantly Anna Eshoo, our
member of Congress, to make sure that we continue to provide a clear
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message about Palo Alto's concerns on this issue. As a gentle reminder, if
there are ongoing either short-term or long-term bodies continuing to deal
with this issue at which local governments will have a seat, Palo Alto would
love to have a seat at the table. In no way do we want to displace others in
their opportunity to have their voices heard. We just want to be part of that
conversation. As the FAA is working on their report, we thought now is a
good time to remind the FAA that we want to continue this conversation and also to make sure that the Council provides direction to Staff and possibly to
the Policy and Services Committee to say, when the FAA report comes out,
keep running with this issue, feel empowered to do that. Again, when it
comes to the regional diplomacy, to empower Staff and the Council and the
Mayor in particular to work with our regional neighbors, other cities that
have been affected by this, to improve the two-way and multiparty
conversations just to maintain the understanding and increase the
understanding that we are really in this together and trying to work
together. That's kind of the intent here. Of course, after we go to the public
and it comes back to us—I want to commend Staff, by the way, for under a
really tight deadline trying to get something back to us, so we could address
this prior to going on our break and actually a week prior to our busy budget meeting next week, so that we could have this taken care of quickly. We've
got a first draft of a letter here for the FAA, but we might make some
amendments to that or direct Staff to go tweak it a little bit more. With
that, I think I'd be interested in hearing from the public.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you, Council Member Wolbach. Also filling in as
Vice Mayor tonight, I appreciate it. I'll read all the names that we have so
far. Rath, Ericksen, Ben is the first name, Cheryl Poland, Bob Moss, and
Karen Porter. Those are the six that I have so far. If there are others, if
you'd give them to the Clerk, thank you so much. Are you Toni?
Toni Rath: Yes, I am.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Hi, Toni.
Mr. Rath: Hi. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Toni
Rath. I'm a resident of Mountain View, and I'm here to speak to you about
airplane noise. I would like to ask you to start advocating to improve the
situation for everyone in the area. I would like to respectfully offer a few
suggestions. Reversing the harmful effects the NextGen implementation has
caused would be at the top of my list, making sure the FAA finally puts noise
minimization on its agenda. I would also like to see that affected
communities get representation on the San Francisco International Airport
(SFO) Roundtable and on the San Jose International Airport (SJC)
roundtable if it were formed. I would also like to see advocacy for charging
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landing fees based on noise that would help to encourage airlines to reduce
the noise footprint that they create and advocate minimizing flight
maneuvers that create noise. The list goes on, but the point here is that
there are many things that can be done and should be done right now. It is
important to realize that the entire region has suffered from the
implementation of NextGen. Palo Alto's pain is real, and the pain of your
neighbors is also very real. For some, the continued push to shift noise to your neighbors may be an attempt to extract economic and quality of life
value from your neighbors. It is nice to hear the Chair of the Committee say
that the intent is not to shift noise to other communities. Every time we
read documentation coming out of the City, what we see is not that. What
we see is essentially more push to shift noise to Mountain View and Los
Altos. The City seems to be very painfully aware of this immorality. The
City's communications always carefully avoid mentioning Los Altos and
Mountain View when it comes to shifting noise. Here's an alternative
definition of equitable distribution of noise: preserve the historical
distribution of flights across cities and neighborhoods. Homeownership
decisions have been made based on the absence and presence of flight
paths in the area. These decisions must be respected. Thank you.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you very much. Beth Ericksen.
Beth Ericksen: Madam Vice Mayor, members of the Council, good evening.
My name is Beth Ericksen, and I am a longtime resident of Santa Clara
County. I'm here tonight to address my concerns regarding Palo Alto's
stance on airplane noise reduction. I have read your proposed letter to
Elaine Chao and commend you for many of the suggestions therein,
particularly efforts to limit the use of speed breaks and to recognize
supplemental metrics for noise that better reflect the experience of those on
the ground. However, I would like to remind you to remember and
recognize your neighbors, many of whom have experienced the same
dramatic increase in airplane noise that Palo Alto suffers from. The
proposed changes in flight patterns will merely shift the noise over my
community, which already experiences significant and disruptive amounts of
noise. I believe that, as a region, we should be able to find a solution that
does not result in lowered property values, impacted health, and decreased
quality of life for those near you. I urge the City of Palo Alto to work
together with her neighboring communities to develop a plan of action that
benefits the entire region rather than simply shifting her problems onto
others to deal with. Thank you very much for your time.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you for coming tonight. Ben whose last name I'm
not going to try. That'll be followed by Cheryl Poland and then Bob Moss.
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Ben Shelef: Thank you. I'm here to talk about the proposed letter to the
Department of Transportation. My name is Ben. I actually graduated from
Gunn High School locally. I lived here for many years. My dad lived his life
here and died here too. I currently live in Saratoga. The draft letter that I
saw is aligned really well with the letter that you sent the FAA in October
2016. It outlines a number of principles, but it's kind of vague. It says
equitable distribution; it doesn't say what that is. It says add more waypoints but doesn't say where. It carried an appendix, and the appendix
had the maps and the plans and the verbiage. It said, "It's going to be
much better if you fly over there, if you come down and, just before you hit
Los Altos Hills, you make a right." It says so in so many words, Page 2 of
the appendix. Fly over Mountain View and Los Altos and then go back over.
It's going to be much better, but that is aligned with the proposal by the Sky
Posse from 2 years ago. It's just not true, and they don't accept it, and we
don't like that movement either, we being Quiet Skies NorCal. Aside from
that, you said one of your audience is the FAA. You sent a virtually identical
letter to the FAA just as the Select Committee was wrapping up. The Select
Committee was established by Anna Eshoo and the FAA to get to the bottom
of this problem. They have arrived at a decision. Now, you're sending the same letter to the FAA's bosses. That is not talking to the FAA. That's
trying to bypass the committee established by the FAA and Anna Eshoo to
get to the bottom of this problem, in which you were represented. The
Chairman was Joe Simitian. Greg Scharff was an alternate. What you're
basically trying to do is bypass that decision. Therefore, you're getting a lot
of pushback from the communities around you. We would like to work with
Palo Alto. I think what you're doing is not in the best interest of the
residents of Palo Alto. The problem happened in 2015. There needs to be a
focus to reverse those changes, not use that as an opportunity to do other
changes. A lot of things can be reversed if there's an overwhelming
message from the entire Bay Area. If you use that unfortunate 2015
NextGen implementation as a pretext to do a complete reshuffle, redesign,
you're going to get resistance from everyone and from the FAA. I think it's
not in your best interest either. Thanks very much.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thanks. Cheryl Poland, Bob Moss, and then Karen Porter.
Cheryl Poland: Hi. I'm Cheryl Poland. I'm a cofounder of Quiet Skies
NorCal. We represent residents from Monterey, Santa Cruz, Santa Clara,
and San Mateo Counties. I'm here regarding the letter that you're proposing
to write to Elaine Chao. I think you're all aware of the process that we went
through last year. Thanks to the leadership of Anna Eshoo, we were able to
get the FAA to come to the table and work directly with all of the
stakeholders on ways to improve the issues that we're all suffering in the
Bay Area. It was a very successful process. I'm really disappointed that the
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City of Palo Alto would even consider subverting the democratic process that
we went through. Your letter, among other things, requests that Elaine
Chao create additional points for aircraft. In other words, you want to shift
longstanding flight paths to other communities. By going around our
Congresswoman, Anna Eshoo, and the residents of the Bay Area in going
directly to the Department of Transportation (DOT), you're doing this
without the knowledge and consent of your peers, City Council Members of cities and residents that you want to shift these flights paths to. I think it's
also really disrespectful to Congresswoman Anna Eshoo to take this action.
You should be working with her and the rest of the region to fix the issue.
It's not a Palo Alto issue; it's a regional issue. We would like you to join the
rest of us. We had a very successful process. We stand as a shining symbol
of regional cooperation and democracy in action. That's the way you can
move the needle. That's the way you can resolve this issue, by joining the
rest of the community and the region. I hope you do so. Thank you.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Our next speaker is Bob Moss, followed then as I said by
Karen Porter and Carl Thomsen.
Bob Moss: Thank you, Vice Mayor Kniss and Council Members. I'd like to
begin by saying I strongly urge you to send the letter of protest to every government agency you can think of, every Congressman, every Senator,
and everybody associated with the Federal Aviation Administration because
we are being overwhelmed with airplane noise. I've lived in our house in
Barron Park for more than 44 years, and it wasn't until the NextGen process
was instituted that we started having significant airplane noise. We need to
get it fixed. Your responsibility is to take care of the problems of the people
of Palo Alto. If people in other cities are also benefited by our actions, that's
wonderful, but we are the ones that you represent. It is important that we
ask the FAA to change the flying area so that planes that enter over
populated areas fly at least 6,000 feet, go to the Bay and, only when they
are over the Bay not over occupied areas, do they turn towards San
Francisco airport. Because we have had this problem of plane noise, when
I'm sitting out on the patio and I can both hear and see an airplane, I
tabulate when I actually can see them. Some of them are obviously flying at
less than 4,000 feet. In a typical hour, there will be between 8 and 12
airplanes that I can both hear and see. There are more than that that fly
over us that I can hear but I can't see because they're flying behind me. I
can't actually view them. We are definitely having a problem with airplane
noise in Palo Alto. We want to get it fixed. I think working with Anna Eshoo
is an excellent idea. She's been very supportive. We should work with her
even more in the future, but we also want to talk to our Senators and get
them involved. We want to make it very clear that it is possible to have an
airplane route requirement that does not make it noisy for occupied
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residential areas. If a plane is coming at 6,000 feet or more over Mountain
View or over Saratoga or over Palo Alto, it will be far quieter than the flight
patterns they have today. We have a problem; we recognize the problem;
we should fix the problem. It is fixable. I urge you to contact all the
government agencies you can and ask them to get busy working on it.
That's the way we can comply with the FAA's changed, new, and advanced
technology. That's what we need. I urge you to follow through.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thanks, Bob. Carl Thomsen, Jennifer Landesmann, and
Mark Landesmann. Did I miss you, Karen? I'm sorry.
Karen Porter: No worries.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Go right ahead.
Ms. Porter: Thank you. I echo Mr. Moss' sentiments entirely. I won't take
the time to correct some of the misstatements that have preceded me. Let
me preface it by saying I very much appreciate the work of the Policy and
Services Committee and the Staff and the urgency they have exhibited. I
heartily agree that it is important for the City to send this communication to
the DOT at this time to register the City's position. I do not believe the City
was represented adequately on the Select Committee. We did not have a
voting position. We have never been a voting seat on the SFO Roundtable. Consequently, here we are, essentially the epicenter of three routes of SFO
arrivals. With respect to the letter, I think it is a very good letter. I have a
few comments. With your permission, I can submit some proposed changes
offline. For example, on Page 1 Paragraph 2, to maybe address some of the
concerns of our neighbors, I might just clarify that we would want to redirect
some flights to routes that enable planes to fly at a higher altitude and over
less populated areas. Changes along those lines maybe to alleviate some
concerns in that respect. I very much appreciate the additional points that
have been added by the Policy and Services Committee and Staff. For
example, to recognize the concerns posed that inexplicably for me the Select
Committee for some reason didn't take into account the emissions that are
falling out of the sky at all hours now with the 300-400 jets overflying our
City. There simply has not been adequate studies done on the effects of
those emissions. I hope we can encourage the FAA to do proper analysis of
those effects. Thank you so much.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you for coming. Carl.
Carl Thomsen: Thank you. I'm going to make this short because I hadn't
planned on speaking. Once you got into the topic, I thought I should say
something. There is no question that jet noise over Palo Alto has increased
dramatically in the last 2 years. We've lived here for 40 years. For 38 of
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those years, we didn't hear any noise or maybe sporadically. In the last
year and a half for sure, I could clock every 10 minutes hearing a jet over
my house. That's well known. I want to support the Council's efforts for
continuing to pursue this aggressively with our federal agencies. I want to
say that over our house or through the MENLO waypoint, my understanding
is 75 percent of the planes that go to SFO go through that waypoint. That is
right in line with our house. When we talk about equity with other communities, 75 percent is a large share for us. That's all I want to say. I
want to say thanks for your efforts so far and continue to fight for Palo Alto.
Thanks.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thanks for coming. The next two are the Landesmanns.
Jennifer Landesmann: Good evening, Council. Thank you for all your work
and Policy and Services Committee and City Staff. I will submit a little bit
later some of the stop jet noise data. Just in general, 25 of the last 29
months Palo Alto has had the highest amount of complaints. The magnitude
of citizen reaction to this noise—it has a lot of explanations behind is—is
huge compared to any other part of the Bay Area. You will be able to see
that with this data. I want to clarify a few things about the difference
between moving and reorganizing traffic, which is done on a regular basis, and moving noise. Those are two different things. You can move traffic in
order to eliminate noise, to reduce noise. Once the planes are quiet using
technology and appropriate routes, then you can decide what to do with
what's left over. That's very different than actually moving noise wholesale
to another area. Lastly, a lot of terms are coming up about subverting the
democratic process. There really was no process for this absolutely nutty
situation that happened with NextGen. By the way, the problem started
here earlier; NextGen was launched earlier. There was no process. The first
thing, Council Member Holman, the FAA told us on July 24th, 2015 was they
were going to come back with two buckets, short-term solutions and long-
term solutions. Two months later, our friends from other cities said, "No,
let's get together and sign a letter that we want this other solution." I felt
like that was a little bit of a subversion of the process. You know what? We
chipped in, and we worked during the Select Committee meeting. We're
willing to work with everyone because that is what we want. I'm glad
everybody here is willing to do that because that's what the next steps are
going to have to be. Thank you.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you. Mark Landesmann.
Mark Landesmann: Hi, good evening, Council. First of all, thank you to the
City, particularly to Kash, for working so hard the last 2 1/2 years on trying
to move us forward. Clearly, all the studies show that the great majority of
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the noise in our region has been parked in Palo Alto, and the FAA can easily
verify and check that. It's certainly not outrageous for us, who have been
victimized by this noise move, to ask that it be distributed equitably. The
solutions that were proposed by Palo Alto actually help the entire region.
The FAA could show Mountain View that both the DUMBA and the (inaudible)
solutions that were proposed by the consulting report elevate flights far
above the 7,000-foot threshold that the FAA has said below which overflights are presumed to be intrusive. Mountain View actually is a net beneficiary
because, if you elevate the current overflights, you also elevate the San Jose
reverse flights, which currently overfly Mountain View at 2,000 feet. They
can be elevated to 5,000 feet. They are a net beneficiary as everybody in
the region is if both of these proposals are implemented. For the record, we
should state very clearly in the letter—I proposed some edits in writing. One
thing I forgot to say is we should state very clearly we do not consent to the
socially deleterious and absurd DAVYJ route as it is currently presented
because we did not consent to this process of the Select Committee.
Another party that has not consented to this process and opposes this
process is the Select Committee itself because it says in its report, in 4.1,
that this is not the way things should work. Twelve laypeople should not be drawing new routes and deciding those issues and deciding what's in the
best public interest because they do not have the requisite know how.
Thank you very much.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you. Susan Monk followed by Kerry Yarkin, and
lastly is Carl Stewart. Welcome, Susan, member of Planning &
Transportation Commission (PTC) but probably on your own tonight.
Susan Monk: That's correct. [Foreign language] which means hello and
welcome from Fiji, where I just returned from on Sunday and prompted me
to speak tonight. I am a member of the PTC, not speaking on behalf of the
PTC. I did submit a picture to David. I was here on a different matter but,
since this was on the agenda and since I was shocked at how close I flew
over Palo Alto—right underneath that jet engine is Palo Alto High School.
This was from an 11-hour flight from the South Pacific. It seemed to me
that this flight could have come in at a much lower point. I think Mr. Moss
had mentioned coming in where it's less densely occupied and coming up
through the Peninsula. I just wanted to advocate that type of a flight
pattern to minimize the noise if that's something that's available to consider.
The letter that you prepared addresses all of those issues. I agreed with the
changes that were suggested also by Karen Porter. I just thought that this
photo is really illustrative of the issue that this community is facing. I was
so shocked at how low this plane felt to me being on the plane, looking right
down on our community. I don't know if it meets any of the criteria, but this
was just something that just happened on Sunday around 2:00 P.M., that I
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just had to take a photo of it from the window. I did see other planes going
out over other communities at lower altitudes even. It's clearly a regional
problem. I want to commend our Council here for addressing this issue on
behalf of the residents here and also on behalf of all of the neighboring
communities. I think we all want to see changes made that will benefit
everybody. Please do continue all and any advocacy work that you can do
on behalf of Palo Alto. I understand that you do have limited authority with regard to these federal type of issues. Whatever authority you do have,
please continue to exercise it. Thank you so much.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you, Susan. Kerry, then Stewart Carl. I
apologize; I turned it around.
Kerry Yarkin: It's some of the original people that were here 3 years ago
when we first got here. I'm here tonight. Good evening, Vice Mayor and
Council Members. I'm just going to comment basically on the letter to Elaine
Chao. I want to thank the Staff. I feel that this second paragraph—it says
"however, at this time, the impacts from the airport noise are creating a
disproportionate negative impact." It's very, very objective. I think we
need—it's not strong enough. I think we need to make it more compelling.
We need to make it direct. We need to give some passion there because my life and my family's life have been completely turned around from where we
sat out every day and a barbecue every single night to we are prisoners in
our house. I'm under the three flights. I am under Oceanic, which people
say it's not very much noise. Those Asian flights are really loud flights. I'm
under Asian. I'm under Surf Air, which is nonstop. All the flights from Los
Angeles (LA), southern California all go directly in a straight line. If you're
under that line, it's impossible. Of course, Point Reyes, the turnaround or
whatever. The other thing I wanted to say is I think you need to add a
paragraph about Palo Alto's position. We have paid for Freytag and
Associates to produce a plan. I think it was $60,000-$70,000; I'm not
totally sure. That amount of money, that plan did not get the right kind of
hearing from the Select Committee. It didn't get the right kind of impact. I
think there should be a whole paragraph about that or maybe an addendum.
Also, there were 6 hours of testimony from—I don't know—200 people.
They were packing this chamber. That meeting should have a link to this
letter to Elaine Chao and all the other officials so that they can just click on
it and just listen to the voices of the citizenry. Also, I think you need to
have a Number 5 for the letter saying use population heat maps, new
technology breakthroughs to design air routes to avoid densely populated
areas. I think they need to really push that because we are in Silicon Valley.
My last point would be I really have to question the whole idea of trying to
get on the Roundtable because we are so outmaneuvered. We have no
voice there. I would really think about the whole idea of trying to join the
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Roundtable. We could join it if we got 60 percent of the voting power over
the arrivals, but one vote out of 13 is nothing. I would really think about
that.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you. Last speaker is Stewart Carl. I got it right
this time, didn't I?
Stewart Carl: Thank you. Good evening, Council. I'm appearing here as
probably patient zero in the aircraft noise problem. I heard somebody talk about 2015. I actually first appeared before Council in October of 2014,
when I first started noticing the problem after returning from a holiday out
of town. I've been here since the very beginning. I was instrumental in the
formation of the Sky Posse group. I've worked with Staff and Council. I'd
like to say that at no point have we ever even considered any plan that
would push noise onto another community. That's just an absurd claim.
From the very beginning, we've worked with other communities. We worked
with East Palo Alto. We worked with Portola Valley. We work with the
residents of eastern Menlo Park. We even talk to other organizations as far
away as Oakland. There is no effort to push noise onto another community.
We've always been able—the people working on this problem in Palo Alto
have always been working to find a regional solution. That idea that we're doing that is just absurd. I think that it's not helpful for people on Council to
continue to apologize for Palo Alto Council aggressively pursuing and making
an effort to protect its citizens from this problem. That kind of talk is not
helpful and just tends to reinforce this fake news meme that Palo Alto is
somehow conspiring to push noise onto other communities. Thank you.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you. That concludes the members of the public
who wanted to speak tonight. Council Member Wolbach, you've turned your
light on.
Council Member Wolbach: Actually, I really appreciate everybody from the
public who came to speak. I've a number of questions for Staff, but actually
before that, if the Chair of the meeting, the Vice Mayor, would allow it, I'd
actually like to call on a couple of members of the public for some follow-up
questions based on their comments. If you'd allow it?
Vice Mayor Kniss: Yes, please.
Council Member Wolbach: I heard Mr. Toni Rath say that in reading the
letter he saw that we said in the letter we wanted to shift noise to Mountain
View and Los Altos. If I've misrepresented your comments, please clarify. I
don't think we are trying to push noise onto Los Altos and Mountain View. I
was hoping you could help me identify where in this draft letter it says that
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because I didn't see it. I sincerely do want to understand why we're looking
at the same piece of paper and seeing different things.
Mr. Rath: Very happy to. Basically the letter references creating more
points for entry into the Bay. Typically, what is referred to are the DUMBA
and the ROKME waypoints, which would branch off at the SERFR point, at
the EDDYY waypoint. That drafts a straight line over Los Altos from—what
did I say? To the ROKME or the DUMA waypoint from—what's the branch off points? From EDDYY to DUMBA or from EDDYY to ROKME, those are the two
paths that essentially we object to because they would directly overfly
Mountain View and Los Altos.
Council Member Wolbach: Thank you very much.
Mr. Rath: I'd be happy to hear what you mean by creating more points to
enter the Bay. That's what we understand it because we've heard that in
various forms or shapes.
Council Member Wolbach: Thank you very much, Mr. Rath. Also, a question
for Mr. Shelef, if the Vice Mayor will allow it. You reference trying to push
noise to other cities. I was hoping you could clarify as well where you see
that in this letter.
Mr. Shelef: We see the letter really well aligned with the previous letter to the FAA, almost going over the same points, using the same phrases such as
"add more points over the Bay" and such. We know from experience that
the previous letter, not this one that hasn't been sent—obviously we haven't
seen the final form yet. That previous letter refers to the consultant report
that was prepared here by Freytag and Associates. That one charts the line
from EDDYY to ROKME and DUMBA. We can wait until the letter is sent and
see if it includes the same appendix and the same report. That was a very
reasonable assumption that that would be the case.
Council Member Wolbach: Thank you.
Mr. Shelef: Can I have one more comment?
Council Member Wolbach: Sure.
Mr. Shelef: The other thing that we saw during the last 2 years, which
caused a lot of this consternation in the region, was we focused almost
exclusively on undoing the harm done at NextGen plus getting whatever
low-hanging fruit we can. Irrespective of future plans, there was a very
strong campaign to halt that reversal, namely with DAVYJ and other
methods that originated here in the City. There was the big no on DAVYJ
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campaign. For lack of a better way, that was basically saying we're going to
oppose fixing those things that went wrong in 2015 because there are other
plans afoot, better according to the report, for example flying direct to
DUMBA over Mountain View. That all added up, and that's what's causing
this reaction.
Council Member Wolbach: Thank you. I appreciate that. From one Gunn
High School grad to another, thank you. I appreciate the concerns. I don't doubt the sincerity of those who have raised those concerns. Again, this
drives home, at least to me, the importance of being clear about our position
and being clear with our neighbors and direct communication with
neighboring cities that we want to work with you. I don't see in this letter
anything that contradicts that. I don't see in this letter even the waypoints
addressed in the Freytag recommendations. There are a couple of things
that I actually would like to see in this letter, that I don't think we have yet.
When it comes time for motions, I think what I'd like to see is we …
Vice Mayor Kniss: I'd suggest that we get a Motion out right now because I
think we've dealt with this so many times before that we're ready for the
Motion that will take us to whatever the next step is. People can speak to
your Motion.
Council Member Wolbach: In that case, I'd like to move the Staff
recommendation but with a couple of changes. The first is add to "D" "Santa
Cruz and others." Also in Item G, it should say "even if it is not within the
vicinity of an airport." I'm talking about in the Items A-H in the
recommendations. I'm sorry. These are in the background.
Mr. Keene: Can I help just for a second? I did want to change the language
in the recommendation from the Staff. This is on the first Page of the Staff
Report, in that first paragraph under recommendation. That being said, I
don't think the way we also have this report written that we are asking the
Council to adopt or endorse the recommendations from the Policy and
Services Committee. That needs to be added if there are going to be these
amendments. This is just for clarity to the Policy and Services
recommendations. We speak more generally in the recommendation. In
one sense, we leave the Policy and Services Committee meeting
recommendation hanging out there in limbo without it being adopted or
modified by the Council.
Council Member Wolbach: I appreciate that clarification. That's why we're a
little bit confused. I'd say let's start with the Staff recommendation
including endorsing the Policy and Services recommendations. I don't know
if Staff can find those in the Staff Report, Items A-H, and copy those over.
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We can work through those. While Staff's doing that, I want to mention a
couple of things that I'll want to see added.
Vice Mayor Kniss: I just want to make sure you get a second for the …
Mr. Keene: Can I …
Council Member Wolbach: This is why I wanted to go through it first.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Let me second it because I think we need a second to get
it out there.
MOTION: Council Member Wolbach moved, seconded by Vice Mayor Kniss
to reaffirm Palo Alto’s position to reduce aircraft noise by directing Staff to
finalize a letter from the Mayor to the appropriate federal agency
incorporating relevant commentary from Council tonight including the
following changes:
i. Include clear references that the Federal Aviation Administration
(FAA) is already reviewing the Select Committee on South Bay
Arrivals Report and the San Francisco International
Airport/Community Roundtable Report; and
ii. Prior to sending the letter, review a draft with Peter Hirsch, Juan
Alonso, and Van Scoyoc, the City’s federal lobbyist;
A. Directing Staff to:
i. Obtain expert opinion on aircraft noise monitoring strategy; and
ii. Meet with neighboring cities to establish a regional position on
the issue of aircraft noise; and
iii. Align resources to be prepared to respond to the Federal Aviation
Administration’s (FAA) response to the reports of the Select
Committee on South Bay Arrivals and San Francisco
International Airport (SFO)/Community Roundtable;
B. Endorse the Policy and Services Committee recommendations with
minor changes:
i. Take into account the public comments made tonight and
received in writing, and reaffirm the City’s position to reduce
aircraft noise over the skies of Palo Alto; and
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ii. Endorse and advocate for a seat on the Select Committee's
proposed Ad-Hoc Committee and any new permanent entities
whose actions will impact Palo Alto and communicate that
interest to United States Representative Anna Eshoo; and
iii. Obtain an expert opinion on aircraft noise monitoring strategy
and make a recommendation to Council; and
iv. Reach out to neighboring communities such as Portola Valley, Woodside, Menlo Park, Mountain View, Los Altos, Sunnyvale,
Santa Cruz, and East Palo Alto to establish a regional position on
this issue; and
v. Be prepared to respond to the Select Committee Report in the
form of legal or professional representation; and
vi. Emphasize as a priority, a focus on minimizing noise, the
equitable dispersion of noise, and improving technology and
flight methods to minimize aircraft noise in general; and
vii. Ask the FAA to recognize that on the ground noise matters, even
if it is not within the immediate vicinity of an airport and
establish an objective standard for noise at certain elevations
and flight methods; and
viii. Separately, ask FAA to consider emissions from aircraft.
Council Member Wolbach: There were a couple of changes I did want to
make. I want to see if we can get it all on the screen at once if possible.
The first change I'd like to make is under C iv, where it says reach out to
neighboring communities. It is an inclusive, not an exclusive list, because it
does say such as, but I think we should add Santa Cruz to that list. I know
Santa Cruz has been heavily impacted, and we should work collaboratively
with them. Secondly, on Item G, this one should say at the beginning "ask
the FAA." Also, after the first comma, it should say "even if it is not within
the immediate vicinity."
Mr. Keene: That would be correct.
Council Member Wolbach: That was just a typo, so not a big deal just fixing
that. I would also want to make a couple of recommendations for the …
Vice Mayor Kniss: You want to clarify "H" a little bit?
Council Member Wolbach: "H," we should reword that a little bit because it
is a separate but important issue. The particulate matter from airplane
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emissions is certainly an important issue. I don't think it's a distraction, but
it is a different issue. We should make clear and severable these two issues
and address them in parallel rather than lumping them together. The reason
I say that is if we add new concerns that seem to be, from an outside
perspective, far afield from our core concern, which is noise, at this point in
the process it will hurt our credibility with the FAA. It will be easy for them
to accuse us of moving the goalposts. That is why I think it's important that we—we can keep the issue of emissions as an issue, but emissions is not an
airplane noise issue. Now, if routes are moved, dispersed, raised to higher
elevations, that can also have potentially an insulated benefit of decreasing
emission effects on our residents, but this is a fairly new issue that we've
added fairly late in the process. I think we should change that to
"separately ask the FAA to consider emissions from aircraft." We follow that
on a parallel track rather than lumping the two together. That will make it
easier for the FAA to respond to and digest these concerns. I'd also like to
add recommendations for edits to the letter or recommendations for how we
proceed with the letter. I don't think the letter needs to come back to us to
approve final language. I do think it should get another pass before we send
it off. I'd like to add for the Clerk—I'll wait 'til the Clerk's ready. There are two or three changes I'd recommend making to the letter itself. These are
general directions to Staff as they rewrite the letter. The first is rather than
just referring to our policy direction, the letter ought to make specific
references to the specific recommendations that the FAA is already looking
at, that align with our recommendations. The FAA is working on a report
right now based on 108 recommendations, some from the Select Committee,
some from the Roundtable. That's the report that they're working on. Our
message to the FAA right now should be, of the recommendations you're
looking at, here are the ones that are most important to Palo Alto. We're
not trying to divert from those. We actually support the process. We've
supported the Select Committee process. We participated as an alternate,
but we did participate. Among those recommendations that you are
currently reviewing at the FAA, some of those recommendations, we think,
will be particularly beneficial to Palo Alto, and we just want to highlight
those. We need to make really specific reference to those by location and by
number in those reports, so the FAA can easily reference those. Secondly,
how can we get that in there? "Make the following modifications to the
letter," could we just add that at some point here? We make the following
changes to the letter. One, include clear references to recommendations
that the FAA is already reviewing from the Select Committee report and/or
Roundtable report for each of our recommendations to the FAA where
available. Secondly, prior to sending the letter, have it reviewed by, if
available, Peter Hirsch, Juan Alonzo, and also our federal lobbyists that we
already have a contract with and who we've worked with in the past, Van
Scoyoc. Those are the big changes that we need to make. I think that gives
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direction to Staff so that over the next couple of weeks—we'll be on our
break. You don't need to bring it back to us. I think this gives clear
direction about how we can improve the letter. This first draft gave us a
good template to work from. Here's some recommendations to tweak it and
some people to get more feedback from to make sure it's going to be
supportive of our efforts rather than contradicting our efforts and rather than
contradicting what the Select Committee's done. We want to again encourage what was happening there. That's it for now.
Mr. Keene: Madam Vice Mayor, could I interject here just to add some
thinking to this and some additional clarity? What we have here really is a
recommendation from the Policy and Services Committee that had identified
"A" through "H." I do think that you want to take action on their
recommendation. Of course, as Council Member Wolbach has done, he's
modified that slightly with a couple of changes. The Staff recommendation
that is also part of this recommendation is the way we crafted a way to take
subsequent action on the recommendations from the Policy and Services
Committee, of which the main vehicle is sending a letter. I would suggest
that we keep the letter separate from the first two or else it'll start to get
everything really confused. I actually think we're going to be in real trouble if you're going to want to wordsmith this letter tonight. We won't send it off
until September if you start doing that. Let me suggest some things that
we've learned that would change this recommendation slightly. Let me just
read it so the Council understands. Ultimately, we can work with the Clerk.
We would change this slightly to say "Staff recommends the City Council
reaffirm Palo Alto's position"—are you with me on the right paragraph? Let
me do it again. "Staff recommends the City Council reaffirm Palo Alto's
position to reduce aircraft noise"—starting the changes—"by directing Staff
to finalize a letter from the Mayor to the appropriate federal agency"—I'll
explain that in a second—"incorporating relevant commentary from tonight."
Everything else would stay the same except we would take out the
redundant reports typo in the next-to-last line. The reason I say that is
Kash, in talking with Congresswoman Eshoo's Office today—they were
asserting they thought the appropriate agency would be the FAA rather than
the Department of Transportation at this point. That's why it's saying "the
appropriate federal agency." Technically, we wouldn't want you to approve
this attached letter because we're expecting that we will make some
changes to the letter based upon some of the things we have heard tonight.
We're ultimately asking you to—unless there's need for absolute clarity—
delegate to us the responsibility for reviewing the things people said and
putting them in here. If I could make a comment in that regard. This is not
the last communication we are going to have on this issue. The key point
and the reason for sending this letter now is to be responsive, to let the
world know that Palo Alto is still actively engaged in this, that we want the
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FAA and DOT and all of the witnesses to all of this to know that the City is
restating its concerns at this point in time. The main thing is we don't want
to say anything in this letter that either locks us into something or precludes
us from expressing something else in the future. Generally, the way the
letter is written right now, it does not do that, and there may be some
comments that we get, that we could incorporate. There may be some that
are more specific than they probably should be at this point, even though we would have the opportunity to make those subsequently. That's again
asking you to—for clarity of the Minutes as much as anything—restating the
Staff recommendation as I read it to you. We'll get that clear. Having you
be certain that you're okay with the—as you make the Policy and Services
Committee recommendations yours, that you modify it as you feel
appropriate. Then, we could discuss what other changes you want to the
letter itself. If there was a way for you to get some sense as to are we
roughly okay with this process of sending a letter, asking us to look at other
things as far as working with other communities in the area. I would just
ask you to think about not getting into the details of the letter too soon
before you've settled these first two items, if that's at all possible.
Council Member Wolbach: I would like to leave those recommendations that I've mentioned here in "A" because I'm not trying to wordsmith the letter.
I'm just trying to give general direction on some recommendations on how
to improve the letter. I agree we shouldn't try to wordsmith it because it's
going to have a substantial rewrite. I think it would be a futile task to try
and wordsmith it at this point. I'm comfortable with the changes that the
City Manager recommended there, that are in writing. I'd be fine with
incorporating that if the Vice Mayor would be as well.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Yes. If you would all look at this for any typos. I'm
looking at one that says "reduce aircraft noise." I don't know whether that
was "thereby directing Staff."
Council Member Wolbach: No, just "by."
Vice Mayor Kniss: "By directing." Thank you. I'm going to postpone my
comments as the seconder because I know both Tom and Lydia are waiting
to speak. They were there that night, and I unfortunately wasn't able to be
at the meeting. Tom.
Council Member DuBois: I see the proposed Staff language here. It has
been a long 3 years already. I do believe we're advocating for
improvements for everyone within the region. The concentration of the
MENLO waypoint has really been dramatic with much more noise than we
ever had in the past. The issue is the low altitude of the flights. I think
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we've had a consistent position. I'm not sure where the misunderstanding is
coming from some members of the public. We are working with Anna Eshoo
and the FAA. We've been highly supportive of the Select Committee. It's
clear that noise has shifted at some point onto Palo Alto. I've gone to a lot
of meetings; I've been reading. Flying at high altitude doesn't seem to be
the problem. We're talking about where the flights get into a lower altitude.
I was going to suggest something similar to the City Manager that we give comments on the letter Study Session style and rely on Staff to put those
comments together. I just have two comments on the letter. One is
somewhere we should note the distance Palo Alto is from San Francisco
airport, maybe in the first paragraph or in Bullet Number 1 in the letter.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Do you know what the distance actually is?
Council Member DuBois: No, but I think it's worth …
Vice Mayor Kniss: As the crow flies, I'll bet it's not more than 10 miles.
Council Member DuBois: Yeah, but we're not sitting next to the runway is
the point, just to call it out. My second point to make, Kash, would be
something like noting that this is a new condition, that there was a change
in noise and that's what's triggered all this. It's implied, but we never really
state that we've never historically had this level of noise. There's a question in the Staff Report about noise monitors. We did discuss that at Policy and
Services. After the P&S meeting, I did talk to several community members,
and I changed my position there. I just wanted to let Staff know that I do
think we should be trying to get permanent noise monitors ideally with raw
data access by the City. I think it's important that we have access to that
data. I appreciate Cory's efforts here, but I still feel like this Motion has
gotten incredibly complicated. I would make a Substitute Motion that would
just move the Staff recommendation and that we incorporate Council
feedback on contents to the letter and that we get it out as soon as possible.
Mr. Keene: Would that be the Staff Motion the way I restated it?
Council Member DuBois: Yeah.
SUBSTITUTE MOTION: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by
Council Member Holman to reaffirm Palo Alto’s position to reduce aircraft
noise by directing Staff to finalize a letter from the Mayor to the appropriate
federal agency incorporating relevant commentary from tonight and:
A. Directing Staff to:
i. Obtain expert opinion on aircraft noise monitoring strategy; and
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ii. Meet with neighboring cities to establish a regional position on
the issue of aircraft noise; and
iii. Align resources to be prepared to respond to the Federal Aviation
Administration’s (FAA) response to the reports of the Select
Committee on South Bay Arrivals and San Francisco
International Airport (SFO)/Community Roundtable.
Council Member DuBois: I think Staff struck the right balance—just to speak to it real quickly—between short and long-term recommendations coming
out of Policy and Services. You broke it down the right way and identified
the actions that we should take more immediately. These other pieces here,
are those part of your recommendation, Jim, or we're still editing? I'm done
if the seconder wants to speak.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Karen, do you want to speak to your second?
Council Member Holman: I do. I'm looking for … I appreciate this because
the first Motion was getting pretty complicated. I appreciate the comments
that the maker of the Motion, Council Member DuBois, said about making
comments on the letter. I did have just a couple of comments. I agree with
what Tom said about the distance from Palo Alto to SFO and that this is not
the historic condition. That is good to—it's been stated before, but I think it's good to remind them that that's not the case. To support what is
Number 3 in the letter on the backside—we have two listings of numbers.
To support Number 3, that's on the backside, I've always said this. In the
second paragraph of the letter, it says "however, at this time the impacts
from aircraft noise are creating a disproportionate, negative impact on the
quality of life." I would add "and health." I've always been adamant about
that. This is not just a quality of life issue; it is a health issue. That
supports Number 3 on the backside of the letter. I would add that. I have a
question. You want the Council Members as a whole or the Council as a
whole to comment on the—I don't know why this is such a small report, but
I keep having a hard time finding this or that. You want the Council to
comment on the—what was it—"A" through "G"? Jim, did you want the
Council as a whole to comment on those?
Mr. Keene: Yes, but a little bit the way this Substitute Motion is worded, you
have those things restated essentially under A i, ii, and iii. The others are
subsumed in how we would incorporate into a letter. We're not explicitly
saying you're adopting the P&S recommendations, but you are restating
them. It's just six of one, half dozen of another. It's not a big ideal; it's just
what works for you best as far as a Motion.
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Council Member Holman: You feel like this captures the correction that
Council Member Wolbach made in "G"? It's not explicit, but you're just
taking that as a comment, right? That was a correction.
Mr. Keene: The issue here is that—our first allegiance, when we're drafting
a letter, is to capture the Council's intent as accurately as possible. If there
was a disagreement on that issue between the Council, I'd be uncomfortable
being the one to decide whether it's in or out. I was saying that a lot of the commentary from the public we could look at a little bit differently. I think
you need to either say everything we're offering here is like in a Study
Session and do the best you can with it or, to the extent that you want to
make something explicit, then I think you guys need to give us that
directive. I don't have an issue as Staff with the suggestions that Council
Member Wolbach, for example, made.
Council Member Holman: I did have one. I don't want the Motion to get as
complicated as it was to begin with. This is much simpler, and there's one of
the—I actually have a different take on "H" that Council Member Wolbach
had suggested before. Do you want to hear that change here? Somehow or
other you have to get that conveyed. I would change it because, for me, it's
always been about health as well. Noise is health but so is particulate. For me, "H" would read "ask the FAA"—excuse me. The FAA …
Vice Mayor Kniss: Karen, are you including that in this Motion or in the first
Motion?
Council Member Holman: No. I'm just giving this to Staff as an edit.
Vice Mayor Kniss: As input for the letter?
Council Member Holman: No. This is for "H," the list from the Policy and
Services to Council, which they want to hear comments on. That's guidance.
"H" would read "asking FAA to address the routes will also positively affect
the additional health impact from particulate emissions." The difference is
Council Member Wolbach was saying—we have a little bit different opinion
on this. You were saying that it was a different take and thought it might
discredit the other aspects of the letter if we go into a separate track. I
don't think this is a separate track from where we've been in the past, from
my perspective. That's why I'm offering the other language. Thank you.
Vice Mayor Kniss: I'm going to suggest we go back to Council Member
Wolbach. I think we need to simplify this. We're getting ourselves way in
the weeds. Let's see if we can simplify it to the extent that we're not going
to be spending the next hour wordsmithing it, which I don't think is
productive overall. Cory, if you have any suggestions, go ahead.
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Council Member Wolbach: The reason the original Motion was complex is it's
a complex issue. The Staff recommendation in this current Motion does not
incorporate "A" through "H." We just lost a lot of "A" through "H." I don't
see "B" in here at all about advocating for (crosstalk).
Vice Mayor Kniss: You're staying the course. It's fine.
Council Member Wolbach: Here's the question. The question is does that
need to be in the Motion or can we just say the Council endorses the Policy and Services Committee recommendations. That's one line here. That way
we don't lose all that other stuff.
Vice Mayor Kniss: You could make that as a separate Motion by the way.
Council Member Wolbach: I'm asking if you'd accept it as an amendment.
Council Member DuBois: As general direction, what got tricky is we started
editing the P&S recommendations, which we didn't necessarily vote on as a
group.
Council Member Wolbach: Right. That's why I was editing them. We gave
them as general direction; Staff gave their best shot at clarifying them into
words. When looking at the words, we realized there was a couple of errors.
Council Member DuBois: Like Number B …
Council Member Wolbach: That's why my original had (crosstalk).
Council Member DuBois: Number B about the Select Committee or Ad Hoc
Committee, I saw that as rolled into A iii that we're going to be prepared to
respond to what comes out of the report. Part of that may be advocating to
be on the Ad Hoc Committee. We're not locking into that right now.
Council Member Wolbach: What I also don't see here is anything about
sending a letter to the FAA.
Council Member DuBois: It says to the appropriate federal agency.
Council Member Wolbach: I'm sorry. I was looking only after "A." You're
right; thank you for pointing that out. I guess this is okay. All of my
comments from before, in my original Motion, can Staff just take those as
my comments?
MOTION WITHDRAWN BY THE MAKER
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Mr. Keene: Yeah. Without gumming up the works, I do think that the "A"
through "H" recommendations from the Policy and Services Committee,
whether they stay as a recommendation only from Policy and Services
Committee or the Council adopts them, they don't necessarily all need to be
converted into this particular letter, which is also a focus for what we're
trying to do.
Council Member Wolbach: Agreed.
Mr. Keene: The key thing really was to—we're here tonight to get direction
on sending basically the right kind of letter at this point in time to the FAA.
Council Member Wolbach: Actually I think this is an important point. This
isn't just about a letter to the FAA. This is about the Council for the first
time in many months taking a position on this issue. One part of that is
writing a letter. One part of that is communicating to Anna Eshoo. One part
of that is communicating to other cities in the region. One part of that is
putting out a public message. One part of that is being prepared to respond,
as this says here in "3." I agree the letter is merely one component of
updating our position and our strategy around this issue. I'm fine with
supporting the Substitute Motion. Staff, please take my recommendations
from the original Motion as my comments.
Vice Mayor Kniss: In that case then, I will obviously relieve you of my
second, since it no longer is a Motion. Tom, have you spoken sufficiently to
your Motion? Karen, you spoke to the second. Lydia, you had your light on,
and then Eric. Do you still want to speak or are you okay with it now?
Council Member Kou: I am okay with it now. Also, I just want to say that it
is in the best interest for everybody to work with each other from wherever
cities that we are. As long as we're not working together, it just delays the
FAA from acting. As the City Manager had said, this is not just taking a
position. We're also taking action and showing urgency. I hope that we can
get together and work this out.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Eric.
Council Member Filseth: Given that we've …
Vice Mayor Kniss: Weighing in on the substitute?
Council Member Filseth: Yeah. We seem to have resolved the Motion. I
think that's—Staff's good with it. Since Staff's going to do the heavy lifting
on this anyway, that's good. I was just going to comment briefly on the
letter. Given Staff's explanation of what the letter's intended to accomplish
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at this point in time, I actually thought it was pretty well written. I would be
fine if there were not a lot of change to it. Thanks.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Greg Tanaka.
Council Member Tanaka: Just a question. I hear that we have a lobbyist for
this. I'd be really curious to know what does the lobbyist do for us in this
regard.
Mr. Keene: The Council commented on the coordinated meeting that they had during your Hill visits in March at the National League of Cities with the
FAA. We certainly did ask Van Scoyoc to look at the letter already, which
they had done. They've got principals on their staff who have been senior
members in transportation, both on the Senate Transportation Committee
and that sort of thing, and a lot of contacts within the—at least used to have
contacts in the Administration. I don't know if there's anybody to contact
sometimes. We're well represented as far as having somebody in
Washington who can give us a little bit closer flavor on things. They're
certainly not the be all—they're not the only resource that we would have.
The truth is we have a whole bunch of homegrown experts in our town here
on this.
Council Member Tanaka: My point is with the change in the Administration, a lot of the top posts have changed as well, as we all know. Does it mean
we need to change lobbyists that are maybe more effective with the current
Administration? I don't know. I'm not as experienced with this.
Mr. Keene: Those are future discussions we could have about our
effectiveness strategy just in general. I don't think it would be something
for tonight.
Vice Mayor Kniss: I will be supporting the Motion. I think us having
simplified it makes it a lot easier. At the same time, I want to underscore
that I do support what you came up with in Policy and Services. It has great
value. Jim, what I heard is you will incorporate those beliefs into the letter
that goes.
Mr. Keene: Yes.
Vice Mayor Kniss: I also want to tell those of you who have been patient
and waited until 11:00 P.M. to deal with this tonight that several of us sat
with the FAA last March on a snow day, so called, which is probably why
they had time to spend with us. We were there with them for about an hour
and a half. We worked diligently to get them to actually say they would get
a report out, that they would actually make a decision. They finally agreed
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that they thought something could come by the end of the summer. They
are difficult to deal with. I want to reassure you our lobbyist has been
working with them. The lobbyist set the meeting up. It was a very
frustrating meeting. I am very sympathetic. I too live in this community,
and I hear the planes going over as well. I know how frustrating it is. We're
going to keep at this diligently. The letter will go from the Mayor. We will
stay in touch with Representative Eshoo's Office. There's no question. When the report comes from the FAA, it will go to Representative Eshoo's
Office first. She's the first line of contact on this. They were very clear with
us that that was exactly how it would be. That report would go to her office,
and then we will hear from there what is in the report. I wish I could be
more encouraging about the FAA. It was somewhat difficult to get clear or
concise or definitive answers. I'm sure you're not surprised to hear that
especially, as Stewart said earlier, it actually has been since October of
2014. That's a long time. Believe me, we are working at this diligently. I
know P&S spent hours on it when they did it. Tonight, we're sending this at
least in a definitive direction with this letter from the Mayor. Thank you all
for being here. With that, if there are no more comments, could we vote on
the board? Good pattern tonight. That is unanimous with seven of us present. I'll read it just for those of you who may not have access to this at
home. This is a unanimous vote with DuBois, Kou, Wolbach, Kniss, Filseth,
Tanaka, and Holman voting yes. Thank you all so much. That's the end of
our regular agenda.
SUBSTITUTE MOTION PASSED: 7-0 Fine, Scharff absent
Inter-Governmental Legislative Affairs
Vice Mayor Kniss: Intergovernmental Legislative Affairs, is there anything
on that tonight?
James Keene, City Manager: Nothing to report tonight.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you all for being here.
Mr. Keene: Nothing to report tonight.
Council Member Questions, Comments and Announcements
Vice Mayor Kniss: If there's nothing on that, are there Council Member
Questions, Comments and Announcements? Anybody? I see Tom, I see
Cory, and I see Karen.
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Council Member DuBois: I forgot to mention last week that I was elected
the Vice Chair of the Joint Recycled Water Committee with the Santa Clara
Water District.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Isn't that one of the ones where they pay you to go to a
meeting?
Council Member DuBois: No. We are making good progress. Hopefully, we
will see some money coming to Palo Alto for recycling efforts.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Congratulations. That's terrific.
Council Member Wolbach: A couple of things. First, congratulations on that
position. I was happy to second the Motion. Gary Kremen beat me to the
punch on making the nomination for Vice Chair. Also wanted to mention our
League of California Cities Peninsula Division had a great lunch on Friday. If
you haven't been or haven't been recently to any of the Peninsula Division
events, Liz and I are both on the board. That is a great group of Santa
Clara, San Mateo, and San Francisco County and City Officials. We had a
great meeting this last Friday. I had the chance to moderate a panel on
autonomous vehicles and how cities can prepare for autonomous vehicles,
considering the pros, the cons, and how to get the best out of them. We
had a member of our Staff there. Meetings with Staff in preparation were very helpful. Thank you to both Jonathan Reichental and Josh Mello for
great conversations. I hope to see you guys at our next one.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Before I get to Karen, I would also mention that the
annual meeting for the League is going to be in September. It's the 13th, I
think, this year in Sacramento. It goes back and forth each year. There's
also a meeting in Monterey for Mayors and Council Members that is the 20 …
Beth Minor, City Clerk: The 28th and 29th.
Vice Mayor Kniss: The 28th and 29th in Monterey. If that's of any interest,
I know that Beth has … It's League of California Cities. It is a special 2-day
presentation for Mayors and Council Members. It starts, I think—is it
Wednesday afternoon?
Ms. Minor: Yeah. I'm not sure what time. We'll have to check the
registration too. It might be too late. You might have to register at that
location.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Karen.
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Council Member Holman: Thank you. Last week, when we were adjourning
our meeting in honor of Pat Briggs and appropriately so, I got home to
discover that we'd lost another community treasure, Doris Richmond. Doris
and Cole Richmond were longstanding members of this community and
regarded highly by not just their neighbors but Stanford University students.
They welcomed they estimated hundreds of students to their home where
Doris would make her famous potato salad. They'd come and have good conversation. Doris also worked as an assembly line person during World
War II in LA. She was the first African-American to work full-time for the
Palo Alto Library. When the renaming of the Main Library was being
considered, her name was—you're nodding; you know all this—one of the
names that was considered as an appropriate name to rename that Library.
When they bought a house in Palo Alto—because we do have a past, as do
many cities, we tend to forget about it or maybe don't want to remember it.
They bought a house just south of Oregon Expressway because it was one of
the few areas in town where non-whites could own property, could have a
house. They also were charter members of the first African-American or
Black church in Palo Alto, the AME Zion Church Downtown. Doris and Cole,
who preceded her just a few years ago, are both going to be greatly missed in this community. I'd like to adjourn the meeting in her honor.
Vice Mayor Kniss: I cannot resist saying this. It's a good thing there are a
few of us long-timers still around that can remember those people that
made such a difference in our community. They did. Thanks. Anything
from the Staff this evening? Thank you very much. Appreciate that.
Appreciate your keeping me on task for the hearings tonight, Molly. With
that, we are adjourned.
Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned in honor of Doris Richmond at
11:07 P.M.