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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2017-08-14 City Council Summary MinutesCITY OF PALO ALTO CITY COUNCIL FINAL TRANSCRIPT Page 1 of 102 Special Meeting August 14, 2017 The City Council of the City of Palo Alto met on this date in the Council Chambers at 5:00 P.M. Present: DuBois; Filseth arrived at 5:05 P.M.; Fine; Holman arrived at 5:01 P.M.; Kniss, Kou, Scharff; Tanaka arrived at 5:05 P.M.; Wolbach Absent: Closed Session 1. CONFERENCE WITH LABOR NEGOTIATORS City Designated Representatives: City Manager and his Designees Pursuant to Merit System Rules and Regulations (James Keene, Ed Shikada, Rumi Portillo, Lalo Perez, Molly Stump) Employee Organization: Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Local 521 Authority: Government Code Section 54957.6(a). Designated Representatives: City Manager and his Designees Pursuant to Merit System Rules and Regulations (James Keene, Ed Shikada, Rumi Portillo, Lalo Perez, Molly Stump) Employee Organization: Utilities Management and Professional Association of Palo Alto (UMPAPA) Authority: Government Code Section 54957.6(a). Mayor Scharff: The first thing is a Closed Session. If we could have a Motion to go into Closed Session. Vice Mayor Kniss: I so move. Council Member Wolbach: Second. MOTION: Vice Mayor Kniss moved, seconded by Council Member Wolbach to go into Closed Session. TRANSCRIPT Page 2 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Mayor Scharff: If we could vote on the board. That passes 6 with Council Members Filseth, Tanaka, and Holman currently absent. Let's go into Closed Session. MOTION PASSED: 6-0 Filseth, Holman, Tanaka absent Council went into Closed Session at 5:01 P.M. Council returned from Closed Session at 6:28 P.M. Mayor Scharff: Welcome. It's great to see all of you. We're coming back from Closed Session, and we have no reportable action. As I said, welcome. Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions None. City Manager Comments Mayor Scharff: I think the first thing up is City Manager Comments, and then we'll move to Oral Communications, which is what I think a lot of you are here for. Mr. City Manager. James Keene, City Manager: Thank you, Mayor, members of Council. Nice to see everyone back from the break. What a way to start off the next three meetings you're going to have in August. I have a number of things to report on, kind of a mixed bag of things. First of all, some transportation-related items. The first one related to our Safe Routes to School program and traffic safety improvements. With school back in session this week, the Transportation Division has been fast at work making traffic safety improvements along various walk and roll routes leading to elementary and middle schools throughout town. Some of these improvements include new green bicycle boxes and signs on Donald Drive at Arastradero Road to encourage right-way riding by Terman Middle School students; secondly, four new speed feedback signs on Embarcadero Road with additional signs to come over the next several weeks; third, new high-intensity flashing beacons at the Clemo Avenue crosswalk across Arastradero Road; and finally, conversion of the temporary traffic circle at Coleridge Avenue and Cowper Street to an all- way stop as an interim measure until a small-area Traffic Study can be completed. Transportation Division will be onsite tomorrow morning on Donald Drive for the first day of middle school to make sure that things go smoothly. Secondly, interim rail grade crossing improvements. While there has been a lot of attention on grade separations at the rail crossing—the Rail Committee, of course, will be talking about the larger strategic issues for the long term for our City—our City Staff has been working cooperatively with TRANSCRIPT Page 3 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Caltrain to put in place some interim safety improvements. The project includes new medians, new signing and striping, new railways and other standard safety feature improvements, in particular improvements at the Charleston Road crossing, which will be more substantial and will include new concrete crossing panels, a median stretching past Park Boulevard, and a new near-side traffic signal to discourage motorists from entering the track area on a red light. Construction is expected to start within the next several months. On the topic of the First Baptist Church, I wanted to provide an update. Certainly a lot of things have been taking place over the past month and the last two-plus weeks while I was out of town. There have been several meetings that our Staff at my request has had last week with both the pastor and tenants at the First Baptist Church. We're also continuing to communicate with neighborhood residents. I've asked our Staff to be completely open to requests by tenants for more time to comply with our Zoning Ordinance and make it clear that there would not be any eviction notices proceeding, and that we have to have some time to work through these matters with the church. There are still some traffic and neighborhood issues that will need to be resolved. Our Staff, I understand, has met with the pastor, and there's some discussion about exploring at least the possibility for either applying for a Conditional Use Permit (CUP) to legalize uses as part of a community center. I indicated to the Staff last week that, when I return which is now, I wanted to be meeting with the pastor personally. We will keep the Council tuned in on this right now. I think the understandable barrage of emails from various groups at the church are concerned with community-serving uses that we put to rest the concerns about any action there. We're going to work collaboratively to see how we move forward. There may be the need to have a larger discussion ultimately with the City Council. We'll keep you posted there. On University Circle at the Transit Center, construction started on pavement repairs on August 7th and will be completed by September 21st. The project was approved by Council on June 27th and includes replacement of 12,000 square feet of failed concrete pavement, new sidewalk installation in front of the MacArthur Park restaurant, and six new curb ramps. The pavement repairs are being conducted in three phases, each within a different section of the circle. This phasing allows for full access to the businesses within University Circle and proper curing time for the concrete pavement. Stanford Marguerite pickup and drop-off is remaining at the Transit Center, but Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) SamTrans bus stops are temporarily relocated to Quarry Road during construction. For those users of those transit services, for more information please visit cityofpaloalto.org/streets. Just an update to Council and the community as to where we are with regard to the recruitment of a new Police Chief. Our executive recruitment firm has been actively soliciting candidates. We've sent out a survey to the community seeking feedback on the qualities they would like to see in the next Chief, which I'll be using in structuring the interview process that we will use, which TRANSCRIPT Page 4 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 will involve direct community involvement also. The survey closes at noon this Wednesday. If folks haven't given us their thoughts, there's still time. There's a link to the survey in our story on the website homepage. The target would be that we'd be in a position to have a new Chief of Police appointed to be able to begin in November. From the City Clerk's Office, the City is looking for engaged community members who would be interested in serving on the Architectural Review Board (ARB), the Historic Resources Board (HRB), or the Planning and Transportation Commission (PTC). Serving on these advisory bodies is a great way to learn more about the Palo Alto community and certainly for folks to be able to give back to our town. Applications are available on the City Clerk's webpage, cityofpaloalto.org/clerk. The application deadline is September 19th at 4:30 P.M. Next week total solar eclipse. Please join us at the Library and power down devices to help save energy, submitted by Ed Shikada, Assistant City Manager and General Manager of Utilities. On Monday, August 21st, as most folks know a total solar eclipse will pass over the Pacific Northwest, affecting California solar resources supplying power to the electric grid. The eclipse is expected to occur from 9:02 A.M. to 11:54 A.M. with the moon obscuring 58-76 percent of solar rays hitting California. California won't see another solar eclipse of this magnitude until 2045. The City of Palo Alto Library is hosting a total solar eclipse party at Mitchell Park with events scheduled on August 20th and 21st. The eclipse will cause an estimated loss of 4,194 megawatts (MW) of California large-scale solar electricity. Palo Alto gets 30 percent of its electricity from large-scale solar in the Central Valley and 1 percent from local rooftop systems. While California utilities and our grid operator have all the tools necessary to make sure the State has enough electricity through the eclipse, most of the energy needed to replace this clear, carbon-free power will come from expensive, carbon-producing natural gas peaking power plants. Our City is encouraging community members to think about reducing energy consumption during this time to prevent those extra greenhouse gases from needing to be produced and entering our atmosphere. Simple actions like unplugging gadgets and appliances that are not being used, foregoing energy consuming tasks like running loads of laundry or charging an electric vehicle can all help. Finally, it's my pleasure to formally introduce to the Council Michelle Flaherty, our new Deputy City Manager. She joined us as of August 8th. We're excited to have her onboard. She's relocated from Washington, DC, where she most recently served as the Director of Performance, Strategy and Innovation for the Architect of the Capital, which is a federal agency responsible for maintaining Capital Hill's historic facilities and parks as well as promoting tourism. She also has deep ties to Silicon Valley and the Peninsula, serving as then newly elected Supervisor Joe Simitian's Chief of Staff 25-plus years ago and also working for Congressman Norm Mineta. She also has great experience working in county and city government in Washoe County, Nevada, as well as Rockville, Maryland. With the Council's indulgence, if I could just ask Michelle TRANSCRIPT Page 5 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 to say a few words. Michelle, welcome back to California. This is a very typical turnout every Monday night at the City Council meeting. This is what you … Mayor Scharff: It's actually a light turnout, Michelle. Michelle Flaherty: Thank you. It's a real privilege to be serving the City of Palo Alto. To see the engagement of the community is heartening to me. I'm excited to be back in local government, which is where my heart has always been. Having only been onboard a week, I've been impressed with the commitment and dedication I've seen in the Staff that I've met. Not a lot of cynicism here, just a lot of commitment to service, which is wonderful to be around. A lot of beautiful stories in the community about what makes Palo Alto a home. I know I'm in the right place. Thank you for having me. Mayor Scharff: Thank you very much and welcome. That's all I have to report. Thank you. Now, we'll move on to Oral Communications, but first Vice Mayor Kniss has something. Vice Mayor Kniss: I asked the Mayor as a point of personal privilege if I could introduce my niece, who is visiting from Boston, and her two children. Some of my family is there too, but I know you know them already. Would you, Carlin and Cien [phonetic] Alyssa, come down? If you'd go to the mike and just say your name just so they can hear you, first and last name. Carlin Wayne Oyama: We're really happy to be here and to see our Nana do her job and serve the community. Mayor Scharff: Thank you, Council Member Nana. Vice Mayor Kniss: I am lucky to be their Nana. I really am. Oral Communications Mayor Scharff: Now, we have Oral Communications. How many people do we have? Beth Minor, City Clerk: Twenty-eight. Mayor Scharff: Twenty-eight. Given our schedule, I'm going to have to say that we can only speak for 2 minutes. I notice that we have one speaking for five people. Amy, do you think you could do it in 7 minutes? Amy Andonian: Yeah. Mayor Scharff: That'd be great. Come on up. TRANSCRIPT Page 6 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Jim Phillips: Good evening, Mayor and Councilmen. My name is Jim Phillips. I'm the Board Chair of Avenidas, which has been operating here in town for 50 years. I'll just introduce the little group we have in front. We have a number of our Board Members, volunteers, Staff members here with us this evening. Up front we have Julie Roche, who is the Staff member that has been working on our expansion campaign. Larry Klein, who you all know, is a Board Member. Deborah Radin, who's also a Board Member. Amy Andonian, who's our President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), will be reading our letter that we intend to provide to the entire public here in Palo Alto. Amy Andonian speaking for Larry Klein, Julie Roche, Jim Phillips, and Deborah Radin: Thank you. It's an honor to be here this evening. Thank you so much. Again, I'm Amy Andonian, the President and CEO of Avenidas. I wanted to provide you all with an update tonight regarding the ongoing situation with our subtenant, La Comida, and to share with you our vision for senior nutrition in the future. Our State's elderly population is expected to grow more than twice as fast as the total population, so it is critical to build communities that support and celebrate older adults. Since 1969, here in Palo Alto Avenidas has been doing just that through a wide range of support options, education, and helpful services that enable people to stay active, involved, and independent as they age. Avenidas served 7,500 older adults and their families last year alone. Unlike other cities which rely solely on government support to run their senior centers, Avenidas is a private nonprofit, 501(c)(3), that has a longstanding public-private partnership with the City of Palo Alto to provide senior services. The City provides 10 percent of our annual Operating Budget, and we fundraise for the rest. Avenidas has recently embarked on plans to renovate our building located at 450 Bryant Street in Palo Alto, which is owned by the City but leased to Avenidas on a 50 year lease that expires in 2065. This $18 million project is forward looking, seeking to expand and convert outdated and insufficient space while also conducting a critical seismic upgrade. These renovations will help us to continue to meet the ever- increasing needs of our senior community. We are tremendously excited about the upcoming groundbreaking for the building, expected in September, and are preparing for the temporary relocation of our services to Cubberley Community Center during the construction. While this brings new challenges, it also brings new opportunities, and we have plans to ensure as little disruption to our community as possible. Throughout the renovation planning, Avenidas has continued to evaluate how we can better serve our community and best use the limited space we have available. Not everything can remain exactly the same as it was as we seek to meet the challenges of a changing and growing senior population. Due to the need to address seismic and Americas with Disabilities Act (ADA) accessibility concerns throughout the building, the usable footprint for the lunch program currently run by La Comida was reduced. La Comida had the option of altering their current service model TRANSCRIPT Page 7 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 by moving from one large seating to two smaller ones. After completing mediation last December, La Comida chose to find an alternate facility rather than change its operations. Consequently, Avenidas began to repurpose the space and sought to supplement and increase nutritional services to our community through the introduction of a new café model that would allow drop-in access to low-cost, nutritious meals in small and individual seatings. In essence, innovating to complement and enhance nutrition services for our seniors. In addition to serving food, Avenidas would host activities designed to encourage socialization in the café such as food demos, cooking classes, pop-up brown bag workshops, trivia games, current events discussions, and more. The café will provide a warm, inviting, inclusive environment for the entire community. On the eve of Avenidas beginning construction, La Comida changed course and asked to return to 450 Bryant Street upon project completion. Avenidas proposed some options for a congregate meal program to operate out of 450 Bryant Street including a merger of the two organizations to streamline operations. No agreement was reached. Accordingly, Avenidas will continue to honor the terms of the December 2016 settlement agreement. Avenidas will help fund La Comida's relocation to its temporary home at Stevenson House as well as help remodel the kitchen, if needed, at its new permanent facility. We have time to figure out where this new permanent facility will be. Avenidas will also provide a variety of supportive services at La Comida's new location and assist with transportation so that older adults can travel freely between La Comida and Avenidas. We believe that the Avenidas café in conjunction with La Comida's congregate meal service will expand offerings to our growing community. More seniors throughout Palo Alto will be able to take advantage of some form of subsidized meals to improve their nutrition. As we continue to develop these exciting new plans, we will be sure to share them with the community. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Our next speaker is Steve Young, to be followed by Jessica Rothenberg Aalami. Steve Young: Hi. Steve Young, a longtime resident of Palo Alto. Nice to be in front of you. I represent iSing, a young girls' choir. iSing teaches tremendous values of empowerment to young women through song. My two girls have been a part of iSing for years, and the impact has been dramatic. I encourage all of you to get tickets early to the holiday concerts. They will bring a tear to the eye like they do mine. We understand Palo Alto's a busy place and getting busier. Demand for space for community-based programs is growing and will continue to grow. Our churches in Palo Alto have a vital role as a repository for these programs. There are very limited alternatives. After over 30 years, it is time to revisit the Zoning Ordinance of treating churches the same as residences for requirements for conditional use permits. It's onerous. I hope the City will see the need to treat churches differently. TRANSCRIPT Page 8 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Let's find a way to use churches more efficiently for these community-based arts programs while looking for mediation on impact to the neighbors. iSing needs this home. Thank you very much. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Jessica to be followed by Cari Templeton. Is Jessica not here? That's fine. Holly: Hello, my name is Holly. I am 9 years old, and I have lived in Palo Alto for my whole life. This is Senna; this is Zoe. iSing is one of our favorite activities. There is no other choir like iSing in Silicon Valley. If iSing gets moved, we can't participate any more, and we won't be able to continue singing. Please let us stay. Thank you. Cari Templeton: Thank you. That was my daughter. I'm happy to share my time with her. My name is Cari Templeton. I've been a resident of Palo Alto for 12 years. I worked 10 years at Google also in Palo Alto and Mountain View. I just recently graduated from Stanford. I'm involved in the community, and I have been working with iSing on mitigation plans. Thank you very much for giving us the time for that and doing so on the record. That's absolutely brilliant. Thank you. Because I live and work in Palo Alto, it's very difficult for me to take my children to activities outside the City and then to come back. I wanted to speak a little bit to the underlying issue and encourage the Council to take the necessary actions for the long-term solution. Our family participates in several art and music programs housed at faith-based sites here in Palo Alto. These build community and enrich our families. Faith-based sites, churches, and synagogues, etc. are at risk by the Code as it stands. If we don't allow these uses, what else should we do with our empty church space during the week? We mustn't allow our community's character to be stifled by an outdated Code. We should be able to distinguish between nonprofit and community enrichment programs—there we go; that's my timer—versus for-profit corporations. I think we all understand the difference. If the Code doesn't acknowledge that, we should address it. Finally for actions, I urge the Council to direct the Staff to change the zoning designation to allow religious as well as nonprofit and community uses without conditional use permits. Until this can be achieved, please extend the moratorium to all of the faith-based sites for the duration so that no other programs are affected. Thank you very much. Mayor Scharff: We typically have a rule that we don't clap. I've been allowing it to go forward, but maybe it's time to not clap so loudly all the time. Jessica Rothenberg Aalami: Hello, Council. I am Jessica Rothenberg Aalami. It's an honor for iSing to be here. We thank you for your service to our community. Not only am I a fifth generation Californian, I was born and raised TRANSCRIPT Page 9 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 here in Palo Alto by my parents, who are artists, and my grandparents, who are musicians, and they are also social community advocates. As a child, I was always so impressed with Palo Alto. It always was so welcoming to both innovation and creativity. It's something we're very proud of as local Palo Altans, but I've seen over the last years that it's harder and harder for arts- based organizations and artists to stay and thrive and even survive here in our City. All the more reason I raced at the opportunity to not only help grow iSing, a girl choir based in the heart of Palo Alto, but to serve as the Chair of its Board. My daughters have also been part of the iSing community since its founding. They have grown in innumerable ways. I would also attest that most of their friends have as well. That brings me to my ask. Right now, iSing is at its home at the church we are staying in, in our neighborhood. We don't want that to change, and we appreciate your efforts to not only extend our residency at the church, but we ask you to revisit the Code. Again, this was created in 1978, when I has 5 and riding my red bike with the banana seat around that neighborhood. What I'd like to see is more arts organizations and community-based organizations stay and thrive in this area. It's not only the voices of our girls and our community that we're singing for. Girls coming together to change the world through song benefits everyone well beyond our City limits. For that reason, I would like to introduce you to the iSing girl choir, who will be singing. Mayor Scharff: I'm going to treat the iSing girl choir as a group of five. You will have 7 minutes to sing if you'd like to sing for 7 minutes. Lauren Aalami: Hello everyone. My name is Lauren Aalami. It is a pleasure to make the acquaintance of the Council and my fellow attendees. Not only am I a member of iSing girl choir, but I reside less than 2 blocks away from the church in question. In the 4 years I've sung with these girls, I've been privy to the palpable paradigm-shifting effect this organization has had upon the confidence and self-assurance of hundreds of Palo Alto and Bay Area girls, girls as intent upon improving their communities as they are upon improving themselves. My fellow singers and I are true sisters, a connection upon which I think we all lean heavily as the plethora of academic and personal stressors become seemingly insurmountable. If iSing is forced to vacate their current premises, Palo Alto will be setting an irrevocable precedent as a City which does not prioritize community engagement through lifelong friendships, through a world-class musical education, and through a sisterhood that celebrates the beauty of our voices as one. Thank you so much for your time. This is "One Voice." [A group of girls sang.] Mayor Scharff: We probably don't need any more speakers on that subject, but feel free. You guys were fantastic by the way. I thought you guys did a TRANSCRIPT Page 10 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 great job. Feel free to come back and sing at other Council meetings. Rick Mixon to be followed by Pipe May and Victoria Eberle. Rick Mixon: Pardon me if an old man is a little emotional at this moment. This is the magic we get to experience on an ongoing basis. I'm just thankful for the girls, for who they are and what they represent. Vice Mayor Kniss, this was the perfect night to have your girls here. This is girl’s night out. I'm Rick Mixon. I'm an 11 year resident of Palo Alto and the pastor of First Baptist Church. When I came here, the building was sitting empty, and I said to the congregation, "This is irresponsible use of a space that would benefit the community greatly." Over the last 11 years, through good stewardship the building has filled organically by groups coming to us and looking for space where they can operate reasonably in the City of Palo Alto. We see that as a vital part of our mission and our ministry. I was going to say some other things, but the City Manager has preempted them. I'm glad for that. We're grateful for his willingness to talk to us and also for a good conversation I had with Hillary Gitelman and Jon Lait on Wednesday of last week. We're very hopeful that these things can be resolved. We're very sorry that it's taken so long to get to the point where we seem to have the City's attention in a way that we can work through this stuff. I want to say two things basically. One, we want to be a good neighbor. We need to hear what the complaints are so that we can work on them. At this point, we're kind of at sea. We know there are complaints. We know some of those complaints are legitimate complaints; there are issues that need to be addressed. We're more than willing to work with any neighbors and the City to address the concerns that have been raised by some of our neighbors. At the same time, we've had neighbors living across the street from the complaining neighbors, who have had exactly the opposite experience of our ministry in the neighborhood, who celebrate it and love the fact that these girls are here and there are kids all over the place. It's just a good place to be. I think the bigger issue that the City has to address in some way is you're living with a very antiquated definition of what a church is. It probably goes back 50 years. To restrict us to religious worship and religious education incidental thereto does not recognize the reality of church life in this country in 2017. Nearly every church in the country makes use of its space. We're just following what our friends and neighbors do. I do want to say that this is a bigger crowd than I get on Sunday mornings. Would it be all right if I give an altar call at the end of my remarks? Thank you for listening, and thank you for being willing to work with us. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Piper May and Victoria Eberle. Piper May: It took me 2 years to collect enough courage to audition for ISing. I was very nervous. On my first day at iSing, I was leaving school, chatting TRANSCRIPT Page 11 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 with my friend, Victoria. I said that I had choir that afternoon, and she replied that she also had choir. After that, I felt a lot less nervous. Victoria Eberle: My mom did all she could to get me in a spot to audition for iSing. When the time came, I was terrified. One day after school, Piper told me that she was attending iSing as well, and all of my fears were brushed away. I couldn't wait for iSing to start. Ms. May: A few months after our first year of iSing ended for the summer, we received the bad news that iSing might have to move due to the fact that the neighbors were unhappy. Ms. Eberle: This news would mean iSing might have to relocate out of Palo Alto, where the majority of iSing students live. This would cause longer commutes. Ms. May: All of the iSing girls need iSing to stay where it is. It's a convenient location for all, and the current space has room to house over 100 girls at a time, ages 5-18. When we all get to sing together, it's magical. Ms. Eberle: It's a great place to perform. In the past year we have done iSing, there have been many events at the church from the ice cream social to a song recording. Ms. May: However, this setup makes others unhappy. During drop-off and pickup, iSing parents take up parking spaces. This problem is easily solved, though, by asking iSing girls to ride their bikes and carpool. Ms. Eberle: Real estate in Palo Alto is expensive. If iSing cannot find another location in Palo Alto, the program may be shut down for good. We can't let that happen. Ms. May: iSing has been wonderful. I've learned a lot about music and singing. We've also laughed a ton, made new friends, and strengthened the friendships I already had. I know girls at multiples schools now and love meeting my iSing friends around town. Ms. Eberle: iSing is so much more than a choir. It's a second home and a place to learn and enjoy yourself at the same time. That kind of magic isn't found easily. Ms. May: I don't know what I'd do without iSing. It has helped me grow so much both in confidence and musical knowledge. TRANSCRIPT Page 12 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Ms. Eberle: iSing was created to bring girls like us joy. If you agree to let them stay, they will continue bringing both ourselves and all of us joy, which I'm certain is one of the things they love and enjoy most. Ms. May and Ms. Eberle: No one should ever stop doing what they love. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Chris Eberle to be followed by Thomas Arnold. Chris Eberle: Hi there. I believe this is what they call piling on at this point, but I respect the process and thank you all for giving me my 2 minutes. I'm Chris Eberle. I'm a father of three and a Palo Alto resident. I'm also a terrible singer. My wife, Adriana, also a terrible singer. Somehow against all odds, our daughter Victoria found her voice literally and figuratively thanks to the wonderful people at iSing. We've only lived in Palo Alto for 7 years, but it has absolutely become our home, and we love this town. We thank you for all that you do to run this town with us. So much has changed in these 7 years. We have seen among other things the activities that our kids do get pushed further and further away to the point where they are so far away that they stop going or places close down. They can't afford rents to compete with the likes of the Googles and the Palantirs and the Facebooks and now the Amazons. I am beyond empathetic to folks that have been here much longer than I, that have seen things change that much more drastically. I think as a community we owe it to ourselves to look at these organizations, look at what's coming through the church in particular and think about what it brings to the community, what it brings to our folks. iSing, in addition to bringing beautiful voices, is empowering young women, which in today's day and age I can't think of anything more important. Of course, I have two girls, so I'm biased. They teach our girls to create, to lead, to foster community. They expand their global view, and they lead by example by giving back, not just helping our girls but by helping girls in underserved communities as well. I would just lastly say that, when you look at the front of First Baptist Church when you arrive, you see that sign saying that immigrants and refugees are welcome. You see the rainbow flag. I think the reason we fell in love with this town and made it our home is because we felt like all are welcome. We think we should find a way to keep programs like this in our town and actually have more of them. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Thomas Arnold to be followed by Karen Hohner. Thomas Arnold: Thank you for the opportunity to support iSing. I moved to Palo Alto in 2008. My wife moved here in 1977. Our daughter's in iSing; we love it. We ride our scooters there. When we first heard about this, a lot of her questions were about what happened, what are the rules, what did we TRANSCRIPT Page 13 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 break, what did we do wrong. She's getting a great civics lesson today. The first question was is there a solution. That's what we train our kids to do, to try and find a solution. I'm very happy that there is a good openness to try and find a solution. Second question is a really pointed question, which is are the rules being applied equally. I understand that the reason that the eviction notice was created was because there was a demand for the list of tenants. I want to ask the Council Members respectfully was the same demand of tenants made for all churches that are under this zoning district. I don't think so. That's a difficult thing to explain to a child. The third thing that comes to a question is does this feel fair, does it feel like the right outcome for our community. Hopefully when you look at all these facts and all the people that came out here tonight, this is part of the community that you can look at as you weigh your decision. Thank you for the opportunity. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Karen Hohner to be followed by Judy Chang. Karen Hohner: I'm Karen Hohner. I've lived in Palo Alto for 19 years. I'm here to speak about what everybody else is speaking about. I'm a member of the Bay Choral Guild, which used to rehearse and give concerts at First Baptist, and my daughter is currently working as an intern for iSing. I've appreciated First Baptist's generosity in making their space available for community groups like ours at a reasonable rate, which is hard to find in Palo Alto. I know there are also other groups and individuals who rent there. All of them foster a sense of community among a variety of constituents. Many other churches in Palo Alto provide the same service as part of their mission. The work of these religious institutions is no longer solely restricted to weekly services for their individual congregations. I fear that strict enforcement of the R-1 Zoning Ordinance as it stands now would have a domino effect that would hurt both the churches who rely on the income and the groups who benefit from the ability to use these spaces. As an initial step, I would ask the City Council to enact a moratorium on the enforcement of the R-1 Zoning Ordinance, and then I believe the entire Ordinance as it effects religious institutions should be reexamined and revised. I also feel that communication between the City and the institutions should be improved. If there are neighborhood complaints about parking or noise, the churches should be informed directly and given a chance to work things out with the neighbors before more drastic steps like eviction are taken. I believe this might not have been the case for First Baptist. Thank you for your consideration. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Judy Chang to be followed by Peggy Simon. Judy Chang: Good evening, Council Members. I'm Judy Chang. I'm sorry for changing the subject. I'm not with iSing. I represent La Comida, the senior nutrition program in Downtown Palo Alto. First and foremost, on behalf of our TRANSCRIPT Page 14 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Board, our local seniors, our diners, my heartfelt thanks to each and every one of you for your continuing support, guidance, and effort to help the La Comida program. As you know, we will be moving to Stevenson House at the end of this month to continue our services. It's a 1 year arrangement, which means at the end of the year we will have to look for another home. We were in the midst of discussing a permanent location with First Methodist Church in Downtown Palo Alto, but they pulled out in the middle of the negotiations. We're back to looking for a permanent home. I look forward to receiving your support in helping us find a permanent location ideally in the Downtown location, ideally close to or next to other senior services. Many of you have come down to La Comida to our lunch program, so you know that we're not a grab-and-go program. We are not a membership program. What we are is a social service, a senior nutrition program, congregate meal program. Over 60 percent of our diners are 75 years and older; 40 percent are low-income seniors. When they come to our dining room, they are served a cooked-on- site, hot meal. They're entertained by piano players. Hopefully we can have the iSing members come to sing for our seniors. What is most important and I want to share with you is we have an environment that our seniors can converse and talk and feel very, very comfortable. They are not isolated. Many of them come to our lunch program as their one point of contact during the day with other people. Several studies have shown that preventing isolation, tackling isolation, social inclusion plays a very big part in aging. I hope that I will continue to get your support in helping us to provide this very much needed senior nutrition program for our seniors. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Peggy Simon to be followed by Kevin Miller. Peggy Simon: Good evening, Mayor Scharff and City Council Members. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. My name is Peggy Simon. I am currently a Board Member of La Comida, the senior nutrition program housed at Avenidas. I'm also a former employee of Avenidas. Tonight I am representing La Comida. I worked for Avenidas for almost 7 years, mostly as an information and referral specialist in the social services department. In my role, I had the opportunity to see firsthand the synergies between the two organizations. When I began working at Avenidas, I was unaware that La Comida was a separate organization. I thought it was one of the many programs Avenidas offered to the older adults in this community. In fact, I believe if you had asked the community prior to the discussions about Avenidas' renovation and La Comida's need to find a new home, most people would have answered that they weren't aware that these were two different organizations. That is the point I'd like to make here tonight. Avenidas and La Comida share many participants. I believe the participation in both of these programs enhances the other. Both organizations offer ways for older adults to remain active, healthy, informed, and most importantly make social TRANSCRIPT Page 15 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 interactions and friendships. Throughout the years, Avenidas and La Comida have promoted the programs of the other. How nice to be able to spend the morning doing yoga through Avenidas, then come downstairs and have a lunch break in La Comida, and return to an Avenidas writing class in the afternoon, all in one location. What fun it is to invite all the participants of Avenidas to come to La Comida for a special holiday meal often with entertainment with their peers and new friends. It was a brilliant idea to co-locate these two organizations. Many seniors centers do the same. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Kevin Miller to be followed by Sea Reddy. Kevin Miller: Good evening, Council Members. I cannot believe that such a rotten, foul and poisonous series of 12 or so form letters would ever be mailed to a Christian house of worship for any reason by the City of Palo Alto last month. Palo Alto's Code Enforcement Division has received a complaint regarding your use of the subject property, i.e., the church buildings. Most of these servants of Jesus Christ have been ordered to abandon their beloved church forever within 30 days. Failure to vacate the church, the City wrote these good servants, may result in administrative citations and/or a notice to appear at a hearing at City Hall. The fine for the violations, the City of Palo Alto noted in its series of letters, are $500 per day subject to go up to $750 a day after a second violation, and up to a whopping $1,000 a day after a third. I guess the church must look like a big, juicy Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) machine to the City. It gets worse. On July 18th, the City of Palo Alto mailed another letter to the church itself, notifying it of its own violation. The letter from the City demands that the pastor of First Baptist cease operation of all uses other than those permitted by a Palo Alto Code Enforcement Officer no later than August 17th, effectively killing the church. It gets worse still. The City of Palo Alto repeatedly refers to a Christian church's service to humanity as a business, almost implying that the church is engaged in some sort of filthy Code violations, going as far as to showcase in local newspapers a photograph of a Christian house of worship in the same light next to a photo of an abandoned sofa on a sidewalk and a photo of a boarded-up shack on a weedy lot. The attacks get worse. I won't go into that garbage here. Does a Baptist church look like a big, old crack house to the City? The church has been tasked with serving Jesus Christ and humanity faithfully for 70 years and in perpetuity as are all churches worldwide. Unfortunately, it would seem that the City's hell-bent endgame here is to take down a Christian house of worship as a type of modern-day trophy. Mayor Scharff: Time's sort of up. If you want to just finish your last … TRANSCRIPT Page 16 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Mr. Miller: … by any means necessary and terminate the church with extreme prejudice. If a venerable church can be bulldozed and demolished forever by a complaint, then all Christianity can be toppled per the domino effect theory. Finally, I would respectfully urge the City of Palo Alto to revisit this series of a baker's dozen or so of old-fashioned, mafia-style, black-hand form letters mailed to the church. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. I did talk to the City Manager. I just wanted to make sure that everyone understood that no one is being fined at iSing. That's not happening. I just wanted to make sure that you all are aware of that. Sea Reddy: Kevin Miller and many others have had the passion to talk about this incident, how the City went about sending a notice of eviction. I think that's very irresponsible. That's uncalled for. You have no idea how people feel about it. You have no right to do it. I mean, you have a right about this church not—only doing all these things. This is mighty Palo Alto. You're not going to do it. You need to tear up the document that you sent. That's how I feel about it. That's how the community feels about it. That's how the singing group feels about it. You need to understand the passion of singing groups. My daughters are 37 and 35. The best they talk about is the singing experience when they were little. What are you thinking? Who is this that allowed—who is your attorney that agreed to send these letters? I think it's just inconceivable, and it's irresponsible. Now that happened, I'd like all of you to know about the College Terrace market we supported to build. I know it's big and ugly, but we need to support it. All the singing group ought to come there and get some ice cream, get the pressure out of this crazy thing that's happening in the City Hall. It's uncalled for, and I think somebody should resign for doing this. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Rev. Lindy Bunch to be followed by Bing Heckman. Rev. Lindy Bunch: Good evening. It's good to be here with you all. This is my first City Council meeting. I have to say, as an avid fan of the show "Parks and Rec.," this is holding pretty true to what was depicted. I'm a relatively new resident in Palo Alto; I moved here about a year and a half ago from Washington, DC. It's my pleasure to live here now. I want to echo Rev. Rick Mixon that I think the City needs to update its understanding of what churches are, of what our spaces can be. I think it's a real gift that we have to offer, that we have a lot of empty space during the week in a place that needs a lot of empty space, and where it can be difficult to find affordable space in particular. I have to say as a church as well—I'm at St. Mark's Episcopal—it's very worrying how all of this went down. It's very worrying to look at a lot of our people who rent space, 12-step groups and parental support groups, musical and art groups, and wonder if we might be targeted next. As well as TRANSCRIPT Page 17 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 a newcomer to Palo Alto, I've found it to be a very difficult place to be in a lot of ways, especially as a young person and a priest. I wonder, watching this, are we a City devoted to making it easier for community groups to be a part of this place or are we making it harder. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you very much. Bing Heckman to be followed by Penny Ellson. Bing Heckman: Thank you. My name is Bing Heckman. I'm a resident of Palo Alto for over 40 years. This is my first time in this room. I'm also a member of the First Congregational Church of Palo Alto. As has been clearly expressed, we have an urgent situation with respect to the uses at First Baptist Church, and that needs to be addressed in a process that has the time and insight required. A moratorium is needed before planned actions are taken against the tenants at First Baptist. This is a serious issue for all our faith- based communities. It needs to be resolved comprehensively. Art education, therapy and other such services are part of the mission of our faith communities. Please know that. Further, Palo Alto needs affordable services of these types, which I'm certain you know. Having strong faith communities in Palo Alto is important to our community and beyond our community. Our faith communities need to be valued and supported. I know I'm not alone in sensing there is currently a struggle for the soul of our Nation. Faith communities, frankly, with the loudest voices do not represent most of us here. The faith communities here locally do. These voices need to be supported, not impaired. Current policy is potentially a serious problem for all. Issues can be complex; they're often not easy. However, Palo Alto is the epicenter of innovation. We are a unique City. If any city can and should be a model, it is us. What we need to provide isn't liberal or conservative policy; it's sensible policy, well-crafted and responsible. Bringing humanity to our bureaucracy is often not easy. I'm confident we can do that. I thank you for your service. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Penny Ellson to be followed by Teri Raffel. Penny Ellson: Good evening and welcome back. I'm Penny Ellson, and I'm here speaking as an individual this evening regarding Senate Bill 328, which is scheduled to go to the Assembly Appropriations Committee on August 23rd. I'm going to be asking you for some pretty quick action on this. Senate Bill (SB) 328 would require all middle schools and high schools to start after 8:30 A.M. Our middle schools and high schools right now are scheduled—they start between 8:10 A.M. and 8:25 A.M. Our morning peak hour starts at 8:30 A.M. roughly. What this means, if we push all of our secondary schools past 8:30 A.M., we will be putting our kids on the street at the same time the regional incoming peak-hour commute traffic is coming in. This is not a good mix for TRANSCRIPT Page 18 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 kids. It's going to put them out there with all the exhaust fumes from the high volume of cars. It's going to expose them to the risk of all that traffic. I'm going to be sending a letter to Mayor Scharff tomorrow—probably tonight actually—with some suggestions about questions that we need to ask for this meeting. Have the potential school commute safety and congestion impacts of this legislation been analyzed? I see no evidence in any of the documentation that it has. Has anyone looked at other communities across California to find out if they might be similarly affected? I see no evidence that that's been done. Has the cost of mitigating traffic safety and congestion impacts of this legislation been studied? I see no evidence that that's been done either. I hope we can request a delay of any vote on this item to allow adequate time to study transportation impacts and school commute safety implications of SB 328 and to consider how we might mitigate them. This came up just a few weeks ago. The Parent Teacher Associations (PTA) are not meeting over the summer. They cannot vote on it to take a position before the August 23rd meeting. That means I'm going to need to find supporters in other places because the PTAs' hands are tied. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Penny, I just need to clarify. You're ask to the City Council is that we take an opposed position to SB 328. Is that … Ms. Ellson: I'm asking that you work with Staff to decide on a position. I'll suggest some language to you because I have some thoughts about it, of course. I would ask you to write a letter and ask them to delay a decision until they've looked at these impacts. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Teri Raffel: Hi, I'm Teri Raffel. I'm another one of those first-timers. I'm very proud to see everybody's passion for the community tonight. I have lived here for the last 31 years. During that time, many things have changed here, but many things have not. Palo Altans still value education and arts and community. I'm proud to say I've seen the benefits of all this in my family. Our town values all of our community and everything we can all contribute and the success of everybody and everybody to participate in everything available here. As you have witnessed, everyone, growth is rampant in our community. Change and growth go hand in hand. We're creators, innovators, and team builders here, and we value progress, innovation. We value reflection, and we value responsibility. For the past 10 years, I've worked for Castilleja School, and I'm proud to say that Castilleja reflects the values of Palo Alto in our efforts to make the topnotch innovative education available to more girls, to guide more girls to become doctors, coders, and people with great social impact. We would like to add more students. With that in mind, we have thought long and hard on how to lessen the impact on our Palo Alto TRANSCRIPT Page 19 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 neighbors. As we see here tonight, the impact on our neighbors is very important in everything that our community does. Emphasis at Castilleja is placed in messaging to all members of the community from students to employees to guests that parking in only designated areas is the right thing to do. As a member of the admission team, I make sure to give everyone coming on campus clear, precise parking instructions. Since I became part of the Castilleja community back in 2000, I've seen remarkable progress in making parking options clear and have seen my coworkers go out of their way to honor the well-thought-out guidelines. When I arrive on campus daily, I marvel at how few cars I see parked along the perimeter. Thank you. I'm proud of this community, and I really want to honor its values in making it a better place for all. I think educating girls and allowing them to sing and including churches is the way to go. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Ericka von Kaeppler to be followed by Stephanie Munoz. Ericka von Kaeppler: Good evening. Thanks for hearing me. My name is Ericka von Kaeppler. I'm here to express my support for Castilleja School's enrollment increase project. I attended Castilleja for both middle and high school, graduating in 2009. After graduating from Castilleja, I went to Yale University, where I played varsity basketball and earned my Bachelor of Science. Currently, I am a fourth-year MD PhD student at Stanford, where I study bone biology and have hopes of pursuing a career in orthopedics. I can say with the utmost confidence that my Castilleja experience played a very integral in my development as a student and as an athlete, but most importantly as a person. Particularly as a woman in a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathmatics) field, I benefited greatly from the confidence that I gained as a student at Castilleja. Believe it or not, in 2002 I started at Castilleja as a painfully shy sixth grader who loved reading books but was terrified of speaking. By the end of my senior year, I was nominated by my classmates to deliver a senior address at our annual Founder's Day luncheon, one of the highest honors afforded to a Castilleja senior. It was that unique community and curriculum that allowed me to grow into the emboldened, passionate, and successful woman that I am today, something that I hope more students can grow to experience. Recently, I've had the pleasure of returning to the Castilleja community as an athletics coach. I coached high school water polo and basketball and, most recently, this spring I coached a novice, seventh/eighth grade basketball team. It's been extremely rewarding to see the continued legacy of Castilleja empowering students through sport. It is my hope that the high and currently unmet demand for a Castilleja education can be addressed such that more girls can be afforded the same unrivaled opportunity for growth that changed my life. I understand the challenge and importance of seamlessly integrating Castilleja TRANSCRIPT Page 20 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 with the surrounding physical community. In this regard, noticeable changes have been made. As a coach, I was struck by how many of my athletes rode their bikes to and from school or took the school-provided shuttle to and from the train station, more so than when I was a student. To conclude, through sport, academics, art, and community, Castilleja empowers young women to become the very best versions of themselves. I ask this Council for your support of this institution that has long been a staple of the community and is committed to working with this City to find innovative solutions for continued success. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Stephanie Munoz to be followed by John Fredrich. Stephanie Munoz: Good evening, Mayor Scharff and Council Members. Welcome back. Just before you left you approved a couple of hotels, and there was an enormous complaint by the neighbors to those prospective hotels. The final comment was Palo Alto's a very expensive City to run, which seemed to me to be an acknowledgement of what the neighbors were accusing you of, which was doing things for the money and the power, especially the money. I've been taking the bus a lot at night. You learn a lot. Probably you have not had the opportunity of knowing, if you ever knew it, for many, many years there are assets in this community that you're not looking at. On the bus, I never get off without having somebody raise a hand to help me off. The other night it was this old guy. He was Black; he was shabby; he was poor. You could see that life had not treated him well. He lifted his hand to help me as if he were Sir Walter Raleigh throwing out the cloak for Queen Elizabeth. The dignity of poor people is really quite inspiring. I felt this is a race I'm proud to be belong to; it's the human race. When you do things like say the Recreation Vehicles (RV) vehicles can't park along El Camino, that's not practical. It really is better to have people have a place to live. Thanks for all you do, and you could do better. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. John Fredrich to be followed by Richard Brand. John Fredrich: Good evening, Council Members and fellow citizens. I applaud the witness of the people at First Baptist there, the church. They have support throughout the community including the Buddhists, the Hindus, other people I sit with. Their First Amendment rights of free exercise cannot be impinged upon by a conditional use permit. They need to seek legal relief if they can't get it otherwise. I'm here to speak to a different matter, and that's the Buena Vista project. I applaud your progress and hope that this moves forward tonight with the parcel division. However, I do support Mr. Borock's opinions in Attachment E and would like to refer you to lines 12-23 on Page 21G of the attachment of last month's Planning Commission meeting, in which the Planning Director says, "I just want to avoid speculation about what might TRANSCRIPT Page 21 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 happen in the future." That's an unusual position. That's Ms. Gitelman for the Planning Department. Maybe she needs to call it planning or management as opposed to speculation. In those lines I noted, 19-23, she says, "There's no problem with Mr. Borock's input. We don't have to do anything. The map's cool, and there's no problem with California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)." I think the impacts of CEQA that come up frequently and the zoning in this case are problematic. More importantly, my complaint and what got me down here tonight—I didn't think there'd be this big hootenanny—was the thing with the easement for the 20-foot road. That should be a 30-foot-wide road. The question is who owns it. Is it Jisser property or is it by public domain from having been driven on for over 50 years? The question is are you paying good City money for a road that is substandard and is already in the public domain through use. It's a public byway and has been for 50 years. I think you need to correct those two parcels to send this thing forward without challenge. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Richard Brand to be followed by James Little. Richard Brand: Good evening, Council Members. Richard Brand, and I am not a new timer. I've been here a few times. I wanted to speak out tonight on an issue that the City can save money on. I'm here representing some of my neighbors as well. What I'm recommending to the City and to Staff is that you stop street sweeping in my neighborhood, Professorville, by the contract sweeper team, not the City. The City guys do a great job. The contract sweeper, which you outsourced 2 years ago for financial reasons because it's going to save a lot of money and all the issues—we do not get our street swept. As many of you know and I've been a member of the Residential Preferential Parking (RPP), our streets are parked up by 8:00 A.M. in the morning. In fact, part of them are parked at 7:30 A.M. The contract sweeper comes through anywhere from 10:15 A.M. in the morning 'til 1:00 P.M. in the afternoon. It goes down the middle of the street at 20-25 miles an hour, and they have not changed those filters, I swear, for a month because it's blowing dust. What we get is a dust storm going by, and the curbs remain dirty. I have gone to Mike Sartor and his team about this so many times, but I want to make you aware to look into this. Jim, I know I should talk to you about this, but I've talked to Mike. They're just not doing the job with this contractor. The City crew does a beautiful job the six times a year they come through and do that. I want to thank the City Staff for doing that. The outsourced contractor is not saving you any money. I'd rather just see it and my neighbors would see it eliminated during the time. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. James Little to be followed by Bill Fleenor. TRANSCRIPT Page 22 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 James Little: I'm James Little. I've lived in Palo Alto since 2006, owned property in Palo Alto since 2000. My wife and her parents have lived in the same house, which we're now living in, since 1961. Regarding the Baptist church and its issues with its neighbors, I don't think shutting down their rental of space to social and cultural groups is a good thing to do. I think it would be a great tragedy for the social and cultural life of Palo Alto to do that. I think the Zoning Code or at least as it applies to the church should be modified to allow the church to rent property to groups such as it has been renting to and solve the noise and traffic problems by negotiation with the neighbors. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Bill Fleenor to be followed by Joseph Haletky. Bill Fleenor: I'm Bill Fleenor; I've lived in Palo Alto since 1973. I'm a folk dancer, so I represent the Folk Dance Federation of California, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, public benefit organization. Three or four of our groups have been named as not being allowed to continue dancing at First Baptist. This was the Peninsula Folk Dance Council, Movable Feet, the Stanford Folk Dancers. Two of these groups use the church every other month or so; one group used the church on a weekly basis for folk dances in the evening. Folk dancing has been going on for many years at First Baptist and other Palo Alto churches. Have I mentioned there's a new federal law that protects the rights of churches and other places of worship to exist and sponsor activities which may apply in this case? It's called the Religious Land Use Institutionalized Act of 2000. Some may want to look into the specifics of that new federal law, which is being administered by the Department of Justice. I request the City Council to restore the rights of First Baptist Church to have public benefit activities such as folk dance, similar to the informal rights of other Palo Alto churches. Mayor Scharff: Joseph Haletky followed by Hollis Radin. Joseph Haletky: Good evening. I've been living here in Palo Alto since the early '70s and am a member of First Lutheran Church. I've discovered that First Lutheran and First Baptist are really sister congregations. We share more than just the name First. We are also, like they, crowded on our little corner lot just a few blocks from here. We also have a lot of activities that go on during the week. We have a singing group, the Silicon Valley Boys Choir, that rehearses there. We have 12-step programs; we have drama groups; and an afterschool program from Addison School that uses our facility. It's not that that's an additional part of our ministry. We follow two great commandments: love your God, which we do on Sunday mornings, and love your neighbor as yourself, which we do the rest of the week. That involves opening us up to everybody. I have a connection or two with First Baptist. My wife worked at TRANSCRIPT Page 23 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 the daycare center there, sneezed one morning opening up, and the church got a complaint about noise. That was my introduction to First Baptist. Also, I was one of the organizers of the Hotel De Zink shelter. When we started the shelter, we had no idea of even asking First Baptist because we knew the neighborhood. They insisted. The 28th day that the shelter was there, the same next door neighbor that complained about my wife's sneezing called the urban ministry and said, "When is this shelter coming to First Baptist?" I said, "It's been there for 4 weeks." We never heard from her again. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Hollis Radin to be followed by Trevor Nelson. Hollis Radin: Good evening. My name is Hollis Radin; I've been in Palo Alto for 37-some years. I'm also the President of the nonprofit Peninsula Folk Dance Council. We occasionally rent space in Palo Alto at some of the many churches in Palo Alto. As far as I can remember, churches have hosted many, many different kinds of uses, AA meetings, rummage sales, choirs, daycare centers, senior activities, youth activities. I always think of a church as a place that bustles with activities. Fellowship halls are meant for fellowship. Our folk dance community has held gatherings and provided services at churches throughout the Peninsula for over 50 years. Church halls we've found to be much more affordable and generally nicer than city community centers. Using the Zoning Code in Palo Alto to prohibit community use of churches doesn't make sense either for the churches, who rely upon the rentals to help maintain their facilities, or for the many community groups and individuals who are in search of affordable space. Requiring an expensive and time-consuming special use permit for each use is not workable. Churches in residential areas such as St. Mark's and First Baptist Church include very clear policies in their contracts regarding keeping noise levels down in order to keep from disturbing the neighbors. I can understand warning the offending parties, setting up a mediation. I do not understand block out all users. I'm upset at the way the situation was handled at the First Baptist church. We were given only 30 days to find alternative locations for events that had been scheduled months in advance. We eventually found alternative locations far away at more than double the cost. As a longtime resident, I'm already feeling priced out of my community on many fronts. I ask that the Council strive to protect the availability of affordable space for the community groups and service providers and allow churches to lease their space out freely. Mayor Scharff: Could you just clarify for one second, you're with the folk dancing … Ms. Radin: I'm with Peninsula Folk Dance Council. It's one of the folk dance groups that occasionally rents space in Palo Alto. TRANSCRIPT Page 24 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Mayor Scharff: You haven't been evicted from any church in Palo Alto, right? Ms. Radin: We were told that we had to not—we had three events scheduled in the fall. We were told we could no longer use the First Baptist Church for those events. We use other churches in the area. When those churches aren't available, we use the First Baptist Church. That was our alternative hall. Now, we have to go farther afield. Mayor Scharff: I just wanted to ask the City Manager. Are we … James Keene, City Manager: We'll look into this. I'm assuming that maybe you responded to the notice that you received from the City. Is that what it was? Ms. Radin: Yes. I had asked for an extension. By the time I got the letter for the extension—we have deadlines to meet for newsletters and things like that to notify people where events will be happening. We had a very short time before the next deadline, so we spent 2 weeks running around trying to find some place. About 3 weeks later, I got a letter back from the City saying, "We can maybe work out something," but that was too late. Mayor Scharff: I apologize. I actually think that's unfortunate. Trevor to be followed by Jan Holiday. Trevor Nelson: I'm Trevor Nelson. I moved to this area in 1959 from the East Bay. I'm an architect, so I'm a little bit familiar with zoning problems. I'm a former Fire District Director, so I can sympathize with some of the problems of being in public office. When I read what was happening to the church, I was frankly appalled. I recalled when I took public office I swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States, which contains the First Amendment separating church and state. I see the City zoning guy coming in there and telling the church it can't have half of the activities that it has because they don't conform to the zone. They can't do that, for one thing. The First Amendment just is very clear on that. The other thing is that something should be done about it, and it should be done quickly. It seems to me the appropriate thing to do would be to zone the churches as churches instead of zoning them as single-family residences or businesses because they're churches and they do what churches do. People who move into buildings or houses next door to churches should know that they're moving next to a church. Churches make noise; they sing; they dance. They could dance in the courtyard for all I care. I don't think they do that because they try to be a good neighbor. This church is trying to be a good neighbor, but it's a church. People around it should recognize that. I have another comment about the parking situation. Apparently that is one of the things that has been complained about. Half of the parking on California Avenue was eliminated TRANSCRIPT Page 25 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 by the City when they built a bicycle lane at that point. The City should try to replace that parking, maybe with a parking lot next to the church. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Jan Holiday to be followed by Ravi Karra. Jan Holiday: Good evening. Mayor, Council Members, thank you for your patience. I would like to address the situation that you've heard about for quite a while between the location of the La Comida program within the Avenidas redo, remodel of their facility. First of all, I want to tell you that this situation is not a conflict. It is driven by passion. I know there's passion on both sides. When you have passion, you have emotion. A lot of our Board Members, of which I am a member, feel very strongly that this program serves a population that would not be served by a shift in the model of how to deliver meals. We have 40 percent of our population over 75. Guilty. I eat at the senior eating facility at La Comida 5 days a week, and I meet lots of people who only come there so they can talk to someone and have a nice meal. That's what we're doing. I'm not sure that the same shift could happen under the grab-and-go, casual atmosphere that's being proposed. I strongly, strongly urge you to support the co-location of La Comida and Avenidas under the new, remodeled arrangement. There's still time. If we wait until the wrecking ball starts, which will be in less than a month, there's no turning back. Once the commercial kitchen is re-allocated for a smaller, café environment, we can't come back to that facility. You've heard about the situation with churches. Our resources are really limited as to where else to go. Forty-two thousand meals last year were provided with the help of the County, the City, and Second Harvest. Thank you for your attention. Please think of the seniors first. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Ravi Karra to be followed by Mary Kear. Ravi Karra: Good evening. I'm not here to talk about either the Avenidas center or iSing. I have my own passion. I can't claim that I've won a Super Bowl; although, I was a neighbor of Steve Young's when they won two Super Bowls. I can't claim I've lived here all my life, but I've lived here a long time. What I'd like to talk to you about is the subject of a letter I sent you maybe 10 days ago. I apologize if this matter has been resolved and sorted out. There's a proposal to make a bike and pedestrian overpass on 101 near the Adobe Creek crossing. I live close by, and I enjoy walking to the Bay a lot. I'm very passionate about just my own personal experience but also the experience of all my fellow citizens. Most of you know we only have 2 miles of 101 that goes along the 101. Of that, there's only 1 mile of highway that is unencumbered, without buildings on one side. This proposal would cut into that limited space you already have. In my letter, what I wrote you folks was there is a cheap alternative that actually might be better to relocate this TRANSCRIPT Page 26 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 overpass closer to either the Oregon/Embarcadero overpass or the one that's near San Antonio Road. It would mean moving it a mile, give or take, north or about 300 yards to the south. There's only so much open space. Encroaching on that is irreversible. That's what I want you to consider. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Mary Kear to be followed by Bob Moss, our final speaker. Mary Kear: Good evening, Council Members and Mayor. Thank you for having us. My name is Mary Kear, and I am the Vice President of the Buena Vista Residents Association. On behalf of the Board Members and all the members of residents at Buena Vista, we would like to thank you for bringing us across the finish line. We'd also like to ask you to please pass this tonight so that the Housing Authority can take possession of Buena Vista. Also, we were here, and now we are here. Thank you so much. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Bob Moss, our final speaker. Bob Moss: Thank you, Mayor Scharff and Council Members. I'm sure you're eager to be back, reading the packet every weekend and coming to the Council meetings Monday night and getting educated by the speakers from the public, like you did tonight. I'm sure you're going to enjoy the next 4 or 5 months of this. I wasn't going to comment, but I thought about Richard Brand's experience with street sweeping in Professorville. Our experience in Barron Park has been very different. I'll give you an example. Monday, this morning about 8:45 A.M., my wife and I were walking down Los Robles. The street sweeper came along, and he was sweeping the entire bike lane and into the street. When we got up by the apartments, he was sweeping along the curb until he came to where a car was parked. He'd pull out and sweep around it, and then go back in and sweep by the curb. He was sweeping. Later, we saw him go back up the other side on Los Robles, and he was doing the same thing. We didn't notice any particular problems with the street sweeper in Barron Park. It's possible that rather than being an institutional problem with the contractor, it's a question of who the individual sweeper is. It's not a bad idea to have the Staff talk to the contractor and say, "We're having a problem in this particular neighborhood. Why don't you talk to the sweeper who's in that neighborhood? Is he different than we had before? Is that our problem or do we have an institutional problem with the street sweeping?" Our experience in Barron Park has been very different than his. I would look into the individual, not the corporation at this point. Look into it anyway. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. TRANSCRIPT Page 27 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Minutes Approval 2. Approval of Action Minutes for the June 19 and June 27, 2017 Council Meetings. Mayor Scharff: Now, we come to Minutes Approval. I was tempted to say, "That concludes our Council meeting." I'll move the approval of the Minutes, if I could have a second. Vice Mayor Kniss: Second. MOTION: Mayor Scharff moved, seconded by Vice Mayor Kniss to approve the Action Minutes for the June 19 and June 27, 2017 Council Meetings. Mayor Scharff: If we could vote on the board. That passes unanimously. MOTION PASSED: 9-0 Consent Calendar Mayor Scharff: Now, we're at the Consent Calendar. I need a Motion to approve the Consent Calendar. Vice Mayor Kniss: So moved. Mayor Scharff: I have some lights. Council Member Kou. Council Member Kou: I'd like to pull the 425 Portage, which is No. 13, from the Consent Calendar. Mayor Scharff: Do we have seconds, thirds? Council Member DuBois: I'll second. MOTION: Council Member Kou moved, seconded by Council Member DuBois, third by Council Member Holman to pull Agenda Item Number 13 - 425 Portage Avenue: Approval of the Planning and Community Environment Director's Determination … to be heard on a date uncertain. Mayor Scharff: That'll be pulled out of Consent and moved to a date uncertain. On the remainder of the Consent Calendar—Council Member Holman did you have something else? Okay. On the remainder of the Consent Calendar, if I could have a Motion. Vice Mayor Kniss: So moved. Mayor Scharff: Second? TRANSCRIPT Page 28 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Council Member Filseth: Second. MOTION: Vice Mayor Kniss moved, seconded by Council Member Filseth to approve Agenda Item Numbers 3-12, 14-19. 3. Selection of Applicants to Interview on August 24, 2017 for the Storm Water Management Oversight Committee. 4. Approval of Amendment Number 2 to the Agreement Between the City of Palo Alto and Acterra to Extend the Term to 2022 and Provide Funding for First Year of $75,720. 5. Approval and Authorization for the City Manager to Execute a Master License Agreement for use of City-controlled Space on Utility Poles and Streetlight Poles, and in Conduits With Mobilitie, LLC, a Nevada Limited Liability Corporation. 6. Approval of a Contract With Alaniz Construction, Inc. in the Amount of $568,880 for the City Facility Parking Lot Maintenance Project, Capital Improvement Program Project PE-09003, and Authorization for the City Manager to Negotiate and Execute Related Change Orders Not-to- Exceed $56,880 in Total Value. 7. Approval of Contract Amendment Number 3 to Contract Number C15154454 With Integrated Design 360 for Green Building Program Management Services and Landscape Plan Review and Consulting Services for a Term Extension of one Year and Increasing Compensation for Ongoing and Approved Work With Development Services and Optional Tasks by $376,744 for a Total Not-to-Exceed Amount of $1,255,005. 8. Approval of Amendment Number 3 to Contract Number S15156222 With Golder Associates to Increase Compensation by $91,300, for a Total Not-to-Exceed Amount of $311,622, to Perform an Evaluation of Selenium Concentrations and Leachate Levels at the Palo Alto Landfill, and to Extend the Current Three-year Term by Four Months. 9. Authorize the City Manager to Execute an Amendment to Contract Number C12146667 Between the City and Van Scoyoc Associates Inc., for Federal Legislative Advocacy, to Reduce the Term by Seven Months and Reduce the Not-to-Exceed Amount by $56,000. 10. Approval of a Contract With Bauer Compressors in the Amount of $697,519 for the Purchase of Fire Fighting Self-contained Breathing Apparatus, Face Masks, Air Cylinders, Maintenance and Support TRANSCRIPT Page 29 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Equipment, and Authorize the City Manager to Negotiate and Execute Related Change Orders Not-to-Exceed $102,481. 11. Approval of Amendment Number 3 to the Agreement With the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board for Rail Shuttle Bus Administration to Extend the Term of the Agreement for one Year and to Provide an Additional $128,200 for Community Shuttle Service on the Existing Embarcadero Shuttle Route From July 2017 Until June 2018. 12. Resolution 9699 Entitled, “Resolution of the Council of the City of Palo Alto of Local Support for Grant Funding as Required by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) for the One Bay Area Grant Program (OBAG) Cycle Two and Vehicle Emissions Reductions Based at Schools (VERBS) Funding Programs.” 13. 425 Portage Avenue: Approval of the Planning and Community Environment Director's Determination to Authorize a Waiver of the Retail Preservation Ordinance. Environmental Assessment: Exempt in Accordance With the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) Section 15061(b)(3) Guidelines. 14. Approval of a Side Letter of Agreement Between the City of Palo Alto and the Palo Alto Police Management Association (PMA). 15. Policy and Services Committee Recommendation to Accept the Continuous Monitoring Audit: Payments. 16. Policy and Services Committee Recommendation to Accept the Audit of Green Purchasing Practices. 17. Policy and Services Committee Recommendation to Accept the Utilities Department: Cross Bore Inspection Contract Audit. 18. Resolution 9700 Entitled, “Resolution of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Establishing Fiscal Year 2017-18 Secured and Unsecured Property Tax Levy for the City of Palo Alto’s General Obligation Bond Indebtedness (Measure N).” 19. Policy and Services Committee Recommendation to Accept the Auditor's Office Quarterly Report as of March 31, 2017. Mayor Scharff: Let's vote on the board. We have a speaker. I apologize. On Item No. 5, Richard Brand. Come on up, Mr. Brand. Richard? We are going to move on then. Let's vote. That passes unanimously without Item—I actually forget the Number—13. TRANSCRIPT Page 30 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 MOTION PASSED: 9-0 Action Items 20. Approval of the Draft Palo Alto Transit Vision Plan and Direction to Staff to Pursue Funding for Local Shuttle Service Enhancements. Mayor Scharff: Now, we come to our Action Items. I actually wanted to reorder, if possible. Take Item 20 after we do the rest of them. The rest of them are supposed to be really short or fairly short items. I think we may have some public speakers on Item 20. I actually wanted to hear the public speakers, if we're okay with that, and then come back to this item at the end. James Keene, City Manager: Item 20 is the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) shuttle item. You will take some public comment from those that are here on that item, and then we will hold that to the last item and take the three or so shorter items. Mayor Scharff: That's correct. Do we have any speaker cards for Item No. 20? Jyllian Halliburton to be followed by Ellen Uhrbrock. Jyllian? I'm not seeing Jyllian; am I missing Jyllian? Do we have Ellen? Following Ellen, Peter Taskovich. Ellen Uhrbrock: Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm Ellen Uhrbrock, and I have lived in Palo Alto since the 1950s. I have been a member of Avenidas since the 1980s and a volunteer since 2000. I've also been a member of the Citizens Advisory Committee and on the Transportation Subcommittee. Tonight, however, I'm speaking for Avenidas and the move up to Cubberley. This is going to be a problem; Cubberley is a problem for many people. The problem is there isn't enough access to the different departments that are in Cubberley. It's part of the last mile problem. The last mile applies to your home to the bus or car, and it also applies for where the stop is and the trip to your destination. The problem with Cubberley is that too many—Avenidas is one of them—are located there, but they do not have an address in Google maps that lets the buses and Google maps give you what the last mile is. For example, you're Lyft and Uber drivers don't know where to let you off except at 4000 Middlefield when you're going to Cubberley. That may be a very long hike to wherever you're looking for, and you can't find it, and you're tired. For me, I've reached the stage where the bus stops that are there, which are VTA—there are two of them that really serve Cubberley. The walk to where Avenidas is, is longer than I can manage, so I use Lyft. I use another one called GoGo Grandparent, which I like even better. I'm not going to be able to go to Avenidas in Cubberley except if I can do Lyft. I hope I can get somebody to share the ride. It will cost me between $20 and $30 a roundtrip to go to Avenidas in Cubberley unless I can get somebody to share. I have TRANSCRIPT Page 31 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 three suggestions for us. It starts with somebody call Google maps team and get them to include all the addresses of the different organizations that have space you've rented to them at Cubberley, including Avenidas which is going to be in Building I-2, second floor. I want to be let out, of course, close enough so that I can walk from whatever brought me there to Avenidas and go to a meeting. It has to be a good one or it's not worth $20 a roundtrip for me. The second thing is in Cubberley you need better signage. When you're walking into it anywhere, it's very difficult to know where are the numbers of the different buildings. It's almost impossible to find the ladies room. I think they need better signage throughout the whole. Finally, I'm going to suggest that you expand Transportation Management Authority (TMA) to include customers and seniors. It's now limited to employees, employers, and owners. They also need to have the last mile apply to seniors who are going shopping. Seniors are customers and treat our citizens as customers. If you don't do that, then how about a task force that is joint between Avenidas and the TMA or the City Council that is a task force which tackles this problem. Offhand, I can think of six types of stakeholders in it. The first one is somebody on the Google maps team and then somebody on Lyft. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Peter Taskovich to be followed by Immanuel Cherkas. Peter Taskovich: Thank you, Mayor and City Council. My name's Peter Taskovich. I just wanted to talk briefly about the proposed plans. I think that Staff and the consultant have done a good job overall. I would encourage, though, for the south Palo Alto route that goes from the California Avenue train station to the Veterans—it was a proposal I think I made earlier—have that route extend on Page Mill Road down to El Camino and then up California Avenue. That will provide a direct connection to Route 522 of the VTA and Route 22 and also for the Dumbarton express. I think it's important that people don't have to walk 4 blocks just because they want to catch the 22 or 522 or the Dumbarton express. That slight extension going down Page Mill, up California Avenue to the train station is very important and critical for that. The other thing is funding. The priority should be the south Palo Alto route, if you have limited funding, first because that route is going away in November when VTA cancels Route 88. I think it's important to implement that by November. For the Crosstown Route, I recommend Version A because it doesn't duplicate the route of the 21, and it'll help keep the 21 ridership high, which will help keep it frequent. Otherwise, if it duplicates it, I can see the VTA discontinuing Route 21. I prefer Version A, which is more similar to what we have now for the Crosstown Route. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Immanuel Cherkas to be followed by Myra Cohen. TRANSCRIPT Page 32 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Immanuel Cherkas: Hi, I'm Immanuel Cherkas. I'm a resident of Moldaw Seniors Residences. We have over 230 seniors. It's a City Council Rail Committee (CCRC) and a 501(c)(3). Many of our residents do not drive and need transportation. We're asking for a bus stop at Fabian and East Charleston. This stop would not only serve us but also members of the Jewish Community Center (JCC), the Jewish Community Center, and low-income housing that is on Fabian and a high school. This would increase ridership by quite a bit if you added that one stop. The route goes nearby; it's about a block and a half or so away. Just adding that stop would not be that big a change but would be a big change in the ridership and the ability of the Moldaw Senior residents to have transportation and be able to get to places. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Myra Cohen to be followed by Judy Lerner. Myra Cohen: I too am a resident of Moldaw. I'm 91 years old; I have macular degeneration, and I'm great. However, I don't drive, and that's a deprivation I don't wish on anyone. We are very fortunate in Moldaw that we are provided transportation to doctors' offices, to dentists, but we can't get transportation, for example, to a bank, to a cleaner, to an alteration place. Having a bus would alleviate so many of our concerns. Taking the recommendation that was just made would be a tremendous asset to most of the old people in our place. We have a large group. I thank you for your attention. I hope you'll give it consideration. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Judy Lerner to be followed by Jyllian Halliburton. Judy Lerner: Good evening. Thank you, Mayor and Council Members. Bravo, bravo for your energy, for your vision, for everything that you do. This is my first visit. I'm a resident of the Moldaw Seniors Residences. Everything my two friends/residents said is true. We are on the corner of San Antonio and East Charleston. If you could make arrangements that we could have a stop, it would improve our lively, daily activities. We thank you if you could please do that for us. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Jyllian Halliburton to be followed by Adina Levin. Jyllian Halliburton: Thank you for your time. I came earlier to help represent Avenidas with Amy Andonian. I'm also here tonight as the transportation manager at Avenidas. I oversee the volunteer program and the transportation program there. I'm just here to encourage the stop outside of Cubberley for obvious reasons, just in terms of distance traveled obviously would be easier for seniors. I also think that the stops down by Cubberley are safer. We used to do a program with the City called Find Your Way, where we took seniors out and showed them how to use public transportation so they'd feel less TRANSCRIPT Page 33 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 intimidated by using it and feel safe. I do feel just being a resident of Palo Alto and knowing the ebb and flow of traffic in that area, the stop that's at Charleston and Middlefield would feel intimidating and unsafe to people in their 80s, crossing the traffic at that intersection there, because people tend to be driving pretty fast and not always looking when they're turning right. They'd be having to cross at those intersections. If they could just safely get out at Cubberley and then also safely walk across to go the other direction at Middlefield, that's an intersection that would just be safer. For those people who come to our center currently and who take classes and are involved with our programs, they've been advocating to us, since I'm here speaking on their behalf. They would really like to have a Cubberley stop. By having that stop, when we return to Downtown Palo Alto, we'll enable residents of the southern parts of Palo Alto as well as Mountain View residents to actually come down to Downtown and ease the parking issues when we have our new structure there. Thank you for your time. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Adina Levin to be followed by Penny Ellson. Adina Levin: Good evening, Council Members. Adina Levin, Friends of Caltrain. I wanted to commend the Staff for good community outreach, getting a lot of feedback and then thoughtful analysis of the feedback to come up with these recommendations. Just a few comments on some of the specific recommendations. First for the Crosstown Route, would strongly encourage the alternative B that, when interleaved with VTA Route 2, would provide every 15 minute service. Right now, the shuttle and the 35 almost but don't quite interleave, and that means the trip for someone wanting to take that route is pretty unpredictable in terms of time. Having a service that's every 15 minutes becomes something that many more people will choose to use. If you might have to wait for 30 minutes, you can basically get—you can get anywhere in Palo Alto within 30 minutes, so the overall ridership will be lower. On the suggestion for increasing TMA, do encourage increasing TMA coverage over time but methodically, area by area, so it can be goal-based and have really targeted programs and investments to keep it cost effective as opposed to having little mini programs sprinkled that will wind up being less overall effective at the goals. Lastly in terms of the funding sources, if the City does go ahead and choose to have paid parking, for example, in the Downtown area, that can be a useful enrichment funding source for shuttles to help fewer people need to drive. I guess version—it might also be helpful to look at what Mountain View and other cities are doing to experiment with Lyft and Uber to help people get to specific locations. Thank you. Vice Mayor Kniss: Penny Ellson, you're our last speaker. TRANSCRIPT Page 34 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Penny Ellson: I'll be quick. I'm Penny Ellson; I'm speaking as an individual because I'm no longer in the Parent Teacher Association (PTA). I do want to point out that there's no PTA representation here tonight because they don't meet over the summer. They can't comment on stuff that's done over the summer. I just want to encourage Staff to reach out to the Gunn High School Parent Teacher Student Association (PTSA). I was up at Gunn for a back to school walk and roll event last week. There were a lot of kids asking questions about the bus. Please do some outreach there. I know we have some time because VTA is going to delay their cuts to the bus and time the changes with the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) implementation. That gives Staff time to work with students. I hope that they will. Thank you. Vice Mayor Kniss: That is the last of our speakers. The Mayor has left the room just briefly. Let's go back to what we had proposed just before we finish the end of our Oral Communications, which was to hear public speakers on this Item, Number 20, and then go onto Items Number 21, 22, and 23, returning to Item 20 at the end of the evening. And 24, yes, definitely 24, don't forget that one. Mr. Keene: We'll take up Item 21, the tentative map Item. Vice Mayor Kniss: We're now moving onto Item Number 21. AT THIS TIME COUNCIL HEARD AGENDA ITEM NUMBERS 21-24. 21. PUBLIC HEARING/QUASI JUDICIAL 3972, 3980 and 3990 El Camino Real [17PLN-00197]: Request by the Housing Authority of Santa Clara County for a Tentative Map for a 6.19 Acre Site That Includes the Buena Vista Mobile Home Park Site (3980 El Camino Real) and two Adjacent Commercial Properties (3972 and 3990 El Camino Real), for lot Reconfiguration and lot Line Removals to Reduce Five Parcels to Three Parcels, and Provide Access and Utilities Easements. The Three new Parcels Will be: (1) Parcel 1, at 4.5 Acres, Zoned RM-15 for Multiple Family Residential Use (Buena Vista Mobile Home Park); (2) Parcel 2 at 1.0 Acre, Zoned CN for Neighborhood Commercial Use (Existing Retail Building); and (3) Parcel 3 at 0.7 Acres, Zoned CN (Existing Gas Station Site) and RM-15 (0.41 Acre Rear Portion Supporting More Than Eight Buena Vista Park Studios/Modular Units). The 0.41 Acre Residential Portion Would be Leased to the Housing Authority for up to Three Years, Allowing Tenants to Remain Until They can be Accommodated on Parcel 1. On July 12, 2017, the Planning & Transportation Commission Recommended Approval of the Tentative Map. Mayor Scharff: We're getting a Staff Report, that's what we're doing? TRANSCRIPT Page 35 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Vice Mayor Kniss: Yes, we are. Hillary Gitelman, Planning and Community Environment Director: Good evening, Council Members. Hillary Gitelman, the Planning Director. It's nice to see you all again. While the presentation—there it is. That was quick. First, I wanted to introduce Amy French, who's going to present this item. We have a magnificent total of four or five slides to introduce this topic. I wanted to particularly thank Amy for her fast work on this Tentative Map. It normally takes probably three or four times longer than it's taken Amy to process this application because we knew how critical it was to hit the September 1st close date that the Housing Authority wants to close on the property. Amy's done a terrific job over the Council break to get this teed up for you. I'll let her present. Amy French, Chief Planning Official: Amy French, Chief Planning Official. I have before you a few slides showing the context. You're all aware the mobile home park and the adjacent commercial uses, gas station and commercial building. The streets are Los Robles and El Camino. The zoning is RM-15 for the residential portion and CN for the commercial portion. Here is the proposed Tentative Map. There are three parcels proposed, and there are easements as indicated. The easements are from El Camino Real to get to the park and from Los Robles adjacent to the commercial building. The existing entrance to the park is farther down Los Robles. The good news is we're preserving housing. We're allowing for the Housing Authority to take over ownership as of September 1st following recordation of the Final Map. The Final Map is scheduled for your review next week on Consent Calendar. We're looking forward to seeing some Code compliance concerns resolved following the ownership transfer. One of these items to take place prior to recordation is the relocation of two coaches to make way for these new parcel lines. That's going forward. The Housing Authority can proceed with those prior to recordation. That's our presentation. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. We have one public speaker, Winter Dellenbach. Public Hearing opened at 8:21 P.M. Winter Dellenbach: Winter Dellenbach, Barron Park. I just want to say here we are at the end of a really long road, as you all know. Thank you so much for your participation, the City's participation, and Staff. I'm really thrilled to be here representing Friends of Buena Vista. This is the big—I feel like we're handing over the baton to the next generation. I know you'll do the right thing tonight. Nothing could be more of—it's such a cliché—win/win/win/win for the Jissers, for the residents of Buena Vista, for my neighborhood. I know you'll bring this in, and we can call this pretty much a conclusion. Thank you TRANSCRIPT Page 36 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 for all the cooperation and the gumption that you have shown through the years. I know sometimes it's been painful for the City, but I also know at other times it's been a delight for the City to be associated with the struggle at Buena Vista. Thank you to the residents and to the Housing Authority for being willing to lay it on the line and to take on Buena Vista. We did this together, the City and Stanford and the people in this community. Thank you very much. We will see you down the road at the Posada and at Buena Vista for years to come. Thank you. Public Hearing closed at 8:24 P.M. Vice Mayor Kniss: Winter, come back for just a minute. I don't know if we've acknowledged in public yet your wonderful win of the Tall Tree award. Much of it has to do with just what you had to do with Buena Vista. I know everybody thanks you. Great job. You did a terrific speech that night as well. Ms. Dellenbach: Thank you. I'm glad you liked my speech. Thank you. Ms. Gitelman: Mr. Mayor, I think there is a representative of the applicant, the Housing Authority, who wishes to speak. Mayor Scharff: I didn't see a speaker card. Did you fill out one? Katherine Harasz, Housing Authority of Santa Clara County Executive Director: No, but I can if you'd like me to. Mayor Scharff: It's fine. Just check with the Clerk in case we need one. It's unclear to me. Ms. Harasz: I'll do that. I'm Katherine Harasz. I'm the Executive Director of the Santa Clara County Housing Authority, and I wanted to echo thanks to the Planning, Public Works, and Building Staff for their very efficient processing of this application. Our hope is to achieve our main objective, which is to be able to purchase the property, separate the commercial from the residential uses. We know there are a few things left on our list to do, and we believe at this moment in time that we're going to be able to accomplish them prior to the recording of the Map. If there are any hiccups, we will certainly reach out immediately to Amy French. Thank you very much. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. I did just want to thank our friends from Buena Vista for coming out tonight and speaking. I do like the new shirts; the new shirts are a much improvement. Congratulations. Vice Mayor Kniss: I was hoping there'd be music. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Filseth. TRANSCRIPT Page 37 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Council Member Filseth: Thanks. I think we're all delighted to see this process reaching its conclusion. In the spirit of crossing “T’s” and dotting “I’s”, resident Herb Borock sent us a letter regarding Conditions of Approval from Utilities and Public Works that needed to be part of the Final Map submittal. Does Staff have any comment on that? Ms. French: Yes, we did see that comment from Mr. Borock late today and looked through what he was saying. His basic question is what's the real reason we're going so quickly. That's, as you know, to make sure that the acquisition goes forward in a timely manner, on their timeline. The other thing is just looking and seeing what he was talking about. He didn't catch all of the comments that came after the comments he was looking at. We're good to go with the Record of Land Use Action (ROLUA). The requirement to remove those coaches is in there, in the planning condition. The other conditions are noted variously. Council Member Filseth: Thanks. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: I know we've got a busy agenda. If it's all right with the Mayor, I'd like to make a Motion. Mayor Scharff: It's fine. Council Member Wolbach: I'd like to move that the Council approve the proposed Tentative Map based on findings and with conditions of approval as reflected in the attached Record of Land Use Action, Attachment B of the Staff Report. Vice Mayor Kniss: Second. MOTION: Council Member Wolbach moved, seconded by Vice Mayor Kniss to approve the proposed Tentative Map based on findings and with Conditions of Approval as reflected in the Record of Land Use Action. Mayor Scharff: Vice Mayor Kniss, you seconded it. Vice Mayor Kniss: I did. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach, would you like to speak to your Motion? Council Member Wolbach: It's about time. Mayor Scharff: Very dramatic. TRANSCRIPT Page 38 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Vice Mayor Kniss: I could add nothing to that. It is about time. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: It's been a long time coming. Great things are worth waiting for. Really appreciate all the endurance and stability and grace with which the residents have gone through this process. Thanks to the Housing Authority, Caritas, City Staff, Council Member colleagues, and Winter Dellenbach for helping proceed to this outcome. Mayor Scharff: Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: I'm happy we're here as well. I had a quick question. The easement in the front, will that ensure car access from El Camino into the park? Ms. French: Yes. Council Member DuBois: That will be ongoing? Ms. French: Ongoing. Council Member DuBois: The second question I have probably happens after tonight. Is there a plan to come back and rezone the area as mobile home park? We have a mobile home park zone. We didn't use it in the past, and that was part of the issue. Ms. Gitelman: We don't currently have any proposal or any thought of rezoning the site for anything. At some future date, the owners of the various parcels could propose rezoning, but we'd have to evaluate that if and when those proposals came forward. I think the Housing Authority is going to engage with the residents over the next 6 months or so to really figure out what their future plans are for the site and what changes need to be made. Until that process has a chance to be completed, we're not aware of any proposal to rezone. Council Member DuBois: That's not something the City would do proactively? Ms. Gitelman: We haven't discussed that. Council Member DuBois: I guess I'll make a friendly Amendment, which would be to have Staff evaluate the rezoning of the appropriate areas to mobile home park and maybe discuss it with the Housing Authority and return to Council at some future date. Council Member Wolbach: I will not accept that Amendment. TRANSCRIPT Page 39 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Molly Stump, City Attorney: Mr. Mayor, maybe I can make a comment just for a point of information. This initial piece has to do with the lot lines and a new Map for the site. Concurrently, there are other processes that are underway. The County, the City, and the Housing Authority for the larger parcel, which is where the body of the folks will live now and will remain, there's a regulatory agreement that's being drafted, that will involve lots of restrictions on how the property can be used and how the Housing Authority needs to maintain it. It's in the spirit of the letter of agreement that the Council adopted with the County and the Housing Authority and have charged the City Manager with implementing. There will be restrictive covenants in that document that maybe that's the first step in understanding what is the nearer-term future and what are the legal requirements for the site. Perhaps, we could hold off on additional to-do items pending … Council Member DuBois: Thank you for clarifying, City Attorney. I guess for the person from the Housing Authority, we do have a mobile home park zone. It may or may not be appropriate, but it's just something for you to be aware of as we go through the definitive agreement. The same thing to Caritas and Buena Vista. If we had had this zoning in place, we would have had a much quicker discussion in terms of this transition we're going through. AMENDMENT: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Council Member XX to add to the Motion, “direct Staff to explore re-zoning the area to Mobile Home Park and discuss this topic with the Santa Clara County Housing Authority.” Ms. Harasz: We'll certainly take that into account. Thank you. AMENDMENT WITHDRAWN BY THE MAKER Mayor Scharff: Vice Mayor Kniss. Vice Mayor Kniss: Just a couple of questions for the City Attorney. At the end of the day, who actually owns the property? Ms. Stump: I think the Housing Authority Director wants to speak to that. Ms. Harasz: The Housing Authority is going to own the property, but we can't own it until it's subdivided into a legal parcel that we can take title to. The Housing Authority will own the property. Actually, a nonprofit corporation, which we created, is going to take title to the property, Poco Way Housing Development Corporation (HDC) Incorporated, but it's us. Vice Mayor Kniss: I assumed the same. Secondly, as it is in Palo Alto, I'm going to presume that Palo Alto rules, zoning, so forth, will apply. Correct? TRANSCRIPT Page 40 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Ms. Stump: That's correct. The agreement between Palo Alto, the County, and the Housing Authority will be very specific that any future development, should there be an initiative, will have to go through Palo Alto's processes. Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you for being here. Mayor Scharff: I just wanted to thank the Housing Authority and Joe Simitian and fellow Council Members and Buena Vista and Winter Dellenbach and others who worked so hard on this as well as our Staff. I know our Legal Department put a lot of time and effort into this. In fact, I think our Legal Department worked really hard on this. It was a long process. I know Planning put a lot of effort into it. I just wanted to say I think this was a really long struggle and a process, and thank God we had a really great outcome. I just wanted to thank everyone that participated in it. Let's vote on the board. That passes 9-0. Thank you very much for coming. MOTION PASSED: 9-0 Mayor Scharff: Our next item is Item Number 22. Let's talk about janitorial services. Do we have a Staff presentation? 22. Approval of a Five-year General Services Agreement With SWA Services Group in the Amount of $10,652,615 for Janitorial Services and Approval of a Budget Amendment in the General Fund. James Keene, City Manager: No. A little bit, John? Come on up here, John Hospitalier and Mike Wong. We'll talk trash. If I might say something just as far as an intro here. This is really typically an item that we would put on Consent. We really brought it to the Council on Action just for three reasons. One is it's a significant dollar amount. That's less the point than the fact that we also used some evaluation criteria that selected who we thought was the most responsive respondent, and not necessarily just the lowest price piece of it. Third, in some ways I thought just because we also have a new Council. We've got three new members of the Council. It might just provide an easier opportunity to understand a little bit of the ins and outs of our procurement process or to be able to answer questions if the Council had them rather than forcing you to pull an item off of Consent. With that being said, I'll turn it over to John, you guys. John Hospitalier, Public Works Assistant Director: Thanks, Jim. Mr. Keene: We're here to answer questions. Mr. Hospitalier: John Hospitalier, Assistant Director of Public Works, Public Services Division. I'm actually here just to tee it up for Michael Wong. I'd TRANSCRIPT Page 41 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 like to present Michael Wong; he's our Facilities Manager. I want to commend him on his Staff Report that he provided you. Mike's responsible for all of the information that you had before you in order for you to make an informed decision. It was very detailed and a high-level look at what we need here at Palo Alto in order to keep our facilities clean and maintained. With that, I'll hand it over to you, if you have any questions. Mike's here, and we also have a representative from SWA if you have questions for them. Mayor Scharff: I don't see any public speakers. I just wanted to confirm. Council Member Filseth. Council Member Filseth: Thanks. What are we paying now per year for these services? Mike Wong, Facilities Manager: We pay $3.5 million over a 5 year contract. Council Member Filseth: $3.5 million over a 5 year contract. $700,000 a year. We're going to go from $700,000 to $1.9 million? Mr. Wong: Correct. Council Member Filseth: Per year? It seems like a big jump. Mr. Wong: It is a big jump. Part of the problems that we've had in the past is with contractors underbidding and undervaluing the contract. Council Member Filseth: I saw that in the Staff Report. How much did we budget for these services when we did the Fiscal Year (FY) '18 Budget 2 months ago, per year? Mr. Keene: I don't remember the exact amount. We knew that there was this dramatic increase, so we'd essentially built in the funding anticipating the fact that we knew we were going to have a jump of this magnitude. Council Member Filseth: If we built it in, why are we asking for a $1.2 million Budget Amendment? Mr. Keene: I think we identified that to the Council when we were talking about the budget itself, that this was one of the outstanding issues that we saw coming to you afterwards. I don't mean to say you don't need to take an action, but we had anticipated this was going to be coming. Council Member Filseth: This is … Mr. Keene: We didn't want to actually say appropriate it before you've actually awarded the contract. TRANSCRIPT Page 42 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Council Member Filseth: This is an annual thing, so it's $1.2 million a year over the life of the contract basically. Mr. Wong: There are some slight increases each year. Mr. Keene: If I could intercept just for a second. I would just say from somebody who is in City Hall, this is not empirical. This is experiential. I would just say that we've had really poor service, without a question. Council Member Filseth: I understand. I assume that the existing provider is none of the three on the list here. Is that an accurate statement? Mr. Wong: Correct. Council Member Filseth: Thanks. Mayor Scharff: Seeing no other lights, I'm going to ask a question then. It is troubling to go from $750,000 to $1.9 million with increases on that. I guess I'd just ask the question is it worth the better service. There are a lot of other services you can provide in Palo Alto for $1.2 million. If we went out and rebid this contract, would we get different bids? It's really a dramatic increase. Mr. Wong: It's a very challenging contract. If you go out, as stated in the Staff Report, we only received three bids. What would be different if we went out to bid? You might get no bids. Mayor Scharff: What happened to the existing provider? They didn't provide a service you were happy with, but I didn't find City Hall to be dirty. Mr. Wong: They are losing money. Mayor Scharff: They're out of business? Mr. Wong: No. They just bid this contract incorrectly. Mayor Scharff: They didn't rebid it when we went out? Mr. Wong: No. They're not interested. We're a very complex account. Mayor Scharff: In the previous years, who did it previously? Mr. Wong: Two much smaller companies. Mayor Scharff: They also lost money on it and chose not to continue? TRANSCRIPT Page 43 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Mr. Wong: Yeah. They couldn't compete either. It's just a difficult account to manage. It's a large account, as you can see, that requires—for a city of our size to require a Staff of 33 is pretty big. Mr. Hospitalier: One of the challenges is that we don't have cookie cutter buildings that we service. Obviously, you're familiar with Mitchell Park Community Center. We have large facilities like that and City Hall, and then we also service smaller facilities like park restrooms. The big challenge is the transportation time for the Staff, to get them out there, do the job, and then move on to the next site. If we were like a Google or a Microsoft and we had rows of buildings all on the same site, it would be a little more economical for us. Mayor Scharff: Have we ever considered breaking it up so that smaller companies do some of the smaller buildings and a larger company does some of the larger buildings? If there are not economies of scale because of transportation, does breaking it up make sense? Did we consider that? Mr. Wong: It'd be more challenging to manage more contractors plus the City requires a performance bond. Many small companies can't afford that. Mayor Scharff: If we would require a smaller performance bond if we're doing smaller buildings like the parks and rec—I realize it's more challenging on Staff. We could get by with an extra Staff member for $1.2 million a year. Mr. Wong: I'm not sure that it would actually be any cheaper. I think what you're looking at is—because you're focusing on what we've paid previously, if the contract was bid correctly 5 years ago, it would probably be at $6 million. We did receive bids at $6 million. We received several bids around $3 1/2 million, which we felt were too low. We brought in the contractors and interviewed them and asked them to double check their prices because we felt it was too low and that they would be losing money. In fact, there was a contractor who was actually selected over the existing contractor, but they withdrew their bid, realizing they made a serious mistake in their pricing. Mayor Scharff: Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: Hi. I appreciate the Staff Report. Thank you for putting that together. You started to explain my main questions, which is understanding why Palo Alto is different. I'd like to hear a little bit more about that. When I looked at it, I was really looking at us compared to Mountain View. I understand it's the same vendor selected that does Mountain View. Mountain View's a larger city than we are, and they're paying less. Why does that happen? TRANSCRIPT Page 44 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Mr. Keene: Can I just jump in? I think if we look at the comparison, they're really in my view quite similar between Palo Alto and Mountain View. Actually, they're a larger city, but they're a smaller city as relates to their government, their number of buildings, whatever. We've got 43 buildings; they have 26. We have almost 700,000 square feet; they've got 365. We've got twice the square footage. Their price is $1 million; we're going to pay $1.9 million. On a per square foot price, it's really a similar price. We basically have twice the number of contract employees under this contract as they have. It's proportionate in my view. Council Member DuBois: Is that how people look at it, price per square foot? Mr. Keene: That is one factor, but I do think the variety we have is another dimension. Mr. Wong: That's a common mistake that many contractors make when they bid on the project. They try to use the easy way out—that's what I say—with a generic cost per square foot. That may work if you're doing a typical office building that just has offices and some restrooms. When you start servicing city facilities, especially the ones in Palo Alto which have a large infrastructure and many different types of facilities from junior museums to art centers to libraries to parking lots and parking garages, then the mix is quite different, and shop space and things like that. In the comparison with Mountain View, we probably come out a little ahead because their contract does not include supply cost, which is $9,000-$10,000 a month for us, and window washing either. Council Member DuBois: You said we're a complex account. Are there things that are in our control, that we could be less complex? Mr. Wong: It's just the large infrastructure that we have. People just look at the size of the City itself. They don't typically look at the amount of building infrastructure we have. The number of buildings and the square footage that is on this table doesn't reflect actually all our buildings and all our square footage. This is only the buildings and the square footage that this contract is responsible for cleaning. In terms of a facilities maintenance standpoint, we have a higher number of buildings and more square footage. Council Member DuBois: Somewhere it mentioned the quality of service. I wondered if you guys considered varying that quality based on the building type. Are there some buildings that could be cleaned less frequently? Are there ways we could save costs? Mr. Wong: That's already factored in. When we look at some of our newer, remodeled facilities, which are nicer and have nicer amenities and finishes, I TRANSCRIPT Page 45 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 always say even in residential housing the fancier finishes that you put in, the higher maintenance it requires. In keeping up with the expectations of the customers, the Library patrons, the City Hall users, the City Staff, when you have nicer amenities and finishes, the expectation is to keep it up. Council Member DuBois: Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Tanaka. Council Member Tanaka: I too also find this a little bit troubling in terms of the increase from the previous contract. I actually agree with what the Mayor was saying about maybe breaking up the bid into multiple pieces to get a more competitive bid versus trying to have just one big bid. I guess one question I wanted to know from you is typically how many bids do we get for this kind of service. How many bids did we get last time? This one only got three; I understand that. What about last time? Mr. Wong: I think last time we had 11 people that had six bids. I think I have that somewhere. We had six. Council Member Tanaka: Why did we get half the number of bids this time? Was the time window different or did we have (crosstalk)? Mr. Wong: No. It's just how the market is. We had, I believe, 27 people look at the bid, but only six attended the pre-bid conference, and only three bid, actually submitted a bid. Council Member Tanaka: Why wasn't Uniserve chosen? Mr. Wong: There was a couple of reasons. When you ask why aren't we going with more competitive bids, whether you bid it out to one contractor or several or split up the account, as is being suggested, part of the problem is what the contractors are paying the employees. We're having problems with recruitment and retention at paying employees anything less than $15 an hour. It's difficult to hire; it's difficult to retain. We have … Council Member Tanaka: If you go with a smaller provider, you give small business a chance. If you only go for the big providers … Mr. Wong: We had those type of suppliers the first couple of contracts. Council Member Tanaka: On this time, was the time window different in terms of giving vendors time to bid on this project versus last time? I'm just trying to understand. Mr. Wong: No, it's a pretty standard process for us. TRANSCRIPT Page 46 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Council Member Tanaka: I got a number back, because I asked the quality difference between these different vendors. I got a numeric number back, and I didn't quite understand what that meant in terms of—what does that mean in terms of service? Mr. Keene: Which numbers? Mr. Wong: I asked the question … Mr. Keene: It's the coefficient score on the net score and the rankings of them. You have different criteria that are involved, and they all roll up into that number. Mr. Wong: There's a weighting criteria based on quality of proposal and costs. Historically in the past, the biggest factor has been cost, trying to get the most competitive bid and the lowest prices. That's when we experience performance problems. Council Member Tanaka: What would our previous vendor have been? What score would our previous vendor have been if we used the same criteria? Mr. Wong: If we use the same criteria today? Mr. Keene: We wouldn't be in a position to be able to do that comparison. Council Member Tanaka: I'm just trying to understand. If the previous vendor was really, really low, even below Uniserve, then Uniserve might be pretty good. It's all relative. That's what I'm trying to understand. I'm trying to understand the quality difference or performance difference. Mr. Wong: You asked about Uniserve and how they compared. Uniserve is a company based out of Los Angeles, as you read in the Council packet. They don't really have a local account in this area except for FedEx in Oakland. They don't have any experience with the local labor force, and we don't really feel they understand the local employment market because they are proposing to pay their employees $12 an hour, which is where we are having problems recruiting and retaining good employees. They also only differentiate their utility workers and custodians with a pay difference of 25¢ when typically in the market it's a $3-$4 difference. They also only differentiate their pay between a custodian and a lead custodian at 25¢ an hour, which in the market is typically $2-$3 an hour. There's also no local accounts to pull from if they need backup equipment, staffing, or management. Council Member Tanaka: The issue is that you're dipping into a Budget Stabilization Reserve (BSR) though. TRANSCRIPT Page 47 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Mr. Wong: Excuse me? Council Member Tanaka: This is dipping into our Budget Stabilization Reserve. Mr. Wong: I'll defer to Jim on that. Council Member Tanaka: That (inaudible) brought up. For me, I would be in favor of either putting this out for rebid, maybe using the Mayor's suggestion of opening it up to even smaller vendors and breaking up the bid, or going with Uniserve. Mr. Keene: I don't think we are really in a position to do that latter direction to us. We have a procurement process and a process to do that evaluation that has really been delegated to the Staff, and we have done that. I guess technically the Council could say they want us to reject all of those and go out again. Then, we would need some very specific criteria from you all as to what the evaluation factors will be. Secondly, I don't know who's going to be doing our contract during this period of time. Mayor Scharff: Since this is on the Action Agenda, what's the policy decision Council is supposed to be making? Ms. Stump: Council approves contracts over a certain dollar amount. Whether you do that on Consent or you do it on Action, those are Council approvals. You can approve them. On rare occasions, Council does not approve a contract that's brought forward. The process is a little bit delicate, though, in terms of the respective roles. Council should not re-score in this process. Rather, if you wish not to approve the contract, you can give direction to, for example, break up the contract, not do this line of work, bring it in-house, prioritize different things in terms of the solicitation that the Staff will send out. Is that helpful? Mayor Scharff: Yes, it's very helpful. The policy direction then is we either approve the contract or we give direction to go out and rebid under specific things, either break the contract up or just rebid it. That's the choice. You can't say you want to go with the lower bidder. I just wanted to clarify what that was. Do you have more, Council Member Tanaka? Are you finished? Council Member Tanaka: I guess just in terms of process, it sounds like we have a gun held to our head right now in terms of approve this contract. Otherwise, use the janitorial service, which to me doesn't seem like the right kind of process. This is a substantial increase over the last bid. This is our taxpayer dollars that we're spending. I think we need to—this is not a small amount. We're talking about $10 million; it's a substantial amount of money. There's such a large deviation from what had happened before, it would have TRANSCRIPT Page 48 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 been prudent perhaps to alert us sooner. Now, I feel like we have very little choice. If I was to vote, I would vote against approving this. Mayor Scharff: You will get to vote. I promise. You wanted to speak? Mr. Wong: I'd like to make one additional comment. We've done our homework. We've done a lot of benchmarking to show that we are competitive. We've done a lot of benchmarking with other local agencies and private sector. I'd like to share some of that with you. The City of Mountain View is currently at $15.60 an hour. The City of Menlo Park faces the same challenges. They currently pay $15 an hour. Because they face the same challenges with us, they feel it's still not enough. In their next contract, they're going to be increasing the hourly rate for the custodians. The City of Los Altos is at $14 an hour. The City of San Jose actually has a living wage that they incorporated in 1998. They actually require a living wage that gets adjusted each year, health benefits, and 12 days paid time off. They're at $21 an hour. One of the sections of Stanford is paying $15.60 an hour right now. Varian Medical Systems in Palo Alto is paying $17-$20 an hour. Facebook Menlo Park is paying $15-$18 an hour. In benchmarking with our colleagues and other agencies, we're going to be paying $15. We are faced with the same problems, the same challenges. Some of the cities use smaller contractors as well. We all face the same problems with recruitment and retention. The owner of SWA is sitting behind me, and he can answer your questions to show which way the industry is driving the market and to support that this is the rate we need to be at to bring in the type of service levels we need. Our expectations to the bidders was we need a certain level of service at the City, and we need to overcome our challenges with recruitment and retention of employees, how are we going to get there. SWA knows the market very well, and they said, "This is how much we've got to pay." That's how they bid. That's how they came up with their pricing. They knew that in order to meet our expectations and the scope of services they would need to bring in employees at a rate of $15 an hour. They pay more than that. They actually tried to be competitive and win this bid by going to the lower range of what they pay their employees. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Fine. Council Member Fine: Thank you. Thank you for bringing this before us. A couple of quick questions. In the Staff Report, it said a number of contract performance standards had not been met. Could you highlight some of those for us? What were the standards that weren't met by our previous contractors? TRANSCRIPT Page 49 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Mr. Wong: I'll speak to the point of recruitment and retention of employees. There's a high turnover. We've had employees who don't show up to work. We've had employees who were putting gang graffiti in the City. We've had employees stealing City property. We've had people drunk at work. We've had people living on City property. We've had someone arrested because they tried to break their son out of Juvenile Hall. We've had numerous vehicle stops by the Palo Alto Police of the custodial Staff. Numerous problems. Council Member Fine: I guess I would agree with my fellow Council Member Tanaka. It would have been nice to hear about this earlier. I'm surprised our fellows in the press haven't covered this as much. The second question, of the price differential between some of these bidders, how much is it due to the wage difference actually? It looked like part of the thing here, as we were discussing, some folks are paying $12 or $13. If we wanted to peg to our minimum wage of $15, there's this increase. I'm wondering of the difference between this bidder, SWA, and the second closest, how much is due to the wage difference? That may be a bit more work than you can answer right now. Mr. Wong: Some of it's due to the wage difference, the hourly rate, plus whether they offer health benefits and paid time off, and then the overhead and profit factors in. The high bidder only pays $13.50, but they're the high bidder at $13 million, which tells you that their overhead and profit margin is higher. Council Member Fine: Do we know how much higher than the other outfits? Is SWA's profit margin …? Mr. Wong: I can let the owner of SWA speak to that. They're very transparent in their numbers. They have a low overhead and profit rate. They invest in the employee obviously because they have a lower bid than the third bidder. They recognize the importance of attracting and retaining employees by offering a higher … Council Member Fine: Have we required the profit factors to be disclosed in each of the Request for Proposals (RFP)? Mr. Wong: No. Council Member Fine: Just a comment there. That's something I've seen some other agencies do. Maybe it's something Palo Alto should consider. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman. TRANSCRIPT Page 50 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Council Member Holman: I have some of the same questions and concerns as others do. As many know, I'm not really crazy about Budget Amendment Ordinances (BAO), especially this close to the time that we approved the Budget. This is actually, I think, our first meeting since we approved the Budget. I think we approved it at the very last meeting, if not the next to last meeting, before we took recess. We do have, as Council Member Tanaka said, a gun to our heads because it looks like this current contract expires September 1st. Not happy at all with that process either. I have questions about—comments were made about if you have buildings that have nicer finishes, they get more attention, I guess you should say. Who makes that determination? If we have Mitchell Park Library, is that being compared to Lucie Stern? Who makes that determination? Mr. Wong: The customers and the directors of the departments. It's based on usage as well. You look at the number of users per facility. The libraries are very high. We look at how dirty the facility is throughout the day and whether … Council Member Holman: How what? I'm sorry. Mr. Wong: How dirty it gets during the day based on usage. Council Member Holman: Does Lucie Stern, because of its high usage, get the same attention as Mitchell Park? Mr. Wong: Which facility at Lucie Stern are you referring to? Council Member Holman: The ballroom, the meeting rooms there, the theater. All those bring in revenue, and they get a lot of usage. Thousands of people use that facility a year. Mr. Wong: Most City facilities are serviced once a day, and it's generally in the evening. City Hall and the libraries are areas we're actually increasing service due to complaints. Council Member Holman: I'm not quite sure I'm getting an answer to my question. If a building that's new and has nicer finishes, if I heard your comments correctly, gets greater attention—because somebody visits a facility once a day doesn't say what kind of service they get. Mr. Keene: I don't want to get into this level of—I appreciate the comment. I think it was a more general point that Mike was saying. Clearly, when we've made new investments, people are quite concerned about we want to make sure we're keeping these things up. I think it's much more appropriate to think about what's the difference between doing work at the Municipal Service TRANSCRIPT Page 51 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Center in the yard there and at Mitchell Park Library. Clearly, there's big differences between those type of facilities. Lucie Stern is as much of a jewel as Mitchell Park Library is. Its facilities probably have their own requirements as to what it takes to keep them looking well. To get that old wood to look good and those sort of things requires a different approach than it does when we've got Formica tops or whatever it is at a Library. I think the point is more there's a lot of variety and diversity. Council Member Holman: Yes, I understand that, but it's like the response prompted the question. Speaking to breaking up the contract, are there not companies that specialize in, say, parking garages? Mr. Wong: I can't say there is. There are people who do pressure washing of parking garages. The number of garages we have would be so small that the contract would be very small for just cleaning parking garages. Cleaning parking garages is actually one of the least desirable types of spaces to clean because of the type of messes that they need to clean. We've had custodians quit the first day on the job because they might be used to cleaning office space and then they come across what they need to clean in parking garage is quite surprising. Council Member Holman: I'm not surprised at that. That's why I was asking the question. Aren't there companies that probably deal with just parking garages because they understand what they're going to be encountering probably? Mr. Wong: There are not any companies that I am aware of. Council Member Holman: You mentioned some of the issues with the current contractor. We've had concerns with at least one other company that we had a contract with. Some of the issues that raise are a bit concerning. Do we have a requirement or can we have a requirement that the cleaning contractor does background checks of their employees? Mr. Wong: We do. We require a Department of Justice (DOJ) background check, but these things happen after they pass the background check. Council Member Holman: You mean the employees, even though they passed the background check, then they deviate? Not employees who were hired after the background check. Mr. Wong: Right. I'd like to speak to your point about cleaning standards. The City requires a custodial cleaning standard Level 2, which is ordinary tidiness. That's how we set the standard for each facility. If we go below that, if we see it go below Level 2 standards, then we need to think about do TRANSCRIPT Page 52 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 we need to service this area more frequently based on use. That was my example. The Library Director and the Library Managers at each branch have noticed the high number of patrons that they get, that are dirtying their facility much sooner, and not being able to meet that requirement with once a night service. They've actually been requesting from us service during the day to keep that standard up. Council Member Holman: Does the current contract actually expire at the end of this month because you want this contract to commence September 1st? Mr. Wong: That is correct. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach, did you … Council Member Wolbach: No. Mayor Scharff: You don't want to speak. I have a couple of things. First of all, Mike and John, I wanted to say I really thought your Staff presentation was great. I thought it was challenging Council questions. You guys did a great job. You're the President of SWA? Solomon Wong, SWA Chief Executive Officer: Yes, I am. Mayor Scharff: If you just want to introduce yourself and say hi, since you're here. Mr. Solomon Wong: Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council Members. My name is Solomon Wong. I'm also Palo Alto resident. I'm the principal of SWS Services Group. I'm here if you have any question; I'm more than happy to answer. Maybe what I start with a couple of comment that I hear earlier that I'd like to make. Number one is that the market when you compare— currently we serve City of Mountain View. To compare apple with apple, City of Mountain View, the park are served by the park ranger. We are not involved in serving the park. When you do a comparison, it's not the same comparison. The other part is that we also went through the process with City of Mountain View about a year and a half ago regarding the pay wage increase. Actually, the contract went up almost close to 50 percent compared to originally when we bid the job. The requirement was the City Council wanted to pay employee at a certain level of pay wage. It's very challenging of living in the Silicon Valley and paying a janitor at $11 or $12 an hour. We did (inaudible) to the union pay scale but not union. The union pay scale right now is about $15.60, and we pay at $15. We also want to make sure that consistency service, and retention is very important even though the pay scale is not as close to where it should be. We provide benefit, health and medical benefit, etc., to support the consistency of the employee. I hope I answer some of the concern of TRANSCRIPT Page 53 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 question that you have. The other comment I'd like to make is also transparency. We are very transparent. When I put this bid together, we have power with Payroll Tax, workers' comp. I laid it all out. It's available for facility or City to look at. My margin is 2 percent profit and 2 percent GNA. That what I bid on the job. Mayor Scharff: Thank you very much. I did have one small technical question. The landfill office and toll booth, do we still have a landfill office and toll booth? We closed the landfill. Mr. Solomon Wong: There are ongoing services, but we still have offices there. For tradition, we still call it the landfill. Mayor Scharff: I'll make the Motion that we approve the contract. Council Member Kou: Second. MOTION: Mayor Scharff moved, seconded by Council Member Kou to: A. Approve and authorize the City Manager or his designee to execute a General Services Agreement in an amount not to exceed $10,652,615 with SWA Services Group for janitorial services for a term of five years effective September 1, 2017, ending August 31, 2022; including $10,145,347 for Basic Services and $507,268 for Additional Services; and B. Amend the Fiscal Year 2018 Budget Appropriation Ordinance for the General Fund by: i. Decreasing the FY 2018 Operations Reserve in Non-departmental by $500,000; and ii. Decreasing the General Fund Budget Stabilization Reserve by $753,463; and iii. Increasing the appropriation for the Public Works Department by $1,253,463. Mayor Scharff: I don't think I need to speak further to it. Can you speak further to it? Do you want to speak, Council Member Kou or Council Member Wolbach? Who was the second? Vice Mayor Kniss: (Crosstalk) was second. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Kou, did you second? TRANSCRIPT Page 54 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Council Member Kou: I did (inaudible). Mayor Scharff: I'm happy to let you second. Go ahead. Vice Mayor Kniss: I think it's important to have a lot of seconds. Mayor Scharff: If you're not going to speak—you don't have to. You want to speak. Council Member Kou: Just a little bit. Mayor Scharff: Go for it. Council Member Kou: I just want to say that, first, City Manager, thank you for bringing this and helping the new Council Members understand this and also for your presentation. I do appreciate—I want to acknowledge that our current janitors, what you had presented, whether their bid was under, definitely we want to see something that is at market. What I mostly appreciate about this SWA is that they do invest in their employees. Just the fact over here that they have health benefits and vacation and holiday pay, it's just really something that shows employees that they're appreciated. Thank you for that. That's why I'm supporting this recommendation. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: Actually I just wanted to echo the comments by the Mayor. I thought that Staff did a great job with the Staff Report. I appreciate taking the time to answer all the questions and address the concerns of Council. I had a lot of questions that were already asked by my colleagues. I appreciate the responses and clarity and transparency both from the future contractor and also from Staff about this. Obviously, it is a lot of money, but clearly we have a former contractor that underbid, very substandard service. We need to pay people at the minimum wage that we've established. As a City, it is for all employers in the City; we need to lead by example on that. We're looking forward to having better service. We're paying more; hopefully we'll get what we paid for. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Filseth. Council Member Filseth: I'm going to support this. Staff's done a thorough job on it. I want to thank Mr. Wong for joining us tonight. I think the basic issue that we're grappling with here is how do we continue to afford the level of service that we want. We want better service than we've had. Just to reiterate, they shouldn't be surprised. For all the stuff we went through before the break, the upward pressure on costs in the City is of a structural nature. TRANSCRIPT Page 55 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 We're going to continue to over the next several years find it harder and harder to afford the level of services that we want because our costs are rising faster than our revenues. This is a conundrum we're going to find ourselves in this coming year and the several years following. Mayor Scharff: If we could vote on the board. That passes on an 8-1 vote with Council Member Tanaka voting no. MOTION PASSED: 8-1 Tanaka no Mr. Keene: Mr. Mayor, just one real quick thing we didn't bring up. Following the 2009-10 recession, we actually had a lot of this work done in-house with contract Staff, with pension benefits. We eliminated a number of those positions and started contracting this out. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman, did I miss you? Mr. Wong: Thank you very much. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Now, we're at Item Number 23. We have a Staff presentation on the CalPERS ... 23. Resolution 9701 Entitled “Resolution of the Council of the City of Palo Alto of Intent;” and adoption of an Ordinance to Amend the Contract Between the Board of Administration of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) and the City of Palo Alto to Implement the Share of Employer Contribution in Accordance With Section 20516 of the California Government Code and the Memorandum of Agreement Between the City of Palo Alto and Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Local 521; International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), Local 1319; Palo Alto Fire Chiefs’ Association (FCA); Palo Alto Peace Officers' Association (PAPOA); and Palo Alto Police Management Association (PAPMA). Mr. Keene: Rumi Portillo has a family issue, and her able Staff is here. I will let them introduce themselves to you, Council. Some of you will not know them. Angelica Jimenez, Manager Employee Benefits Manager: Good evening. I'm Angelica Jimenez, the Employee Benefits Manager. Sandra Blanch, Human Resources Assistant Director: Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council Members. I'm Sandra Blanch. I'm the Assistant Director in Human Resources (HR). TRANSCRIPT Page 56 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Ms. Jimenez: Before you this evening is a Resolution of Intent and an Ordinance to amend the pension contract between CalPERS and the City of Palo Alto to be able to implement the employee pickup of the employer share of pension costs. These changes were agreed upon through our current Memorandum of Agreement. CalPERS sets forth rates for employee and employer contributions towards pension costs. This Amendment will allow us to make changes so that employees continue to make their contributions as well as pick up a portion of the employer contribution. We are looking to implement the employee pickup for those percentages already stated in our current Memorandum of Agreements (MOA). The chart shown here illustrates an example of the shift in the percentage of employer costs to the employee contribution. CalPERS requires these administrative steps in order to process that contract Amendment. The first being the one that we're setting before you today. Council to adopt the Resolution of Intent and an Ordinance to amend the contract between CalPERS and the City of Palo Alto. This will then be followed by a secret ballot to the employees with the requirement of a majority vote. Then, the Ordinance will return to Council for a final reading in September. Upon final approval of the Ordinance, CalPERS will then implement the changes. Tonight, we are requesting a Motion to complete step 1 of that process. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. I see no public speakers. Council Member Filseth. Council Member Filseth: We said we were going to do this, so I think we should proceed and do it. The only thing I would comment on is because of the magic of CalPERS' accounting, if you take the entire employee contribution and the entire employer contribution and put them together, it's still not enough to fund the cost of the pension, but the City is still on the hook to deliver the pension. The true employer cost is actually much higher than in our accounting. Everybody should understand that. I think we should move forward with this. Mayor Scharff: I'll move approval. Vice Mayor Kniss: Second. MOTION: Mayor Scharff moved, seconded by Vice Mayor Kniss to adopt: A. A Resolution of Intention of the Council of the City of Palo Alto stating its intent to amend the contract between the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) and the City of Palo Alto in order to implement the pension cost share provision in accordance with California Government Code section 20516 and the Memoranda of Agreements between the City of Palo Alto and the following groups: TRANSCRIPT Page 57 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 i. Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Local 521; and ii. International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), Local 1319; and iii. Palo Alto Fire Chiefs’ Association (FCA); and iv. Palo Alto Peace Officers' Association (PAPOA); and v. Palo Alto Police Management Association (PAPMA); and B. An Ordinance amending the City’s contract with CalPERS. Mayor Scharff: Seeing no lights, you want to vote on the board. That passes unanimously. Ms. Jimenez: Thank you, Council Members. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. MOTION PASSED: 9-0 24. Designation of Voting Delegate and Alternate for the League of California Cities Annual 2017 Conference, to be Held September 13-15, 2017 in Sacramento, CA. Mayor Scharff: Now, Item Number 24, which is a designation of the voting delegate and alternative. At this point, I believe only myself and Cory are going to the conference, so that doesn't leave many choices. I didn't mean it to be a backhanded comment. Vice Mayor Kniss: Why don't I make a Motion that the voting be done by Cory and the backup be done by you, Mr. Mayor? Mayor Scharff: As long as Cory's going to be there. Council Member Wolbach: Sounds good to me. Mayor Scharff: You want to vote on the board. Vice Mayor Kniss: (Crosstalk) a second. Mayor Scharff: I'll second it. MOTION: Vice Mayor Kniss moved, seconded by Mayor Scharff to designate Council Member Wolbach as the Voting Delegate and Mayor Scharff as the Alternate Voting Delegate for the 2017 League of California Cities Annual Conference. TRANSCRIPT Page 58 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Mayor Scharff: That passes unanimously. MOTION PASSED: 9-0 AT THIS TIME COUNCIL RETURNED TO AGENDA ITEM NUMBER 20. 20. Approval of the Draft Palo Alto Transit Vision Plan and Direction to Staff to Pursue Funding for Local Shuttle Service Enhancements. Mayor Scharff: Now, we're back to Item Number—was it 21—20, Item Number 20. We have the Staff presentation. James Keene, City Manager: Hey, Dad, welcome. Mayor Scharff: That's right. Congratulations, Josh. Mr. Keene: Josh is a new dad and was out for a month on paternity leave. Now, he's back. Josh Mello, Chief Transportation Official: A new dad for the second time. Mayor Scharff: Did you get Lalo's beard? Mr. Mello: It's my paternity beard. It's only going to last a little bit longer. Vice Mayor Kniss: What's the name? Mr. Mello: Samira [phonetic], Sami for short. I'm Josh Mello; I'm the Chief Transportation Official with the City of Palo Alto. To my right is Philip Kamhi; he's our Transportation Programs Manager. Philip oversees all of our parking programs, Transportation Management Association (TMA) relations, our Safe Routes to School Program as well as the City's shuttle program. Philip is going to give you a brief presentation on the Palo Alto Transit Vision Plan and then discuss some alternatives for our City shuttle system moving forward. Philip Kamhi, Transportation Planning Manager: Thanks, Josh. Good evening, Mr. Mayor and members of the Council. Last time we were here, we actually ran a bit later than this and did not get to cover everything. Tonight, I'll try and touch on some of the things that we didn't get to cover and, of course, answer any of your questions and fill you in on where we are now. This gives a little bit of a high-level timeline up to today. Just taking you from the start, the Palo Alto Transit Vision started in 2015. Last time we were here in April 2017, you reviewed this Palo Alto Transit Vision Plan, and also we brought you up to date with what was going on with Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) with their final Service Plan, what was previously known as the Next Network Plan. The Palo Alto City Manager following that Council meeting sent a letter TRANSCRIPT Page 59 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 to VTA requesting that they help us to fund services that would backfill some of the areas that they're cutting service in Palo Alto. Following that in May 2017, the VTA Board approved the final Transit Plan, and the Board did request that VTA staff work on a framework for working with the cities. However, VTA staff has returned to us that they believe that the transit operations program within Measure B would be their option for working with communities on transit funding. Currently, the final Transit Plan is planned to be implemented concurrent to the new Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station's opening, which recently has had some press suggesting that it would be later rather than sooner. It had originally been planned for December implementation. It sounds like it's possibly going to be delayed to June now. Before I get into the VTA service and talk about new concepts, I want to talk a little bit about our existing service. This is our existing shuttle. It's a Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) shuttle. It's operated by MV Transit through a contract. You can see in the photos the existing branding that was from 2000. It has pictures of people with some quotes and comments. We operate two routes. This is the existing Crosstown Route, which is a north-south connection from Palo Alto Transit Center to Charleston Road. It's 100 percent funded by the City. This route is operated directly through contract with MV Transportation Inc. This is our Embarcadero Route that, I realized following tonight's action on the Consent Calendar, has a number that's incorrect. It says that it's 53.5 percent funded by the City. After the approval of the contract tonight, its 56 percent funded by the City as the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board (PCJPB,) which operates this service for us through contract, has reduced their contribution. They've reduced their contribution several times over the past few years. A few years ago they were contributing, and the City was only paying 25 percent. Our contribution has changed a lot through the years. This route serves an east-west connection and serves out to U.S. Highway 101, the areas to the east of that. This is primarily peak only service. Earlier this month, I took a ride on our Crosstown shuttle. I was really surprised actually and a little bit caught off guard by the people that I encountered. I had a really good experience because I was lucky to have with me a Staff member that speaks Chinese. I really had no idea that I was going to get on the bus—we rode the bus for 2 hours, and 40 out of 47 passengers were Chinese people, that only or primarily spoke Chinese. I do have some translated quotes from some of them. We also found out where some of them were going. Primarily they were traveling from Stevenson House to go eat at La Comida, which we heard from quite a bit earlier tonight. Most of them were very happy with the service. They were requesting more frequency. They were generally really glad that this service exists. There's a few quotes from them and pictures of them. That last photo on the left is showing a crowd of them boarding. It was pretty high ridership during the time that we got on, which was a Friday at about 10:00 A.M. This was a good time for them to ride because they had mentioned—this was, of course, before TRANSCRIPT Page 60 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 school—they don't like to ride during the school hours because it becomes too packed during school hours. I'll touch briefly on some of the operating statistics of the shuttle. This just compares to some of the peer services, services that we compare our shuttle to. Both the Emery Go-Round and Irvine iShuttle are very similar, free shuttle services. The Emery Go-Round is a little bit more high frequency and connects directly to BART, so it has very high ridership. Otherwise, I'd say we're a very comparable service. You can see that our boardings per revenue on both of our routes are very comparable to VTA or better than VTA and also SamTrans. I'm sorry. Boardings per revenue hours, how many passengers get on each revenue hour that we operate. Revenue hours are the hours that the bus is actually in service, where it can pick up passengers. The same thing for revenue mile. If the bus route is 20 miles, it's how many passengers get on within that 20 miles or 1 mile in this particular metric. Finally, something that the study looked at. If you've read this portion of the study, it compared to a couple of different service models. One of them that it looked at in particular was comparing shuttle service to Transportation Network Company’s (TNC,) which is your Uber or Lyft type of model. I just wanted to show here what would happen if we shifted this service—the funding that we use for this service completely to TNC trips. I'm somewhat taking a guess here with an $8 fare as an average for Palo Alto because I tried to take a trip, and it was $16 across Palo Alto. It really depends when you travel. Maybe it's sometimes cheaper than that too. Realistically it's going to end up being a very strong decrease in the number of trips that we can provide with this existing Budget. Another challenge is that we cannot currently—I know that Lyft and Uber are both working towards this, but they don't have accessible vehicles in a widespread level at this point. That is one of the challenges. The Palo Alto Transit Vision that was completed by Nelson Nygard Consulting Associates. Last time we had Steve Crosley here from Nelson Nygard, who was actually born and raised in Palo Alto. They put together this map for us, that shows a look at the current services. This is inclusive of all public transit services that serve Palo Alto or conventional public transit services, SamTrans, VTA, Dumbarton, Marguerite, and the Palo Alto Free Shuttle and Caltrain. This map, the tan or yellow highlighted sections are sections that are considered a reasonable walking distance to a transit service. What you see from the current map is 74 percent of Palo Alto residents live within a quarter-mile walk of transit. I did talk about this last time. The final VTA Transit Service Plan was exactly as we expected at the last meeting. The major change for Palo Alto was Route 88 will be replaced by school trippers in the morning and afternoon. They added a second afternoon run that would pick up in theory people that have stayed later at school for afterschool activities. Another major impact to us and to the residents of Palo Alto will be paratransit riders that live in the area where the Route 88 currently serves will have an increased cost per trip from $4 to $16. This is the current Route 88 service, just a snapshot of it. It runs hourly all TRANSCRIPT Page 61 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 day long from 6:30 A.M. to 6:30 P.M. That's essentially a snapshot of what we're going to be losing when we lose this service in the area that will be losing service. This new route is not going to be a normal service. It's not going to serve the Veteran Affairs (VA) in the same function. It's not going to provide trips for anyone really apart from school kids. This represents a 17.5 percent decrease in transit accessibility in Palo Alto. Coming back to the Palo Alto Transit Vision Plan. The goals of this Plan as were defined by the community and through the outreach process were to have a convenient and accessible system that's frequent and reliable and has visibility and ease of use. At the last presentation, Steve had a lot of information about the outreach process, but I'll just tell you that it was a pretty wide outreach process. It included a community survey that had nearly 2,000 respondents, several community meetings, social media interactions, and part of the Comp Plan Update process. The comments and the feedback received at meetings helped to shape this Palo Alto Transit Vision Plan and the services that we're going to talk about in concept. First and foremost, present to you the new South Palo Alto Route that was created. This primarily serves the same portion of service that would be provided by Route 88 and is currently provided by Route 88 except for it extends the route to California Avenue and the California Avenue Caltrain. It provides a destination for people that live in south Palo Alto so that they can take the route not just to the VA or to the school because those are really the key destinations of the Route 88 service. It's designed to run from 7:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M. with 30 minute frequency. It would serve Midtown and Palo Verde neighborhoods, Mitchell Park Library, the Moldaw Residences that we heard from tonight. There was public comment that somebody was requesting a stop there if this service was designed. I would assume that we would want to have a stop there. It would also serve Terman Middle School, Gunn High School, and the VA Hospital. We've got two options for our Crosstown Route that I'm going to discuss with you. The first option is Crosstown Variant B. This is one that was also brought up in public comment tonight. We call the VTA Route 21 supplemental because it runs in a very similar path to the VTA Route 21 along Middlefield Road. Through that it creates 15 minute frequencies throughout the day. This route would be every 30 minutes. VTA's route would be every 30 minutes, and we would change it so that every 15 minutes one of these routes is operating. The key to this route in comparison to our existing route is apart from moving the route off some of the travels off of Middlefield, it would also extend the route to the San Antonio Caltrain, San Antonio Shopping Center, and the Stanford Shopping Center. I also want to note that we did receive a letter from VTA. It's in your attachments. VTA has requested that we do not do this because they are concerned that it would cannibalize their route, which they do charge a fare for. This is the Crosstown Variant A, which we also heard some comments for from public speakers tonight. What you see in solid line is the current Crosstown Route. That's the route that I rode earlier this TRANSCRIPT Page 62 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 month and talked with passengers riding from Stevenson House to La Comida and Avenidas. This route has some extensions on the end. On the north end, it extends to Stanford Medical Center and Stanford Shopping Center. On the south end, it would extend to the San Antonio Caltrain and the San Antonio Shopping Center. It also would operate at 30 minute frequency all day, 7:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M. Mr. Mello: If I could just jump in. One of the points of feedback we got from quite a few seniors in the community when we did outreach was that they wanted more affordable shopping options, especially for groceries. The San Antonio Shopping Center was one of their destinations that they thought they'd be able to find more affordable groceries and clothing and other goods. Mr. Kamhi: Thank you. Mr. Mello: Despite it being outside the City limits of Palo Alto. Mr. Kamhi: Finally, we have the Embarcadero Variant C, which is this blue route. The blue route represents what's currently existing. The dotted line represents an expanded portion of the route. The expanded portion of the route would serve Bayshore and Fabian employers, senior residents in centers including Moldaw, and the Municipal Service Center (MSC,) which would allow City employees that currently don't have access to Caltrain Go and actually provide a car-free connection between City Hall and the MSC as well. Mr. Mello: This route would also help fill in some of the service gaps. You can see the white area on the map is an area that would no longer have access to fixed-route transit after the VTA restructuring. This would help fill in that east side of the City along the 101 corridor. Mr. Kamhi: Just to talk a little bit about planning level cost estimates. The current Crosstown Route, we're expected to pay this year around $302,000, $303,000 to operate. The expanded Crosstown Route with 30 minute frequency, we expect would cost around $864,000. The Embarcadero Route, the cost is $229,000 approximately; however, as I mentioned before, we only pay 56 percent of that. We do expect that whether or not we expand service, we expect that we'll continue to get the portion that the Caltrain Joint Powers Board (JPB) would continue to pay their $100,000 portion. The expanded service there would be $376,902. Finally, the South Palo Alto Route we expect would cost approximately $625,000. All in, the current cost is $531,776. Our estimated enhanced service level cost is $1.866127. You probably saw in the plan there's also a higher level cost, which is increased frequency throughout. This may be eventually something that we'd like to get to. To summarize coverage, you saw that map that showed 74 percent of Palo Alto residents that are within walking distance of transit, within a quarter mile of transit. TRANSCRIPT Page 63 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Under the changes that are coming with the final VTA Transit Service Plan, assuming BART eventually opens their stations, it'd be reduced to 61 percent of our residents have coverage. Under the proposed revisions with the Palo Alto Transit Vision Plan, the coverage would increase to 77 percent, which exceeds our mobility goal of 75 percent that's in the draft Sustainability and Climate Action Plan. This is a map of it. It's a little bit hard to see, but that's the 77 percent that would have service within this. With that, I'll get to this kind of long Staff recommendation. Council review the draft Palo Alto Transit Vision Plan, which is in Attachment A, and approve the Palo Alto Transit Vision Plan including the following recommended enhancements contingent on funding: design of the new South Palo Alto Route; expansion of the Crosstown and Embarcadero Routes; rebranding and marketing strategy. Direct Staff to seek Measure B and other available funding for the proposed service enhancements. With that, happy to take any questions. Mayor Scharff: You're not looking for us to choose between the different variants at this stage or are you? Mr. Mello: Given the letter that we received from VTA regarding the variants for the Crosstown, I think it would be unwise to move forward with the variant that would supplement the VTA Route 21. They essentially said that we could poach riders from their service, eventually leading them to further reduce service in Palo Alto and potentially cut the 21 route. That is interesting because one of their big strategies on this restructuring is to create 15 minute headways along key corridors. We were trying to do that along Middlefield Road with the supplemental variant. They seemed to feel that, because our service is free, we would cannibalize some of their riders. Before we jump into questions, I would just like to highlight the rebranding and marketing strategy component. Our brand is fairly outdated. When we did our outreach over the last 2 years, a lot of folks did not even know that we had a free shuttle in Palo Alto. They were unaware of the service. We have not kept up with the technology around transit, real time arrival information, linking to some different transit apps. I think this is a really important component. This rebranding could move forward before we do any of the service enhancements. Ideally we would do this rebranding when we come back to you with a new contract for enhanced service. That would incorporate new wraps on the buses, a new identity for the shuttle system, and some methods to do some more intensive outreach around the community and make people aware that this service exists. Mayor Scharff: I just wanted to clarify and frame this for Council a little bit. What you're asking for is up there. You showed us a bunch of variants. We could have a long discussion about could we just ask VTA to give us the money and then tell them not to run the bus, and we'll just run our own shuttle and TRANSCRIPT Page 64 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 do a better job. Are you going to come back to us? Are we going to have more discussions about this? Is this the final discussion and should we say whatever we need to say about this or is there going to be other opportunities to discuss this? Is this an iterative process? Maybe you could just frame what you're looking for Council—we could probably talk about this for 5 hours if we … Mr. Mello: We're looking, first of all, for your opinion on the direction that you think the shuttle program should take. That's not necessarily a Motion; that's just a feel from the Council on where you think we should take this program. Mayor Scharff: Do you mean in a more expansive view, a less expansive? When you say direction it should take, what does that mean? Mr. Mello: I think I'd be open to all types of direction that you may have. Specifically tonight, we're looking for you to endorse this Plan that we drafted, some of the findings in the Plan about where service is needed within the community. Direct us to move forward with the design of a new South Palo Alto Route, the expansion of the Crosstown Route and the Embarcadero Route. That will enable us to start to apply for grant funding. There's a whole host of funding sources that we could potentially use. We're also looking at some mitigation measures in the draft Comp Plan that could lead to additional shuttle funding through private development and development approvals. Finally, we're looking for the rebranding and marketing strategy. Direction to move forward on rebranding the shuttle and updating it and doing some more intensive marketing. We're a little hesitant to do any kind of rebranding until we get some direction on where to take the program. I think we could get that tonight ideally. Mayor Scharff: Jim. Mr. Keene: I just wanted to clarify. I thought that one of the constraining factors—I mean that in a positive way tonight—is this focus on having a Plan accepted that would inform our pursuit of known grant funding and other sources that we have and that the recommendations you've put forward are things that you think could meet that test and be eligible. If we start getting too far outside of that, I don't think we're in the same position to be able to quickly say that would really fly really well right now. This could be seen as a kind of iterative process with the Council. You make this set of determinations tonight, understanding that there could be a larger evolution that we should spend 5 hours on maybe at some point in the future. Tonight, in my view, wasn't designed so much as that, to get us ready to be able to say, "Let's pursue these specific funding opportunities." TRANSCRIPT Page 65 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Mr. Mello: If we walk out of here with the recommendation or something akin to what's up on the screen, our next steps would be to move forward with securing funding for the South Palo Alto Route in advance of the restructuring by VTA and, concurrent with that, updating the brand and doing some better marketing for the program. Mayor Scharff: That all makes sense to me with the exception of you wanted to know some comments that are not in the Motion about where we take the shuttle. I'm actually really unclear about what you mean by that. Give me an example for the Council of what kind of policy choices are we talking about. Mr. Mello: Since I've been here, we haven't had a conversation with you about the shuttle program at all. I think it's just an opportunity for us to have a conversation about the shuttle program. We're doing that through this Vision Plan and through the recommendation that's on the screen. Mr. Keene: One other clarifying thing in that regard, though. It's my understanding that the recommendation the Staff is advancing on these options and to pursue funding would stand alone as recommendations that we had if we did nothing else on shuttles going forward. Therefore, you could do nothing but that tonight, and we're still on the right track. If you start to get some other feedback and we start wandering all over the place and you decide to say, "We're losing track here," we don't want to miss the opportunity to give this direction tonight on this recommendation. I'd almost think if there's a way to get to giving direction on those things first, before getting into other comments about the shuttle, that might be more effective as far as a decision. Now, you may decide we ought to have some of that as a prelude and then come back to this. Mr. Kamhi: If I can, this might be saying exactly what the City Manager just said. What we'd like to do is we'd like to have this as a guiding Plan for us to take and seek grant funding. Once we get grant funding, we'll come in here and really fine tune the Plan, assuming we're (crosstalk). Mayor Scharff: You have a very specific Plan attached, and that's what we're approving tonight. Should Council Members comment direct on aspects of the Plan they like or don't like? Is that what you mean by that? It's a pretty specific Plan, when I read it. Mr. Mello: I think any comments on the Plan would be very helpful tonight. I don't think by adopting the Plan you're necessarily saying you agree with everything in it. You're adopting the vision that came out of that Plan. The specific elements of that are in the recommendation. Mayor Scharff: Vice Mayor Kniss. TRANSCRIPT Page 66 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Vice Mayor Kniss: I'm still lacking clarity, as one would say. About how much funding do you think this will take, roughly? Mr. Kamhi: The total cost of our enhanced service is $1.866127. Vice Mayor Kniss: No, no. That's the end product. You're talking tonight about grant funding for the Plan. Mr. Kamhi: I'm sorry. I'm just going to say it out loud if that's all right. The $1.866 million is the full cost of the service. If you subtract the $431,000 that we're currently paying and the $100,000 that the PCJPB is currently paying, that's our expected and increased cost for the enhanced service of the three routes. Vice Mayor Kniss: I see that clearly. My question is money. Mayor Scharff: (Crosstalk) for the rebranding. Mr. Kamhi: For the rebranding. Mayor Scharff: From what you have tonight that you want us to do. Mr. Kamhi: The rebranding would need to be a separate item. We don't know exactly how much that would cost. It's just really directing us to go forward. Vice Mayor Kniss: You said we're going to go out and look for funding, grant funding. What is that for? Mr. Kamhi: That would be for operations of the service. I would expect we would also go for branding funding if that's available. Mr. Mello: Currently, the shuttles that are used are owned by MV Transportation. We direct them as to what type of vehicle we want, what it should look like. Once we are able to assemble a package of funding to expand our system, we would rebid the contract. We did a temporary extension of the contract to get us through this discussion. Our goal would be to rebid the whole shuttle contract with some specific parameters around types of vehicles. We're thinking we want to try to do all electric vehicles, something much more modern looking, that seems a little more cutting edge and in line with Palo Alto than what we currently have out there. A lot of the branding costs could potentially be absorbed by the operator as part of the rebid of the contract. Vice Mayor Kniss: Not to prolong this, but it's a fair amount of money that you're adding to this. VTA isn't known for being generous regardless of what we may think. I think this is an overreach. I admire it, but I can't quite imagine it at this point. I could certainly say, "Yes, go find the grant funding TRANSCRIPT Page 67 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 money to put the Plan together." If your plan is to end up with something that's almost $2 million a year—that's what I'm looking at—great idea. I'm sure the community would love it. I frankly don't see where that funding would come from. Mr. Mello: I think it would be an incremental process. We would first look to add the South Palo Alto Route, which is a cost of $625,000. That would be our first goal. The extension of the Crosstown and the Embarcadero could be 5 years out, could be 7 years out. I don't know when that funding will develop. The Comp Plan Update and our update to some of our traffic impact fees and our mitigation measures around Transportation Demand Management (TDM) could potentially allow us to direct some private funding to the shuttle program in order for them to reach their TDM goals. Having this Plan on the books is an important tool for us to start to secure some funding and expand the system. I don't know overnight we're going to roll out the two route extensions and the new route that's shown up there. Mr. Kamhi: We do feel that South Palo Alto is the one that's very time sensitive because that's the area where residents are going to lose service. Vice Mayor Kniss: I simply don't disagree. Mr. Kamhi: If I could, one other thing. I agree with you that I don't expect that we're going to get all this funding from VTA. I also think that VTA is not the only funding source out there. I think we need to look at different funding sources. (Inaudible) just released a shuttle funding program, so we'd be open to looking at that as well. Vice Mayor Kniss: Just as a flash from the past, 20 years ago we started our own shuttle program because we wouldn't believe that VTA wouldn't actually begin to help funding. They never did. In my experience, they don't come to the rescue. I'd be glad to see you start the study, get the money for your initial grant to study it, but I'm not ready to go with almost $2 million tonight simply because great idea. I don't think it's realistic. Mr. Mello: It is a Vision Plan. It's not an Implementation Plan. It's something that we see as long term. I think the numbers are just for reference. We're not saying we're looking to commit $2 million a year. Vice Mayor Kniss: Numbers become real. The rest of the Council may see this very clearly and believe that the money will show up somehow. We haven't funded our TDM yet. TMA, sorry. Done. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach. TRANSCRIPT Page 68 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Council Member Wolbach: As Vice Mayor Kniss predicted, others on the Council may see this a little bit differently, and I do. I would not describe it as an overreach. If anything, I'd consider it pretty conservative given the needs. It is definitely an increase in expenditures. We were just talking quite a bit about spending money for janitorial services, which is important for residents when they visit City facilities, but it's also important for City employees. This has a more focused—there's more of a focus here on services for residents of Palo Alto. Given who's going to be primarily served by this, I think that's something we should keep in mind as far as whether it's something we want to prioritize. The point was just made—a good one—that we're still figuring out all the funding for our TMA. Frankly, I thought of—over the last couple of years I've been thinking this might be something that would be good for our TMA to run. What Staff has found and what we have found as our TMA is still gaining steam is we can actually contract with another TMA, Mountain View's—our neighbor and collaborator on so many things—to run this. Rather than having to find funding to then hand it over to our TMA, we can just find funding for this. Yes, we do need to find the funding for this. I don't think that's a question. I know Staff was really bogged down on it, but when we get back to talking about some of the transportation funding mechanisms that a Council Committee was looking at last year, as we start to revisit that question, especially ahead of and going into 2018, as we continue those conversations, there are funding mechanisms that can be found. I just want to make sure that we don't pass on an essential service for one of the biggest needs in Palo Alto, which is getting around town, reducing congestion, and increasing accessibility and mobility for people who either don't drive, can't drive, don't want to drive, and don't want to add to congestion. When we start charging for parking in Downtown, if we have a robust shuttle system that can bring people to Downtown and they don't have to pay for parking, those things work really hand in hand. It's important, as we do charge for parking Downtown, to make sure we have alternatives for people to get here. I'm generally supportive. This does take a step in the right direction. I will just take the opportunity now to raise an issue on this question of what's a general vision idea that might be a little bit different from what I see here, the idea of on-demand or flexible routes, where either you call up a shuttle or ask for a shuttle to make a slight detour from its route. Say you live a couple of blocks from a shuttle route and, either because of a long-term or a short-term disability, it's hard for you to get those couple of blocks, you could use the shuttle if there's a way to either call a number or use an app or both depending on your preference and technology aptitude to have those opportunities available. I know other cities and areas are working on things like this. I've shared with Staff and you're probably aware of the Minneapolis area, the Southwest Prime in the Minneapolis area. VTA's also been working on an experiment in north San Jose. I don't see that as something that we're necessarily going to do right now, but I want to make sure we're still thinking TRANSCRIPT Page 69 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 about how we can really modernize this system and not copy Uber, not copy Lyft, and not contract with them if they're as expensive as you're guessing here. How do we provide a service that really fulfills those goals that are articulated here? I do think the goals articulated—if you look at Packet Page 706, Page 27 of the vision, I think the goals are the right ones. That's a big part of why I'm going to support this. This gets us going in the right direction. Talking about this being convenient and accessible, frequent and reliable, and having visibility and ease of use is really critical. You look on Packet Page 709 or Page 30 of the Report, why people don't use our shuttle. Half of them, 49 percent, if you add up "I didn't know about it" 30 percent or "I'd like to use it but I don't even know how" 19 percent, that's half of the respondents to the survey either didn't know we had a shuttle or didn't know how to use it. That visibility, the marketing is really essential. Half of the respondents said it basically wasn't marketed effectively to them. I agree with Staff that having this Service Plan before you develop the Marketing Plan is the right order. You don't want to come up with rebranding and come up with the Marketing Plan until you know what it is you're marketing and what it is you're branding. I think that's also the right approach and the right ordering. A couple of questions. How much have you worked with Palo Alto Unified School District? You talked about trying to coordinate with other agencies. They're one of our major customers, essentially their students. I'm wondering how much you've partnered with them. I'll be honest; I'm skeptical that they'd be able to contribute much financially, but at least maybe we can work with them to talk about timing, routes, etc. How much conversation has there been there with Staff? Mr. Mello: We've done quite a bit. We have the benefit of having our Safe Routes to School program in the same group as the shuttle, the folks who work on the shuttle. We've taken the Shuttle Plan to the City/School Traffic Safety Committee several times. We've met with school administration, Parent Teacher Association (PTA) officials. Currently, the Crosstown Route gets significant ridership for Jordan Middle School. The Embarcadero Route actually gets some Paly ridership because it goes down Embarcadero Road and El Camino. What Philip didn't mention on the South Palo Alto Route is we would have an extension that would actually during school hours serve Paly. The Palo Alto School District actually has a sliver that's south of Oregon Expressway, north of Colorado. Those students tend to drive or get dropped off more frequently because they have to cross Oregon Expressway. This route would actually capture some of those students that are south of Oregon but in the Palo Alto district and have an extension during school hours to bring students to Palo Alto. Our shuttle system actually serves a large number of Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) students. With the enhancements we're recommending, we'd capture more of those students on the shuttle system. TRANSCRIPT Page 70 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Council Member Wolbach: I think that's great. What about Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School (JLS)? You can access JLS' backside from the Charleston-Arastradero side. It looks like one or two of these new shuttles might be able to drop students off near JLS on the Charleston side. Am I reading that right? Mr. Mello: We kept the loop around Meadow and Charleston on both of the Crosstown Variants because we wanted to serve the super block and all of the schools and the community center and the park within it. We did consider for Variant B moving the route to Middlefield, but we felt that the destinations on the super block were too important to bypass on any of the routes Council Member Wolbach: Also looking at the south Palo Alto map, it looks like that one also could drop off, as I was saying, kind of the other side. That also serves the Charleston Shopping Center, right? Mr. Mello: Yeah. This Vision Plan provides quite a bit of enhanced service to south Palo Alto, the Jewish Community Center (JCC), the super block, and the Charleston-Arastradero corridor in general. Council Member Wolbach: We heard public speakers talk about over by the JCC and Fabian and you've addressed that. I appreciate that. It looks like two or three of these would connect there, so that might actually become a real hub and intersection for changing between shuttles. Also, Cubberley, could you talk a little bit more about serving Cubberley, which is just a block off what we were just talking about, at the Charleston Shopping Center? Mr. Mello: Given the comments we've gotten more recently about a desire for service at Cubberley, there are ways to modify the Crosstown Variants to better serve Cubberley. I don't know that we'd want to go into the campus. It might cause a lot of delay. We could certainly enhance the stop facilities on Middlefield in front of Cubberley and look at ways to better serve that with a Crosstown variant. Council Member Wolbach: I appreciate that. Mr. Mello: Especially when La Comida is relocated there. Council Member Wolbach: I also wanted to ask about paratransit; I want to be clear. Because of VTA scaling back routes, paratransit access at the reduced cost is also pared back. We're going to see paratransit costs shoot through the roof for a lot of residents of Palo Alto because of VTA scaling back. When calculating how much they're going to charge for paratransit, do they only go off of VTA routes or would they also look at our routes? If our routes TRANSCRIPT Page 71 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 backfill the VTA cuts, could we get those discounted rates for paratransit again, and who would make that decision (crosstalk)? Mr. Kamhi: They would not consider that. Complimentary paratransit as VTA provides it is within half a mile of their service. It would only be provided there. However, we provide accessible vehicles, so we would provide service in that area if this route was providing service. It wouldn't be origin to destination, door-to-door, but it would provide a service to them. If I can add one more comment about the PAUSD also. I just want to mention that I had a lot of dialog with them very recently in particular about the Route 88 cut and their concerns over Gunn School getting service. They're very concerned that the changes to Route 88. I'm sure they wished to be here tonight. The changes to Route 88 would compound by the fact that there's less service because students wouldn't have the option to stay a little bit later after school or to leave early or to go in earlier because of the decrease in service. Council Member Wolbach: When I was a student at Gunn, living in south Palo Alto, I rode the 88. That was my school bus. I'm well aware of the flexible times that you need depending on whether you're doing band or theater or sports or any other extra curriculars or just having a different schedule for the day. I really share that concern. It looks like VTA responded to that a little bit but not very substantially by adding just one or two late routes. Mr. Mello: If I could, we neglected to mention this during the presentation. If we were to implement the South Palo Alto Route, we wouldn't duplicate the school runs on the 288, formerly known as the 88, because we wouldn't want to poach riders from that. The demand would be much higher during those periods, so our shuttle vehicles would not be large enough. We would continue to let VTA provide that service, but we would provide that midday service and late evening service that students could depend on if they wanted to stay late or leave early. Council Member Wolbach: A couple of other questions. Could you discuss— we see on Packet Page 724-725 enhanced versus full service levels, different levels of hours and headways. Could you talk a little bit more about the distinction between those? When would we make the decision about that? That's not something you're asking for us to choose tonight. Mr. Kamhi: I mentioned this a little bit earlier. We want to take the low- hanging fruit, and we're going to probably want to phase this. The first step would be looking at this. I don't want to say what your priorities should be, but in my opinion the first step would be the South Palo Alto Route because that's where we're losing service and then look at expanding our other two current routes. The higher level, what's called the full level of service, is TRANSCRIPT Page 72 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 expanding it to really high, increased frequencies. That would definitely increase ridership and increase the ease of use, which was something we heard from people. Actually just 2 weeks ago when I was out riding with people, I heard "I wish this came more frequently." It is a lot of money, and it would take a lot of money. That's really if funding became available. If we had all the money we need to operate this service, it's $3.4 million. I don't have page numbers on my packet. I think it's $3.4 million for that full service level. I think it's probably not a realistic target for us at this time but maybe perhaps in the future. Council Member Wolbach: I think that's important, that you're laying out for us an achievable and then a Cadillac version that we might be able to go towards if we're able to get more of the funding. I share with Vice Mayor Kniss the concerns about finding that funding. We can take it one step at a time. Also, I wanted to ask about San Antonio Road. I see some service being planned there. You talked about getting people down to San Antonio Shopping Center. A lot of Palo Alto residents do go to that area. As a service for Palo Alto residents, getting them there is important. Wish we were getting the tax money, the sales tax money. I think that's important. North of that, the northern part of San Antonio Road, going from—where is it? Going up beyond Charleston, up to north Bayshore, that's not Palo Alto, but a lot of Palo Alto residents work up there. We also just had a couple of hotels get approved on San Antonio, where the hotel developers, the applicants, were—I mentioned this during the meeting. They were explicitly, even enthusiastic about supporting a potential shuttle there. I've met with Mountain View's Vice Mayor and people from MV Go. They'd be very interested in exploring some way of partnering, maybe cost sharing. The conversation is open, I think, for really working with MV Go, who's already our contractor on this, to have something that maybe runs the full length of San Antonio, from San Antonio Shopping Center all the way up to north Bayshore whether people want to go hiking at Baylands or they're going to work in north Bayshore and having stops along— I think they might even be running one now through MV Go. It runs through the Palo Alto portion of San Antonio but doesn't make stops in Palo Alto. It's people who are guests at those new hotels or residents of the Green House I and II or people in those neighborhoods. I just want to put that out there again as a question of vision and opportunity for partnerships. I think that's it for my questions right now. Are you open for motions at this point or do you want to do a round of questions first before we go to motions? Mayor Scharff: Do I ever want to do a round of questions? You can do the Motion. Council Member Wolbach: I'd like to move that we approve the Staff recommendation. TRANSCRIPT Page 73 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Mayor Scharff: I'll second that. MOTION: Council Member Wolbach moved, seconded by Mayor Scharff to: A. Approve the Palo Alto Transit Vision Plan including the following recommended enhancements (contingent on funding): i. Design of a new South Palo Alto Route; and ii. Expansion of the Crosstown and Embarcadero Routes; and iii. Rebranding and marketing strategy; and B. Direct Staff to seek Measure B and other available funding for the proposed service enhancements. Vice Mayor Kniss left the meeting at 10:50 P.M. Council Member Wolbach: I've spoken quite a bit, so I'll keep my comments on the Motion short. I think Staff has done a really good job taking a major step forward in our vision for transit in Palo Alto. There's a lot more we could do. I'm getting the sense that Staff is already interested in how to do that through the branding, through openness to questions about autonomous vehicles, openness to questions about flexible routes, eagerness to find ways to have electric vehicles, which I think is important for Palo Alto both for our immediate environmental health plus our climate impact and even for cost. I think we're moving in the right direction here. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: I'm actually going to pass speaking on my Motion. I'll come back to speaking on my Motion. I know there are a lot of other Council Members that would like to speak. Council Member DuBois, you had your light on. Council Member DuBois: Thank you. First of all, I want to say there's a lot of good work in the consultant's report and in the Vision Plan. This really is the first time we've had a chance to talk about the Plan. We continued this last time; we didn't talk about it at all. It's a pretty major item, so I do hope we spend some time tonight. I would like to direct my colleagues' attention to Section 6. First of all … Mayor Scharff: Section 6 of the Report, right? Council Member DuBois: Actually, before I go there, just let me say I appreciate comments from both Council Member Wolbach and Vice Mayor Kniss. I too am really struggling with tripling our shuttle expenditures. Currently, most of it is out of the General Fund. I know we want to look for TRANSCRIPT Page 74 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 grants, and then again we're talking about branding and marketing. That money is not quantified either. It feels very expensive. If you could look at Packet Page 728, Section 6. If you haven't read it, I really hope we could have … Mayor Scharff: Packet Page—sorry, say it again. Council Member DuBois: 728. It's other service delivery models. I was really hoping we could have a serious discussion about a lot of the ideas in this section, the ability to go to a flex route approach. When you look at the pros and cons here, the pros all seem fantastic. The cons seem pretty minor. A lot of it is education and, as we heard, 67 percent of people don't even know we have a shuttle. We have an education challenge any way we go. I'm actually going to advocate tonight that we postpone a vote on a fixed route expansion and have a further discussion on these flex services. I think it's really the future. I think it's a good fit for the type of City that we are. You read this section, and it's all very positive, but it's just kind of tacked on. We don't really go into it in any detail. Back in April, we made a Motion that we try to get VTA to backfill the shuttles. It sounds like the answer was no. Mr. Kamhi: If I could. The answer wasn't exactly no. The VTA Board directed them to develop a framework for working with the cities. The VTA staff believes that that framework is a competitive funding program called Transit Operations Through Measure B. Council Member DuBois: We're going to go for Measure B money. Mr. Mello: If I could. I don't think that by directing us to move forward with the South Palo Alto Route and the other route extensions we're precluding using a flex type service. Council Member DuBois: I was going to get there. I do want to see more emphasis on the dynamic side. The Report says in this section the data suggested that riders want a service that operates when they want to travel and where they want to go. When we were talking to the community, what kind of discussion did we have around flex services as an option? Did we get feedback on that at all? Mr. Mello: To be honest with you, there's quite a large number of seniors who use the shuttle, and quite a bit of the public engagement was with the senior community. I think that's a little bit beyond their wheelhouse. When they use transit, I don't know that they have the same access to smartphones and apps and things that might be required for a more modern, flex-type, dynamic service. If we were to move in that direction, I think we'd have to think pretty hard about how we accommodate seniors through some kind of traditional TRANSCRIPT Page 75 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 dial-a-ride type service. That kind of eliminates the cost savings that you get from this more technologically operated dynamic service that you're seeing (crosstalk). Council Member DuBois: Was it discussed at all? Mr. Mello: It was, it was. It wasn't something that a lot of the folks who attended the community meetings were very familiar with. It wasn't something that was easy to facilitate a conversation around. Council Member DuBois: Have we had a chance to get any data from—you mentioned (inaudible) flex route, the VTA pilot, flex bus. A lot of people must be dealing with this issue. Mr. Kamhi: The VTA flex route was discontinued. However, I am very interested in reviewing information from their pilot. That is something that I intend to do. Also, if I could add—this is tagging onto what Josh said. I wasn't available; I wasn't here at the City of Palo Alto when the outreach happened for this originally. Two weeks ago when I rode the shuttle, I can tell you that the majority of the people that I rode with would not have access or the ability to book a trip without some kind of assistance. There would be a barrier. Not to say that it's a barrier that can't be overcome, but there would be definitely a barrier. Council Member DuBois: I guess three of the six target markets are employees. Did we discuss with private employers if they'd be interested in some kind of flex-based approach? Mr. Mello: To be honest with you, without some kind of Vision Plan on where we want to take the shuttle program, it's very hard to have any kind of conversations. Staff is caught in this limbo right now where we have a program that we know is not living up to its potential, but we don't have any clear direction on where to take it. The branding, as Philip mentioned, is left over from 17 years ago—7 years ago, sorry. This program is in need of a real update and some direction. That's one of the reasons why this Vision Plan was put together. The answer is once we have something to talk to them about, we can do that, and we can do the outreach, and we can talk to other stakeholders. We really don't know where we want to take this program today. Council Member DuBois: I think we're definitely seeing an increase in private employer buses going through town. Talking about funding sources, if you had a dynamic, point-to-point system, having them help fund it would make a lot of sense. I think that's happening in Mountain View with the public shuttle with some private funding. When you talk about things like La Comida TRANSCRIPT Page 76 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 and the school routes, it seems like a hybrid approach would make a lot of sense. You run the fixed routes for the school routes, maybe for the La Comida lunch, but other times during the day you go to a dynamic model. Even looking at the data you provided for boardings, if you take out the commute times, then the ridership is quite low. Again, we've been funding this shuttle for some time. Every time we get the numbers, there's a larger amount of hours where the ridership is very low. Again, the kind of City that we are with the density we have and also affluent people who value time over money, people would be willing to pay for dynamic service. If we were going to evaluate it, how would we evaluate demand for a flex service to be able to even compare it against the fixed-route option? If you ask people, "Do you want the shuttle to come to your house and take you exactly where you want to go," everybody's going to say yes. Mr. Mello: Again, moving forward with the Vision Plan as presented is not precluding us from partnering with somebody like Chariot or another operator that has that kind of on-demand ability. Again, we'd have to think about how we serve the existing shuttle ridership and the existing shuttle users. Potentially, we would do it as a pilot and monitor the ridership levels and come back to you within a fixed period and report back what the results were if we elected to move in that direction. Council Member DuBois: I'd really like to challenge us to be aggressive about a new approach. I don't know if my fellow Council Members are even listening. Council Member Wolbach: Are you offering it as a friendly Amendment or are you just (crosstalk)? Council Member DuBois: I'd like to when I get there. The other thing that wasn't even discussed in the Plan was this question of free. Clearly, it's far from free. It impacts our General Fund. I was glad to hear you say we would not compete with VTA. Obviously, a free bus on the same route that they have a paid bus, I would worry that we'd lose that VTA route. Was there any consideration when you were coming up with this Plan of moving away from free? Mr. Kamhi: If I can, I just want to put it on the record that I offered to take VTA's fare on our buses. It was something that we discussed. It was something that—frankly, we'd be open to charging a fare if that's what the City Council thinks is the right direction. It's something that certainly would fund the bus and would provide a stable funding source for the bus. It's really more of a policy discussion or question, whether the service—I'm really not sure what the genesis was of it being a free service. A lot of communities similar to Palo Alto and in this region are providing a free shuttle service. TRANSCRIPT Page 77 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Mr. Mello: If I could jump in. We'd have to think about how we'd want to collect the fare. A cash fare can be an impediment to a lot of transit riders who use other services. In order for us to accept the Clipper card, which would be ideal in my opinion, we'd have to enter a Memorandum of Agreement with Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and basically pay them to offer our fare as part of the Clipper system. That could have a substantial cost. We'd have to think about how we would collect the fare if we did move in that direction. Council Member DuBois: I'm not suggesting we do it right now. I was just curious. The funding, I think, is a huge concern. You were saying this is just an example. It's a huge part of the puzzle. Even the idea of marketing and rebranding a free service is basically adding expense. I do want to say we're an aging City. A focus on age-friendly services is important. We heard from a public speaker, Ellen Uhrbrock, tonight about getting to the bus stop at Cubberley really isn't enough. I heard you say later we probably wouldn't want to drive around inside Cubberley because it might take too much time. That's a challenge we have. If we're going to focus on the senior market, this idea of dynamic routes is pretty key. I think there are funds available for age- friendly types of services. That might be another funding source to go after, California. Looking at the employer market, corporations can contribute pre- tax dollars to transportation. Finding a way to really leverage that would make a lot of sense. Going this dynamic route still meets a lot of VTA's needs, so Measure B money should be available for that as well. I think the only criteria it doesn't meet potentially is improving bus stops, which is dependent on having a bus stop. I think the Report is good. I'd just like to see us internalize it more and really try some new things that I think could have a real impact. I'm definitely hesitant to just ramp up the shuttle with no proof that it's going to work. We've had a hard time with the current shuttle. Originally, I was going to propose a Substitute Motion. It could be potentially an Amendment to this Motion. Let me describe it, and you can decide. Mayor Scharff: (Inaudible) weigh in a little bit. I'll come back to you, I promise. Council Member DuBois: Sounds good. Thanks. Council Member Kou: I agree it's a good plan also for the vision for transportation. I wanted to ask—we're trying not to duplicate the routes for VTA. Have you spoken to Stanford about their Marguerite system and if we're at all duplicating over there? Do we need to just to be more efficient and not to have to spend as much money? TRANSCRIPT Page 78 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Mr. Kamhi: I can't say whether there's been a direct conversation about should we duplicate; however, I have worked with Stanford on these routes. They've reviewed all of them; they've actually worked with me a bit in implementing them into a system that maps all of the different routes and looks at how ridership would function under these new services. If the City Council was to direct us to move forward with this Plan, I would actually spend some time and really get some good information coordinating with Stanford. They're very supportive of this Transit Vision Plan at a Staff level. Council Member Kou: It just seems like they do the Embarcadero Route too. I understand that you … Mr. Kamhi: There are some differences. The Embarcadero is specifically a Caltrain connection; it's peak only. Their service is a bit different. Council Member Kou: Ours is peak only. Mr. Kamhi: Ours is peak only, yeah, operating by Caltrain. Council Member Kou: Here in the Report, the VTA staff says that they're working on their framework for working with cities. Is that also looking at how big the cities are? We're basically going to be going forward competing for the funding with other cities within that framework. How do we compete with San Jose or Santa Clara, which is just so much more bigger? Mr. Mello: We were very disappointed in the amount of funding that they allocated to the competitive program for local agencies. There's $500 million in the transit operations category under Measure B. VTA is going to take the bulk of that for their own service and only allocated $1.6 million per year for the local shuttles and other innovative dynamic systems. We're going to be competing for a pot of $1.6 million per year, which is very … Council Member Kou: This is all Santa Clara County? Mr. Mello: Yes. Council Member Kou: $1.6 million? Mr. Mello: Yes. Council Member Kou: Thank you. Mr. Mello: As Philip mentioned, there are other grant sources that we can pursue through MTC and (inaudible) and other agencies. TRANSCRIPT Page 79 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Mayor Scharff: I now feel compelled to jump in. I originally seconded this Motion because it would move this forward and allow you to go out and get grant funding. Vice Mayor Kniss' point is do you really have the bandwidth and the time, and it seems like a hopeless cause. It's not helpful when you tell us there's only $1.6 million to be all things. It does seem a hopeless cause (inaudible). I think you need to set forth where else you would find the funding. If we're competing for all of this $1.6 whether we vote for this or not, I don't see the funding there. I think Tom's points are really well taken. It brings me back to what are we doing. This brings me back to our Sustainability and Climate Action Plan (S/CAP) and really asking, Josh, what problem are you trying to solve. The problem you're trying to solve is not the problem in the S/CAP, and it's not Gil's vision. At least that's the way I heard you tonight. What problem are you trying to solve and who do you expect to ride this shuttle and what do you do? Mr. Mello: What problem are we trying to solve? First and foremost, we're trying to fill the gap that's going to be left by VTA cutting the 88 route in south Palo Alto, continuing to serve Gunn High School students but implementing a route that would hopefully have better ridership because we would serve the Cal. Ave. Caltrain station. Mayor Scharff: How does that relate when we do the S/CAP, where we said the only real source of greenhouse gas emissions left in the City is transportation? Mr. Mello: That's not the only problem. Mayor Scharff: We're supposed to have mobility as a service. I don't see you addressing that. I see all you're doing is moving us towards increasing ridership not for everyone in Palo Alto but for seniors, who seem to be your target audience. It seems to be a certain, specific group of seniors, frankly. That's not the vision that we talked about in the S/CAP. We talked about getting people out of their cars and having mobility as a service. The longer this has gone on, the more I'm getting convinced that this Plan does nothing for that. Mr. Mello: That's one problem we're trying to solve. The second problem we're trying to solve is providing that transit coverage for Palo Alto residents. Currently we're at 74 percent transit coverage. With the VTA reductions, we'll go down to 61 percent. With our recommended extensions and the new South Palo Alto Route, that'll get us back to 77 percent transit coverage. Seventy- five percent transit coverage is one of the goals in the S/CAP. Mayor Scharff: Why do you believe that transit coverage will translate into ridership by your non-senior Palo Alto resident? TRANSCRIPT Page 80 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Mr. Mello: The other component is to rebrand the system, modernize it, integrate it. We would expect to fully integrate it into mobility as a service and have a technology that can be integrated into that. Like I said earlier, we're stuck in this limbo right now where we have this service that is not performing to where it needs to be, but we don't have any direction on where to take it. Mayor Scharff: Do you think they're both the same thing? Do you think they're different services? Mr. Mello: I think we could have a system that serves multiple audiences. Right now, we're primarily serving seniors. I would like to (crosstalk). Mayor Scharff: It seems we're seeing seniors and students. Mr. Mello: Yes. Mayor Scharff: It seems like what we're doing is we're increasing the seniors and students without coming up with a solution where we're actually going to do everyone else. Mr. Mello: If you look at the Embarcadero Route that we mapped out the extension, that services multifamily housing along 101. It serves all the offices along east Bayshore. It connects to the businesses at the end of San Antonio. We're also going to serve the JCC, which has a huge amount of activity, that whole area. Council Member Wolbach mentioned … Mayor Scharff: How long would it take me to get to the JCC from just north of Oregon? Mr. Mello: On which route? Mayor Scharff: On the shuttle. You said to get to the JCC. If I wanted to go to the JCC and I want to get in at roughly Jordan, how long would it take? Mr. Mello: You'd take the Crosstown Route, and it would probably take 15 minutes, I would say if the route arrived when you got there. Mayor Scharff: The bus trip would only be 15 minutes. Mr. Mello: Around there, I would say. Mayor Scharff: If we ran these every 15 minutes, that would be virtually equivalent to driving. That would be convenient. TRANSCRIPT Page 81 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Mr. Kamhi: Something that's been mentioned a couple of times, I'm going to have to correct Josh on this. The service is being characterized as poor performing. I just want to make sure it's clear tonight that it's actually not poor performing. This actually is a pretty good performing. I could go back to that slide where we compared to other services. I've come from services in my previous life at other transit agencies, where I've worked on services that had lower performance than this and services and routes that had lower performance than this. It's actually a pretty strong performing route. We're really carrying 500-600 passengers per day at fairly low cost, $431,000 per year. Mayor Scharff: No, I totally thought it was actually well performing. I thought it was well performing, but it's well performing for a certain segment of the population. My concern was whether or not that was being expanded. To Vice Mayor Kniss' point, when you just said $1.6 million, I think you need to address—if we vote for this and it's only $1.6 million, I'm just saying it becomes very aspirational. I guess I'd like to know is there more than that. Mr. Keene: The problem is we have a number of different things that we're trying to achieve. I'll put it in the simplest way I can think about it. In one sense we have the past practice or the present, which is we have a shuttle system that serves some of our population. That shuttle system itself, as we even know it right now, is at risk. We're going to be faced with the fact that those people aren't going to be served as well as they were in the past. What do we do about that, as far as maintaining access to transportation that a segment of our population is familiar with and knows how to use? On the other hand, we have the future. That's also all kinds of people who aren't using the shuttle now, might be less inclined to use the shuttle, might be more uptake on mobility as a service type things to move forward with. I'm not saying that the Staff is incrementally triaging this but dealing with the loss, the past, and constituents who are at risk, saying what would it take to, one, fund a backfill of those and, two, make that even more attractive and successful so you could actually draw at least more riders. It might even draw some different demographic riders with the right route and with some of those things done right. Now, a lot of us—I would say I'm in this camp—would say I would be hard pressed to ever think that I would ever really say, "Man, I'm going to take the shuttle. I really want to do that." Whereas, I can think much more if we had the right on-demand service or something, I would do that. We have this pull between this isn't very exciting just to think how do we plug a hole in all of this and keep it going, knowing that even that costs a lot of money, which we might not be able to get. In one sense, it's kind of frustrating. I do think we should be thinking about even if there's $1.6 or $1.8 or whatever the number is and there's only $1.6 in the way the Measure B allocation is, we've already identified that there is a priority route in south TRANSCRIPT Page 82 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Palo Alto within that that's $600,000. I would think if you adopted a plan, if that's all we could get and that's what it was, we might very well be in a position to say, "We want to at least keep that route." We still have to stay open to what are the other either old-fashioned, transit-related approaches or what are the options that are going to be available for these new deployments of on-demand. I think we've clearly said we're not in a position to answer those questions tonight other than to acknowledge that some of you are saying, "I don't want to lose that option." Mr. Mello: If I could just. I sounded glum when I mentioned the $1.6 million, but there's only two communities in Santa Clara County that operate shuttles right now. It's Mountain View and Palo Alto. The third that's interested in operating a shuttle are Morgan Hill and Gilroy combined. It may not sound like a lot of money, but I don't know that there's going to be a tremendous amount of competition for that money. Mayor Scharff: That makes me feel a lot better. Mr. Kamhi: If I can further that. I think we're probably going to be the only one with a Transit Vision Plan like this if this was approved and we move forward with it. Also, I just want to point out that we can maybe consider the different prices of the routes as a menu of options. The recommendation, we ordered it in this manner with design of the South Palo Alto Route as the first recommended enhancement. It's ordered in this reason because we think this is the priority. The South Palo Alto Route was the first one because we think that's the most imperative priority based on the cut of the VTA routes. If we were to only be awarded $600,000, it's really easy to say Staff would recommend that going towards the South Palo Alto Route. Mayor Scharff: The other two points I really just had was that I actually would have felt better about, if we're designing a system to help seniors who are looking for cheaper places to shop—that's one of the reasons you argued to go to San Antonio; although, we don't get the sales tax. We drive people over to San Antonio, which to be honest I don't feel good about when we have so many grocery stores in Palo Alto that need business. I do think we should go by Grocery Outlet or have some ability to get to Grocery Outlet. That's our more affordable grocery store in Palo Alto, and we should support it. Mayor Scharff: I don't know how affordable it is. I do think we should support our own places. Mr. Mello: If I could just jump in. One of the things that we did try to do when designing these routes was to provide destinations at the ends. Currently, the Crosstown Route doesn't really have a logical termini on the south end. We were actually trying to serve the San Antonio Caltrain station. TRANSCRIPT Page 83 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 In order to do that, you have to loop through the shopping center, so we said we might as well serve the shopping center as well. Mayor Scharff: I'm not saying it doesn't make sense; it makes total sense. I just wish there was a way we were supporting our shopping centers. I'm going to let other people talk. Council Member Filseth. Council Member Filseth: I like the direction too. I saw that there was flexibility in it to adapt as things went along and we raise money or don't. There's a whole (inaudible) how to pay for it. I'm just sort of wondering how hard the VTA door is really closed on that. The two things that I really took away from the whole VTA direction discussions we had in the first half of the year, which by the way I think stands for Valley Except Paly Transportation Authority, was really two things. One, the cut in services to Palo Alto is going to fall disproportionately on seniors and on school kids. Two, the VTA's cost of operations is kind of an outlier. They deliver less transportation at higher cost than basically the whole rest of the Bay Area including Palo Alto. This idea that for Palo Alto transportation let us run the service and rebate some money back to the VTA and our costs are lower. It seemed like a win-win. At some point, there was a discussion that said we'll consider that. What we're saying is now they've come back and said, "We'll keep the money, but we're still going to cut service. Why don't you guys go look at Measure B?" Measure B seems to be the nexus of a lot of things. It sort of feels like we're getting sold the same horse twice or maybe more than twice around here. I don't know if anybody else feels that way. Mayor Scharff: I feel that way. Vice Mayor Kniss: Amen, Eric. Council Member Filseth: (Inaudible) The fact is the VTA sees Palo Alto as a cash box and the Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) to bail out their inefficient service to the rest of the County. The impact of that is going to fall on folks like Ms. Uhrbrock who spoke earlier this evening. This is outrageous. We are paying VTA for transportation that we don't get. I don't want to pay the VTA for transportation that went away. These guys are a black hole. We need to get our money back from the VTA so that we can spend it on some actual transportation. We need to consider all possible avenues, and I mean all possible avenues to do that because this is ridiculous. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Tanaka. Council Member Tanaka: I actually agree with that statement as well, which is try and get our money back from VTA. That makes sense to me; I'm not sure how to do it though. It sounds like a good idea. In general, this does TRANSCRIPT Page 84 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 seem to be trying to fill a hole from the 88 route. In general, this makes sense. I just was thinking about what the Mayor was talking about earlier in terms of what problem you're trying to solve. I think it's important to figure out what problem you're trying to solve. Traditionally, the shuttle's been servicing students and seniors. Maybe that's what we should do; we should focus on that and do it really, really well rather than trying to serve everyone. Maybe everyone else has a car or could afford Uber or whatever the case might be. Knowing your audience and serving that one audience really well, exceptionally well may be what you want to do. Rather than having a general marketing program, maybe you focus really on students and seniors. The routes, trying to really optimize it for that versus just trying to do a general purpose route as what VTA did. If you have a more focused marketing and more focused strategy and a more focused audience, you'll actually excel. That's one thought in terms of rather than trying to be all things to all people, which means this thing meanders around and takes forever to go anywhere. Being a little bit more focused makes sense. My observation is—maybe because it's the time I'm out—I see a hell of a lot of students taking these shuttles. I think that's great. Palo Alto doesn't have school buses, and so this is the school bus for kids. I was looking at—what is this one called? I guess the new route, the South Palo Alto Shuttle Route. I was looking at this. One thing I was observing is that it's a—if you'd actually put it up there, that'd be great. One thing that I observed is it's going like three-fourths of a loop. It makes me wonder why don't you go all the way around. Otherwise, you have to double back. If Staff can answer that question. Mr. Kamhi: If I can just generally. Circular routes are more difficult for somebody to ride than bi-directional routes. If they want to get from one point to another, they might have to ride all the way around in a complete circle even though the points might not be very far apart. Council Member Tanaka: The Marguerite has the counter-clockwise routes. It's similar to that. Mr. Kamhi: For transit best practices, we're moving away from designing circular routes. Council Member Tanaka: You guys are the experts. I was just curious. It seems like you're almost … Mr. Kamhi: Josh had another reason (crosstalk). Mr. Mello: If I could also add. The California Avenue and the Page Mill Corridor will be served by the VTA 89, which they're retaining. We would be duplicating that service if we were to run this in an entire loop. Also, what we're trying to do here is emulate some of the 288 service. The VTA school trippers will TRANSCRIPT Page 85 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 begin at the VA Hospital and run along Arastradero and Charleston into Midtown, and then terminate at Colorado and Louis. This would basically run that same route but run all day and provide all-day service that would supplement. We didn't want to confuse people by having different routes. Council Member Tanaka: Let me ask you this. Let's say a student from College Terrace is trying to go to Jordan. How would you do it? Mr. Mello: What was the question? Council Member Tanaka: Let's say a student from College Terrace is trying to go to Jordan. How would you do it? Mr. Mello: You could do two things. You could take the 89 to Cal. Ave. and ride your bike or walk down Cal. Ave. You could also take this route and get off at Colorado and walk down Middlefield. You could transfer to either the 21 or the Crosstown, which both serve Jordan from either the 89 or the South Palo Alto Route. Council Member Tanaka: I was noticing that the South Palo Alto shuttle right now is going through Colorado, which is more of a quieter, residential street. Why not go down Oregon Expressway, which is a much busier transit corridor and probably wouldn't make the residents as upset? Mr. Mello: Part of the Paly School District is south of Oregon, between Colorado and Oregon. We're trying to pick up students heading to Paly along Colorado and help them get across Oregon Expressway. If we were to run on Oregon Expressway, we'd have to have stops on Oregon Expressway, which would be not a comfortable place to wait for a shuttle. Council Member Tanaka: Why not just turn right on Middlefield, go up Oregon and then turn right on Middlefield, and then go up Colorado? You're staying on the major arterials and probably causing less—also what will make people upset is your running shuttles on, especially if they're empty, quiet residential streets. People may get pushback on that. Mr. Mello: We'd miss the students that live along Colorado in that sliver of the Paly School District, on the west side of Middlefield. Council Member Tanaka: What was the rationale for not extending it down— right now it's looping around at the Cal. Ave. station. Why not have it go down towards the Research Park? I think I heard one of the speakers mention that. TRANSCRIPT Page 86 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Mr. Mello: I did hear that speaker's comments, and I think that was a great idea. His suggestion was to continue on Oregon Expressway to El Camino and then use El Camino to access Cal. Ave. Having the ability to transfer to the 22 and the 522 is a great idea. When we refine this, we will take that gentleman's comments to heart. Council Member Tanaka: Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Fine. Council Member Fine: Thank you. Thank you, Staff, for this Plan. I think there's a lot of good work in here that we may pursue now or could be some fodder for future ideas. Just a couple of things to set this up. It is important to remember this Plan really was envisioned as a "Citywide, fare-free transit system that improves regional transit connections and connects residential areas to key employment, shopping, recreation, and school destinations." Essentially, we're asking you to design our transit system for free. That's why there's a price tag here. While I struggle with tripling the cost, in some of these cases I actually do think we're significantly underinvested in transportation and transit in this City. I would love to see us find a way to fill this funding gap going forward, whether that's through parking, the TMA, Transit Tax, whatever it may be. I think that is our challenge rather than just saying that this is really expensive and we're giving it away for free and we should look at alternatives. A few comments. As Council Member Filseth mentioned, this really is a reaction to VTA pulling back, which is a sad story. I think you've done a commendable job here. I would emphasize for Staff the silver linings. We do have an extra push we still have to make around the additional school route in the afterhours and then preserving paratransit where possible. A few just comments and some questions. One, while I think transit marketing is important—this is just a personal belief—the product is actually a lot more important. You need to provide the right transit product for people to use than the marketing. Just be a little careful in the balance there. I do agree it's dated, and we do need to connect users who don't know about it. One of the goals of this Plan was for transit to be convenient. I agree with Council Member DuBois that that doesn't mean it has to be conventional. I really do think we should be looking at self-driving, dynamically delivered vehicles, electric vehicles, and all those options that are being researched right around us here. One of the speakers mentioned that we should be slowly expanding the TMA, whether it's by areas or different groups, whether it's seniors or to nonprofit customers. We should also be integrating the TMA in here and how that might be collaborating across the TMA, these different nonprofit sectors, the schools, and the shuttle service we deliver. A couple of questions. One thing I didn't really see is how this Plan might reinforce some of our other priorities, whether it's housing development TRANSCRIPT Page 87 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 near transit, parking policies like the Residential Preferential Parking (RPP), supporting local retail businesses. Any comments there? Were the guiding principles really just the fast, free, convenient shuttle? Mr. Mello: The first thing that pops into my mind is that new South Palo Alto Route would serve the Cal. Ave. business district and their stretch for parking right now. This would provide a whole new market for them, bringing south Palo Alto residents with a one-seat ride to the Cal. Ave. business district. It's a logical nexus to start running this route when we are implementing RPP around Cal. Ave. and we're starting to encourage them to look at TDM in a serious manner. To provide this route is a good nexus to that. The other routes would continue to support Downtown and connect to transit Downtown and support the retailers Downtown and provide a wider transit market for them as well. Council Member Fine: Next question is around cost per trip. A few months ago, Staff brought to us like $1 million of bikeshare, and we turned it down. I think part of the presiding sentiment was we weren't sure how that compared to other transit investments we could be making. I would just give some advice to the City again. I think it would be helpful to see a cost per trip comparison of any of these transit initiatives we're looking at, whether it's bike, bikeshare, bike and ped lanes, shuttle, investments with the TMA, things like that. I really do think we want these apple-to-apple comparisons even if they're imperfect. Mr. Kamhi: We do have that on one of the slides. It's actually in the Staff Report as well. It's under shuttle stats. (Crosstalk) $2.38 per trip or something. Sorry, $2.88 per trip. Council Member Fine: It'd be nice to see this in comparison. If we put a million bucks in bikeshare, how many trips are we going to get? If we're just going to do the—the Uber one is $8 per. Those are kind of the contours we're looking for. The final thing and this is the big one I've left open. I know Council Member DuBois had some ideas here. I would also be very interested in seeing what Staff thinks is possible, whether it's a Vision Plan or what are the top five ideas we could pursue in terms of on-demand, flexible route and autonomous vehicles to serve these populations. I'll just put it out there. I would be willing to put an Amendment out there. Mayor Scharff: I promised Tom first. Council Member Fine: I think, Council Member DuBois, we're on the same page on this, but we need some more work on that. TRANSCRIPT Page 88 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Mr. Mello: Could I just jump in and say how that would work initially is when we bid the contract out, we would put in some language that says we would give preference to somebody who comes to the table with dynamic routing and some technology that we might be interested in. Instead of a clearly defined route in south Palo Alto, we could say this is the general service area and the destinations that we want to serve, and let some of the proponents propose different solutions. Council member Fine: I'm to some degree agnostic on what the technology is. The spirit that I'd like to see is for Staff or the bidders or our community to come forward and say these are the top five ideas we can try in the next year. It may be a collaboration with Uber or Lyft. It may be a somewhat autonomous shuttle on certain routes or a limited route. Just try a number of them. I don't think we yet know what the solution is here, but there are a few too many of these ideas floating around. I'd like to see us just try and iterate on a couple of them. That's the theme I'd like to see. Mr. Keene: We're going to go to Council Member DuBois. You made the comment about you would want to make an Amendment. Is the general thinking that the Council would be looking at adopting the general, say, core recommendations from the Staff to proceed as it relates to the shuttle and then these additional considerations on other alternatives? That's what we're going (crosstalk). Thanks. Council Member Fine: I think that's where I would be right now, supporting this main Motion. In addition to that, looking at autonomous, self-driving, flexible route services. I personally would like to see a few ideas from Staff, not just go out to the bidder and see what they come up with and we'll give preference to you. I would love to see some marks on the map for us. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: (Inaudible) Council Member Holman's turn. I just wanted to … Council Member Holman: I'll be brief. A couple of things. One is I absolutely concur with the comments that Council Member Filseth made about VTA. When they were here earlier in the year, I and others talked about VTA providing the funding to Palo Alto that they were going to be saving by reducing this route. The VTA person—there were two of them here; I've forgotten which one was which—said this but talked about we have Measure B. I'm like, "I'm not talking about Measure B. I'm talking about the cost savings." Is that conversation just dead totally? We talked about not being Measure B but cost savings because we can run it cheaper than they can. TRANSCRIPT Page 89 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Mr. Mello: They're redirecting the funding that they're taking from Palo Alto and putting it on their high frequency network that they're building. They need that funding in order to implement the remainder of the plan that they've developed. It's currently a Funding-neutral Plan. They did not account for the extra Measure B funds that they'll be getting, the almost $500 million over 30 years. That conversation is still ongoing. They still have not adapted the guidelines for Measure B, so we still have time between now and, I think, September 7th, when the Board's adopting the final guidelines to ask them to increase that allotment of $1.6 million to something that's more substantial, that we could potentially access. That conversation is not completely closed. Council Member Holman: It's interesting that every time we have a conversation about VTA, we end up being not happy. It's pretty consistent. I said I would be brief because I will, because I got called on last. The Embarcadero Variant C, the one question I have about that is I understand you want to go to the San Antonio Center and the JCC. I just don't know how much ridership there is going to be. I'm not convinced there's going to be a lot of ridership going up and down east and west Bayshore as opposed to, say, there's another route that goes down Louis. Greer and Ross have a lot of population along those routes. I'm just not seeing it on east and west Bayshore. You mentioned earlier, I think, the MSC. Mr. Mello: This is the route that's partially funded by the PCJPB. They see it as a route that's distributing Caltrain riders to employment currently out in the Baylands at the end of Embarcadero. In keeping with that, the extension would serve a lot of the offices that are along east Bayshore, the cluster that's at east Bayshore and San Antonio as well as around the JCC, and also serve the multifamily housing that's along west Bayshore. If we were to run it through a residential neighborhood along, say, Greer or Ross or Louis, it would be stretching the mission of that route from the JPB's perspective. Council Member Holman: That's helps to better understand that. I'll stop there. Mayor Scharff: Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: This will be a friendly Amendment. If you could put it up. It says substitute, but it's essentially the same language that we would approve the Vision Plan with the recommended enhancements contingent on funding, and then it starts to vary. We'd propose funding of limited fixed shuttle routes. We'd propose creation of a flex system. We'd return with funding needs and approach for this hybrid, fixed-flex approach, but we would move forward with Measure B Funding for the South Palo Alto Route in the meantime, until we had an updated Vision Plan. I spent time listening to TRANSCRIPT Page 90 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 everybody speak, and I was trying to capture a lot of the thoughts. Again, I think it's fundamentally—I won't talk about it now. Let's see if it's accepted. Mayor Scharff: Tom, why don't you—I was going to say for discussion purposes. I actually think we need to—I think you're right. I just think the language needs to better reflect a little bit of what you said. Why don't you speak to it, and we'll just talk about it. Council Member DuBois: Should I make it a Substitute Motion or just continue speaking? Mayor Scharff: I don't know. Cory? Why don't we just think about it as an Amendment for now? Council Member Wolbach: I'm open to it, and I would like to discuss it. I can see a lot of this, maybe all of it, being a supplement to the main Motion. I do think it's an Amendment open for discussion. If you want to speak to it first, go ahead. AMENDMENT: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Council Member XX to replace in the Motion Parts A.i., A.ii., A.iii., and B with,” i. Propose funding of limited fixed shuttle service focused on school commute and select other high volume routes at particular times; and ii. Propose creation of a flex system aimed at seniors and employees; and iii. Return with funding needs and approach for revised hybrid fixed- flex proposal that includes a combination of public and private sources; and B. Seek Measure B and other available funding for a short-term South Palo Alto route to fill in Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) discontinued route until returning with fixed-flex hybrid.” Council Member DuBois: I think it is a major shift in the strategy. It's more emphasis on the flexible, dynamic routing. It's not really approval of the funding in here, which is—the full service is up to seven times as much as what we're spending now. It's kind of like proceed with the first step, which is the South Palo Alto Route, and then come back with an updated Vision Plan. The South Palo Alto Route doubles our current expense, so it's a significant increase. I think it's a more reachable goal. I really would like to see the Vision Plan incorporate more of these modern approaches. Getting to the TRANSCRIPT Page 91 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 problem to solve, I think part of it is really addressing more audiences including that employee audience. I do think there's an education issue with elderly. More and more elderly do have smartphones, and there's probably other technologies we could use to enable on-demand services. I also think it addresses that paratransit hole that we have, like I said, the long-term or short-term disabled folks that can't necessarily get to a bus stop. Hillary Gitelman, Planning and Community Environment Director: Mr. Mayor, if I could jump in? Hillary Gitelman, the Planning Director. Our Transportation Staff has been working on this long and hard. I wanted to see if I could jump in at this juncture, though, and say how glad I am that we came to you right now. We're really at that classic chicken and egg thing. Do we go look for money for something or do we decide what it is we want before we go look for the money? It's good to hear all of your thoughts about how you would prioritize this program. I have to say the way Council Member DuBois just explained his Motion is something that we could probably work with, like prioritize the South Palo Alto Route and go look for funding for that route at the same time that we adjust the Vision Plan to look at these ideas of new technologies and dynamic service. I'm not sure that's exactly what that says up there in that Motion the way it's written. The Amendment to us is go back to the drawing board, let's just start again. Mayor Scharff: That's what I meant about it. What you just said is what I think—tell me if I'm wrong. What she just said is, I think, what you meant. Let's go ahead and get the funding for the South Palo Alto Route. Let's have that in the Plan. Let's ultimately work on a Flex Plan. Council Member DuBois: Yeah. My Letter D there says that on the immediate funding. I was trying to capture what I said. I also didn't want to approve this Vision Plan and these financial statements beyond the South Palo Alto Route at this point. Ms. Gitelman: If I can just add a little bit more? Mayor Scharff: If you want to make amendments to write it the way you thought we might be fine with it, so it's clearer. I agree with you; it doesn't quite capture that. Ms. Gitelman: Let me think about that. Can I just offer one more observational or big picture comment about this? We're at this perfect intersection between these great futurist ideas, mobility as a service, on- demand services to our community, serving everyone not just our transit- dependent communities and the real world. We have a vendor; we provide a shuttle service. We have to rebid that contract to expand the service and to meet some of the goals that we've identified in this Plan. What we're hoping TRANSCRIPT Page 92 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 is that we can rebid that service, the real life, nuts and bolts kind of stuff, within the next year or two. We're just trying to come up with a solution and direction from the Council that will help us get the real work stuff done while we're thinking about the future and … Mayor Scharff: Hillary, I think it'd be really helpful if you suggested—you've heard Council Member DuBois—what that looks like in a Motion so you can go out and rebid it. I think the concern is—if I'm speaking out of turn, Tom, let me know. I think what Council Member DuBois is saying here is we don't want to commit to moving the million whatever it was. We want to commit to the South Palo Alto because you've got $1.6 million possibly, that $600,000 that seems practicable and doable. Let's expand that shuttle route, but we also want to not just serve seniors. We want you to have mobility as a service. If we believe in the S/CAP, what you're doing—I don't mean this negatively— does not seem in line with that if we're going to get more people out of their cars. Council Member DuBois: I think one other clarification is it's not expand Crosstown, expand Embarcadero plus do the dynamic. It is before we expand those, can we actually perhaps cut those back only at the high use points in time and use some of that money to fill in with dynamic. It's not do the original plus. Mr. Mello: If I could just maybe provide some language that might get us there. What we're hearing is you generally agree with the areas that we're proposing to serve, but not necessarily the technology of a traditional shuttle route. Maybe when we come back to you, we come back with different models of service that still provide the same general service areas and service levels but could be a flex model, could be dynamic. Enable us to move forward with the Vision Plan with the recognition that the technology may be different; it may be a flex service; it may be dynamic; it may be shuttle service during the peak hours and then more of a flex service in the evenings or during the midday. Ms. Gitelman: Just to suggest some language, Paragraph D in Council Member DuBois' Motion is a good place to start. Your direction would be to seek Measure B and other available funding for a South Palo Alto Route to fill in the VTA discontinued route when funding becomes available. I would add to that "revise the Vision Plan to incorporate an analysis of dynamic and cutting-edge transit models for possible implementation and funding in the future." Mayor Scharff: Does that seem acceptable, Tom? Council Member DuBois: It's close. Again, there's technologies that are here today, that have been here a few years. I'm really advocating for those. I'm TRANSCRIPT Page 93 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 not saying self-driving shuttles at this point. I do want to distinguish between that. Again, I think the key point that I'm not sure we're connecting on is approving the general vision but not approving the finances for the expansion as put in here. Even the way you described the South Palo Alto Route, I would still like to have that analysis of fixed route at certain times of the day and maybe not fixed at other times of the day. I don't want that to hold up the VTA funding. If you need to have it fixed to get the funding, fine but I'd like you to come back with an updated vision statement more like how Josh described it. AMENDMENT RESTATED: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Council Member XX to replace in the Motion Parts A.i., A.ii., A.iii., and B with,” i. Propose funding of limited fixed shuttle service focused on school commute and select other high volume routes at particular times; and ii. Propose creation of a flex system aimed at seniors and employees; and iii. Return with funding needs and approach for revised hybrid fixed- flex proposal that includes a combination of public and private sources; and B. Seek Measure B and other available funding for a short-term South Palo Alto route to fill in Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) discontinued route when funding becomes available; and C. Revise the Vision Plan to incorporate dynamic service models and cutting edge transit models for possible implementation and funding in the future.” Mr. Mello: They're going to cut the 88 in early 2018. It takes us a significant amount of time to secure grant funding, prepare an Request for Proposal (RFP), get a route in operation. We need to start moving now if we're going to have something in place when that service is cut. We really don't have time to re-envision the Vision Plan between now and the time we start to see grant funding and try to line up an operator for the South Palo Alto Route. Ms. Gitelman: Not to mention the fact that we've already put a lot of time and energy into the Plan, and we had envisioned spending the next part of our lives beating the bushes for funding, not redoing the Plan. I recognize you've brought up very important issues that we have to look at from a planning perspective and try and bridge this gap between our standard service which, with all due respect to the S/CAP and mobility as a service, was really TRANSCRIPT Page 94 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 designed with the Comp Plan policies in mind that this Council has reviewed about better serving transit-dependent communities. We have a whole new section in the Transportation Element at the Citizen Advisory Committee (CAC) suggestion and the Council's agreement to address that issue. I don't think that's inconsistent with mobility as a service. It's just a foundation on which we can build a more expansive and more dynamic service in the future. Mayor Scharff: I agree with what Hillary just said, to be honest. I want to make sure that we go ahead and get the grant and do the nuts and bolts while not locking us into a vision of the past and not a vision of the future. I do want to make sure that she has the tools here to go get the VTA grant if that's possible. Council Member DuBois: I think we all agree—I agree. I think "D" captures that. It says go get the money for the South Palo Alto Route. Mayor Scharff: I do think it's important that Staff be comfortable with the language. Are you comfortable with the way it's written now, at least on "D" and E?" We want you to focus on—why don't you put an emphasis on focusing on the funding and getting that before you come back, before you work on the vision if that's the issue. Why don't we say prioritize getting the funding before you come back with a vision? That way you're doing what you expect, which is to beat the bushes for the funding without having to be distracted with the other stuff. We just don't want to get locked in long term to the other vision. Mr. Keene: If we had that direction, which is more the original Motion, the original Motion is not guaranteed. We're realizing that we may run into funding shortages or nonresponses. We made it clear that the South Palo Alto piece would be prioritized first. It very well could be, as we're even doing that work, we suddenly say, "There's not enough to make this work. Maybe if we did some hybrid here, we could keep a fixed route and figure out how we could supplement." We could come back at that point in time. We haven't thrown away the basic Vision Plan that we have, all the while knowing even beyond that we also want to look at even more expansion but not at the cost of the effort for us to stay on the path we're roughly on right now. We're not dismissing that. That is a little bit different than what Tom is saying, I think. Council Member DuBois: Yeah. That's fundamentally a different strategy approach. If you're saying keep the original Motion, to me that's saying you want to fund all these fixed routes at the level described in the Plan. That's what I don't support at this point in time. Again, I think it's a question of strategic focus. TRANSCRIPT Page 95 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Mayor Scharff: I agree with Tom. My concern here, frankly, is that I am saying go and get the funding. I am fine with the one fixed route, the South Palo Alto Route. I haven't heard that you're going to get more funding than that anyway out of this. If you really think you're going to get all this funding, I don't want this to come out of the General Fund on what I consider to be an old style plan. If we're going to funding out of the General Fund, I would much rather you come back with a hybrid, Flex Plan that's more modern and gets more. That's why I'm supporting Tom on this. I want to make sure that—the body language I'm getting is that you don't think we're getting you what you need. What I'm trying to do is to get you to change that so you get what you need and you prioritize it and you're not distracted. If me and Tom disagree, we can disagree I guess. Then, I won't support your Motion. I'm trying to see if we can get there. Mr. Mello: Just a point of clarification. The numbers that are in the Vision Plan are planning-level cost estimates. They are not encumbering any funds. They're not committing any funds. It's a tool that we use when we do plans to estimate what the magnitude (crosstalk). Mayor Scharff: A year from now, you come back and say, "Council approved this Vision Plan. Now, this is how we fund it." Mr. Mello: I don't want to throw those numbers around like we're committing to spending $1.6 million a year on a shuttle system. If we were to go with the original Motion and put something immediately after "design of a new South Palo Alto Route," that says something to the effect of "re-examine the Vision Plan for opportunities to use dynamic services and flex services before the expansion of the Crosstown and anything else." I also want to get direction on branding and marketing because we're sitting here with this shuttle system that we have to operate, that is poorly marketed, has a poor brand. That's something we could do at a fairly low cost when we rebid the contract, get some better vehicles and some better wraps. I'd like to see that in the Motion as well. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “incorporate fixed-flex models as appropriate to serve the areas recommended in the Vision Plan.” (New Part A.ii.) Mayor Scharff: I actually hadn't focused that Tom had taken it out. Mr. Kamhi: If I can mention one more thing about the branding. I didn't want to bring this up. I don't know if it's sore wounds, but we've been told many times that our bus has gibberish on it. We need to change our branding. It needs to happen. TRANSCRIPT Page 96 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Mayor Scharff: Tom, are you fine with getting with—why would we get rid of—we'd want to design a new South Palo Alto Route. We want to rebrand the marketing strategy. You want to have four. Did you leave that in? Council Member DuBois: I think that's fine. I think it's really A.iii that I don't feel ready to commit to at this point in time. It's really asking you to go back and evaluate some alternatives. I would delete "iii;" basically you're replacing it with "re-envision the Transit Plan to incorporate fixed, flex models." Mayor Scharff: You mean A.iii, right? Council Member DuBois: A.iii. Mr. Kamhi: Can I ask a question? I could see how this could be a concern. If we're really talking about—I hope this is what the direction is that we would get, to seek funding from the outside. Maybe that's something that we need to clarify. As a transit operator and my previous experience as transit operators, we've got a strong commitment here to transit services already. Even if we provided $500,000 out of a $1.8 million system, that's a strong commitment when a lot of times transit operators like VTA are using 10-20 percent of their own money to match a transit service. We've got a strong commitment already. If the direction to Staff was to seek outside funding, Measure B or other, that would really—perhaps that alleviates some concern as well. Mayor Scharff: Tom, are you finished designing the Motion or not? Council Member DuBois: Again, rather than approve the expansion of the Crosstown and Embarcadero Routes from 7:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M., A.ii is meant to replace that. I would want to delete A.iii and … Mayor Scharff: You would get rid of the other ones in the Motion parts A.i— that would stay. You wouldn't replace A.i, A.ii, A.iii. That would change. It would just say "Council Member DuBois moves to delete A.iii and add these things in addition." Council Member DuBois: Add A.ii. We should make sure that A.ii is worded to capture anything below that we want to incorporate. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to remove Part A.iii., “expansion of the Crosstown and Embarcadero Routes” from the Motion. TRANSCRIPT Page 97 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Mr. Mello: Could we perhaps say "re-envision the Transit Vision Plan to incorporate fixed, flex models to serve the areas recommended by the Crosstown and Embarcadero Route expansions" or something to that effect? Council Member DuBois: Or recommended in the Vision Plan more generally. Mr. Mello: So that we get direction that we're supposed to look at replacing the Crosstown and Embarcadero Routes with something more dynamic. Council Member DuBois: That could include the South Palo Alto Route as well. That's why I'm saying the Vision Plan. Greg, I'm looking at the top Motion now, not the Amendment at all. Ms. Gitelman: You want to put dynamic and fixed, flex models in "ii," right? Council Member DuBois: I think fixed, flex. Flex means dynamic. Ms. Gitelman: It would be a combo. Council Member DuBois: The only thing we might want to add is public and private funding. I don't know. You say other available funding. Ms. Gitelman: "B" says other available. Mayor Scharff: Public, not public, public is the wrong word. It's outside funding because we're not focusing on using General Fund money here. It's outside funding and private money. Mr. Keene: Pursue outside funding. Ms. Gitelman: "B" talks about other available funding. Mayor Scharff: Pursue outside funding. Council Member DuBois: If you delete A.iii, then … Mr. Keene: A.iii gets deleted now, up top. Mayor Scharff: Do we delete where it says Amendment? Would that all be … Mr. Keene: The Amendment goes away. Mayor Scharff: The Amendment goes away. AMENDMENT FAILED DUE TO THE LACK OF A SECOND TRANSCRIPT Page 98 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Mayor Scharff: Yeah, I realize that, Cory. We could call it a Substitute Motion if that's—that might be easier at this point. Mr. Keene: We could suspend some of the protocol. Mayor Scharff: We could just call it a Substitute Motion. That's what you're looking for? We get rid of the rest of that. Let me just read it. Staff, would you be good with that? Mr. Mello: Yeah. I might just suggest under "ii" just starting with "incorporate fixed, flex models to serve the areas recommended in the Vision Plan." We can't re-envision the Plan as part of adopting the Plan. Mayor Scharff: That's fine. Why don't you say incorporate? Council Member DuBois: I guess the only thing is when would you come back? It doesn't really say that you would come back. If you do incorporate these fixed, flex models, you are going to be updating the Plan. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Filseth whispered in my ear "as appropriate." I think he's correct on that. "Incorporate fixed, flex models as appropriate." Mr. Kamhi: We would have to come back to you to consider options. It would be similar. Mayor Scharff: Why don't you do that, come back to us to consider options? You're right; we're not going to … Why don't you make those changes up there? Come back to us. It doesn't say come back to us; should it? Mr. Mello: As we develop options for the routes, we would come back to you and say, "These are the options we developed. There are different models," and have a discussion about that at that time. Mayor Scharff: I'm good with this if you're good with it, if Staff's good with it. Cory, did you want to incorporate that or did you want to oppose it or did you have a suggestion? Those are the choices. Council Member Wolbach: I wanted to hear from Staff on what removing the expansion of the Embarcadero and the expansion of the Crosstown means for transit-dependent customers, for transit-dependent residents. You spent a lot of time proposing those expansions. Let's be clear just for the Clerk. This is the Amendment now. In this Amendment, we've removed that. We haven't had a real discussion about what we're losing by losing that. I'm open to it; I'm still open to this. I want to hear what that means. TRANSCRIPT Page 99 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Mr. Mello: I don't see it as removing the recommendations. I see it as modifying them to have us look at different models of providing service in those areas. We would have to think about how that affects existing users and their ability to access the service when we look at those models. Council Member Wolbach: Give me one second. Fixed, flex models is too specific or is fixed, flex a large category? What does fixed, flex mean exactly? Mr. Mello: There's anything from dial-a-ride to dynamic routes that would run on a route but then would deviate to pick people up if they got a call. Council Member Wolbach: The term "fixed, flex models"—just so we're all clear and on the same page on what that jargon means—is a category that includes a number of different policy options. Mr. Mello: Yes. And times of day too. It could be fixed. Mr. Keene: (Crosstalk) and ratios of fixed and flex. Council Member Wolbach: That's what I wanted to understand, that that's a category, not a specific policy proposal or not a specific program. I do think rebranding and marketing is important. I do agree it belongs at the bottom. As far as when this comes back to us, any guess on the next time this would come back to us? I don't want to see us incorporate into the Motion any timeline (crosstalk). Mr. Kamhi: I believe the contract that Council extended last month was a 2 year extension of our contract with MV. We do have the right to cancel that contract if we needed to. That current contract is for 2 more years. I would think that if we were to just get funding for South Palo Alto Route as a fixed route, we would probably just want to expand our current contract with the current vendor. However, if you're going to fixed, flex models or expanding significantly a service, we would probably want to go out to bid. Mr. Keene: We're going to have to come back to the Council and explain what that looks like, get your direction. Council Member Wolbach: I will accept this as a friendly Amendment. This helps it a lot. Mayor Scharff: Moving back, I have two lights. I have Fine and Kou; I don't remember who put it on first. I'm just going to go with Kou. Council Member Kou: The schedule that Council Member Wolbach was talking about, you still need to come back prior to VTA cutting their services down the South Palo Alto Route, right? TRANSCRIPT Page 100 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 Mr. Mello: Hopefully we'll be coming back with a funding package to begin a new route to replace that. That would be the goal. Council Member Kou: That is a priority, right? Mr. Mello: Yes. Council Member Kou: Thanks. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Fine. Council Member Fine: I think this is improved. I am excited to see what Staff comes back with on some of these items. I will just reinforce to my Council colleagues that at least personally I would be willing to support some money from our coffers or from our own sources to support some of these improvements. It may not all be just from outside sources. I think that's important for us to consider, particularly given Director Gitelman's comments that while all this stuff about dynamic and self-driving cars is great and there may be future opportunities there, we've still got to do the ground game of actually providing transit service in our City. This is one of our residents' top concerns. It may warrant funding from the General Fund or another source here in the City. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: How many students ride the bus a day? Mr. Mello: I think that's probably in the Report somewhere. We can take a look. I can tell you when Jordan's dismissed there's about 30-40 students waiting. We have two runs that arrive about 10-15 minutes after dismissal, and there's 30-40 students waiting for the shuttles to arrive. Mr. Kamhi: I can tell you anecdotally the customers that I rode with 2 weeks ago said that they don't want to get on the bus because it's so packed with students during the school times. Council Member Holman: The numbers I was remembering was the number of students that walk or bike. I couldn't remember what the numbers were for riding. I don't want to create an unfair situation, but I was thinking about one thing to consider would be if students were charged $1 a day or some fee. It would certainly help pick up a lot of the fare, and surely it's worth parents saving a roundtrip for $1. I understand that might set up an unfair situation because you're charging students; you're not charging anybody else. Just something to think about. TRANSCRIPT Page 101 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 MOTION AS AMENDED RESTATED: Council Member Wolbach moved, seconded by Mayor Scharff to: A. Approve the Palo Alto Transit Vision Plan including the following recommended enhancements (contingent on funding): i. Design of a new South Palo Alto Route; and ii. Incorporate fixed-flex models as appropriate to serve the areas recommended in the Vision Plan; and iii. Rebranding and marketing strategy; and B. Direct Staff to seek Measure B and other available funding for the proposed service enhancements. Mayor Scharff: I don't see any other lights. Shall we vote on the board? That passes unanimously with Vice Mayor Kniss absent. Thank you very much. MOTION AS AMENDED PASSED: 8-0 Kniss absent Council Member Holman left the meeting at 11:25 P.M. Inter-Governmental Legislative Affairs None. Council Member Questions, Comments and Announcements Mayor Scharff: Now, we'll go to Council Member Comments if there are any. Council Member Kou. Council Member Kou: I'm the liaison to Lytton Gardens. They have just sent me an invitation for a walk event that includes a full block around their Webster House health center. It benefits, and it's an annual walk for Alzheimer's. That's on Friday, September 15th, from 10:00 A.M. to 12:00 P.M. I hope everybody can join and support their efforts. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: I just wanted to make a couple of comments. One, I wanted to thank the City Manager for his comments earlier regarding working with tenants in faith institutions and with those host organizations. I do think that the City has faced and continues to face challenging questions about how our Codes and our Code enforcement can actually create challenges for people and programs that provide art education, art performances, TRANSCRIPT Page 102 of 102 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript: 8/14/17 psychological services, and other important services and programs that are of great importance to Palo Alto residents and visitors. I appreciate that Staff is taking an active role and the City Manager's Office is trying to take an active role in dealing with these tricky questions. I hope that Staff isn't afraid to bring these items to Council if and when appropriate, if that includes revisiting our Codes as appropriate to make sure that Palo Alto is a welcoming place and an open place for those kinds of things. The soul of our community in a sense is on the line. On another note, I attended a rally yesterday, late morning, in Mountain View that was organized at very short notice, right in front of City Hall in Mountain View, in response to what happened in Charlottesville. I saw a number of people from multiple cities, including quite a few Palo Alto residents. I also saw David Carnahan's parents there. We had Council Members from a few cities and some School Board Members from Mountain View and a lot of other folks from Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Menlo Park, etc., coming together focused on rebutting white supremacy and misogyny and anti-Semitism and Islamophobia and things which unfortunately have too large a voice in our country today, but which I'm proud Palo Alto has and will continue to take a strong stance against. Mayor Scharff: On another note, at the Cities' Association we formed a working Committee to set up the structure of a roundtable for Santa Clara County and Santa Cruz County. That should start the process soon. I wanted to thank Council Member Kou for coming and sitting with us and attending. On airplane noise. With that, the meeting's adjourned. Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 11:30 P.M.