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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2017-09-11 City Council Summary MinutesCITY OF PALO ALTO CITY COUNCIL TRANSCRIPT Page 1 of 97 Regular Meeting September 11, 2017 The City Council of the City of Palo Alto met on this date in the Council Chambers at 6:10 P.M. Present: DuBois, Filseth, Fine, Holman, Kniss, Kou, Scharff, Tanaka, Wolbach Absent: Call to Order Mayor Scharff: Tonight is September 11th, and tonight we'll remember it. We're honored to be joined by Boy Scout Troop 57. Thank you all for coming. A lot of them probably were not born, looking over there, on September 11th. On September 11, 2001, as you all know, one of the darkest days in our nation's history unfolded in the sky as the U.S. came under an orchestrated terrorist attack onboard four airplanes. The flights were bound for California, Los Angeles and San Francisco specifically, when hijackers commandeered the planes, turning them into weapons as they flew them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon, and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. 9/11 was not only the deadliest attack on U.S. soil, claiming 2,997 lives, it was also the single, deadliest incident for firefighters and law enforcement officers in the history of the United States with 343 and 72 killed respectively. More than 6,000 innocent people were injured in the attacks. It was not only an attack on the innocent, it was an attack on our way of life, on our democracy and our freedom. Things really haven't been the same in the United States since. Tonight we honor that. Our Boy Scout Troop will do a flag ceremony and lead us in a moment of silence. Come on forward. Boy Scout Flag Ceremony and Moment of Silence. Mayor Scharff: Thank you very much. We really appreciate you coming out. Thanks again. Let's do a picture. TRANSCRIPT Page 2 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Special Orders of the Day 1. Appointment of Three Candidates to the Storm Water Management Oversight Committee (SWMOC) for Terms Ending May 31, 2019 and Four Candidates to the SWMOC for Terms Ending May 31, 2021. Mayor Scharff: You have the ballots, right? We should fill those out? Beth Minor, City Clerk: Correct. You have … Mayor Scharff: Before you vote, we have one public speaker. Cedric, would you like to come speak for 3 minutes? Cedric de La Beaujardiere: Hi. Hopefully, it won't be 3 minutes. It's nice to see Troop 57. I was in Troop 57. We used to really rock it, so I hope they still rock it. We really crushed the competition. Go 57. Thank you for your service to the City. I'm hoping you will appoint me as one of your appointees to the Storm Water Management Oversight Committee. I was born in Palo Alto; I've lived here almost all my life. I'm committed to the wellbeing of the City and its residents. I understand and agree with the purpose of the Committee, to make sure that storm water management funds are spent according to the dictates of the ballot measure. I'm also fully aligned with the spirit of the measure, which calls for an increase in green infrastructure. I'm capable of doing the budgetary number crunching and eager to learn in more detail to understand the costs and challenges and capabilities of the various storm water management projects. In addition, if the Committee's input is sought in terms of prioritization or any ambiguity, my priorities will be effectiveness and timeliness of the flood protection projects, equitable distribution of the projects for the City, maximization of the ecological benefits, and economic efficiency. I look forward to serving with those selected from the outstanding pool of highly qualified applicants. Thank you very much. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Now, we're going to move on to honoring the Healthy Cities initiative. [The Council completed Item Number 2 and returned to this Item.] Mayor Scharff: Does the Clerk have any … Ms. Minor: Yes, I do. First Round of voting for four positions on the Storm Water Management Oversight Committee with terms ending May 31, 2021. Voting For Ayla Agarwal: TRANSCRIPT Page 3 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Voting For Keith Bennett: DuBois, Holman, Kou Voting For David Bower: DuBois, Filseth, Tanaka Voting For Peter Drekmeier: DuBois, Filseth, Fine, Holman, Kniss, Kou, Scharff, Tanaka, Wolbach Voting For Jolanta Goslawska-Uchman: Voting For Marilyn Keller: DuBois, Kou Voting For Hal Mickelson: Filseth, Fine, Kniss, Scharff, Tanaka, Wolbach Voting For Dena Mossar: Fine, Holman, Kniss, Scharff, Tanaka, Wolbach Voting For Cedric Pitot de La Beaujardiere: Voting For Bob Wenzlau: Filseth, Fine, Holman, Kniss, Kou, Scharff, Wolbach Voting For Richard Whaley: Ms. Minor: Peter Drekmeier with nine votes, Hal Mickelson with six, Dena Mossar with six, and Bob Wenzlau with seven have all been appointed to candidates for the 4-year terms on the Storm Water Management Oversight Committee. We will now hand out the ballots for the 3-year positions. [The Council proceeded to Item 3 and returned following City Manager Comments.] First Round of voting for three positions on the Storm Water Management Oversight Committee with terms ending May 31, 2019. Voting For Ayla Agarwal: Filseth, Kniss, Scharff Voting For Keith Bennett: DuBois, Holman, Kou Voting For David Bower: DuBois, Filseth, Holman, Scharff, Tanaka, Voting For Jolanta Goslawska-Uchman: Fine, Scharff, Tanaka Voting For Marilyn Keller: DuBois, Fine, Holman, Kniss, Kou, Wolbach Voting For Cedric Pitot de La Beaujardiere: Wolbach Voting For Richard Whaley: Filseth, Fine, Kniss, Kou, Tanaka, Wolbach TRANSCRIPT Page 4 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Ms. Minor: We have David Bower with five votes, Marilyn Keller with six votes, and Richard Whaley with six votes, all appointed to the terms ending in 2019. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. [The Council proceeded to Oral Communications.] 2. Proclamation Honoring Santa Clara County Public Health Department for Their Commitment to the Healthy Cities Initiative. Mayor Scharff: We are very lucky to have with us Laura Jones, Nicole Cox, and Teddy Gallagher, if you guys want to stand up. I want to tell you that I've worked with Nichole, Laura, and Teddy for several years now. They work for the County. The County of Santa Clara is really doing an amazing job focusing on Healthy Cities and helping cities throughout Santa Clara County work on a Healthy Cities initiative. I also think it's really important to give a shout-out to Ken Yeager, who's the Supervisor that really spearheads the Healthy Cities initiative throughout Santa Clara County. Ken does a great job, and he's really, really focused on it. I wanted to thank you for coming. I've asked Council Member Holman to read the Proclamation. Then, you'll have some time at the mic to tell us. Council Member Holman: Thank you very much. It's my privilege to be able to read this. She read the Proclamation into the record. Mayor Scharff: Come on up. Female: Good evening. It's nice to be among friends. We're always happy to see former Supervisor Kniss, one of our major public health champions. Thank you. Of course, we want to thank Mayor Scharff and the rest of the Council. Thank you so much for this honor. We truly feel honored to receive this recognition. Mayor Scharff, with your role through the Cities' Association, we've really appreciated your guidance and leadership to help us establish this initiative. Without your guidance and help, we might not have been able to start this initiative. Last year, we were proud to recognize the City of Palo Alto with the 2016 Best in Active and Safe Communities award. Also, an exemplary award for your Safe Routes to School program, which is a recognized model throughout our county and has been for the last several years. We've also been encouraged by your recent work to pass and implement healthy food and beverage policies for events, celebrations, meetings, and vending. Female: I also wanted to commend the City of Palo Alto for your leadership on implementing smoke-free policies for outdoor public spaces and in multifamily housing. These significant steps will truly help protect residents, TRANSCRIPT Page 5 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 visitors, the work force from the harmful impacts of second-hand smoke. Next week, the City Council has another opportunity to lead on this front by implementing a tobacco retailer permit ordinance to further protect youth from tobacco industry influence. We see the City of Palo Alto as a true leader for the Healthy Cities initiative, and we look forward to our continued partnership and hopefully some additional Healthy Cities awards for the City of Palo Alto in 2017. Thank you again for this recognition. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. I wanted to come down and give you the Proclamation. I also wanted to invite Council Member Holman and former Supervisor Kniss, who have all played significant roles in the Healthy Cities initiative. We could all come down and give the plaque, if you're amendable to that. [The Council returned to Item Number 1.] 3. Proclamation Honoring Suicide Prevention Awareness Week, September 10 Through September 16, 2017. Mayor Scharff: Now, we have another Proclamation for Suicide Prevention Awareness Week. I've asked Council Member Kou to read that. Council Member Kou read the Proclamation into the record. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Now, to accept the Proclamation, is there someone here? Come on up. Female: (inaudible) Mayor Scharff: They can all stand up. Everyone can come up and accept it. Everyone, come on up. Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions Mayor Scharff: I don't think there are any agenda changes or deletions. City Manager Comments Mayor Scharff: City Manager Comments. Ed Shikada, Assistant City Manager/Utilities General Manager: Thank you, Mayor, members of the Council. My pleasure to be sitting in for the City Manager this evening, who's feeling under the weather. He sends his regrets for not being here in person. Do have a few items of note for the Council and community's information. Let me first lead off with a calendar note for this coming Saturday. Our Connecting Palo Alto community workshop number 2 TRANSCRIPT Page 6 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 is on the topic of rail grade separation alternatives. Just a reminder that this Workshop Number 2 will occur this Saturday, September 16, from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., the Palo Alto Art Center auditorium. Known as Connecting Palo Alto as part of our community engagement effort to identify grade separation alternatives along the Caltrain corridor. More details can be found on the City's website, cityofpaloalto.org/connectingpaloalto. Also, a note from the City Clerk that we are, as a reminder, looking for engaged community members to serve on the Architectural Review Board, the Historic Resources Board, and the Planning and Transportation Commission. Serving on these advisory bodies is a great way to learn more about the Palo Alto community and to give back. Applications are available on the Clerk's webpage, cityofpaloalto.org/clerk. Application deadline is next Tuesday, September 19th, at 4:30 p.m. Let's see. A few other items of note, some ongoing news for the week. The City Council back in June approved authorization to seek grant funding from the Federal Aviation Administration. At this point, we're pleased to note progress there. As part of FAA's airport infrastructure grant program, the City of Palo Alto will be receiving an $8.5 million grant to be used for repair of the airport apron. We were among 78 airports to receive discretionary grant funding, which funds various types of airport infrastructure projects, such as runways, taxiways, signage, and other items. Also, a very active week in Sacramento. A quick legislative update. This being the last week of the Legislature, we have been tracking over the weekend two last-minute bills, AB 726 and AB 813, related to the California Independent System Operator and the role that the Cal ISO has in jurisdiction and governance and the way grid regionalization is handled. Consumer and environmental risks associated with the proposal to regionalize the grid does have significant potential impacts on the City of Palo Alto. As such, noting that this is the third attempt to expand the grid. Palo Alto has the same concerns as have been expressed in prior years with prior bills. These risks include increased costs for transmission access; second, stranded California investments as a potential; and third, increases in greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, a process in the two bills would change ISO governance to remove further actions from legislative oversight and, as such, lacks adequate safeguards. We have drafted an opposition letter for the Mayor's signature based upon existing legislative direction. We'll be working through our NCPA and other agency partners to oppose this bill. I also note late on Friday Senate Bill 100, renewable energy bill, was amended significantly and added language to include municipal utilities under the same rules and requirements as investor-owned utilities and community choice aggregators. We are concerned as are the CCAs that this language would erode the local nature of the electric resource planning. We'll be tracking this bill very closely as it proceeds. Note related to our emergency response fire personnel being deployed to disasters. Note that two of our Fire Department personnel have been deployed to recovery on Hurricane Harvey and are continuing TRANSCRIPT Page 7 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 deployment in response and support of Hurricane Irma. FEMA urban search and Rescue Task Force 3 based in Menlo Park were released from the Hurricane Harvey incident and redeployed on Friday, September 8, to Florida in order to support relief on Hurricane Irma. Two personnel from PAFD were deployed with the 80-member team. One of our personnel, Apparatus Operator Chris Moscow, was back a mere 8 hours from the Harvey response when dispatched to Irma. Finally, one last note related to our Palo Alto Art Center. There's an exhibit, Play, that we will be able to celebrate the opening of this new exhibition and will help us kick off our season of play this Friday, September 15th, from 7:00 to 10:00 p.m. This is a free event that will feature mini golf, balloon art, a fairy, free stickers, and other fun art activities, interactive installations, and so much more. Clearly an event not to be missed. That concludes my report. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. If I could get a Motion for—I'm sorry about that. Now, we have Oral … Beth Minor, City Clerk: Mayor Scharff, I do have the other … Mayor Scharff: Do that. [The Council returned to Item Number 1.] Oral Communications Mayor Scharff: Now, we have Oral Communications. Everyone will have 3 minutes. Our first speaker is Ashni Sheth. Ashni Sheth: Good evening, City Council Members and all others. I'm Ashni Sheth, Middle School President of Castilleja School. I'm here because I so strongly support Castilleja, and I'm going to give you a slightly modified version of what I said to the entire school on the first day. Women learning, women leading. That's Castilleja's motto. This motto has even more importance now than it did a month ago. As some of you may know, there's been a huge discussion about women and their role in the workforce and in society. If you haven't yet, go read about the Google memo. Some people, even right here in Silicon Valley, still think that women can't lead, that women can't be good engineers, that women can't be good at STEM, that women can't be reasonable or be assertive or are too anxious. The criticism goes on. The old stereotypes live on. Clearly, these critics haven't met the Casti community. Our school is vastly diverse, a fusion of girls from different ethnic backgrounds, socioeconomic statuses, and much more. Castilleja is the product of a combination of 110 years of women leaders. These critics haven't seen what girls and young women are capable of accomplishing. Castilleja has enabled brilliant young girls who have gone on to become incredible TRANSCRIPT Page 8 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 leaders, entrepreneurs, and whatever else they have chosen to be. This school challenges these stereotypes and shows the world how talented young girls and women can be. This school believes in us. At the same time, it's our responsibility to make the most of what Casti offers us, absorb all the knowledge, the wisdom, the confidence, and values that the five Cs give us. It is our responsibility to be the change we wish to see in this world, as Mahatma Gandhi once famously said. We girls will not be held back by old stereotypes. The world needs more women leaders and engineers and soldiers and everything else that we're able to do. That's why Casti's motto is more important now than ever before. Women learning, women leading. Let's get ready for a year full of learning, leading, and crushing the stereotypes out there. Let's get ready to change the world. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Now, we have Mary Jo Pruitt. Mary Jo Pruitt: Thank you, City Council, for the opportunity to speak this evening. My name is Mary Jo Pruitt, and I'm the Director of Athletics at Castilleja. I absolutely love my job. Every day, I have the incredible opportunity to work with these amazing student athletes that you see standing beside me. Every one of them brings me so much joy with their effort, hard work, self-discipline, teamwork, and ability to manage both their academics and athletics. The value of athletics in schools is significant and not to be overlooked. Many of you have probably played sports and understand what an invaluable experience being part of a team can be. It has a profound impact on individuals and their ability to function as future leaders. Did you know that 90 percent of female, high-level executives played sports while they were in school? Playing sports can teach women to break gender norms, to take risks, and to be a team player. Participating in sports builds their confidence and self-esteem, lowers levels of depression, and provides invaluable opportunities to lead. We currently are in a position where we need to grow our athletic teams to allow all of our sports to have a junior varsity level, which we are unable to consistently offer to date, given our current number of students. This would allow our younger student athletes the chance to play at the appropriate level to develop their skill set, preparing them for the varsity level. Increased enrollment would give us this opportunity to better serve our students and give them the tools they need to become leaders beyond the classroom and better serve our community. Athletics is powerful and transcendent. It can bridge gaps, bring people with relatively nothing in common together, and gives many participants unbelievable, life-altering opportunities. Opportunities to play at the next level, opportunities to relish in one high school career, but most importantly opportunities through relationships. At the end of the day, the work I do is because of the girls, the girls who come to Castilleja hoping and dreaming of an athletic career that resonates with them. I want to be remembered for the opportunity that I TRANSCRIPT Page 9 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 gave our ninth graders to learn how to dribble a basketball for the first time or for a senior who will play at the collegiate level in their respective sport. Whatever their journey, I want to be a part of it, and I really hope that you do to. Let us grow to provide our opportunity for others. Please welcome three of our three outstanding student athletes who are going to speak before you tonight. Jashee Yang: Hello everyone. My name is Jashee Yang. I'm a senior at Castilleja School, and I'm proud to have attended Castilleja since sixth grade. As a sixth grader, I was incredibly shy, but Castilleja has taught me how to be a leader, stand up and speak for myself, and never back down from a challenge. Now, I am the All School Body Vice President and a three sport athlete. My family and I were able to afford this amazing education because of Castilleja's tuition assistance. I know I would have been a completely different person had I not grown up with Castilleja. I hope many more young girls will be able to experience the opportunities Castilleja has offered me. Education can truly be life changing. Going to Castilleja has been such a privilege, a privilege I know I will use in my future to continue mobilizing change. For juniors and seniors, walking around campus and seeing signs protesting our school doesn't hurt us. In fact, it makes us stand taller in defense of our school. However, I can only think how demoralized those signs can make a little sixth grader feel, one that was probably so proud to have gotten into Castilleja, so excited to start her journey, and then so disheartened by the message displayed in the neighborhood. I would also like to convey how important our athletics program has been to my growth. Playing Casti sports since sixth grade was a huge part of my journey to becoming confident in myself as a leader and a mentor. I learned how to push myself past my breaking point, work with and rely on a team, and I made some of my best friends. I know many of my teammates have had similar experiences. With increased enrollment, Casti athletics will have the opportunity to expand our program to include more JV teams, allowing more people to have a chance to experience being on a team and learn all the important skills and life lessons that come with it. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. I'm going to have to ask you not to clap. We have a rule against it. I appreciate. I'm probably not the best at enforcing it, but I would ask that we not clap. Georgia Lewis. Lexi, I'm sorry. I missed Lexi. Go ahead, Lexi. Lexi Stull: Good evening. My name is Alexis Stull. I'm an eleventh grader at Castilleja School and proud three-year member of Casti's volleyball team. I have attended Castilleja since sixth grade, and I've participated in a spectrum of activities. Today, I want to let you in on a secret that I've learned at Casti. Volleyball is life. The first time I tried to play was during a sixth grade team TRANSCRIPT Page 10 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 tryout. A group of friends and I decided that it couldn't hurt to try something new, so we showed up in our tennis shoes and shorts, without spandex, without knee pads, and without a clue of what we were getting ourselves into. Little did I know that single, clueless, fearless decision would propel me to some of the most fulfilling moments of my 15 years. You see, volleyball has become that fabulous thing that gives my world color and meaning. When I'm on the court, I feel strong and confident, seen and understood. That confidence translates to every sphere of my life. It has made me a better leader, better student, and a better person. It has even allowed me to speak in these chambers this evening. Fundamentally, volleyball is about teamwork, competition, challenge, and growth. At its core, it's about relationships, trust, lifelong bonds, excellence, and especially resilience. Volleyball is life, and volleyball at Casti has been a personal gift. I simply cannot imagine my world without it, and I'm so grateful to my school for introducing me to an endeavor I love so very much. It is my hope that Castilleja will be allowed to increase our enrollment to allow new sixth graders an opportunity to figure out if volleyball is life for her too. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Now, we have Georgia Lewis. Georgia Lewis: Good evening everyone. My name is Georgia Lewis. I'm a senior at Castilleja, and I have been lucky enough to attend the school since sixth grade. I'm also the starting goalie for the varsity water polo team, and I hope to play at the collegiate level next fall. I am proud to be here tonight to represent the school that has helped shape me into the person I am today. I entered the sixth grade as a shy little girl, and I stand here before you all tonight as a strong young woman. I'm using my voice to stand up for what I believe in, and I am not afraid to speak my mind. It is important for me to let the City of Palo Alto know the impact that Castilleja has had on my life, truly giving me the opportunity of a lifetime. Because of Castilleja, I am confident, strong both physically and mentally, and resilient. It is my hope that with an increase in enrollment more young girls will have the same chance that I had. Having more students will allow for a more robust athletic department, which would allow all sports to have junior varsity teams, helping girls develop fundamental skills in the sport of their choice. It will give that shy sixth grader a chance to try a sport like water polo and to have the opportunity to be coached by one of the most accomplished water polo players in the world, Brenda Villa, and from there develop into a leader, teammate, and friend to all of those around her. It will teach her to win with integrity and, more importantly, to lose with grace. Castilleja is amazing, unique, and truly special. Please help give more girls in our community the opportunity to experience it. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Bob Wenzlau to be followed by Stephanie Munoz. TRANSCRIPT Page 11 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Bob Wenzlau: Council Members, I wanted to first thank you for the honor of being appointed to the Storm Water Committee and let you know that I'll do my best to give the service you expect. Mayor Scharff: Congratulations, Bob. That's what we're all thinking. Mr. Wenzlau: Separate from the issues that follow a group of women that are so strong and articulate that it gives me faith in the future. Just thinking again about this night and 9/11. What I end up thinking about is our firefighters, given the relationship that I've had with them and even had a police incident this week where I felt really well supported by our police. It's a time to think and honor them. I came here tonight thinking about obviously Oaxaca and equally how unfriendly our good old planet Earth has been. Given my standing and interest in Oaxaca over the years, the recent earthquake hit me pretty hard. I've jumped in to try to mount some local relief for Oaxaca. In context, I want you to appreciate that the City of Oaxaca itself is fine. Everyone was shaken up. The area of impact is about 4 1/2 hours' drive from Oaxaca, so it's quite a bit of a ways away. It didn't separate my interest in trying to help support the community. I'm working with my Board of Neighbors Abroad, who is coming to accept that this is a time to help Oaxaca. I appreciate the support the Palo Alto Weekly has given. They have over 100 dead now. Our friend, Manuel Maza, is leading the state's emergency response effort. In many respects, our vehicles are in use, and the people we know are in use. Again, thank you for your interest. There's no ask here. It's just more to lift up that event in the midst of all the other things that have happened. Again, thank you. It's nice to be here. Mayor Scharff: Thank you, Bob. Stephanie Munoz to be followed by Aram James. Stephanie Munoz: Good evening, Council Members. There's a group out in the plaza mourning the difficulties of 9/11, the tragedy as it has ensued and the earthquakes. I thought it might be a good idea, since we have so many Sister Cities, if we could get together with some of them and maybe be sponsors of some of these refugee camps. No big deal, a little rice, some tomatoes, some clothes, a little something that we could do together to ease the burden on the receiving countries, which are none too well off themselves. Greece is a basket case. Even in our own country, I mentioned last week how disappointed and shocked I was when I was taking the 22 bus to see that at midnight the people sleeping on the 22 bus are made to get off. My taxes are paying for somebody to make these unfortunate people get off the bus and wait 10 minutes until it comes around the podium they have. I've been thinking it's teachers we depend on to make a generation that can probably improve on our performance. These teachers are getting to be few and far TRANSCRIPT Page 12 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 between because of the housing situation. I have suggested before that it might be a good idea if the City of Palo Alto did everything it could to see that market rate-type housing—that would make everybody happy; it would improve the properties a lot—accrued for our teachers. I think they should do that. Google should do it; Facebook should do it. It wouldn't hurt anybody because it would make it possible for employees to live very close to where they work. That goes for the cities too, and there are other City employees also but none of them that we need quite as badly as we need teachers. You can do without a lot of stuff and a lot of employees. You can even do with fewer members on the City Council, but you can't get along without teachers. You've got to have teachers. You just might cast your mind about and think if there isn't any little spot where you could ask Palo Alto Housing Corporation to put up a really spiffy apartment house, a nice one, not some crummy, cast- off thing, but really, really nice. You'd make money at it. You would. Thanks. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Aram James to be followed by Rob Levitsky. Aram James: I gave each of you a piece on Tasers, but I probably won't be addressing that in-depth tonight. Just as an aside, we were talking to County Council, our coalition, down in San Jose this morning about liability issues. What I wanted to talk with you about is another athletic feat accomplished by my son, Louis, who's 38. He's been lucky enough—willing to put up with me for 180 days of the last 185 days at Bol Park, where he's been walking to lose weight. He's able to walk very well on that flat area. He had some muscle disorders as a young man, which made it difficult for him to compete in athletics. It's been a thrill for me to see him do that. I've had a close-up look for the last, like I said, 185 of the last 185 days of the almost accidents that occur from speeding bicyclists out there. Almost every day you have young people, young parents with their kids in the strollers, you have people in wheelchairs. I know you've put up some signage, but it's way up high so the bike riders don't pay much attention to it. It's probably about 1 out of 20 that gives any kind of warning. It's usually when they're already on top of you. I anticipate some potential liability for the City. There was a young ranger out there, who wasn't on duty that day. I can't remember his name, but he had his baby out there, a very nice young man who works for the City. He's indicated to me that there's already been some accidents between bikes and pedestrians. I'd like to see if we could put in some speed bumps or something that will slow down the bicyclists that are coming through there at a great rate. I'm going to be talking about Bol Park later on another issue that's on the agenda. I invite any of you to come out there. I've talked with Tom—I've seen him out there walking—about this, and brought it to his attention. I know there are other seniors. One couple has a New Year's whistle that they blow each time when these speeding bicyclists come through without giving TRANSCRIPT Page 13 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 any warning. Please pay attention to it. You've got some liability there. It's an accident about to happen. Let's try to prevent it. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Rob Levitsky. Rob Levitsky: Council Members, let me first thank the Palo Alto Unified School District for 13 years of education they gave me without paying $45,000 a year. I went to kindergarten at Ross Road, Palo Verde first through sixth grade, Wilbur Junior High School now Stanford for seven, eight, and nine, and Cubberley which is closed and under dispute for the last 3 years. Our dispute as a neighborhood is not with the Castilleja education and services. Our dispute is with the proposal they have foisted on our neighborhood. I want to remind you 2 weeks ago the Palo Alto Housing Corporation came here after spending a lot of time with the Ventura neighborhood discussing what the neighbors could accept for the project in the 3700 block of El Camino. They didn't come here with a project they were jamming down your throat. They came to say, "Cory, can you live above 50 feet?" or "Adrian, would you like more units?" "What's the tradeoff of the Council thinking for that particular spot on El Camino?" They just wanted some feedback about what they could do with their project. Compare that with Castilleja where June of last year they just dumped this proposal on our neighborhood, which would completely overwhelm it, knock down houses, trees, dig deep, tear into the water, effect the setbacks and zoning and all kinds of stuff in our neighborhood. Our neighborhood is up in arms about this. It's partly just the procedural thing. They didn't respect us. They don't think they need to respect us. They think they've got five votes, and they don't really care. I'm just going to say that we care, and we're going to stand up. They have a Conditional Use Permit that they run on. It's not the neighbors who have a Conditional Use Permit; it's the school. For the last 15 years, they've violated it knowingly, pocketing maybe over $10 million of which they were fined $250,000. It's going to be a long run, and we're in for it. Thank you for hearing me out. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Mary Sylvester I just added as a late addition. Mary Sylvester: Thank you. Hi, I'm Mary Sylvester, a longtime Palo Alto resident. I'd like to second Rob Levitsky's comments. I am here, though, to comment on the Consent Calendar, Item Number 6. Is that before you now? Mayor Scharff: No. Ms. Sylvester: That was … Mayor Scharff: We'll do the Minutes, and then we'll come back to the Consent Calendar, if you're not in a hurry. If you're in a super hurry, I'd let you speak. TRANSCRIPT Page 14 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Ms. Sylvester: (inaudible) Minutes Approval 4. Approval of Action Minutes for the August 28, 2017 Council Meeting. Mayor Scharff: If I could have a Motion on the Minutes. Vice Mayor Kniss: So moved. Mayor Scharff: I'll second them. MOTION: Vice Mayor Kniss moved, seconded by Mayor Scharff to approve the Action Minutes Mayor Scharff: If we could vote on the board. The minutes pass unanimously. MOTION PASSED: 9-0 Consent Calendar Mayor Scharff: Now for the Consent Calendar. Mary, would you like to come back up and speak on the Consent Calendar? Mary Sylvester, speaking regarding Agenda Item Number 6: I'm here to speak to Item Number 6, which is the hiring of a consultant regarding remaining funds from the Childcare Task Force. This takes me back about 30- plus years. I think Liz may have been on the Council. I was part of a 1987 Childcare Task Force, which you have in your packet. I was part of it for a decade. I'm here tonight to urge Council to award those funds to a consultant, which are approximately $70,000, very judiciously. That money was very hard-earned by a small group of people, largely working mothers as well as Chop Keenan and a few other business people who were willing to throw their time, money, and political connections into the ring with us. We already know most of the issues in childcare and early childhood development. We don't need a consultant to reinvent the wheel. This cover of Ms Magazine from 1987, cover story, "Whose Job is Child Care?" Sadly, not much has changed 30 years later. I have quite an institutional memory on this. My key points right now are early childhood education is woefully underfunded, yet 90 percent of a young child's brain is—90 percent of the neuro development is in the first 5 years. As a clinician and a childcare advocate, I work with elementary-age children as well as teens and adults who have faced suicide. Those early ages are critical. Privileged parents in this community have choices about quality childcare. I recommend when you consider allocating funds, the remaining $70,000, concentrate on out-of-the-box thinking as to funding possibilities. Number two, focus better on underserved communities, TRANSCRIPT Page 15 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 low-income families, children with special needs, children who are in transitional or emergency housing. We have a big need for quality early childhood care in those communities. Please consider me a resource as you go forward with this. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Now, I need a Motion on the Consent Calendar. Vice Mayor Kniss: So moved. Mayor Scharff: Are you seconding it? Okay. MOTION: Vice Mayor Kniss moved, seconded by Council Member Holman to approve Agenda Item Numbers 5-8B. 5. Approval of Amendment Number 4 to Contract Number S12145610 to add $75,000 for a Total Not-to-Exceed Amount of $379,000 for Continuation of Employee Benefit Broker Services Pending WFIS Sale to USI Insurance Services. 6. Approval of a Budget Amendment to Increase the Transfer from the Child Care Trust Fund by $75,000 to the General Fund to Hire a Consultant to Conduct an Assessment of the Assets, Resources, and Challenges of Families and Their Young Children in Palo Alto. 7. Approval for Palo Alto Housing Corporation (PAHC) to Withdraw $280,418 From the Sheridan Apartments Affordability Reserve Account to Reimburse PAHC for the Costs Associated With the Purchase of the Property Located at 360 Sheridan Avenue From the Sheridan Partnership. 8. Approval of a Budget Amendment to Increase the FY 2018 Capital Improvement Fund by Transferring $400,000 From the Parkland Dedication Fund for the Byxbee Park Completion-Capital Improvement Project (PE-18006) to Secure the Baylands ITT Site. 8A. Ordinance 5416 Entitled “Ordinance of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Authorizing an Amendment to the Contract Between the City of Palo Alto and the Board of Administration of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System to add Cost-sharing Pursuant to Government Code Section 20516” (FIRST READING: August 14, 2017 PASSED: 9-0). 8B. Amend the Condition for Implementing the Buena Vista Mobile Home Park Memorandum of Understanding Between the County of Santa Clara, the Housing Authority of the County of Santa Clara, and the City of Palo Alto. TRANSCRIPT Page 16 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Mayor Scharff: If we could vote on the board. That passes unanimously. MOTION PASSED: 9-0 Action Items 9. Resolution 9712 Entitled “Resolution of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Adopting the Mitigated Negative Declaration, Including the Mitigation, Monitoring and Reporting Program for the Parks, Trails, Open Space, and Recreation Master Plan, and Adoption of the Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space, and Recreation Master Plan.” Mayor Scharff: Our first item is Item 9, adoption of a Resolution adopting the Mitigated Negative Declaration including the Mitigation Monitoring and Reporting Program for the Parks, Trails, Open Space and Recreational Master Plan. We have a report from Staff. Rob de Geus, Deputy City Manager: Good evening, Mayor Scharff, Council Members. Rob de Geus, Deputy City Manager. I'm joined here with Acting Director of Community Services, Kristen O'Kane, and MIG consultant Barbara Beard. We are pleased to present the final draft of the Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space, and Recreation Master Plan this evening for Council approval. This planning effort has been a community-wide, cross-departmental effort. I'd like to thank all the Community Services Staff that were involved, Public Works Staff, the City Manager's Office, and a number of other departments. I'd also like to especially thank the Parks and Recreation Commission, both current Commissioners and former Commissioners—several of them are here this evening and have really spent a lot of time and provided great insight for this Plan—most importantly, just the residents of Palo Alto generally for their engagement and partnership, and their insight throughout the process. We were last before Council May 22, 2017. Since that time, we've incorporated the feedback we heard from Council and completed the necessary CEQA review. Specifically this evening, we're asking Council to approve a Resolution adopting the Mitigated Negative Declaration including the Mitigation Monitoring and Reporting Program for the Master Plan and adopt the Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space and Recreation Master Plan that we began a little over 2 years ago. Now, I'll pass it on to Kristen O'Kane. Kristen O’Kane, Community Services Acting Director: Good evening, Council Members. Kristen O'Kane, Community Services Department. We have two parts of our presentation tonight. The first is to review the environmental CEQA analysis that was done for the Master Plan, which is a requirement under CEQA. The second part is only going to review the changes that have been made since we met here in May with all of you and presented the Master Plan TRANSCRIPT Page 17 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 at that time. We're first going to present the CEQA review. I'm going to turn it over to Barbara Beard, who will give that presentation. Barbara Beard, MIG Consulting: Good evening, Council. Since you know that the Master Plan is considered a project under CEQA, the City prepared an Initial Study to determine whether the project would have any potentially significant effects. The Initial Study analysis identified several potentially significant impacts, and mitigation measures were incorporated into the project to avoid those impacts. With the mitigation measures incorporated, the Initial Study determined that no substantial effect would occur, and a Mitigated Negative Declaration was prepared. The Initial Study will function as a programmatic CEQA document for future Master Plan projects; however, the Master Plan does not present project-level design for any specific improvement or project. In the absence of project-level information, the Initial Study identifies general areas of potential impact. These programmatic mitigation measures cover fugitive dust; potential impacts to biological resources, including sensitive or special status species and sensitive habitats; protecting birds covered under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act; birds protected under the California Department of Fish and Wildlife regulations; and making sure that park projects within the Stanford Habitat Conservation Plan are consistent with the Conservation Plan; standard cultural resource protection measures for unknown or undiscovered archaeological or paleontological resources. These would be all programmatic mitigation measures applied to future park projects as those projects come through the planning, design, and future CEQA analysis. The Master Plan and the Initial Study identify future projects which will require additional CEQA review. The list of projects in the Master Plan is those known at this time. There may be other projects that come forward during the life of the Master Plan, that are not specifically mentioned either in the Master Plan or the Initial Study, but they would be processed in the same manner. The specific projects identified at this point are the Cubberley Community Center Master Plan effort; planning for a 7.7- acre Foothills Park extension; planning the Baylands Athletic Center expansion project; potential acquisition of new parkland; additional dog parks; new trails within existing parks; and Rinconada pool facility improvements. The Initial Study was circulated for a public review period from May 8th to June 6th of this year. A public hearing was held May 23rd. Five comment letters were received during the comment period, four from agencies and one from a public citizens' group. The agencies included Caltrans, County Roads and Airports, County Environmental Health Department, and County Parks Department. The comments received resulted in minor text edits and revisions to the Initial Study, covering Caltrans and County Road Department comments related to their facilities and requiring engagement with them during the planning and design of future projects and Caltrans encroachment permits. County Parks was interested in having the Countywide Trails Master Plan reflected in both TRANSCRIPT Page 18 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 the Master Plan and the Initial Study. That was integrated in the documents. The County Environmental Health Department would like to have the Initial Study address in more detail potential soil contamination from historic land uses, so we inserted text regarding current City practices and current regulations that would guide those efforts for future projects. The Audubon Society letter resulted in edits to the Initial Study related to nesting bird mitigation measures and a couple of other areas. The comments also resulted in minor revisions to the Master Plan, and those were to reference the Countywide Trails Plan, to reference the City Charter Article VIII regarding parks, and a sentence was added to Program 4.A.1 to more clearly call out the protection of biological resources within the open space parks. That sentence as shown on the screen is "[t]he protection of biological resources from visitor use impacts shall be the priority in open space preserves." Ms. O’Kane: Thank you. I'm going to shift a little bit and go into more of the Parks Master Plan itself. I'm not going to, like I said, provide a lot of background. I did want to just show you two slides. I know you've seen them before. I think they're important to just remind us all of the connection that our parks, trails, open space, and recreation facilities and programs have to creating a healthy city. This comes from providing physical health as well as emotional and mental health, economic benefits, environmental stewardship as well as social connections. The purpose of the Master Plan—I know you've seen this slide before, but I wanted to remind everyone again that the Master Plan intent is to guide decision-making for the future development of the parks, trails, natural open space, and recreation system. This includes both recreation facilities as well as recreation programs. Since we were last here in May, there have been some updates to the Master Plan. The first is revised language related to Policy 6.C and the programs under Policy 6.C. This was to strengthen language related to use of parks for private events. The second were the comments that Barbara already has mentioned to you. These were changes made as a result of public comments during the CEQA public review period. The third and fourth are related. The City Manager has drafted a transmittal letter that has been added to the beginning of the Master Plan, and it's a transmittal to Council from him. Rob is going to provide a little more insight into that letter at the end of the presentation. Finally, the Parks and Rec Commission drafted a letter as well. It's at the end of Chapter 5. Really these two letters are the bookends for the Master Plan itself. The Parks and Rec Commission letter is a call to action of all community members to help implement and see the Master Plan through. On May 22nd, when we were here, there was a Council motion to direct Staff to strengthen the language of Programs 6.C.1, 6.C.2, and 6.C.3 to minimize private, exclusive use and when such uses are allowed, charge significant fees, and include specific outreach language. The first part of the presentation is to share with you what changes we made. After that meeting, Staff went away and looked at the policy and TRANSCRIPT Page 19 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 programs again and strengthened the language to have more requirements as far as how are we going to permit private uses when they apply to use our parks and recreation facilities. We drafted revised language, and then we presented that to the Parks and Rec Commission, and they further strengthened the language and approved the policy and programs that are in the Master Plan before you. We did make minor revisions to the policy itself. I know the motion was specific to the programs, but the Parks and Rec Commission pointed out something in the policy that they felt was important. In the previous policy, it mentions booking an entire park site or recreation facility. There was concern that, by including that word "entire," if it were read in a certain way, it could be interpreted that this only applies if someone is booking an entire park as opposed to a portion of a park. That word "entire" was removed from the policy, and the language "or a significant portion thereof" was added. This provided more flexibility as far as providing permits for someone who's reserving a portion of a park site as well as the entire park site. As far as the programs, the most significant changes were related to Program 6.C.1. This is where we've really defined the process that we would go through if a private company would apply for a permit to use one of our parks for an event. We chose 5 consecutive days as the maximum number of days that could be reserved for a park site. The reason this number was chosen is, number 1, we wanted to set a limit on it so that it would be well defined. Five days also forces an event to not extend into two weekends. It would be either over one weekend or another or during the middle of the week but not extend into both weekends. The second bullet in the presentation includes noticing of the event a minimum of 14 days in advance, and including that public input is a requirement of that noticing period before the permit gets issued. The third addition was adding that cost recovery should be no less than 100 percent, not "100 percent" but "no less than 100 percent." The fourth is a new piece, which is exploring establishing incremental deposits and fees for private use. What this means is to start exploring adding a new fee tier that would be specific for private uses, which would include deposits. If there was major damage done, their deposit would already be there. Also, fees would be at a much higher rate most likely than what we would do for a nonprofit group or an athletic group. That was the major change that we made. There were other changes including some typos and editorial-type comments that were made. The major changes, again, were related to the CEQA public comments and then the revisions to Policy 6.C. What are we doing next? Assuming that Council adopts the Master Plan tonight and also the CEQA document, we will be filing the Notice of Determination with the County within 5 days. In addition to that, we are already doing some projects in this fiscal year that are included in the Master Plan. We will continue to do those projects, which include the Baylands Comprehensive Conservation Plan, hopefully a dog park installation, a turf management plan, and also possibly the Cubberley Master Plan. At the same time as we go into the next fiscal TRANSCRIPT Page 20 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 year, we will be developing an action plan for that fiscal year, which will be concurrent with the budget process that the City already has. With that, I'm going to turn it back over to Rob. He's going to have some closing remarks. Mr. de Geus: Thank you, Kristen and Barbara. Just a few brief comments as we conclude that are especially relevant. I think Jim would speak about these if he was here, if he was feeling better. As he states in his transmittal letter at the beginning of the Master Plan, the parks, trails, natural open space, recreation are very important to this community. This Master Plan was developed in partnership with the community through an extensive and multi- layered public outreach effort. The Plan strikes a balance between aspirational vision and tangible, practical, providing a specific menu of potential investment opportunities and resource allocation choices. We tried to align the Plan with the other companion City plans such as the Urban Forest Master Plan, Public Art Master Plan, Bike and Ped Master Plan, Comp Plan, recognizing the parks and recreation facilities and programs are part of a larger system. Lastly, the Plan provides hope and optimism about the future of this great City, and the implementation of the Plan can only be successful if it's done in partnership with the community. With that, we're happy to answer any questions. Mayor Scharff: Let's see. Do we have any speakers on this? We do. You'll each have 3 minutes. Our first speaker is Aram James, to be followed by Keith Reckdahl. Aram James: I wanted to talk about the bathroom issues at the parks. When I was over on Los Robles, I used to take my mom and my three grandkids— they're pretty much grown now, so they don't have the running back and forth to the bathroom issues that we used to have. Before there was a bathroom at Juana Briones; now there's a bathroom there. There was a lot of fear that unhoused members of our community would be sleeping in the park to use the restroom. That was mean-spirited and didn't prove to be truthful. Now that I do all the walking at Juana Briones Park, my son and I try to average about somewhere between 70 and 90 minutes. I have to admit sometimes I have to get back in my car and go find a bathroom during that hike and come back. I know you all were recently applauded for your no idling initiative. It seems to me, consistent with that we'd want to have robust bathrooms in our parks including at Bol Park. I know, Council Member Kou, you've been very active over the years in emergency preparedness. It seems to me that having really robust bathrooms in all of the parks makes the greatest sense. If we were ever to have a tragic earthquake and people needed to sleep outdoors, it would be another benefit to our community. I can also tell you my older home on Los Robles, sometimes it had plumbing problems. We've got those solved, I think, now. It meant trying to walk down to El Camino to use the TRANSCRIPT Page 21 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 restrooms at night because there wasn't bathrooms in the parks. There's lots of really pragmatic reasons why we should support really good bathrooms in our parks. I encourage the Master Plan to do that. What if unhoused people needed to use those bathrooms? Would that be a bad thing? No, it would not. That would be another good factor that we could be a progressive community. Thank you very much. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Keith Reckdahl to be followed by David Moss. Keith Reckdahl, Parks and Recreation Commission Chair: Good evening. Keith Reckdahl, I'm the Chair of the Parks and Rec Commission. We had the Master Plan talk at the Study Session, so I'll try and keep this short. As Kristen mentioned, Page 116 we have this letter. It's a good read from the Commission to the public. It really does a good job of summarizing how the Commission feels about the Master Plan. I'll touch on a few topics from that letter. If you have time, read the letter itself. It's very good. There's a lot of people to thank; we had a lot of help on this. We had just regular people, regular citizens. We had stakeholders such as sports leagues spend a lot of time giving us their input. The Council gave us very good input. Early on, they guided us how to do the Master Plan planning and also later on refining it. It was all very helpful and helped make the Master Plan much, much better. Second, the Commissioners, past and present, did a lot of work especially down the stretch. We had so much to do and such little time, that they really worked very hard and did very high quality work. It was quite impressive. Finally, City Staff, Daren and Rob and Kristen and Peter all worked very hard. They not only worked hard, but they also kept quality. They could have cut corners, and they did not. That was impressive, and we thank them for that. The second point I want to make is, as we discussed at the Study Session, there was a lot of public input, public outreach getting the public's feelings about parks. We asked people their likes, their dislikes, their priorities. What we found is that people in Palo Alto really like their parks. They have strong opinions about their parks, and they have high standards. They just don't want the parks to be maintained; they want the parks to be improved. Because all this public outreach flowed into the Master Plan, this really isn't the Commission's Master Plan or the Staff's Master Plan. This really is the community's Master Plan because the community shaped so much of it. Finally, my last point is that approval is not the end of the Master Plan. It's just the beginning of the Master Plan. The Master Plan is a blueprint of how to improve the parks and recreation of the City. Implementation of this will require a significant energy, significant planning, and significant funding. This won't be easy; it'll be challenging. As our public outreach saw, this is very important to the people of Palo Alto and very important to the quality of life in Palo Alto. We urge you to, once this is approved, not to forget about the Master Plan but implement it. Thank you. TRANSCRIPT Page 22 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Mayor Scharff: Thank you, Keith. Thanks for the work on this. We really appreciate it. David Moss. David Moss, Parks and Recreation Commissioner: David Moss, current Parks and Rec Commissioner. I am proud to have been a part of this effort over the past 1 1/2 years. Others have been at it longer, and I really am grateful for their leadership and vision, those on the Commission, the Council, and the Staff. I'm also in the enviable position to be able to start implementing the Plan. I am proud that it balances the needs of the community and the needs of individual residents, and that it has both short-term and long-term steps. Even long-term steps have short-term activities and longer ones. We can't wait until the 19th year to start trying to find new parkland. I also believe it is a living, breathing Plan as proven by the changes Council requested this spring regarding private use of parkland. I am proud of the input of dozens of vocal stakeholder groups, whose input was incorporated in this Plan. It was a big effort. We have been planning already, as Kristen said earlier, for what we could do this year. There was a lot of enthusiasm on the Commission and the Staff. I can't wait to see how this unfolds. Thank you to the Council for allowing us this opportunity. Thank you. Don McDougall, Parks and Recreation Commissioner: Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Council Members. Don McDougall, current Parks and Recreation Commission member. I just want to encourage adoption of this Plan and particularly to thank everybody who was involved. As a new member, getting to witness all of that—to Keith and Dave and the past Commissioners and Kristen and Daren and Rob for his guidance and the Council, in fact, for their guidance. One of the things that's special about Palo Alto is we not only have a lot of parks and, unlike other cities up and down the Peninsula, we actually have the Baylands and the Foothills in the City, not around the City or beside the City. That's incredibly important. We have the parks, and we have the open space. The reason this Plan is so amazing is it addresses all of those parks and all of that open space. The thing that doesn't really get talked about but was in the transmittal letter is the connections between the parks and the open space. That's important. The Plan addresses in the parks the bathrooms. Yes, let's do bathrooms. It addresses dog space. Yes, let's do dog space. It sets up the possibility of let's play pickleball. At the same time, it sets up big changes, big, big changes for Foothills to actually save Foothills at some level. In fact, it makes significant expansions in the Baylands. An awful lot of work has gone in to prepare all of that. These parks and this open space, as was said earlier, are really important to the health of the City and the health of the people of the City and the health of the natural environment of the City. I would encourage the Council to not only adopt this Plan but to encourage action to execute on this Plan. Thank you. TRANSCRIPT Page 23 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Mayor Scharff: Bob Moss to be followed by Shani Kleinhaus. Bob Moss: Thank you, Mayor Scharff and Council Members. A couple of aspects of the report puzzled me. The first one is the various figures that show the parks, for example Figures 2 and 8. Figure 8, on Page 317 of the packet, refers to Area E as a high population density. That's almost entirely Barron Park, which is almost entirely single-family homes on lots of 6,000- 8,000 square feet. That is not high population density. What's going on? Why are we calling an area, which is almost entirely single-family homes, high population density? It makes no sense. Second, we're talking about adding restrooms to a number of park areas. Two of them that struck me as being rather weird were Bol Park and Terman Park. One of the criteria for adding restrooms is that you should have parks which have facilities that attract and keep people. A restroom is necessary if you're going to have people at the park. Terman Park is directly behind Terman School. Historically, the School District has left restrooms open and available even when school is not in session. People should be able to go from the Terman Park to Terman School and use those restrooms. In the case of Bol Park, the school is about a block and a half away, so it's not right there. Bol Park, when it was created almost 40 years ago, was done as a rural environment. We intentionally kept it without a lot of facilities. Restrooms were discussed when we bought the park area from the Bols for about half of what the market value was. We explicitly determined not to put restrooms in Bol Park. This proposal violates the actual acquisition and construction of the land. Speaking as one of the people who paid for that park originally, I was paying about $36 a year in property taxes until Barron Park voted to annex to Palo Alto, and then eventually the park was taken over by the City. I would take a very careful look at why you want to put a restroom in Bol Park, when it violates the intent of the construction of that facility and it also violates the intent of what Barron Park is wanting to do, retaining a rural environment. We don't need it. Take it out. Mayor Scharff: Shani Kleinhaus to be followed by Geoff Paulsen. Shani Kleinhaus: Thank you, Mayor Scharff, Council Members. I'm Shani Kleinhaus. I'm with the Audubon Society, and I'm a resident of the City. I participated as stakeholder throughout this process and submitted the comment letter on the Mitigated Negative Declaration. I want to say this was a wonderful process. There were so many people who came to speak about what they wanted to see. Staff did a fabulous job of absorbing all of that and putting something together that has a few little glitches here and there, but mostly is really, really good. Peter Jensen, Kristen O'Kane, Rob de Geus, Daren Anderson were absolutely wonderful, and all the different Commissioners that we worked with in the past few years. Some of them are here, not all of them. If I say all the names, I'll lose all my time. There is TRANSCRIPT Page 24 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 something I actually want to say. There was one mitigation that we felt was really important because there was no analysis in the CEQA documents of the impact of increased access on nature. Nature was really, really important to people. Where paths go and what do you prioritize in many cases is critical. More than anything else, people said, "We want access, but we want to protect nature." There is one mitigation that Staff entered into the Mitigated Negative Declaration that said, "In natural areas, we'll protect nature as the highest priority, and then we'll look at what we can do there." That's the only mitigation for that impact. Without it, the CEQA document is lacking mitigation, analysis, anything for something that is really critical. I know that in the Parks and Rec Commission some people didn't recognize the critical importance of that one mitigation. I ask you guys not to take it out. Thank you very much. Thank you, everybody who participated in this. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Geoff Paulsen to be followed by Stephanie Munoz. Geoff Paulsen: Mayor Scharff, members of the Council, I participated in this process as a member of the Board of Canopy. I'm pleased to see that the final Plan includes restoring natural trees, encouraging appreciation for and experiencing nature. I think that's a very important part. Canopy hopes to work with you in all the details because there's a lot of work yet to be done. Second, I'd like to speak as a member of the Lee family, whose matriarch, my grandmother, refused to acquiesce to my grandfather's desire to build a housing development in Foothills Park. She dug her heels in and, because of her stubbornness and vision, we now have a magnificent Foothills Park and was kind of the spark for a lot of the open space. I'm just very pleased that the Plan incorporates natural areas, connectivity. I hope eventually we can connect Foothills Park to Palo Alto so that old folks like me can ride out Alpine Road and not have to climb Page Mill to ride a bike into Foothills Park. It's a great Plan, and there's a lot of work to be done. I commend the Staff, the public, the consultant, and all who were involved, and look forward to working with you in the future. Thanks. Mayor Scharff: Stephanie Munoz. Stephanie Munoz: Good evening, Council Members. I don't have much to say about park planning except to applaud the people who spent many hours working on it and making the parks something to be proud of. I do have one suggestion. It does seem to me whenever you have a large, gardened open space, you should also have at the edge of it, where it doesn't interfere with the rest of the park, but the park can be used as part of the floor allowance ratio of that structure. I believe that's where we should always have some kind of housing, especially for older people who do not interact as much as younger people with the rest of society, with the transportation system. They TRANSCRIPT Page 25 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 don't have to go to work is the main thing, and they don't have to come home from work. The transportation system does not have to allow for them, nor the road system. At any rate, I look over there. Somewhere off at the edge, not in the middle where it would bother anybody. At the point where the parkland intersects with the rest of the community, I believe that is a good place to put certain types of housing, nice-looking housing. When you go to Europe, you see beautiful hotels or beautiful palaces. We could have something like that, and it would be an asset to the park. You could just look at it, and it would be very nice. It wouldn't interfere with nature, but it would be at the point where the park intersects with the rest of the community. I think you should seriously think about that. I'm thinking about those hotels that went down by Greenmeadow. They look very business-like and commercial. If they had a beautiful park around them, that would be something else. That's what I think we need to be thinking of, having some housing, multiple housing, large, where the park stands in view of the open space that you would have around a single-family house to make it look really Palo Alto. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Now, we return to Council. I think we can do a round of questions and comments. I think I'll just start. First of all, I'd like to say thank you very much and thanks to the Parks and Rec Commission. Keith, thank you for your leadership on the Park and Rec Commission, and to all the Commissioners who worked on it. This is a really well done Plan. Thanks obviously to Staff. I know you guys worked really hard on this. It's easy to read. It's understandable. It covers things. I actually in general think it's great. I wanted to ask a couple of questions about the limitations on exclusive use. I just want to make sure I understand it correctly; I also have some comments on it. The way we've written it here, I just want to make sure—I'm thinking about events that are private events, that I've gone to. Most of them have been kids' birthday parties, where someone reserves an area of the park. Sometimes those have been at Mitchell Park, which is a large park, and some of them have been at Bowden Park, which is closer to my house, which is smaller. I read the language here, and I read it to basically say this would be okay and we weren't changing anything with that. Is that correct? We wouldn't have 14-day requirements if I want to have my kid's birthday party at it. I just wanted to make sure that's okay. Ms. O’Kane: That's correct. That part is okay. In Program 6.C.3, it talks about the reservable picnic areas. That would follow the policy for reserving picnic areas. Mayor Scharff: I was in Mitchell Park this weekend. There was a big picnic area that looked like it had been reserved. There was a bunch of people there; there was probably 100 people. It looked to me like they were having a TRANSCRIPT Page 26 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 memorial service for someone in Mitchell Park. It was a fairly large event, but Mitchell Park is a large park. I don't think it interrupted anyone else's enjoyment of the park. I wanted to make sure that event and things like that would not be caught up in this either. As long as people reserve—how many picnic tables—they probably reserved—it looked to me like they reserved six or seven picnic tables in a cluster there. Maybe they just show up and put the picnic tables there for all I know because I'm walking by. I'm trying to understand how—a lot of this came out of the Palantir issue. One of the things, I think, we want to do as a community is we don't want to overreact and then sweep up a bunch of other things because we're concerned about a corporation renting a park. They didn't rent a park; they actually were on playing fields at Cubberley. We don't change how most of our citizens use our parks. Do you see that being in it? The reason I'm asking these questions is I saw weddings in here. It didn't just say corporate events; it said weddings where we talked about corporate events or weddings. I was concerned a little bit about how that plays out and what Staff's going to do and what that means. Some weddings are 50 people; some are 5 people; some are 300 people. What's the dividing line that you're going to look at this and start treating it like a Palantir corporate event, which I view as—since I've been on the Council focusing on this, that is the only one I can remember in all of Palo Alto history. I'm sure there's been other things like that, but it's literally the only one I can remember. Mr. de Geus: Thank you for the question, Mayor Scharff. It is a little bit of a reaction to that particular event. It would be extremely rare that we would do something like that, where it's multiple days a full park or a big portion of a park is not available to the public. That's the dividing line. If it's 5 days or somewhere in that range, or more, that we would not hold up a park so that the public couldn't access it for that amount of time. For private events like a wedding or a big life event for part of a day, those things are just fine, or even a full day. Mayor Scharff: I don't believe that's what the language says. When it comes to the motion, I think I may play with the language a little bit. I don't think it says that. The other thing I was thinking a little bit is about—we actually have one park, which we don't think of as a park, where we actually want to encourage private events. That's the golf course. For our golf course to be successful—whenever I visit golf courses, they hold things like—we have a competition for the hole in one. We have a charity event for this. Most golf courses I know—it's a series of private events that bring in people and fund a lot of it. Our golf course is really an enterprise zone as in—what do we call it? Enterprise Fund. We hope that the golf course will at least break even. I don't think we want the General Fund funding it. We should think about the golf course separately. I was surprised to find out that the golf course is TRANSCRIPT Page 27 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 dedicated parkland. Since the golf course is dedicated parkland, we need to carve out a separate response to these issues for the golf course. That's my comment. I did want to just confirm with you that, yes, the golf course would be included in this if we don't carve it out separately. Mr. de Geus: Mayor Scharff, technically that's right. It is dedicated parkland, so it would fall into that. Just a comment on your remarks. It's an interesting thought. The golf course is unique. It's really quite different than all the other parks. The ability to have more events there could help the golf course recover its costs for supporting the venue and also increasing more golfing public. That would be interesting to take a look at. Mayor Scharff: Those were my questions. I am now going to go to Vice Mayor Kniss. Vice Mayor Kniss: A good report. Thank you all for doing this. It's kind of fun to discuss parks and recreation and something that's so positive. A couple of questions. On page 89, the plan to design and construct a new gymnasium is certainly very desirable. You do mention Cubberley here, and we'll get to that later on tonight. How would we determine that be used? Are you thinking of putting that into some other format as far as sharing that? That sounds like that both would be ours and the School District's. Am I correct? Mr. de Geus: Thank you, Vice Mayor Kniss. It depends. What we do know is we don't have any gyms in the City that the City owns. We only use the School District gyms. We're about to think about Cubberley for the long-term and master plan that site. It already has some gyms, so we feel like that's the natural site for it. It could be potentially a gym on the 8 acres that the City owns, in which case the City would really control it. It could be a shared ownership, depending on what we would come to with the Master Plan. Vice Mayor Kniss: That'll be of great interest to the community. The second question that always comes up is on page 96. Make sure I've got the right page on that. 94, sorry. You've already heard two comments tonight on bathrooms in the park. Bob Moss reminding us that that was not what those who developed Bol Park were intending to have. You heard from Aram James that he couldn't imagine not having bathrooms in the park. I presume what you're saying here is you're going to go through a planning process. That usually means stakeholders and so forth. Is there something else in that, that I'm not seeing? You have some parks in mind already, right? Mr. de Geus: We do. We've listed those parks based on a number of criteria, use and size of the park and those things. What was very helpful going through this planning process was the question about bathrooms and whether the community felt the bathrooms should be added or not. It was TRANSCRIPT Page 28 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 overwhelming people wanted more bathrooms, in this 90-percentile type thing. What's been difficult is when you talk about bathrooms with the specific neighborhood of that particular … Vice Mayor Kniss: They may not always want it in their park. Mr. de Geus: Yeah, that's what happened. That doesn't mean we don't listen to the local neighborhood, but it's another data point as we have the discussion about whether a bathroom should or shouldn't be put in. When we look at Bol Park, we will have another several community meetings with the neighbors there. We'll share the information that we've heard from the rest of the community, and then come to a conclusion, hopefully one that we share, and bring it to Council. Vice Mayor Kniss: That's all the questions I have for now. Thank you. As I said, you did a very good job putting this together. I look forward to—one last thing. How much do we have set aside in our capital funds for this in totality? Do you want to look for it and just let me know later? That's fine. If all of this were done, it's a fair amount. Thanks. Mayor Scharff: Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: A lot of people have already said thanks. I want to add my thanks. I'd actually like to take a minute and call out people and just call out their names. Thank you, Rob. Thanks, Kristen, Brad Eggleston, Daren Anderson, Peter Jensen, Elizabeth Ames, a lot of hard work. I want to thank the Parks and Recs Commissioners. I see a couple of you guys here. I'm going to read all of them: Stacy Ashland, Jeff LaMere, Jim Cowie, Ed Lauing, Amy Cribbs, Pat Markovich, DeeDee Crommie, Ryan McCauley, Jeff Greenfield—I see you in the back—Don McDougall, Jennifer Hetterly, David Moss, Abbie Knopper, Keith Reckdahl. Again, this is one of our best plans, so thank you, guys, for all the hard work. I actually want to thank our consultants too. The consultants did a really good job. I went to a few of those meetings with those community feedback. You really did a good job of surveying the community and interpreting the research. Again, thanks to the residents and the community that participated, particularly those people on the dedicated stakeholder group. This is pretty much the same Plan we reviewed in May. I liked it then; I like it now. As people have said, now the fun part starts, which is actually implementing it. Highlighting a few things. Clearly, we need to find a way to add park space as the community grows. We always need to be looking for opportunities to do that. Cubberley's included here; it's an item later tonight. It's a huge opportunity for the City. The Baylands, the Foothills Park expansion, hopefully that will be coming back to us soon. It's in here, but I just want to add a little extra importance. We really need to focus on TRANSCRIPT Page 29 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 senior programs as our population ages. It's a big opportunity. We are an aging City, and we need senior-friendly services. We heard about some small issues. I won't call them small, but Bol Park with the bike path. I think it's our only park that has a bike path through it. I do see a lot of potential conflict between pedestrians and bicyclists. The other thing I really like about this Plan is the way we bucketed and prioritized and called out things that were critical versus urgent and looking at the size of investment and using that as a way to organize planning. That's really good. Following up on Mayor Scharff's comment, I had a question. Under Program 6.C.3, it says that exclusive use of certain sites is permitted in accordance with regulations. Was the golf course just one of those sites where exclusive use is already permitted? Ms. O’Kane: Thank you for your comments. What this is referring to is those areas where we already allow exclusive use by reservation. For example, picnic areas, those types of areas where we already have exclusive use through a separate permitting process. Council Member DuBois: I didn't know if there was already a reservation process for the golf course and if it just fit in here under our existing ordinance. Ms. O’Kane: Correct. Council Member DuBois: Does it? Ms. O'Kane: It does in the sense that people are—do you mean for playing golf or for reserving a space for … Council Member DuBois: I don't know if we have a way to reserve the golf course for a wedding reception or a golf scramble event. I don't know if that exists in our ordinances already. It may be, and we're just not aware of it. Mr. de Geus: We do have that for playing golf, and we do have it at the restaurant for different events as well. There are lots of weddings and other banquets at the restaurant facility at the golf course. It's included in there. I don't want to speak for the Mayor. For even larger events, like big corporate events that may take up space for a week or something like that, we don't have a policy for that for the golf course. Council Member DuBois: I think he was concerned about weddings; I guess we'll let him speak for himself later. I do think the 5 days is a good timeframe and seems to be specific and a reasonable amount. I also had a question about the flexibility of fees. It sounds like those are going to be worked on further, where it says a minimum of 100 percent. Is there anything that prevents us from going above 100 percent? TRANSCRIPT Page 30 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Mr. de Geus: It's probably a legal question. I know there are certain things we can charge for that allows us to go over 100 percent of cost recovery. This may fall within that category. If it does, then we would certainly look at that. Particularly if there's an inconvenience to the community factor, some cost for that would be important. Council Member DuBois: That's what you would look at when you talked about tiers? Mr. de Geus: Yep. Council Member DuBois: Thank you very much. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Kou. Council Member Kou: I just wanted some clarification also—first, I want to say thank you to everybody involved in this Plan. It was a very good Plan. I read it when I was a member at the CAC. It was good then; it's good now. Thank you to all of you for all your hard work. I did want to go into Policy C.6. I need some clarification on the language. When you're saying "by private organizations," doesn't that automatically already say large corporations or is there a different definition to that? Whereas, wedding parties or birthday parties and individuals, who are reserving those spots would—these areas for their events, would that be considered as a private organization? How is that defined? Mr. de Geus: That wasn't the intent. The intent of this particular policy was for organizations, large, private organizations. Council Member Kou: That should be quite clear it's for large organizations, large, corporate organizations. I'm glad that you explained the maximum 5 days consecutive use. I know Council Member DuBois said it's okay, but I actually find it rather excessive, still excessive. I try to think about what events would take 5 days even with setup and breakdown. Even the biggest events that the City puts on, May Fete and Art Festival, are done in 1 day. I know you guys start pretty early, and it's taken down by night. I can't figure out why would 5 days be needed. That's also still excessive as to 5 days of the community not being able to use it. I don't know. Was there any discussion about—I'm sure that the Commissioners had gone through this and somehow, someway you guys came up with the 5 days. If you can elaborate a little bit more, I'd appreciate that. Ms. O’Kane: The 5 days was discussed with the Parks and Rec Commission. This one is one that was really in response to the larger event that we had at Cubberley, that was—was it 14 days? It was really in comparison to that TRANSCRIPT Page 31 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 period of time. It was a much shorter timeframe that would really limit the type of activity that would occur there. For example, someone who's using the space for a picnic or a memorial event would go through our normal reservation process. Someone who wants space for a large event and would need 2 weeks or even longer than that, this would keep them out of this process unless it was approved independently of that. It was really just a starting point for the conversation. If someone is coming in and applying for a permit, that is the first tier of limiting what the use could be for. We did discuss it. As Rob said earlier, it's going to be very rare that this sort of event comes up even for 5 days. It was bookends to an event that we certainly didn't want it to go longer than that. Council Member Kou: Thank you. I wish it was 3 days, then it would be a little bit more acceptable. Going back to the map that is about expanding park space, how come Ventura was not considered as a neighborhood that would want to see more parkland there? Their park right now is teeny, very small for a place that's going to be growing. How come that one is identified as a neighborhood? Mr. de Geus: We're looking up the … Council Member Kou: That's your Page vii, 7. Mr. de Geus: It certainly was intended to be part of that shaded area, Ventura, because we know that's a highly populated area. That is an area where we would look to add parkland if we ever had the opportunity. Council Member Kou: It wasn't identified in your map, so I was hoping to bring attention to that and have some focus there. They have the Boulware Park, which is pretty tiny. It is a growing area. Hopefully, we can bring some attention to there. As for bathrooms in Bol Park, wasn't there the time when Barron Park Association had a stakeholders group that conducted a survey about what they would like to see at their park and the trails and so forth? Do you recall if they brought it to the Commission and to you in order to—and what it said about bathrooms and so forth? Mr. de Geus: Bol Park and that whole neighborhood was very engaged in the planning process. It was great. We even went and visited with them at one of their homes. We took a lot of their input as well as the rest of the community. Council Member Kou: Bathrooms were part of the discussion there? TRANSCRIPT Page 32 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Mr. de Geus: I'd have to go back. It wouldn't surprise me if that particular discussion with those neighbors—there would have been some voices that were not supportive of bathrooms. Council Member Kou: Were not? Mr. de Geus: Yeah, I'm sure. The dominant voice from the community was more bathrooms. Council Member Kou: On the pedestrian and bike path, how is the maintenance of the vegetation—what is the schedule on that? Sometimes when I'm out there walking, I notice some corners, especially when you're doing a turn, those greenery, shrubs, vegetation is growing rather robust. It takes away from the path, one. Two, it also have an obstruction to sight. I was wondering is there a maintenance schedule for that and if it's addressed to ensure that it is maintained regularly? Mr. de Geus: This is at Bol Park? Council Member Kou: This is the bike path, and then it goes. The bike path. Mr. de Geus: I don't actually have the answer to that question. Perhaps Daren Anderson, our Parks Manager, might be able to provide a little insight. Council Member Kou: Just a schedule if you have it. Daren Anderson, Open Space, Parks, and Golf Division Manager: Good evening. Daren Anderson, Open Space, Parks and Golf. Thanks for that question about the trail maintenance. It varies in different areas. Sometimes it is more frequent. Usually we've got a Staff person going out there and looking for line of sight or protrusion where bikes or pedestrians will be hit. I'll have Staff take a look, but it's not so rigid a schedule, but the inspections are. We go out there, and I have park inspectors who see it on a weekly basis. If we're behind, I'll make sure I take a look. Council Member Kou: Thanks. That's good to know. Thank you. That's all for now. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Tanaka. Council Member Tanaka: Thank you. I think overall it looks like a really strong Plan. Thinking about the comments that the Mayor made in regards to the golf course, I actually agree with that. We're fortunate to have a lot of great parks and a golf course and a lot of amenities that residents enjoy. to make sure that they're kept up, it's also important to make sure we have a funding source. I just want to echo the Mayor's comments in terms of the golf course. TRANSCRIPT Page 33 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 The other thing I wanted to ask about is—on the slides you talked about should be no less than 100 percent cost recovery. Since it's expensive trying to maintain and keep up parks and enhance parks, is it possible to go beyond cost recovery, like for nonresidents, to actually make money so we could fund more infrastructure for parks? Mr. de Geus: Yes. I believe that is the case. It's something that we need to take a close look at, so we can continue to keep the quality of the parks that we have and hopefully expand it. Yes. Council Member Tanaka: Is there a ceiling on how much we can make or can we make it a policy where we charge nonresidents a certain amount so that we make money and could actually enhance the parks? Mr. de Geus: We do have a nonresident rate that is higher for almost all of our programs and facility rentals already. The extent of how far we can push that, I'm not sure. Molly Stump, City Attorney: Thank you, Rob. It is possible to charge above the City's cost for these types of programs for both residents and nonresidents. It's permissible to charge nonresidents more. I would say that the ceiling is really a practical question about what the market will bear and what the Council wishes to do as a matter of policy. Council Member Tanaka: For me, we should do what the market would bear for nonresidents. To me, that makes a lot of sense. That way we can make sure the parks stay great, and we can enhance them as necessary. The second question I wanted to ask is have you guys looked at naming rights and seeing what that could fund. Mr. de Geus: I'm sorry. I missed that. Council Member Tanaka: Naming rights in terms of using naming rights to— I read an article about San Diego. I think they made $2 million from naming rights. They would name a baseball diamond for some company. It was like sponsor a highway. It was some kind of response to that or a bench or whatever. Through naming rights, they were able to raise quite a bit of money. $2 million is not a lot in terms of San Diego, but it's some money and could help defray some of the cost. Mr. de Geus: I appreciate that question, Council Member Tanaka. It has come up before, particularly during some downturn in the economy where we're really looking for new revenues. My recollection is it wasn't supported, particularly naming rights for open space and park spaces. Certainly it's TRANSCRIPT Page 34 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 something we can look at again if that's something the Council would like us to do. Council Member Tanaka: I'm just trying to think of—it also creates a sense of ownership. If your name's on there, you're going to tend to want to make sure it's good. I was wondering if that idea could be explored. Like I said, we're blessed by having a lot of parks, but it's also very expensive to maintain and keep up and enhance. Mr. de Geus: The City Council has an approved naming rights policy for City facilities and parks. You already have that. That would be something to take a look at. It's not specific to raising money. Council Member Tanaka: I didn't know. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Fine. Council Member Fine: Thank you. I also really want to commend Staff, the Parks and Rec Commission, and our community members for this really high quality work product. This is one of the best Plans the City has done in a long, long time. Just a few comments and then one quick question. I really do appreciate the focus on how the Plan sets up prioritization of future capital expenditures and enhancements. The urgency factors are really helpful in terms of this Council deciding how and when and where to spend different monies on different park improvements. Thank you for that. I also want to commend the Commission for the action plan in terms of syncing up with finance and budget for next year's fiscal cycle. I would encourage Staff that this may be something we want to consider for other Boards and Commissions. Multiple Boards and Commissions in the City have requests they want to see accomplished. I commend you all for going to finance; that's the way to get it done. One quick question. I saw Caltrain's letter asking about a cultural resources technical study. I'm just wondering if Staff can elaborate on that, what it is, have we done it, what it will enable or not for us. Ms. Beard: That's one of Caltrain's standard comments that they make on CEQA documents. It's a formulaic kind of response that they give. They just want to make sure that, when a project goes forward and it's within their right-of-way, the reports and studies are done according to Caltrans standards, which are very stringent and rigid. They want to make sure that biological surveys, cultural resource surveys, any other technical reports for a future project will be done according to their standards. We did not do a specific study for this Initial Study on the Parks Master Plan because we weren't looking at a specific project at this point. Council Member Fine: You do it as a project (crosstalk). TRANSCRIPT Page 35 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Ms. Beard: Yes. As they go forward in the future, that will be part of their environmental review process at that time. Council Member Fine: Thank you. Just one other thing. I'm not sure if this is a comment or a question. On the Mitigated Negative Declaration—I don't know how to say this. Some of the mitigations maybe could be a bit more sufficient. There was one around collaborating with Stanford's Habitat Conservation Plan. The mitigation was to make sure that we contact Stanford's conservation manager. I'm not going to throw up anything here and try to stop this. I would put forth that we need a bit more robust mechanism for some of those things. Just listing somebody's contact information may not be a mitigation. Thank you so much. I really do think this is a great Plan. I would encourage my colleagues to dig into this and compare it to some of our other Plans. This is a model for many of the other Plans that we do here in the City. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: Thanks as has most completely Council Member DuBois expressed the thank you to everyone involved in this that have had long-term exposure and participation in this program. Thank you once again. One quick thing. I wish Mr. Paulsen were still here because he mentioned how the Lee family, his family, was considering developing the land that is now Foothills Park for housing. One of the, in my view, better quotes came from Mrs. Lee. I apologize because I can't remember her first name. Mr. Lee, who was considering developing this as housing, went to her and said—they were collaborating about this. She said, "I do own half of that land, and I don't want it developed as housing." He said, "Which half?" She said, "Every other square foot." For me, that's one of the better quotes. Going more to the programs, policies and programs. Policy 6.C.1, the line that says "closed to the general public will be considered on a case-by-case basis and will be addressed using the following criteria." I understand we can't anticipate every single thing that might come up. That first bullet says "no exclusive use by private parties is permitted on peak days, for example weekends, holidays, or peak times, for example evening hours on weekdays or 10:00-6:00 P.M. on weekends as defined by Community Services staff unless approved in advance by the Director of Community Services." I'm curious why that bullet doesn't end after the word "weekends." The hours are the hours. There's no interpretation, there's no determination to be made. We'll talk about the hours in just a moment. I don't understand the purpose of that additional language. Hours are being established, so what's being defined by Community Services or the Director of Community Services? TRANSCRIPT Page 36 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Ms. O’Kane: It's referring to the hours themselves being defined by Community Services Staff based on where the greatest need is. It's likely that these hours wouldn't change as far as what we consider peak hours. Weekends and holidays and then evening hours on weekdays are when the athletic fields are usually used for afterschool athletic programs. That part of the sentence, "as defined by Community Services staff," is related to those hours. If for some reason those peak hours would change for some reason, that would be defined by Staff. Council Member Holman: In all the years I've lived here, I don't know that those peak hours have changed. I'm going to ask that that bullet end after the word "weekends." The hours of 10:00-6:00—a clarification. In the presentation you made, Kristen—thank you—there's the 5-day limit. This bullet says not on weekends. If I heard it correctly, I thought you said 5 days so it wouldn't encompass two weekends but could spill over into one weekend. Did I mishear that? Ms. O’Kane: You did not. Where that comes into play is the last part of this bullet where it says "unless approved by the Director of Community Services." If we lose that piece, then really it's saying no exclusive use is permitted on peak days or peak times." Council Member Holman: I would be curious to hear also what Parks and Rec Commissioners had to say about a private enterprise taking over a park on a weekend. Was that very popular with the Commissioners? Mr. de Geus: I would have to say no, it was not popular. It would be uncommon and fairly unlikely that would happen. What we tried to build in here is we can't anticipate every scenario. There may be a scenario where it does make sense to allow for a large, private function over multiple days. If we do that, we need to be very careful about making that decision. That's what the policy is trying to get at. Council Member Holman: The golf course being separate, as the Mayor brought up. I'm not seeing the need for this. We need to deal with the golf course a little separately from this to have clarity. It is a unique animal. The third bullet says "multi-day private event … including setup." A minimum of 14 days in advance, the public would be noticed. I'm trying to think of what private entity is going to or how a private entity would establish an event as short notice as 14 days in advance. The reason I'm bringing this up is because events are planned long ahead. One of the primary things that has to be established is a location. If the public is noticed 14 days in advance, hasn't the event already been established and the City commented about giving its approval or not? What's the point of the 14-day notice? Why isn't it 60 days TRANSCRIPT Page 37 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 if there's going to be something like this, or 90 days? Fourteen days just seems absolutely pointless to me. Ms. O’Kane: That's a valid point. I will use the example of the Palantir event, where it was planned very quickly, and it was because they had nowhere else to go for their event. That was an example of an event that was planned very quickly. I agree that most events require a significant amount of time to plan, probably some even out a year in advance, to pick your location and to plan everything. Council Member Holman: What was the discussion at the Parks and Rec Commission about the notification? I can't imagine 14 days was particularly popular. I didn't watch that meeting, but I just don't see it useful to the public. Ms. O’Kane: I don't recall us having a lot of discussion on the 14 days. We talked about ensuring that there would be public input. Anytime you had the public noticing, it would be enough time to get public input before issuing the permit. That piece was added to ensure that we didn't issue a permit and then hear public input, that it was the other way around. I'm not sure if that came through clearly in the revised policy. Council Member Holman: It seems to me something that would be useful would be "14 days in advance of permit issuance" or something like that. I'm not sure that's maybe—14 days at least—I'll just use that—in advance of permit issuance seems to make sense. The last bullet, "explore establishing incremental deposits and fees for such use," there's been some discussion about that by colleagues. I don't know why we would explore it. I'm not sure why we wouldn't evaluate and adopt incremental deposits and fees for such use. Did that conversation come up at Parks and Rec? Ms. O’Kane: What this would do is allow the Staff and the Parks and Rec Commission to propose something to Council, and then Council could adopt. That's why it's written "explore," so that we would go through the process of analyzing what would be the appropriate fee, and then present something to Council for adoption. Council Member Holman: It just says explore, so it could be languishing out there forever and a day. I would support something like "develop and adopt." Developing fees would be brought to the Council because we have a fee schedule. Develop and adopt would be where I would go on that. Is there any particular sensitivity—I didn't find it in here. Shani is still here, so maybe she's thought about this. For the event at Cubberley, a lot of us heard a lot about that. I went by there probably three or four times during that. There was a generator going on pretty much 24 hours a day, and it was really loud. I don't know about noise-producing equipment. We have a noise ordinance TRANSCRIPT Page 38 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 that's not that well supported, but we have a noise ordinance. It seems like we ought to have something in here that covers noise and areas of sensitivity. Sensitive receptors, I think, includes wildlife. Ms. O’Kane: The noise ordinance is used for events like this, and that's through the special event permit process, which would be the process that's used for an event like this. That process is managed by the Police Department. We follow that ordinance through that process. Council Member Holman: I'm going to argue it's not really adequate for areas of sensitive habitat and such. I look to the Mayor. We started out doing questions, but we've all evolved to questions and comments. When do you want motions or … Mayor Scharff: Not now. We're still doing questions. Council Member Holman: Is anybody left? I guess Eric is left. That would be one place that I would go. As the hours, again golf being separate, it seems to me it would make more sense to do along the lines of what Council Member Kou was going to but not as restrictive as that. The hours would be 10:00 A.M. Monday to noon on Friday and not on the weekends. It seems like the hours should be 10:00 A.M. to noon or so on Friday on the weekdays. Friday nights, the community is wanting to use their parks. Let me see. The question that's already come up about the golf course. I don't know how Staff wants to handle that, if you want to come back with something specific to the golf course or if you want to try to develop something tonight in real-time or what you want to do about that. What's your thinking? Mr. de Geus: Council Member Holman, that probably needs some thought, that Staff take some time to think about the golf course. I do think the golf course represents a pretty unique opportunity, particularly if we can sometime in the future rebuild the pro shop and the restaurant and rethink that whole area that would allow for large events. I don't think we'll be ready this evening to try and craft language unless you have something simple that directs Staff to explore. As a program, that could be something we could add. Council Member Holman: Thank you. I think that covers my questions and brief comments. Thanks. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: First, I just want to echo—everybody else has said it. For every member of Parks and Rec Commission, current and former, who participated in this, thank you. To Staff who worked really hard on this, thank you. To everybody in the public who weighed in, provided your input, thank TRANSCRIPT Page 39 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 you. This is—I think it was mentioned before—really an exemplary work product from City Staff and Commission. This is a really good example of a great Plan. For people who haven't had a chance to read it, when you get a chance, you could almost flip open any page and find something to like. It really hits something for everybody. More restrooms, for people who have kids or, like me, have had to—been a caretaker for aging and/or disabled family members, restrooms are really important. For people who are dog owners—I'm not currently a dog owner, but I've been one in the past. Having more places for your dog, especially in north Palo Alto, is going to be a big deal. Having more community gardens in south Palo Alto is going to be a big deal. I happen to live in one of the park deserts where I'm not quite within the half-mile walking distance. I'm pretty fit, so it's easy for me to get to Seale Park. For everybody, it's not always that easy. I appreciate the focus on areas including Ventura. Thank you for the clarification, and thank you, Council Member Kou, for seeking clarification about Ventura and wanting to expand park areas in that neighborhood as well. The major needs have really been identified here. Then, it goes in great nuance, in-depth. I really do appreciate, as Keith pointed out, the letter on Page 116. It has a really good and important focus, as much of the report does, on the future and the future investment and making sure that as our demographics change and the balance of ages and needs—as our population grows, that we keep pace and that we think very proactively and act proactively to acquire and provide the parks and the recreation services that are going to serve our community into the future. I really appreciate how this report does that and sets up to do the hard work that others have mentioned we are still going to need to do. We can't just pass this and say we're done. There's a lot more work that's going to have to be done to make sure the goals expressed here become reality and stay reality. Again, just very grateful for this. A couple of questions and thoughts, picking up on other items that have been mentioned. On the golf course, I can't count how many events I've been to at Michael's at Shoreline, at the Mountain View golf course. Certainly, we want to make sure that we can take advantage of that once our golf course is open again. I'm not a golfer, but the golf course is a major asset for our community. Of course, I don't want to see it closed and unavailable for Palo Altans to go golfing at, but it is really a different ball of wax from, say, one of our other major open space preserves or our other parks. Our understanding of it is—our approval of it and the update of the golf course was really dependent on expectations of Staff that it's not going to be a money pit. Segmenting out the golf course in the language from other parks and playing fields, etc., makes sense. When it comes to motions, it sounds like the Mayor is interested in that, and others are as well. I'm curious to see what people will play with and from Staff about what the process would be to incorporate that because I don't think any of us really wants to slow this down substantially just to make a couple of tweaks like that. I was just thinking what kind of event would we call the Moonlight TRANSCRIPT Page 40 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Run. How would we describe that? Is it a public event? Is it a private event? How would we describe that and how would it be captured and how would it be treated or things like that? Mr. de Geus: I appreciate the question, Council Member Wolbach. The Moonlight Run is a co-sponsored event between the City of Palo Alto and the Palo Alto Weekly, that particular event. It's largely open to the public for the public to visit. If you want to actually run in the race, you have to pay to enter. We use the space for really a day to set up the course and then into the evening. Council Member Wolbach: If somebody wanted to do an event like that, that was not with the City as a co-sponsor—having the City as a co-sponsor obviously changes things. If the City was not a co-sponsor and a group was interested in doing something like that, what process would they use for an application and a permit to use a park facility or an open space facility for an event like that? Mr. de Geus: They would submit a special event form. It's a quite extensive form of what the event is. That's reviewed by the Police and Community Services and Public Works and others that will be involved. We apply the different policies and programs that we have adopted to see if we can allow the event to go forward. Council Member Wolbach: I think the Mayor might have been hitting on this a little bit earlier. Small parties, small events, especially by residents, whether it's a birthday party or a memorial service, maybe even a wedding, the issue is not the type of event; it's the size of the event using a small portion of a park. I just want to make sure we're not setting up major obstacles to those. Those are a big part of what we use our parks for as long as it's not the same group using the same park all the time and it's basically turning it into their own private party place. I just want to make sure we're really clear that those—even if it means adding a little bit of clarifying language to that new Policy, 6.C. Just to be really clear about that, I think that's important. Also, a question on—along with the infamous Palantir thing, there was another issue with a performing arts group that wanted to use a City facility or use a park space and wanted to solicit donations. I was wondering if a group has a permit—are we setting up a system by which a group, especially a performing arts group, could use a portion of a City facility, a portion of a park, and then ask for donations or is that pretty much prohibited now and going to stay prohibited, and there's nothing in this Plan to address that? Mr. de Geus: It is prohibited now. It's something that we can certainly take a look at to see if our ordinances need to be adjusted to allow for certain types TRANSCRIPT Page 41 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 of donations to be allowed or not. We've just got to be careful about how we apply that, that we're consistent with all organizations and individuals that use the parks. Council Member Wolbach: Also, thinking about other groups, not just performing arts groups but even political events. Before we were on Council, several of us held our campaign kickoffs in City parks. I think a lot of us probably—I'm trying to recollect—said, "If you want to make a donation"— that's been a common practice. I don't know if this Plan is the place to address that. We might want to look at our policies and see if our policies are reflecting our practice in the City about how we allow solicitation of money in our parks in an event that it is permitted and only uses a small portion of a park, doesn't take up the whole facility. I'm just going to put that out there for discussion, whether that's tonight or a future discussion. Mr. de Geus: Council Member Wolbach, I know that the Parks and Rec Commission are very interested in the same topic. I believe they have it on their calendar to discuss and may be coming to the Council with a recommendation. Council Member Wolbach: That's it for my questions for now. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Filseth. Council Member Filseth: I thought it was really good when we looked at it in the spring, and it's really good now. Thank you. The golf course is a good catch. Mayor Scharff: Coming back to the Council for general questions, comments, motions. I wanted to follow up on Council Member Wolbach's. I'm glad to hear that's coming forward. I didn't realize that half of the Council up here probably violated the rule as they solicited donations in the parks. I just want to make sure there's nothing in the Master Plan—I wouldn't want to have to revisit the Master Plan. There's nothing in the Master Plan that prohibits—it's an ordinance that we have, is that it? Mr. de Geus: It is a City ordinance, correct. Mayor Scharff: They're going to do that, so we don't have to deal with it in the Master Plan. That was really the point of that. Council Member Wolbach also mentioned what I think really comes down to 6.C.2, which was the exclusive events for locally focused events. The Moonlight Run is exactly underneath that. That's what it seemed to me. I also think we need to clarify that language. We probably need to clarify it to say something like "shall be considered by Staff"—shouldn't Staff consider these things—and that they're TRANSCRIPT Page 42 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 not actively discouraged. That seems to be the language that would get there. There's a little bit in 6.C.2 I wanted to have a little discussion. First of all, the new language in 6.C is much better than the old language. I wanted to throw that out there and say the Parks and Rec Committee did a good job capturing it. We're just nitpicking. We should throw that out there and say, "You guys did a good job." I'm a little unclear when it says in 6.C, "limit the exclusive use of"—this is what's been creating the confusion for me. When I read Program 6.C.1 through 6.C.4, for the most part it's really good. I'm having a hard time by "limit the exclusive use of Palo Alto parks," "booking a park site … or a significant portion there for events by a private organization that are closed to the general public." That actually doesn't quite track with what's said in here. What I mean by it doesn't track is, first of all, you use the term "private party or corporation" in 6.C.1 and on, "exclusive use of parks for events by the general public." I don't think the language tracks in the top. That seems to be just for private organizations that are closed to the general public. This says "park site or recreation facility or a significant portion thereof." It seems that should be simpler. I'm not sure exactly what the—it might be something like "limit the exclusive use of Palo Alto parks for events by private parties or corporations" or it might be "by private organizations." It should at least track at least what's in 6.C.1 since, I think, that's where it's trying to get to. I was just wondering if Staff had any comments on that. When you looked at that—things like significant portion, I don't know what that means to be honest. This stuff doesn't really talk about that, and you make it clear, however, that you have rules and regulations about most of the stuff. I wanted to raise that as a question. Mr. de Geus: One thing we could do, Mayor Scharff, is just change the language to be consistent with private organizations. That's what it's intended to be. I see your point. We don't use that same language all the way through here. If we did, it would be clearer. Mayor Scharff: Correct. I wanted to get back to the wedding thing. I wanted to make sure—when I look at 6.C.1 and I go through that, if someone wants to hold a wedding on a weekend, which they normally want to do, is this something that you're going to have to get the Director of Community Services' approval for? Mr. de Geus: Probably do anyway, to get a permit to use a park. Would this particular set of conditions apply? It was not intended to be for weddings, for families, that type of thing. I wonder if the language is for private organizations even there in 6.C.1 instead of private party (crosstalk). Mayor Scharff: If we say private organizations, I think we solve that problem. TRANSCRIPT Page 43 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Mr. de Geus: I think so too. Mayor Scharff: I just wanted to make sure that we're transparent about what we're doing. That's why I raised it. I actually will move that we adopt the Mitigated Negative Declaration including the Mitigation Monitoring and Reporting Program for the Parks, Trails, Open Space and Recreation Plan and adopt the Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space and Recreation Master Plan with the revised language in 6.C with the following changes. In 6.C.1, it says "exclusive use of parks or athletic fields by private organizations for events that are closed to the general public would be considered on a case-by-case basis and will be assessed using the following criteria." I think we should say instead of—in 6.C.1 it should also say "excluding the golf course from exclusive use of parks." Come down to 6.C.2, we should say, instead of "may be considered," "shall be considered by Staff if consistent with this Master Plan and are not actively discouraged," because this entire paragraph implies we're trying to limit events. By putting it in here, we're implying that we're limiting those events. I don't think we should actively discourage them. I think we should add a 6.C.5, which just basically says "the golf course is a special case" and "private events are not discouraged" and "the Director of Community Services shall promulgate regulations to address the golf course." That way, you don't have to come back and deal with the Master Plan, but you have the discretion to think about it. We're basically throwing it back in your—it's not actually holding this up. That was my thought. I wanted to throw that out and make sure Staff was okay with it. Mr. de Geus: We're comfortable with that language. Mayor Scharff: Finally, the one thing I think is really important—I always believe this—is we don't want to just put these things on the shelf. I think we should direct—you're probably doing this anyway, but it's always good to have Council support. We should direct the Parks and Recreation Commission to look at funding sources including a possible ballot initiative to fund this. I need a second. Vice Mayor Kniss: Second. Mayor Scharff: Seconded by Vice Mayor Kniss. MOTION: Mayor Scharff moved, seconded by Vice Mayor Kniss to: A. Adopt a Resolution adopting a Mitigated Negative Declaration, including the Mitigation Monitoring and Reporting Program for the Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space and Recreation Master Plan; and TRANSCRIPT Page 44 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 B. Adopt the Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space and Recreation Master Plan, with the revised language to Policy 6.C. including the following changes: 6.C.1 Excluding the golf course, the exclusive use of parks or athletic fields by private organizations that are closed to the general public will be considered on a case-by-case basis, and will be assessed using the following criteria: A. No exclusive use by private parties is permitted on peak days (e.g., weekends, holidays) or peak times (e.g., evening hours on weekdays, 10 AM – 6 PM on weekends) as defined by Community Services staff unless approved in advance by the Director of Community Services B. Private uses will be limited to a maximum of five consecutive days, including event setup and break-down C. For any multi-day private event including set up and break- down, notice of the private event will be made to the neighboring community and facility users, a minimum of 14 days in advance allowing for public input prior to the permit being issued D. Cost recovery, including wear and tear on facility should be no less than 100 percent E. Explore establishing incremental deposits and fees for such use; and 6.C.2 Exclusive use of parks or athletic fields for locally focused events that allow registration by the general public (e.g., races, obstacle course events, triathlons, etc.) shall be considered by Staff if consistent with this Master Plan and are not discouraged; and 6.C.3 Exclusive use of certain sites and facilities within parks, such as reservable picnic areas, is permitted in accordance with the City’s Park and Open Space Regulations; and 6.C.4 Events that allow public access are permitted in accordance with Special Event Permit procedures; and 6.C.5 The golf course is a special case and private events are not discouraged and the Director of Community Services shall develop regulations covering the golf course. TRANSCRIPT Page 45 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 C. Direct the Parks and Recreation Commission to come up with a funding plan to fund the Master Plan, including a possible ballot initiative. Mayor Scharff: I did just want to ask the Chair if the last one is acceptable to the Parks and Rec Committee in terms of their work plan. Mr. Reckdahl: (inaudible) Mayor Scharff: I didn't want to impose anything on you guys you didn't want to do. I'll just speak to this. I think I've spoken to it mostly. As I think everyone up here has said, we think you guys did a great job. The revised language in C.1 that was originally there is pretty good. These tweaks are minor, and they capture more of the intent of what we're trying to do here. Overall, I just wanted to say it was a great job you guys did. I'm really proud. I'm really hopeful that we can go fund this and get this done. That should be the next focus. Let's go do what we said we were going to do in this Master Plan. Vice Mayor Kniss. Vice Mayor Kniss: Thanks. In the meantime, did you find—was there a figure somewhere for what this would take to actually complete it? Let me chat for a minute, and maybe then … Ms. O’Kane: We don't have a figure if we completed the entire Master Plan, what it would cost. What we do have is in the 5-year CIP, there's $4.5 million for Community Services capital programs. Vice Mayor Kniss: It will probably be considerably more than that. Ms. O'Kane: I would think so. Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you, Mayor Scharff, for working closely on exactly who can use the parks and when. Let me emphasize something. For some of you who might have—I don't know who of you have this in your hand. I'm sure it's online as well. On Page 13, as you go through the number of parks that we have, as I count it there are at least ten parks that have more than 10 acres. We have in Palo Alto—when we often wonder why it's so much per capita to live here, we have an astonishing number of parks. I know we say not everybody is within this certain exact mileage, but pretty much we've made it there. Look through all of these, and you'll see that they range from small, little, pocket parks to Rinconada and Mitchell. You look down—as we ask those who are interviewing or the night that we met with the Parks and Rec Commission, I'm thinking just about half of you said Foothill Park was your favorite park. I thought, "That's really interesting." You really know what you like. What defines us as a City, as unique on the Peninsula, is our parks, our parks, our trees, our ability to get to green space quickly, that you TRANSCRIPT Page 46 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 can ride your bike, wheel your carriage, whatever it might be. That's what I think is astonishing. You have done a terrific job of putting this altogether so that if you are looking for that private event, that wedding, whatever it may be that the Mayor was just talking about, you can go to the next page and see where all of those are located. We're very lucky as a community. As far as the funding goes, that will take some long-term and close attention by our creative Staff to come up with that. I would also say that in some other communities very generous people have given some rather amazing gifts in their parks. For any of us who know some of those amazing people, it might be willing to pursue that. I would also mention just one out loud, Dick Perry's group. Dick Perry's foundation has had an enormous amount to do with the zoo, which isn't exactly a park, but it certainly comes close to one of those amenities that we really know and love. Delighted to support this. Thank you all for doing this. Thanks especially to the Commission for hanging in there on this. This is big. It's been how long since you've done it? Thirty years now? Mr. de Geus: Yes. Vice Mayor Kniss: Thirty years, right. It's time for a facelift. It's time for an upgrade. Thanks so much. We'll look forward to whatever happens next. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Kou. Council Member Kou: Thank you, Mayor, for all this language here. It's actually very good. I just would like to have a Substitute Motion to amend 6.C.1, Number b, private uses will be limited to a maximum of three consecutive days including event setup and breakdown instead of the five. Mayor Scharff: Why don't you get a second? You can probably get one. Council Member Kou: Could I get a second for that please? Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman, are you seconding or not? That fails for lack of a second. AMENDMENT: Council Member Kou moved, seconded by Council Member XX to amend the language for 6.C.1.B. to state “Private uses will be limited to a maximum of three consecutive days, including event setup and break-down” AMENDMENT FAILED DUE TO THE LACK OF A SECOND Mayor Scharff: Anything else, Council Member Kou? Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: I do think we are nitpicking a bit here. I have a couple of suggestions, Greg, I hope you'll consider. In terms of elegance of TRANSCRIPT Page 47 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 the ordinance, I do think if we included the golf course in 6.C.3 as an excluded site and ask Staff to make sure the park ordinances allow the use of the golf course. My main concern is by specifically excluding it from 6.C.1 we're saying that we would allow it to be rented for more than 5 days without notice and without cost recovery. I'm not sure why we would exclude it from those things. I support what you're saying, and 6.C.5 is good, but I'm not sure it needs to be mentioned in both those places. I actually think it would be covered under 6.C.3. I don't know if it was your intent to allow the golf course to be rented out for more than 5 days. Mayor Scharff: That's why I wanted to give them the ability to think it through. First of all, when it comes to the golf course, it's unlikely you'd want to rent it out for 5 days, but it's possible. I really wanted someone who understands golf course operations to think it through, and that's why I said they should come up with regulations. When it comes to the golf course, we want to—your other concern was cost recovery. It's an enterprise, and we actually don't want to do cost recovery. We want to make more money than that. Council Member DuBois: That's what's allowed in 6.C.1, but you excluded the golf course from that. There's tiered fees. Mayor Scharff: 6.C.1 has a bunch of other stuff. If you want to specifically address—giving it over to them to come up with a comprehensive concept on the golf course makes more sense. If Staff wants us to say, "Go make money on the golf course," I can do that. I think Staff already has that sense. Council Member DuBois: I would prefer we delete it from 6.C.1 and just put everything into 6.C.5, which is saying the golf course is a special case and Staff's going to come back with regulations covering the golf course. Mayor Scharff: I don't want 6.C.1 to be confusing criteria in the golf course. I want to exclude it from all of that and have them come up … Council Member DuBois: It would be excluded explicitly in 6.C.5. Mayor Scharff: It says it's excluding the golf course, the exclusive use of parks. It says in C.5 the golf course is a special case. I'm not sure how that isn't clear. I'm not sure what harm it does and why it isn't clear. Council Member DuBois: Would you be open to adding to 6.C.5 "develop regulations covering the golf course including establishing incremental deposits and fees for such use"? TRANSCRIPT Page 48 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Mayor Scharff: Sure, absolutely. I worry when it says incremental. You might want a big deposit. You might want a huge deposit. Mayor Scharff: Establishing deposits and fees for use. Mayor Scharff: Yeah, deposits and fees. I'm fine with that. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, Part 6.C.5 the language “…including establishing deposits and fees for use.” Council Member DuBois: The message is still not looking to lease it out for a month. The other thing that troubles me a little bit is the last bullet point. I thought this Plan is very strong on funding. If you look at pages 105-108, it talks about a lot of funding options. I support what's in the Plan. I'm not sure I would want to highlight a General Obligation tax without knowing what it's for. If we're elevating that above all these other funding options, they already talk about issuing bonds including General Obligation bonds. What's the intent of highlighting a ballot measure as opposed to all the other funding that they're including? Mayor Scharff: I want them to feel empowered. It they think a ballot measure to raise money is a good concept—I'm not saying go do a ballot measure. I wanted them to have the ability to be empowered to go do all of that and come up with a funding plan for our parks. A ballot measure may be one of the best ways to fund our parks and seems to have tremendous support whenever we've polled in the past for parks. I believe parks and bicycles are the things that poll the best. Funding these things is very, very difficult. This is a really good way, and they should consider it. I want Staff to support them. Council Member DuBois: I think they are considering it. It's already in the Plan. I'm not sure what we're adding here. I just want to make it clear that I don't support necessarily without knowing what we're talking about elevating a general tax above all the other options that are also in the Plan. I'd like to see them consider exactly what they've put here on Pages 105-108. Mayor Scharff: What are you looking at? Council Member DuBois: It starts on Page 105, where they talk about funding. They talk about General Obligation Bonds, Revenue Bonds, special districts, selling property, private-public partnerships. I don't want to send the wrong message. Those are all good things for them to consider. TRANSCRIPT Page 49 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Mayor Scharff: They're all good things for them to consider I don't think we're elevating. I think we're empowering them to do something, to come forward to Council if they think we should place a measure on the 2018 ballot. If it was the 2020 ballot, that's fine. It's really putting it in their court to say if they want to do it. Council Member DuBois: I just want to make it clear that as long as it's not above any of these other options. Mayor Scharff: Are you done? Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: On this last point, I was also a little bit uncomfortable with it. For the Mayor, what you just said, how do you feel about changing the language in this last point to match that, to say something like "empower the Parks and Recreation Commission to recommend specific funding mechanisms"? Essentially as a standing thing, the Parks and Rec Commission would be empowered or do you want them to come up with a very specific funding plan, taking what is already here and building upon that with a certain timeframe, or do you want it to be something that they're always empowered to recommend? I want to make sure I'm clear about what the goal and direction here is. Mayor Scharff: Fair enough. The goal is that, first of all, to come up with a— to suggest a ballot measure, for instance, takes more Staff time and is not something the Parks and Rec Commission may actually, without Council direction, proceed on in a way that—polling could be involved, all that kind of stuff. I want them to come up with a funding plan like we came up for the IBRC that says "How are we going to fund this?" I want it to be realistic and reasonable. Part of that may or may not include a ballot measure. I want them to know—they're the best group to come up with a funding plan that we can do it and get it done. I want them to have the ability—they may decide that a ballot measure is not the way to go. I would respect that. On the other hand, if they say they want to do a ballot measure, I don't want Staff saying to them, "You're going to have to get Council direction to be able to do that." That's what would happen. Then, we get slowed down and all of that. By the time they get it to us, I want to make it clear that I really want them to go forward and be empowered and come up with a funding plan that gets this done. Vice Mayor Kniss: As the seconder, could I ask for some clarification? Directing Parks and Rec to come up with a funding plan is pretty strong language. Mayor Scharff: That's why I asked the Chair. TRANSCRIPT Page 50 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Vice Mayor Kniss: You want it to be "direct" them to do that versus "consider"? Mayor Scharff: If the Chair of Parks and Rec had a problem with the term "direct," I would change it. I believe people need Council direction to say go do this. The question is do we as the Council want them to come up with a plan to fund it. That's really what I'm saying. Council Member Wolbach: I'm tentatively okay with it. I was thinking about who was the best body to continue to build upon what is already established here. I echo comments of Council Member DuBois. What's in the Plan on funding is a really good start. Whether the Parks and Rec Commission is the best body, probably because they're already immersed in this. One of the issues for me is their workload. I appreciate that the Mayor asked the Chair's thoughts on whether this is something within their capacity. It is an off-the- cuff question. I just want to make sure that Staff, who also supports the Commission, and the Commission—I want to make sure we're giving them some time to digest the question and understand the gravity of what we would be asking. I would be a lot more comfortable if it said "empower" instead of "direct." Then, it would be less of a (inaudible). Mr. Reckdahl: Right now, without any type of direction, I'd feel very uncomfortable even talking about this in the meeting because it is such a big bite. There are so many things that go along with a ballot measure, polling and setting it up. Without direction, I don't think the Commission should proceed. You really have two options. One is you direct us to investigate it right now, and we investigate it. Or we look at other funding mechanisms and say, "Are the other funding mechanisms sufficient?" If they're not sufficient, then we come back and ask to consider a ballot measure. How much freedom do you want to give us? Do you want us to look at all the other funding mechanisms first and only go back to the ballot measure as the last resort or do you want us to examine everything and then come back with a recommendation? Council Member Wolbach: That actually builds on my question. As somebody who's considering supporting or not supporting this, that or possible tweaks to the language is the issue for me. I don't want to jump to ballot measure. There are a couple of other ballot measures that we've talked about, and there may be other ones coming. I do see putting a tax on the ballot as a last resort, not impossible. I would be willing to explore the possibility. Something that softened it or clarified that such as you described, "investigate funding plan … Mr. Reckdahl: If I look at my crystal ball, though, if you look at the Master Plan, there's so much stuff in the Master Plan that, if you really want to TRANSCRIPT Page 51 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 implement a majority, you will need some type of ballot measure. Some type of tax is going to be needed. Council Member Wolbach: I agree. Mr. Reckdahl: If we are trying to do it piecemeal, you might be able to do portions of it without a ballot measure. It depends on how big of a bite you want us to take out of the Master Plan. If we want to attack the Master Plan and really try to implement it soon, then we should be considering the ballot measure right away. Mayor Scharff: That's what you've basically just—I wanted you to feel that you could do that if you want to take the big bite. I'm deferring to you guys. We don't have that much time if you wanted to do a ballot measure this year. I wanted you guys to start thinking about it. It may or may not be the right thing to do, but you're the guys that are going to make those decisions. Mr. Reckdahl: I would view that as direction to consider it, but not direction to do it. Mayor Scharff: That is correct, and that is the intention. Council Member Wolbach: That's probably comfortable for me. Vice Mayor Kniss: Do we need the language specifically in there, though? Mr. Reckdahl: My only question with that is should we consider other funding mechanisms first. What's your recommendation for the order at which we look at things? Should we … Mayor Scharff: I think you should look at it holistically. There are all these other funding mechanisms. How much money are they going to raise? How much money do you need? How would you want to break this out? Does it make sense? You guys are all really smart people and did a great job on this. Better, frankly, than most any other plan I've seen come to me. I mean that sincerely. I was really impressed with the work you did, so I have complete confidence that you can figure this out. If you get stuck, come to Council. Council Member DuBois: Just to be clear, this is a 20-year Plan, right? Vice Mayor Kniss: Yeah, it is. Council Member DuBois: We weren't talking about everything next year. Mr. Reckdahl: Yes. Even if we had the money, we just don't have the Staff to implement everything. That's the limiting factor also. TRANSCRIPT Page 52 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Council Member Wolbach: I'll just finish up my comments on this, which is what Council Member DuBois was alluding to. If we did have a ballot measure and it provides a certain income level for the City over the course of 20 years, that might provide a stable funding source for the City to draw upon to fund this. I'm comfortable with this. Mr. Reckdahl: The other thing is that it doesn't say anything about the size of the ballot measure. It could be a low-level ballot measure. It could be high level. Not only do you have to decide whether you want to do it, you have to decide the level. Right now, Boulware Park has been sitting on the CIP list for 10 years, and it still hasn't been updated. The swing sets there are old, and we just haven't got that through the list because between the CIP being siphoned off for other purposes—even if you weren't going to attack this, a ballot measure might be an option. Rob and Kristen, what are your thoughts on a ballot measure? Are we getting the cart before the horse or is this the appropriate time to consider it? Ed Shikada, Assistant City Manager: Perhaps not to answer that question directly but to put it in the context of other ballot measures or other funding plans that the Council has discussed. Clearly the Commission will require input from Staff as well as resources more broadly. If we look at other initiatives that the City has undertaken, it's not only the community engagement and the consensus building that's necessary in order to identify the desire and the willingness to pursue the funding, but ultimately everything from financial analysis to polling to at some point the organization behind that as well Clearly, this would be a pretty significant Staff effort as well. At a minimum in addition to the Commission referral, this is one for Staff to engage in and identify both the resources and the timing with which that Staff work could be completed. Council Member Wolbach: Should we add Staff to that Motion? Mayor Scharff: What would you like? What would you suggest? Council Member Wolbach: It's a question. I know Staff is pretty loaded right now. Mayor Scharff: My general experience with Staff is that they make it work. When they're overloaded, it goes slower. We understand these things. Vice Mayor Kniss: As the seconder, let's leave it as it is. If you all meet on this as a group and you look at each other and say, "I don't think this is something we really want to take on," you should come back to us and say, "We appreciate getting the direction. We're not sure that this is the time for us to do it. We would need this much Staff," and so forth. I'm comfortable TRANSCRIPT Page 53 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 leaving it in if you're comfortable coming back to us and saying, "It's overwhelming to us. We really don't think we can take it on this year." Mr. Reckdahl: The option would be that we think about it, and we come back to you with options regardless. We say, "This is what we could do if we just have bonds. This is what we could do if we just rely on the CIP, and this is what we could do if we had a ballot measure." Council Member Wolbach: Can I actually propose an Amendment that might make this work a little better? Direct the Parks and Recreation Commission to explore funding options, and then leave the rest the same. Mayor Scharff: Okay. Council Member Wolbach: Would the maker and seconder be comfortable with that? Mayor Scharff: I'm fine with it. Vice Mayor Kniss: It's good with me actually. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to amend the Motion, Part C. to state “… Direct the Parks and Recreation Commission to explore funding options to fund the Master Plan …” Council Member Wolbach: Thanks. I appreciate it. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman. Vice Mayor Kniss: Good luck with it. Mr. Reckdahl: What? Vice Mayor Kniss: Good luck with it. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: Thank you. In 6.C.1 there was an edit that, I think, accidentally happened. It says in the very first line "or athletic fields by private organizations or corporations for events closed to the general public." Mayor Scharff: Sorry, Karen. What did you say? I got … Council Member Holman: I think there was some language that was inadvertently left out in Program 6.C.1, use of athletic fields by a private party, TRANSCRIPT Page 54 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 and the wording "or corporations." By private organizations or corporations for events closed to the general public. Mayor Scharff: Staff suggested that we change it to match 6.C, that we use "private organizations" rather than "private party" or "corporations." Private organizations was the intent, and that includes all corporations obviously, but does not necessarily include private individuals. Council Member Holman: There's no harm in having "corporations" there because that makes it just that much clearer. Mayor Scharff: It's redundant. A private organization includes—does the private organization include the corporation? If not, let's add it. Then, we need to also add it up in 6.C. Mr. de Geus: I don't think it hurts. It might be redundant. I understand private organizations to be all corporations. Council Member Holman: I don't think of a corporation as being an organization necessarily. Ms. Stump: I would interpret private organizations as a broader term than corporations, but it includes corporations. It includes corporations, nonprofits, private associational groups as a broad term. Council Member Holman: It's "C" as it is up here. For any multi-day private event including setup and breakdown, notice to the neighboring community a minimum of 14 days in advance of permit issuance. Mayor Scharff: I'm good with that. Liz, are you okay with that? Vice Mayor Kniss: Yep, it's fine. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to amend the Motion, Part 6.C.1.C. to state “…14 days in advance of permit issuance allowing…” Council Member Holman: Thank you for that. On "E," explore establishing incremental, could we say "develop and adopt"? "Explore" really doesn't mean anything. It's something that gets left out there in the Netherlands. I would suggest "develop and adopt incremental deposits and fees for such use." Mayor Scharff: Is Staff good with that? That's fine. TRANSCRIPT Page 55 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to amend the Motion, Part 6.C.1.E. to state “Develop and adopt incremental deposits…” Council Member Holman: This is the Master Plan, so I'm still a little bit confused if not concerned by "A," 6.C.1.A, "10:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. on weekends as defined by Community Services Staff." I just think that's really confusing. Even after the conversation, I still don't know what that means. If you're going to change what peak hours on the weekends are, then you'd have to change the Plan, I would think. Otherwise, you're inconsistent with the Plan in implementing the Plan. I will suggest that we strike the language "as defined by Community Services Staff." Mayor Scharff: How about if we just define—we could do the other way around, Council Member Holman, that you would want to actually strike "weekends, holidays." Just say "on peak days or peak times as defined by Community Services Staff." Council Member Holman: No. That's … Mayor Scharff: That provides the flexibility. Council Member Holman: No. I would think that would be worse because then that could be fluid and open to a great deal of interpretation. If we just get rid of the words, like I said, "as defined by Community Services Staff," I think that wording is just confusing. Ms. Stump: I think the way it is currently worded is that the illustrations in parens are examples, and it is subject to adjustment by Community Services Staff as community trends and expectations evolve. It does have that flexibility. Your proposal would make it concrete. Council Member Holman: Wouldn't the Staff have to come back? If those trends change, wouldn't the Staff have to come back to amend this Plan? Ms. Stump: No. Council Member Holman: Then, wouldn't we be permitting events that are inconsistent with the Master Plan? Ms. Stump: The way it's worded, they have some ability to define peak days and peak times. The material in parens is preceded by the initials "e-g," which means for example. It's not prescriptive. It's illustrative and could be adjusted by Community Services Staff. TRANSCRIPT Page 56 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Council Member Holman: I'll go with that. There's the other issue that—no pun intended here—that I am sensitive to. I don't think it's addressed either in the MND or in the Plan. That is how do we best address noise in sensitive areas. Our noise ordinance just won't cover it. I'll give you an example. Several years ago there was an event in Foothills Park that was open to the public. It was really loud. It was a wonderful event, but I kept sitting there going, "This is great, but my God what about all the wildlife out here? They must just be running for the further hills." There's nothing in here that really addresses that. It is a concern. I'm looking to Staff for either a suggestion or—our noise ordinance just won't do it. It won't do it. Mr. de Geus: A couple of things on that, Council Member Holman. First, I remember that event. You may remember it was a one-time only and never happened again event because we did learn some things from that. One of those things was the noise issue was a concern in open space like that. The other thing I would … Council Member Holman: Yes, but what do we have here that's going to preclude somebody else from doing something like that in the Baylands or in Foothills Park? By permit, other people do get even large tour buses through there, which I've raised that as an issue too. Mr. de Geus: The Plan does call for what is referred to as a Comprehensive Conservation Plan for our large open space properties. We're currently in the midst of working on that for the Baylands. That does deal with, in more detail than this Master Plan, what is allowable in terms of active and passive recreation within an open space and sensitive environment. It's likely that it'll be defined specifically in there. We're recommending the same thing for Arastradero Preserve and Foothills Park, which is in the plan for the CIP. Like I said, the Baylands Comprehensive Conservation Plan is currently under way, and that's something we can take a look at. Council Member Holman: That's the Baylands Comprehensive Plan. Where are you going to address the Foothills and Arastradero Preserve? Mr. de Geus: It's called a Comprehensive Conservation Plan, how we actually manage the open space properties and the relationship between nature and the natural environment and the recreation and public access. This is a plan specifically for our park rangers and how they manage those spaces. I bring it up because it strikes me that the specific conversation about events in open space and in sensitive areas would be a topic that would be looked at closely with those two plans. Council Member Holman: That makes me feel much better about that. I think that will do it. Thank you. TRANSCRIPT Page 57 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 MOTION AS AMENDED RESTATED: Mayor Scharff moved, seconded by Vice Mayor Kniss to: A. Adopt a Resolution adopting a Mitigated Negative Declaration, including the Mitigation Monitoring and Reporting Program for the Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space and Recreation Master Plan; and B. Adopt the Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space and Recreation Master Plan, with the revised language to Policy 6.C. including the following changes: 6.C.1 Excluding the golf course, the exclusive use of parks or athletic fields by private organizations that are closed to the general public will be considered on a case-by-case basis, and will be assessed using the following criteria: A. No exclusive use by private parties is permitted on peak days (e.g., weekends, holidays) or peak times (e.g., evening hours on weekdays, 10 am – 6 pm on weekends) as defined by Community Services staff unless approved in advance by the Director of Community Services B. Private uses will be limited to a maximum of five consecutive days, including event setup and break-down C. For any multi-day private event including set up and break- down, notice of the private event will be made to the neighboring community and facility users, a minimum of 14 days in advance of permit issuance allowing for public input prior to the permit being issued D. Cost recovery, including wear and tear on facility should be no less than 100% E. Develop and adopt incremental deposits and fees for such use; and 6.C.2 Exclusive use of parks or athletic fields for locally focused events that allow registration by the general public (e.g., races, obstacle course events, triathlons, etc.) shall be considered by staff if consistent with this Master Plan and are not actively discouraged; and 6.C.3 Exclusive use of certain sites and facilities within parks, such as reservable picnic areas, is permitted in accordance with the City’s Park and Open Space Regulations; and TRANSCRIPT Page 58 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 6.C.4 Events that allow public access are permitted in accordance with Special Event Permit procedures; and 6.C.5 The golf course is a special case and private events are not discouraged and the Director of Community Services shall develop regulations covering the golf course, including establishing deposits and fees for use; and C. Direct the Parks and Recreation Commission to explore funding options to fund the Master Plan, including a possible ballot initiative. Mayor Scharff: If we could vote on the board. That passes unanimously. Thank you. MOTION AS AMENDED PASSED: 9-0 10. Policy and Services Committee Recommends the City Council Approve the Release of a Request for Proposals for a Consulting Firm to Assist the City of Palo Alto and Palo Alto Unified School District With Master Planning of the Cubberley Community Center and Discussion of the Cubberley Master Planning Process. Mayor Scharff: We have rail on Saturday. I am concerned about the time. I worry that Cubberley could bleed into a long conversation. I think we need to do rail next unless anyone disagrees because we have to have the rail done before our event on Saturday. Vice Mayor Kniss: You have some people to speak to Cubberley. Mayor Scharff: I will allow anyone who wants to speak to Cubberley to speak first. I don't want the public to have come here and not—I'm going to allow that, but then I do want to take up rail. Rob de Geus, Deputy City Manager: I just want to say that we did have Dr. Max McGee here from the School District. He's not part of the presentation, but he is here. I know he has a long School Board meeting tomorrow night, I'm sure. Mayor Scharff: No, no. Let's let Max speak as well. Max, welcome. Happy to have you speak as well. I'm hopeful we'll get to Cubberley tonight. I'm just concerned about it. Max McGee: Thank you, Mr. Mayor and City Council Members and Staff who we've collaborated so closely with in developing this RFP. We're having this same agenda item in our School Board meeting tomorrow night. We'll review it and, using our two meeting rule, we expect to pass it this month. I really TRANSCRIPT Page 59 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 look forward to this opportunity to collaborate, to even provide greater services for this exceptional community, services that can be innovative, that we could have a center of community learning. That goes well beyond what we usually think of doing in our schools and with our programming. The idea of having a professional facilitator to build on the great work of the former committee is a fabulous idea. We've talked with your Staff about it a great deal. Look forward to getting started. When I started here 4 years ago, I think we did a good job of working out some of the specifics of the lease agreement. If we can do that, we can certainly continue and develop a great plan together. I wanted to thank you for what I hope will be approval of this RFP process. I look forward to our Board doing the same. Let's get to it. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Max, thank you so much for coming. I know Vice Mayor Kniss has a question. Since Vice Mayor Kniss has a question, she's now agreed to stay at least half an hour longer than she normally would so she can ask her question. If other Council Members have questions, would you mind? Mr. McGee: No, I'd love to stay. Mayor Scharff: Vice Mayor Kniss. Vice Mayor Kniss: Thanks so much for being here. Mine is simple. I had a conversation with your Board President this afternoon. I wanted to ascertain for sure that we're going to split the $400,000. That's a fair amount. Mr. McGee: That is a fair amount. Vice Mayor Kniss: It may not take that much. That, I understand, is the top— that's the top figure. It could be less because it's an RFP. Somebody could come in at—I don't know—$200,000 or $300,000. We don't know that. I just want to have your assurance that we are going to split it evenly with the School District. Mr. McGee: You have my assurance. In fact, as you may have heard, we've had some budget issues lately. We have actually built it into our budget adjustments for tomorrow night. It is documented and, despite some of our challenges, we are committed to putting that full amount in if needed. That is in paper, and that will have my full endorsement and recommendation. Vice Mayor Kniss: Terry did confirm that this afternoon. Thanks very much. Mr. McGee: Thank you, Ms. Kniss. TRANSCRIPT Page 60 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Mayor Scharff: Does anyone else have a question they wish to ask? Nope. Thank you very much for coming. Mr. McGee: Thank you. I want to thank our Paly students who are covering this for the Paly Voice as well. Mayor Scharff: I will take public comment on this item. Here we go. Alison Cormack to be followed by Stephanie Munoz. Alison Cormack: Good evening. Thanks for being accommodating. There are more than 600,000 people who visit the Cubberley Community Center every year. There are more than 100 organizations who call it home, and there are more than 800 pages in the latest report, which outlined the many problems with the current building and some ideas for what we could do instead. At 61 years old, Cubberley is ready to be retired. In its place, we need a modern building that is designed for the purposes it has been used for, for the past 38 years, sports, arts, health, music, languages, dance, and lifelong learning. The opportunities and services that are provided at Cubberley make Palo Alto a healthier and more meaningful place to live. I ask for your support tonight of this RFP, so we can hire a team to imagine the future of Cubberley. I look forward to a collaborative, innovative process that will help guide all of us to what works for everyone and how we can fund it together. This project has been neglected for far too long. Tonight, you have the opportunity to rectify that oversight. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Stephanie Munoz to be followed by Nigel Jones. Stephanie Munoz: Good evening, Council. Thank you very much for advancing this little segment to a more convenient time for us. I want to remind the Council of exactly why and how it was that Palo Alto came to own a piece of Cubberley. It was because some years back the City fathers noticed with alarm that the Palo Alto Unified School District was letting go of school sites for money. They thought they needed the money and that they should get rid of the school sites. The City knew because its business people, lawyers, its intelligent, economic, practical people—we see the same thing right now. Now, we own this land, and we are thinking of doing something else with it when the real need is for schools. It's for the teachers that work in the schools. It would be crazy to use Cubberley for anything but teacher housing. I would recommend something like 101 Alma, a big building, nice building, beautiful building. I don't see any reason why every single community affair that's in the place right now can't just stay, every single book from FoPAL, every single little dancer, every single childcare child. There's no reason why they can't stay on the first floor of these homes. That's a way that people have traditionally used hotels and housing with the other stuff on the bottom. TRANSCRIPT Page 61 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Keep them and do use it for housing. There's no better investment that you could possibly make. It's going to—it's worth millions for our needs. Thank you very much for listening to me. Please, it's an opportunity. It would be crazy to let that facility slip through our fingers. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Ms. Munoz: We could make money on it. Vice Mayor Kniss: Nigel Jones followed by Penny Ellson. Nigel Jones: Good evening. I'm Nigel Jones; I'm the President of the Friends of the Palo Alto Library. I just wanted to make some comments about what I imagine will be slide 11 of the presentation. It's very small, so I can't quite make it out. The essence of it is I wanted to give you an idea of the scale of our presence at Cubberley. We have a freestanding module; it's around 3,600 square feet. There's about 40,000 books in that module. We have another freestanding module of the same size, 3,600 square feet. There's about 2,500 books in that module. With the actual building structure itself, we have two rooms which come in around about 3,000 square feet. There's probably about 20,000 books in that space. We have a storage space. We have a significant footprint at Cubberley. We have our book sales the second weekend of every month. We have about 2,200 people coming to that event. We have around about 150-200 volunteers. We have over 800 paid members. This year we will be paying about $90,000 in rent. I wish that was 1-9, but it's 9-0, $90,000. We're giving about $140,000 to the Library to cover its grants. The number one question everybody asks me is what's the future of FoPAL at Cubberley. It's a major concern. I literally get asked this every day. If I go to the sales, dozens of people will ask me this very question. The reason I'm here is I would just like to say that we would like to be part of the ongoing conversation about where Cubberley is headed. Obviously, we would like to be part of the end solution for the RFP and to maintain our presence at Cubberley. Just simply here to ask you to take that into consideration. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Penny Ellson. Penny Ellson: Good evening. The Cubberley process got off to a wonderful start. I was a member of the Cubberley Community Advisory Committee. Some excellent recommendations were put together by that Committee. Those recommendations were reviewed by my neighborhood. Before Lainie Wheeler and I, who were representing our neighborhood, gave our approval for it, we went to our neighborhood. We got a super majority in favor. Housing was never part of that discussion. I realize that that is something that's being proposed by the School District. I want to encourage you to TRANSCRIPT Page 62 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 continue working in partnership with the stakeholders as you move forward. I think that's going to need to start in Phase I. Tonight, you'll be talking about the tasks that need to happen at each phase. I would say a task for Phase I is going to be really vetting the idea of housing on that site to avert any problems that might happen later in the process. I know that my neighborhood approved the idea of 2 1/2 stories with the idea that it would preserve existing open space, provide space for future school space. It would provide space for Community Services that we need. Also, that a community needs survey would be done, not just an asset analysis. There would be a survey done of community needs, and that was part of the recommendations that were made by the Committee. In short, Greenmeadow was supporting Cubberley growth for use as a public facility. I'm not saying they're against housing. I don't know; I haven't discussed it with them. What I am saying is that I hope we will start this process by vetting that carefully and maybe working to get people onboard if that's part of the program. What else? Let's see. Finally, I want to just encourage you also to include nearby neighbors and also the City/School Traffic Safety Committee in this planning process. I'm not on that committee anymore, but the connectivity of the Cubberley site, if it becomes a school, to neighborhoods is going to be really important. Frankly, the Cubberley site right now is already impacting nearby neighborhoods. We need to be included in that process. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Seeing no other speakers, now I think we need to move to rail. The goal is obviously to come back to this. Rail should be 15 minutes maybe, and then we'll just come back to Cubberley. That'll be like 30 minutes, and then we'll go home. Vice Mayor Kniss: You moved Cubberley off. Mayor Scharff: Yeah. AT THIS TIME COUNCIL HEARD AGENDA ITEM NUMBER 11. 11. Adoption of the Problem Statement, Objectives, and Evaluation Criteria to Support Development and Evaluation of Railroad Grade Separation Alternatives (Continued From September 6, 2017). Mayor Scharff: I want to point out that Council Member Filseth is recused. You need to say something. Do you know what you need to say or should I have … Council Member Filseth: I'm going to recuse myself. TRANSCRIPT Page 63 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Mayor Scharff: Molly, Council Member Filseth just said he's going to recuse himself. Does he have to say anything further or is that good enough? I thought he had to say because I live—property within 500 feet of the … Molly Stump, City Attorney: Council Member Filseth, you do need to identify the real property ownership. Council Member Filseth: I own property within 500 feet of the Alma Street crossing. Ms. Stump: Real property close to the location. Council Member Filseth: Which is real property close to the location. Council Members Filseth and Tanaka left the meeting at 9:30 P.M. Mayor Scharff: I want to thank Council Member Filseth for being generous enough to agree to come back for the Cubberley item. Council Member Tanaka had to make a flight, so he's left as well. Is Staff's ready? Joshua Mello, Chief Transportation Official: Greeting, Mayor, members of Council. I'm Josh Mello, the Chief Transportation Official with the City of Palo Alto. Tonight, we're going to continue our presentation, picking up where we left off last week and talk about our Context Sensitive Solutions process, problem statement, objectives, and evaluation criteria. Last week we talked a lot about the decision-making process moving forward for the Connecting Palo Alto Rail Program. This is the first major decision that's before you. It's been through the process that we outlined in the Community Engagement Plan last week. That process included beginning at a community workshop. I'll talk a little bit more about that as we get into the presentation. This originated at a community workshop and then worked its way through Planning and Transportation Commission. Following the workshop, we actually did a Citywide online questionnaire and then brought this to the Planning and Transportation Commission, the Rail Committee, and then finally with you tonight at City Council. Prior to our first community workshop in May, we started with a series of stakeholder interviews. This was mainly to help shape both the Community Engagement Plan that was before you last week, but also start to identify some issues in the community and some thoughts around the previous work that had been done as well as identify some key themes that we should talk about at the May 20th workshop, the first community workshop. Some of the key takeaways from these stakeholder interviews. We brought about 15 community members into the Downtown Library, across the street, and sat with them for about an hour per interview, asked a series of questions, but also allowed open dialog and got a lot of good feedback including a note on how important the prior rail corridor TRANSCRIPT Page 64 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 studies are. There was a corridor study that was done in 2013 and then, following that, there was a feasibility analysis done by Mott MacDonald, looking at several different configurations at our existing at-grade crossings. That was more of an engineering study. In the interviews, we determined there's a little bit of confusion around that trenching study. A lot of folks thought that was a preferred alternative or, because the preliminary engineering work had been done, it's already a foregone conclusion that we're going to move forward with those alternatives that were identified in the feasibility study. You heard a lot about this last week. There were differing opinions on the CSS process and then some concern about presupposing solutions. There are some big thinking folks out there who want to think a lot bigger about the four grade crossings and something more substantial. Folks were worried that Staff and the consultant team might be predisposed towards certain alternatives and dismissive of some of the larger, big thinking solutions. That came out in some of the interviews. Finally, safety and visual impact were very important. One particular resident noted that her particular street, her neighborhood, was centered around an axis, and that street currently terminated in a vista of trees. If there was any kind of aerial structure erected, it would actually have a very significant impact on her neighborhood. That really brought to light some of the visual concerns that we'll be discussing as we move through this process. Back on May 20th, we held community workshop 1 at Mitchell Park Community Center. That was from 10:00 to 2:00. We had 130 attendees minus Staff, 39 written comments. In the morning, we talked about the background, the existing, future conditions, talked a little bit about the previous work that had been done. In the afternoon, we dove right into the problem definition, the objectives, and the evaluation criteria. We tried to elicit—one of the core tenets of the Context Sensitive Solutions process is to not presuppose the problem that you're trying to solve. What we wanted to do was solicit input from the community on what they saw were the problems with the current configuration and the future configuration of the rail corridor. We're kind of starting with a blank slate, recognizing the previous work that had been done, but still trying to get down to what the real issues are along the corridor. That will help us start to develop the objectives and the evaluation criteria. We did use some innovative real- time polling throughout the workshop, using a program called MeetingSift, where we were able to ask people in real-time questions and then get feedback. It would actually display it on the board. We followed up the community workshop with a community questionnaire. It was emailed out to 444 recipients. We've been creating an email list for the rail program since even before the workshop on May 20th. We'll be maintaining that list and growing it throughout the process. They in turn sent it out through their neighborhood email trees and posted it on their listservs. We were able to get 791 unique responses within the 2-week period. Of those, 98 percent of the people who started the questionnaire completed it and answered all the TRANSCRIPT Page 65 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 questions, which is a pretty good rate of completion considering how complex some of the questions were. The purposes of the community questionnaire were to maintain community involvement through the summer vacation season. We had the May workshop; we didn't want to just disappear until September and not bring folks along and keep them engaged in the process. We also wanted to share the draft problem statement, the objectives, and the evaluation criteria prior to bringing them to Planning and Transportation Commission, Rail Committee, and City Council for adoption. We did bring this to PTC back in early August. We'll get more into the details. In Attachment D of your Staff Report, you can see the revised problem statement, objectives, and evaluation criteria. Following that is the document that was presented to the Planning and Transportation Commission prior to the revisions. Two of the things that the PTC recommended was to reconsider the inclusion of noise and vibration and other common issues near railroads in the problem statement. They felt that there were certain issues that are inherent in any location that's adjacent to a rail corridor, and it may not make sense to include those kind of inherent issues in our problem statement because we may not be able to solve those through traditional grade separation or other treatments that we may end up looking at. Second, they wanted to reduce the number of objectives to a top four, eliminating ones that are a given. By "given," they meant things that we would typically do as standard best practices. Those are mostly the ones that are at the bottom of the early list that we generated. The Rail Committee dug a little deeper into this following the Planning and Transportation Commission. In the problem statement, the Rail Committee recommended that we add a statement at the beginning that recognized the importance of enhanced Caltrain service. Also, instead of describing high speed rail as potential, they recommended that we describe high speed rail as probable. Under the objectives, the Rail Committee felt it was very important that we explicitly reference the previous rail corridor planning work and also be very clear that, when we speak of minimizing right-of-way acquisitions, we're actually talking about minimizing eminent domain and being very clear that one of our objectives should be to minimize the use of eminent domain through this process. They recommended deleting the last three objectives. That's pretty much in line with what the Planning and Transportation Commission recommended as well. Lastly, the evaluation criteria. We originally proposed three tiers of evaluation criteria, and the Rail Committee recommended reducing that to two tiers and some other minor changes, breaking one of the evaluation criteria into two separate criteria, one that would address the minimization of right-of-way acquisition by eminent domain and then another referencing funding feasibility, making it more clear that we should strive to identify an alternative that is feasible to fund. What's feasible is left open for determination. We're going to have to look at all different types of funding sources throughout this process in order to determine what's feasible and what's not. I won't read the whole problem statement, but we TRANSCRIPT Page 66 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 did incorporate the bulk of the recommendations from both the Planning and Transportation Commission and the Rail Committee in this. We also did the same for the revised objectives. There are fewer objectives in the revised version than there were originally proposed by Staff. We made all of the recommended changes by PTC and Rail Committee. Finally, the revised evaluation criteria has been consolidated into two tiers. Moving forward as we develop our scoring matrix to evaluate the alternatives, we're envisioning that Tier 1 would have more weight than Tier 2 in that evaluation matrix. With that, our Staff recommendation for this section of the presentation is to review the summary of the community workshop, summary of the community questionnaire, responses, recommendations from the Planning and Transportation Commission and Rail Committee, and adopt the revised problem statement, objectives, evaluation criteria for discussion at community workshop number 2, and to inform the development and screening of grade separation alternatives. I would note that community workshop number 2 is scheduled for this coming Saturday. With that, I'll give you a quick overview of next steps. This is from last week, so it's a little outdated. We did have our Rail Committee the day following last Tuesday. We have our community workshop number 2 scheduled on September 16th, this Saturday. At that, we're hoping to review the final problem statement, objectives, and evaluation criteria and then start to delve into the development of alternatives, different types of alternatives, for each of the grade crossings. Then, we have a tentative community workshop scheduled for late October where we'll attempt to finalize the development of the alternatives for analysis. The ultimate goal is to adopt a preferred alternative by the end of the second quarter of 2018. Our goal is to bring that to you ideally before June 30, 2018. With that, I conclude my presentation. I'll be glad to take questions. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Do we have any public speakers? No public speakers. We come to Council for questions, comments, motions. Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: Thank you, Josh, for incorporating all the feedback from Rail. I'm just going to go ahead and move the Staff Motion. Council Member Fine: Second. MOTION: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Council Member Fine to adopt the revised Problem Statement, Objectives, and Evaluation Criteria for discussion at Community Workshop #2 and to inform the development and screening of grade separation alternatives. Council Member DuBois: Thank you. I would like to talk about it a little bit. First of all, I think it's understood, but when you look at some of the charts TRANSCRIPT Page 67 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 and things, a lot of this is directional data. It's not necessarily representative data, so don't slice it too thinly. Overall, there's a fair amount of—the top three priorities are the same at all three grade crossings. I think that's useful. I do think the problem statement is improved. I'm still worried that we're really burying the lead again, which is the future impacts. It's way down there in the last sentence. I hope at the workshop we make it clear that the reason we're there is because of future conditions. At the first workshop, there was a lot of discussion about current conditions. A lot of people focused on that, and I heard people say, "Let's just leave it the way it is." I don't think that's really an option. I really want that to come out. If you have a comment on that? Mr. Mello: For the workshop on Saturday, we'll have a much better handle on what the future conditions look like than we did at the May 20th workshop. Council Member DuBois: The objectives and the criteria, we had a lot of discussion. They're improved. The other thing I requested at the last Rail meeting was that we explicitly talk about a trench, again, because people in the community refer to it. Council stated it as a preference several times. If we just go intersection by intersection, we don't really have a forum to talk about a trench. Other than that, I'm looking forward to this weekend. I hope a lot of you guys will be there. It should be fun. Thank you for the work. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Fine. Council Member Fine: A little lonely down here. Mayor Scharff: You can move down, join us. Council Member Fine: I just want to thank Staff for coming back to us with this. Last week, we were speaking more about the community engagement aspects of this. While there are some conflicts there, we've got a pretty good plan in place to get good feedback from the community. This document we're looking at tonight in terms of the statement, the objectives, and the evaluation is a really good demonstration of how that can work. The Planning Commission added a lot of depth here and did add some strength, especially to the objectives. That was really helpful. I agree with Council Member DuBois that we are, as he said, burying the lead. I don't want to go wordsmithing this now, but I would also second that we do need to make sure folks understand that our future impacts are also future opportunities for us to work on connecting Palo Alto, stitching each side of the City back together, and perhaps providing good ped/bike crossings, things like that. Overall, I would just encourage my colleagues to support this. We've done a lot of work on Rail Committee. The community has come out in large number so far. I hope they continue to do so. Going forward, most of these decisions will go TRANSCRIPT Page 68 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 through the public, then the Planning Commission, then the Rail Committee, and then back to us. Each of these is going through a filter process, and I think we're going to get a good result. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Vice Mayor Kniss. Vice Mayor Kniss: Maybe this is the nervous Nelly question. I'm looking on whatever page this is, Caltrain corridor cities grade separation schedule. Can you walk me through that, Josh? What I heard you say, maybe not tonight but one of the other nights, is you felt we were in pretty good shape looking at Mountain View and at Sunnyvale. Mr. Mello: Is the slide up on the projector now that you're referring to, Council Member? Our Staff did our best to put this together by calling other cities, studying where they are in the process, looking at their webpages, and various Council actions. This is a plot showing where in the planning, design, environmental, and construction phase each of the grade separations along the Peninsula currently find themselves. The ones we're primarily concerned with because we'll be sharing the VTA funding with them are Mountain View and Sunnyvale. As it's been stated earlier, it's not going to be a first-come- first-serve competition. When VTA looks at how they're going to allocate the money over the 30-year period of the Measure B sales tax, they're going to have to think about where each community is in their planning process. Ultimately, somebody's going to be funded in the last 5 years of the sales tax or the last 10 years. We are currently in a pretty good position. We are on the same track as Sunnyvale. Mountain View started quite a good time ahead of us. They have full design done for Rengstorff Avenue. They've recently identified a preferred alternative for Castro Street. We will not be identifying a preferred alternative 'til the middle of 2018 under our current schedule. That's about the same track as Sunnyvale. We're in a good position. If we were to slip anymore, we would certainly be the last in line identifying a preferred alternative among Mountain View, Sunnyvale, and Palo Alto. Vice Mayor Kniss: That's reassuring. I serve on the Policy Committee, and the feedback I'm getting when I'm there is somewhat different. Mountain View is feeling quite comfortable with where they are. I won't repeat all the things that they said. They certainly would have indicated that they were very competitive and were further down the track than we are, which is a terrible pun. We are competing for this money, and we didn't know that. I'm sure we must have known it at some level, but it doesn't look like you're competing for it when it's the $700 million that's part of the measure and so forth. Here we are now, this much time later, looking at it and saying, "How can we stay apace with the others?" What Sunnyvale told me is they're really pretty far TRANSCRIPT Page 69 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 along. I think Mountain View has made their—they've made their decisions, as I understand, on each one of the crossings. Mr. Mello: Mountain View actually sent a letter to VTA several months ago asking them to fund their grade separation at Rengstorff immediately with Measure B funding, in advance of the planning funding. Vice Mayor Kniss: It's VTA making the decisions. We've talked any number of times about this. VTA doesn't have any one person from essentially our end of the county. We don't have a great deal of sway. Tell me, Josh, what are your plans for how we—as I said, how do we stay at least neck-and-neck at this point so that we have a good chance, when we actually have a plan, of finding the funding or getting the funding? Mr. Mello: I think we have a schedule before you that allows us to solicit the necessary community input and bring the community along and have a community-driven process but still stay on a schedule that's going to keep us reasonably apace with Sunnyvale. Mountain View has indeed—they already have final design for Rengstorff, and they've identified a preferred alternative for Castro. They're already pretty far ahead of us, especially with Rengstorff Avenue. Vice Mayor Kniss: They were very clear with me about where they were. Mr. Mello: I think we have a schedule before you that does both, that is able to accommodate the amount of community engagement that we need do to but also keeps us on a schedule that we need to be on. Vice Mayor Kniss: One of my colleagues mentioned this might take going to the ballot. We might want to vote on this. That won't be 'til next fall. That's quite some time away. That would seem to me—it's always positive to have a vote on how we're going to construct this and so forth. I'm somewhat concerned that we're going to be losing in the funding competition at that point. You don't have to answer that, but I think that's probably evident that that would happen. Hillary Gitelman, Planning and Community Environment Director: Hillary Gitelman, the Planning Director. I was just going to make an observation. One of the challenges is urgency in the sense of timing, as you pointed out. There's another challenge if ultimately we select a preferred alternative or alternatives that cost significantly more than the funding that's available from Measure B. That remains to be seen. That's another way in which we'll be looking for money. We'll be in a position different than our sister cities in Mountain View and Sunnyvale. TRANSCRIPT Page 70 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Vice Mayor Kniss: What most people are emphasizing at this point is safety. That is really the front and center concern of having this on schedule but also getting the funding necessary. I know what Mountain View is going to talk about is we've made our crossings safe. I've said it. I have these concerns. I interact with both the Policy Committee. Cory is my alternate on that. We hear what's going on at VTA, and I never have total confidence that there will be a fair and equitable distribution. I'll support the motion tonight, but I hope we really will stay on track with this and be aware that we are in a competition. Thanks. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: Thank you. The problem statement, a couple of things. One is why did—on the next-to-last line of it, why did "possible' get changed to "probable addition of high speed rail"? Ms. Gitelman: That was a recommendation of the Rail Committee. I think it was, again, this sense of urgency, that that would significantly color the future conditions that we'd be coping with if high speed rail was on the table. Council Member Holman: It's more a statement of highlighting the urgency of getting this designed as opposed to an actual statement about whether high speed rail is probable versus possible? Ms. Gitelman: I'll let the Committee Members speak. Council Member Holman: There's been quite a shift. Mayor Scharff: The Chair should take that one. Council Member DuBois: I actually don't remember the exact conversation around that. I think it was more about expediency and that there were these impacts coming. It wasn't any statement about the likelihood of funding of high speed rail. Council Member Holman: I'm actually more comfortable with the word "possible." I have another question. If we are going to—certainly we're going to look at this and see where we can get to and whether the funding is likely or not. It seems to me it's not just the increased service by Caltrain, possibly high speed rail, but also there's a fair amount of development anticipated in the Comprehensive Plan, which is also going to mean more traffic, more time crossing existing railroad crossings and stuff. Was there any discussion—I'll look to Tom on this—about adding language "along with increased development anticipated in the Comprehensive Plan"? TRANSCRIPT Page 71 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Council Member DuBois: That's a good point. Council Member Holman: Are you open to that as the maker of the Motion? To clarify the problem statement, just to make it a stronger problem statement. Mayor Scharff: What was the language you were suggesting? Council Member Holman: Just add to the end of that "along with the increased development anticipated in the Comprehensive Plan." Council Member DuBois: Could we just say "along with increased development period"? Council Member Holman: If it's not defined by the Comprehensive Plan, I would say "along with potential increased development" or "the possibility of increased development." Something along those lines. Ms. Gitelman: Mr. Mayor? Council Member Holman: Otherwise, it has no legs. Council Member DuBois: Hillary, did you have a comment? Ms. Gitelman: If the Council wants to add something there, I would suggest "regional traffic" rather than "development." If you look at the amount of development that's actually going to happen in Palo Alto as opposed to our adjacent communities, we're a tiny fraction of what's happening in the region. If you wanted to acknowledge future growth or future traffic, I would use terms like "regional growth" or "regional increases in traffic volumes." Ed Shikada, Assistant City Manager: If I could add as well. I do think it's important to think about the purpose of this problem statement, leading to the definition of the solutions and then the evaluation of what those alternatives are. It could be easy to get diffuse. Not to stick out a really contrarian position, but to the extent that development isn't necessarily a focus of the solutions, that could lead us down a bit of a rabbit hole in terms of the ability to stay focused on solutions that can be implemented along this corridor. Council Member Holman: Except it's not just the number of trains. It's also the number of people trying to get across the tracks. This really focuses on the number of trains and increased train travel. Council Member DuBois: What about the suggestion about increase in regional traffic? TRANSCRIPT Page 72 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Council Member Holman: I'm okay with that. It sort of gets to it at least. Council Member DuBois: Is Staff okay with that? Mr. Mello: It would read "worse in the future with increases in Caltrain service, regional traffic, and the probable addition of high speed rail" or "possible addition of high speed rail"? Council Member Holman: Yeah. Council Member DuBois: "Regional traffic increases." Council Member Holman: "Increased regional traffic and possible addition of high speed rail." Mayor Scharff: Does the seconder accept that? Council Member Fine: I'm not quite comfortable with this for a few reasons. One, per Ed's comments, this does make the problem definition a little diffuse. The second thing is we actually don't know if—there is a possible future case where future development in our nearby cities actually doesn't generate as much traffic as we might anticipate. No, I don't accept this. Mayor Scharff: I'm just going to say it is getting late. The Rail Committee spent a lot of time on this. It was unanimous. Normally, if it was me, it would have gone on Consent, to be honest, but I thought we should have a discussion about it. Unless we think it's going to add something in a way that's helpful to the community and doesn't detract from (inaudible) and make it diffuse, as our Acting City Manager said, I'm not so sure it's a good use of time at 10:00 to be going through a bunch of stuff. I think we're going to have to vote on this amendment, but I would encourage people not to try and wordsmith this, unless there's some reason that they strongly feel that needs to be in there. Council Member Holman: I don't think it's wordsmithing. I think it's bringing up an issue that isn't otherwise addressed here. Can I just say, too, in response to Council Member Fine, with all due respect, there's going to be regional growth. There's regional growth that's already been approved. Even if it's a 50 percent TDM success, you've still got 50 percent more traffic from whatever increased development there is. There's going to be—how would we not have increased traffic? Council Member Fine: That's like saying we should plan these rail separations, the grade separations, considering that the region's going to grow. TRANSCRIPT Page 73 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Council Member Holman: No, because I'm leaving in there "increased Caltrain service." I'm not trying to take that out. Mayor Scharff: Let's not have a debate. Council Member Holman: It's two-pronged. Mayor Scharff: You need a second. Council Member DuBois: I'll second it if we can get the exact language up there. AMENDMENT: Council Member Holman moved, seconded by Council Member DuBois to amend the Problem Statement to state “While enhanced rail transit service is important to the City of Palo Alto, the Caltrain corridor creates a physical and visual barrier to east/west connectivity within the City, and is also the source of safety concerns for pedestrians, bicyclists and motorists, especially at existing at‐grade crossings. The rail corridor also creates issues in surrounding neighborhoods, such as noise, vibration, traffic, and visual impacts. While the City of Palo Alto benefits from Caltrain service, and supports Caltrain modernization (including electrification), some of the issues experienced along the rail corridor will continue to get worse with future increases in Caltrain service, increases in regional traffic, and the probable addition of high speed rail.” Council Member DuBois: This is a good thing to call out. It seems silly to not call it out. I don't think it's diffuse. The issue here is the future impacts are buried in the last sentence. Including increases in rail and including increases in regional traffic and they intersect at our grade separations just seems to make logical sense to me. I would support the addition. Council Member Holman: Would you want it to say "increased regional traffic" or just "regional traffic" (crosstalk). Council Member DuBois: Increases in Caltrain service, increases in regional traffic, and possible addition. Council Member Holman: Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Fine, you want to speak to this? You don't have to. Your light was on. Council Member Fine: (inaudible) Mayor Scharff: You vote on the Amendment at some point. TRANSCRIPT Page 74 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Council Member Fine: No. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Kou, I saw your light was on. You want to speak to this? Council Member Kou: Just a question on the transcript. There's a concern about funding from VTA. Mayor Scharff: We're talking about the Amendment only, Council Member Kou. Council Member Kou: Then, I would … Vice Mayor Kniss: Are you voting on the Amendment? Mayor Scharff: Yeah. We're just going to vote on the Amendment. Council Member Wolbach: Just to be clear, the Amendment is just those four words, "increases in regional traffic," correct? Those are the only amended words? Ms. Gitelman: And the change of "probable" to "possible." Council Member Holman: The change of "probable" to "possible." Mayor Scharff: We're going back to "possible addition of high speed rail." Council Member Wolbach: Can we vote on those separately? Council Member DuBois: I didn't know that we changed "possible" to "probable." Mayor Scharff: You didn't accept that, right? Council Member DuBois: No. I would leave it at "probable." Mayor Scharff: That's not in there, Council Member Holman. Council Member Wolbach: It's just the four words, "increases in regional traffic," that are added as the Amendment? Mayor Scharff: That's correct. Council Member Wolbach: I can support that. Mayor Scharff: That passes on a 6-1 vote with Council Member Fine voting no. TRANSCRIPT Page 75 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 AMENDMENT PASSED: 6-1 Fine no, Filseth abstain, Tanaka absent Mayor Scharff: Council Member Kou, you wanted to speak to the main Motion? Council Member Kou: No. Mayor Scharff: Can we vote on the board? Council Member—I'm confused. Council Member Wolbach, do you want to speak to the main Motion? Council Member Wolbach: No, no. That was (inaudible). Mayor Scharff: I have no lights, so let's vote on the board. It's the main Motion. That passes unanimously with everyone voting for it. Council Member Kou, that's what was confusing me. Are you voting? Council Member Kou: Yeah. Mayor Scharff: Now, that passes unanimously. MOTION PASSED: 7-0 Filseth abstain, Tanaka absent Mayor Scharff: Is Council Member Filseth in the back? Does anyone know? Council Member DuBois: I'll get him. Council Member Holman: If I might? Mayor Scharff: Yeah. Council Member Holman: I can anticipate that this item could go quite a while. Mayor Scharff: Let's get started then. Council Member Holman: How late are you anticipating going? Mayor Scharff: 11:30 because that's when Vice Mayor Kniss would turn into a pumpkin and leave. She already agreed to go to 11:30. 11:30 is where we go. Vice Mayor Kniss: No. Can we make a deal? At least by 11:00. Mayor Scharff: Depends on where we are. No later than 11:30 but hopefully 11:00. If no one wants to talk, there you go. AT THIS TIME COUNCIL RETURNED TO AGENDA ITEM NUMBER 10. TRANSCRIPT Page 76 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 10. Policy and Services Committee Recommends the City Council Approve the Release of a Request for Proposals for a Consulting Firm to Assist the City of Palo Alto and Palo Alto Unified School District With Master Planning of the Cubberley Community Center and Discussion of the Cubberley Master Planning Process. Council Member Filseth returned to the meeting at 10:08 P.M. Mayor Scharff: You want to start? Rob de Geus, Deputy City Manager: Rob de Geus, Deputy City Manager, sitting here with Acting Community Services Director, Kristen O'Kane again. I hope this won't go to long. We're going to certainly try and help with that, make a pretty concise presentation. We're pleased to be here to present the draft scope of services for a Request for Proposals to select a consultant firm to help the City and the School District complete the Cubberley Master Plan. This evening, we're really seeking Council input on the scope of services, so that we can move judiciously and put the RFP out. By way of background, in 1989 we passed the first Cubberley Master Plan. Since then, Cubberley has been operating as a diverse community center with many programs including visual arts, performing arts, education, childcare, nonprofits, many health and wellness programs. It's become a real treasure for the community. In 2013, the Cubberley Community Advisory Committee completed a comprehensive review of Cubberley. The outcome was a number of defined interests and opportunities and really possibilities. The process and output was extremely valuable, but it did not produce a specific plan for the 35-acre site. In 2015 or the end of 2014, the City and the School District renewed the lease for a 5-year term with a commitment to jointly develop the Master Plan for Cubberley. In 2016, the City Manager and School Superintendent signed a Cubberley Future's Compact, again affirming the commitment and intent to jointly develop a Master Plan. That brings us to today. 2017, we're here to review and approve a scope of services to hire a master planning design firm to complete the Cubberley Master Plan. Kristen O'Kane is briefly going to go over the scope of services. Kristen O’Kane, Community Services Acting Director: Good evening. Kristen O'Kane, Community Services. The draft scope of work was developed jointly between City Staff and School District staff and has also been reviewed by the City/School Liaison Committee, Board of Education, Policy and Services Committee, and both the City Manager and School District Superintendent. The intent of releasing the Request for Proposals is to enter into a professional service agreement with a consultant who is experienced in creative and effective public engagement and design thinking, who can assist the City and School District Staff in an efficient master planning process. The scope will be TRANSCRIPT Page 77 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 completed in two phases, with the second phase not starting until the first phase is completed successfully. The first phase consists of developing a work plan with the consultant to ensure that we do not deviate from the scope and to ensure that we have a well thought-out and efficient process. Part of this efficiency is a review of the previous work developed by the Cubberley Community Advisory Committee, so this Master Plan can build on that work and not recreate what they have already done. This phase also involves creating a stakeholder and community engagement plan, conducting an evaluation of existing community assets, then applying tools of design thinking to conduct a series of workshops that will ultimately lead to development of conceptual designs for the Cubberley facility. These designs will be presented to the community, Commissions, City/School Committee, Council, and Board of Education. The second phase will build off the work that was completed in Phase I and consolidate the information into a draft Master Plan report including various conceptual design scenarios and will focus on a preferred conceptual design. The draft report will also include cost estimates for the different scenarios, including potential funding opportunities. The draft Master Plan will be presented again to a wide range of Commissions, Committees, and the community as well as Council and the Board of Education. The ideal outcome at the end of Phase II is to have an agreed upon preferred conceptual design and completed environmental review. Mr. de Geus: The timeline anticipates the RFP process to be complete by the end of this calendar year, Phase I to be complete in calendar year 2018, Phase II to be completed by the end of 2019. Regarding cost, Staff recommends that the Cubberley Master Plan effort be funded jointly and equally by the City and the School District. Tonight, we're not committing any funds but rather reviewing the scope of services. A draft cost sharing agreement with the School District will be prepared for Council consideration when we return with the professional services agreement for the master planning work. City Staff have discussed cost sharing with the School District staff and received their support. Their School Board will be reviewing the scope of services tomorrow evening also. The Cubberley Master Plan is included in the fiscal year '18 adopted Capital Budget. A total cost to be shared with the School District is estimated to be approximately $415,000. The funding source is the Cubberley Property Infrastructure Fund. The cost share coming from the School District is anticipated to be deposited as revenue to offset 50 percent of the total cost of the planning work. That concludes Staff's remarks, and we're available for questions. Mayor Scharff: We had no one wander in from the public who hasn't spoken, right? If you've already spoken, that's different. We return to Council for questions, comments, motions. Council Member Holman. TRANSCRIPT Page 78 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Council Member Holman: I have a number of questions. First of all, thank you for bringing this forward. It's been a long time coming. I think everyone's anxious to get started. Thank you for bringing this forward. I do have a number of questions. It seems like—let me start here. The stakeholder advisory group, who is it, how is it determined, how is it developed, who picks it, what governs it? That's one. Probably better to just take these one at a time. Mr. de Geus: Kristen can help me as we go here. The Community Services Staff will be the lead department on the master planning process, but we'll be working closely with the City Manager's Office. Council Member Holman: I'm sorry. Can you speak up? Mr. de Geus: Excuse me. I was just mentioning that Kristen O'Kane is here because the Community Services Department will be the lead department in the master planning process, but we will be working with the City Manager's Office. Specific to your question, the first task of Phase I is to develop a plan for the stakeholder group, how that stakeholder group is going to be selected, and how they're going to be involved through the process. That's the very first thing that the consultant working with Staff will do. It's not defined in here. Council Member Holman: When does the Council get to weigh in on what stakeholders, what groups, what proximities, who selects them? I can't imagine that we're going to leave that all up to a consultant. Mr. de Geus: I think what we—Kristen, help me out if you think it would help. This is a scope of services to put it out to bid, so we will be looking for a full proposal from different design firms about how they would attack these particular problems. We would then draft a contract with that design firm, that would be much more specific about how each of these tasks will be handled. That contract goes before Council with the full detailed scope of services. That's when Council would see it. At that time, we'd also discuss the level of Council input along the process. Council Member Holman: Some of my questions have to do with understanding what you're saying. In addition to that, this is the scope of services. Whoever responds to an RFP needs to understand what the scope of work is. That's why I'm raising some of these concerns. We just reviewed this evening what got really good reviews, the Parks Master Plan. In that, it talks about a needs assessment. The CAC that was formed and did its work— however many years ago that was—also said that we needed to do a needs assessment. That's not included here. What it talks about is the consultant will conduct an evaluation of the community's recreational, educational, and TRANSCRIPT Page 79 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 cultural assets to identify opportunities … and will fill existing gaps in services and programs. The evaluation will use existing information to be provided. We don't have a needs assessment. How are they going to do that? How are they going to know what the gaps are in the community needs without a needs assessment? Ms. O’Kane: Thank you for that question. One of the things that the consultant will do is look at all of the existing information that is available. A lot of this has come from that needs assessment that was done as part of the Master Plan, which would address—there was a lot of community outreach including asking the community what their needs are. We would be using that existing data. We would be using data from the Comp Plan, also some of the School Board's existing data. That would be the start of it. What we're trying to do is look at what sort of assets exist within the City and where are those gaps and how could Cubberley fill in those gaps. If we do a needs assessment for the whole community, we would get a lot of information back, and not all of those needs could be satisfied at Cubberley. We would have limited space and limited ability to do that. What we're trying to not do is put a call out for all of the needs that the community might have and looking at it that way, but looking at what assets do we have, what existing information have we gained from all of these other recent plans that we have done, and then find the gaps that exist that way. This will be really vetted through the stakeholder engagement process as well as all the community meetings that we will be doing. Council Member Holman: It seems like what we're doing, though, is rather than setting up a system or a process whereby we can prioritize the needs that are identified, we're limiting our knowledge of what the needs are because we're limiting the resources. We have limited resources that show us what the needs are. Again, the CAC asked for a needs assessment very clearly. Mr. de Geus: I appreciate that. The language we're using is more the asset evaluation is intended to be somewhat of a needs assessment. If you read the language in there, it's to look at and assess existing assets, opportunities, needs, gaps, interests, all of those types of things. It takes a strength-based approach, trying to build off the assets that we do have as opposed to a deficit approach, that there are needs. Council Member Holman: I didn't read the word "needs" anywhere here, so I'm not going to mince on that. That's a big concern of mine. It's a big concern. I also note that the arts aren't mentioned anywhere. It talks about educational, recreational, wellness. It talks about social, emotional, and physical health. I see nowhere here that the arts are addressed. In light of the fact that it's something that we are very much lacking in the community TRANSCRIPT Page 80 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 but also the fact that we have artists at Cubberley now, but yet the arts aren't addressed in this. They aren't called out at all. Mr. de Geus: The arts will be looked at very closely. Of course, we do have a lot of arts programs at Cubberley with the visual arts, the dance programs, the theatres, and the art studios. That's certainly represented strongly in the Cubberley Community Advisory work, which is going to be foundational to the work that this consultant is doing. Plus Staff, of course, are working right alongside, so we will very much be looking at the arts at Cubberley. Council Member Holman: Is there any reason that wasn't included in this proposal? Ms. O’Kane: The reference to cultural is where the arts are included in cultural assets. Council Member Holman: It says multicultural learning. I also have questions about the scope of this in a few regards. One is—again, this has to do with the RFP because somebody who's making a bid on this wants to know what the scope is. There's no reference here to connectivity. Cubberley's in a really wonderful location in many regards, but there's connectivity to—Penny Ellson's here—to the Greenmeadow neighborhood. It's closely adjacent to the Charleston Shopping Center. There's Greendell. Those connectivities are really, really important, but connectivity isn't mentioned here. If I was making a response to an RFP, I'd want to know that's part of it. It's not just the site. How, also, will we—it's the same thing as the needs assessment. There's nothing here that addresses, as I read it, the feasibility of the different plans. There's no costing or financial evaluation of any of the options or any of the different drafts. Is the consultant just going to come forward with "here are the plans and here's the dream, but by the way this one costs $15 million more than that one"? We don't know that or we have to go out and find that and we've wasted time on a plan that we can't afford, so we can plan ahead of time and know that we have to go to the voters or whatever to be able to fund the plan. I don't see anything that addresses feasibility along the financial lines. I would think a consultant would have to bring forward that kind of evaluation along with any plan that they present. I have concern about the schedule—not the schedule, but the sequencing of the meetings. I'm looking at Packet Page 476, and it's Task 8, draft Cubberley Master Plan reports and schematics. It says "meetings to include stakeholder advisory group meeting, project team meeting, Parks and Rec Commission, the City/School Liaison Committee." Who's the project team? Would they not be meeting with the stakeholder advisory group? Have we got pieces here? While I'm in that section there, I'm also concerned that it seems like there is a lot of focus and authority, if you will, granted to the City/School Liaison TRANSCRIPT Page 81 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Committee, which is two School Board Members and two Council Members. I'm concerned about that. If you look down at the bottom of that page, it says meetings to include, and it says City Council Study Session if needed. My goodness. Almost all of these—I shouldn't say almost all. A very great deal of these are Study Sessions, so Staff and consultant are going to have to piece together what the recommendations are of a given body as opposed to action items. If they're Study Sessions, they should be at the very beginning of the process. I can understand why there might be something—as opposed to the City/School Liaison Committee, which is just two and two, why isn't there a joint meeting of the Council and the PAUSD Board? I understand that's a lot of people, but we have done it before. I'm concerned about authority being granted to two people of nine or two people of five. Ms. O’Kane: The meetings that are listed are not necessarily—it could be a discussion, it could be an action. The idea was to provide something for a consultant to bid on. As we go through the RF—this will be included in the RFP. When the consultant comes back, they would present something that might be slightly different than this or an end-product of the contract might be slightly different than this. There is opportunity to move these types of meetings around. If we felt that a joint Council/School Board meeting was something that we wanted, we could certainly include that as we're finalizing the contract. Council Member Holman: I'd suggest that we not—you heard me. Also in here, I read in—at least a couple of occasions it talks about the 8 acres, the City owned the 8 acres. We went through a lot of—I think Council Member Scharff is the only other one that was here probably when we had these discussions. We were very clear at Council that it's not the 8 acres. It's 8 acres. It's not the 8 acres where they are now necessarily; it could be 8 acres anywhere on that property. That's something to be worked out with the School Board. If nothing else, the 8 acres that's there now, that the City owns, has very weird, weird, weird, weird boundaries to it because it's drawn around buildings. The 8 acres, I hope we get away from that language because it's very misleading. What if the City—something to be considered here would be if the City wanted to acquire some of PAUSD's land. Is that on the table for a consultant to even consider? Part of where I'm going with that is if the City—the City Attorney has a quizzical look on her face. Part of that query is coming from the City sponsors, if you will, a lot of PAUSD—Vice Mayor Kniss will know this; Vice Mayor Kniss will recognize this—lands and projects and fields and all that sort of thing. Maybe if it makes more sense for the City to have direct and complete control over some of the lands, rather than paying for partial use, maybe it makes more sense for the City to consider or negotiate a purchase of some of the other acreage, especially if the programming of the site … TRANSCRIPT Page 82 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Vice Mayor Kniss: (inaudible) Council Member Holman: That's a part of a negotiation, right? If programming of the property really indicates that 8 acres is not optimal, it's 10 acres. Mayor Scharff: The question before us is the RFP. Council Member Holman: I'm sorry. Mayor Scharff: The question before us is the RFP. Karen, I just want to point out that, I think, you've been talking for 20 minutes. Council Member Holman: I did say I had a lot of questions, and it's a very, very important thing. Mayor Scharff: This is a preliminary discussion about whether or not to issue an RFP. Council Member Holman: This RFP is going to be what someone bases their bid on. I'm saying there are a lot of variables that are not considered in this language, that will affect a bid. Mr. Shikada: If I might note, as Superintendent McGee pointed out, the School Board will also be discussing this item tomorrow night and, in fact, has the same attachment, this Attachment A, to their report. Just conferring with Rob, since both sets of Staff will need to synthesize the feedback that come both from the Council as well as the Board in order to put together ultimately an RFP that can be receiving proposals, we take that input and, to the extent that the Council wants to make it specific direction, then bring that back to the Superintendent's staff. We'll need to negotiate that scope, quite frankly, in addition to the specific items that are being discussed. It is, quite frankly, in that context a little early and perhaps it might even be perceived as a little threatening if we were to go to the point of discussing land transactions that would occur as a result of this study. We might suggest taking this baby step early on, and then let it evolve as the procurement proceeds. Council Member Holman: Two things about that. One is it limits the design options. The School District, as the Superintendent said, is having some financial problems, concerns, constraints. Maybe they might like proceeds from the purchase of—I'm just making up—a couple of acres. Mr. de Geus: Council Member Holman, just to add to Assistant City Manager Ed Shikada's comments, the scope was prepared by both parties. We left it broad and open intentionally so that we wouldn't exclude any ideas at this TRANSCRIPT Page 83 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 early stage of what's possible on the 35-acre site. That's including does the 8 acres have to be the same 8 acres as defined in the map we've all seen. It doesn't. If there are ideas that make sense for both the School District, the City, and the community to think outside of the box on that, then that's on the table among many other potential opportunities. Council Member Holman: I can just say that the way it's written currently, I can't support this going out as an RFP. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Filseth. Council Member Filseth: I'm trying to figure out concretely what it is that we're—if we're going to spend several hundred thousand dollars on a consultant, what are we going to get? Some of this is evaluate community assets and so forth. It seems to me like the real concrete thing that we get out of Phase I is three to six conceptual design scenarios. The rest of this is to support that. It seems to me—I'm going back and reading some of the stuff from 2013—that the real big challenge with making a decision on what to do and picking something is that, first of all obviously, the School District owns the vast majority of the property. The issue of do they need it to build a school on is still unresolved. One figure says they build a school, in which case they have to spend vast amounts of money right now, which they don't have a need for right now. The other direction is they give up the land and we use it for something else, and then they never have an option to build a school there ever again. It's just gone. Those are not good options for the School District. It's not a surprise that the School District is trying to play a middle road here, which is we'd like to keep the possibility in case we need it because who knows what's going to happen with the Stanford GUP and the Comp Plan and all this kind of stuff. Because that accounts for so much of this land, is it even possible for us to move forward without a decision from the School District on one of those two directions? That seems like really fundamental to me. If they have to make a decision yes or no on the land, then is this even a realistic path forward? Maybe they aren't in a position to do that. I guess this is the other phrasing of the question. Is it possible for us to do three to six conceptual design scenarios in which the School District doesn't have to make that decision today? There is a facility to use the land, and it can be used for this and this for 5 or 10 years, but they might still have the option to build a school on it 10 years from now and so forth. Is that within the realm of possibility? It seems to me like if it's not within the realm of possibility, then we have a very difficult path forward, and an RFP won't solve it. If it is within the realm of possibility, then that's one of the constraints on the problem, and we ought to know that. TRANSCRIPT Page 84 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Mr. de Geus: Thank you, Council Member Filseth. It absolutely is within the realm of possibility. It may be even more than that. It may be likely just because the District and their ability to really predict what their needs are is a real challenge for them. They are committed to master planning together, and you heard Dr. Max McGee this evening. They've written this scope too. Going through this process will help us answer that question, how far can the School District go in terms of answering some of those very difficult questions about what they can commit to or not. Council Member Filseth: If the answer is "we don't want to decide yet," you can certainly understand why they would want the answer. Is it even possible to have a Master Plan? Mr. de Geus: It may be how you define a Master Plan. It could be that the City's interest around 8 acres may be much more defined in terms of the Master Plan, and some planning is around the perimeter of those 8 acres. Beyond that, maybe it becomes still a little more fuzzy until the School District is able to actually make the decision. Maybe that's part of the Master Plan. Mayor Scharff: Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: Thanks. I'm really excited this is moving forward, really. It's going to start, I guess, a 2-year process, but I'm glad we're here. I wanted to focus a little bit on the timeline. Can you talk in a little bit more detail how long it's going to take? Mr. de Geus: It's going to be an extensive public engagement process. Our experience is it takes 2 years to do that really well. We think it's dependent on a lot of things, Council Member DuBois, about who we hire and the plan that we have to develop in terms of the timeline and how much the different Boards, Commissions, Council wants to be involved at different steps along the way. Broadly speaking, we want to have the best conceptual options for Council consideration and School Board by the end of next calendar year or sooner to allow for the next year to flesh out the preferred option, if there is one. It'll be interesting to see what happens there. It could be that we get to that point at the end of '18, and the preferred option is really specific to 8 acres that the City owns, and the City wants to move forward on designing that further. We don't have enough clarity for the School District and the other 27 acres that it doesn't go much further. It is dependent on a lot of things that will happen throughout the process. Council Member DuBois: That's the toughest thing. We need to do the community engagement piece for sure. I would love to see if the consultant could recommend more agile methods. How much time is left on the lease? TRANSCRIPT Page 85 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Mr. de Geus: It ends at the end of calendar year 2019. We'll be making a decision that year as well regarding the lease and the terms of the lease. Council Member DuBois: I'd like to see us do it as quickly as we can. Definitely want to ensure we leverage all the work done by the Cubberley CAC. I'm hoping that that could save us some time. It's only 5 years old, I think. That was a pretty extensive community engagement process. I just hope we don't lose sight of that, and we don't do that again. A lot of the conclusions hold up. I read all the volumes. It was really good work. They looked at other shared-use facilities. There are a lot of good ideas in there. It would be great—I don't know if it's in this initial RFP or a later RFP—that consideration be given to existing tenants in terms of the construction plan, if it could be phased where some people could stay while construction was occurring. To echo Council Member Holman's points, I do think a joint Council/School Board meeting, particularly around the asset evaluation which has been a real focus of the community—if that's the needs assessment, doing a joint meeting rather than just sending that to the City/School Committee would make a lot of sense. Do we have a motion yet? Mayor Scharff: (inaudible) Council Member DuBois: Again, I don't want to cut off discussion, but I'll go ahead and move the Staff Motion. Vice Mayor Kniss: Go right ahead. Council Member Wolbach: Second. MOTION: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Council Member Wolbach to direct the Community Services Department to release a Request for Proposals for a Consulting Firm to assist the City of Palo Alto and Palo Alto Unified School District with master planning of the Cubberley Community Center. Council Member DuBois: I think I spoke to it. Council Member Wolbach: As Chair of P&S, we did issue this recommendation. Looking at what we have in front of us, for me the first question was did this really fulfill the direction that we gave at Policy and Services back on June 13th. What sounds like still somewhat tentative but some reassurance that we have a cost sharing agreement is really important for me. I think that was true for all of us on P&S. There are a number of avenues through which the City actually supports the School District, and we have historically. I'm not 100 percent thrilled with the RFP as it is here. Without getting too much into wordsmithing it, I am open to recommendations from colleagues if they TRANSCRIPT Page 86 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 have any directions on how our Staff and the School District staff could fine tune or improve upon the RFP before it's actually issued. At least, we could have direction from the Council and direction from the School Board to our respective staffs to go forward and work. If there is additional direction we want to add to improve the RFP in a general sense, not a wordsmithing sense, I would be open to potential amendments. At the risk of repeating myself and being very redundant, I don't want to get too deep into wordsmithing. Just a couple of comments about this. The Cubberley Community Advisory Committee and their work—it's important that it adds in Phase 1. That's super important. That is where you need to start. I agree with Council Member DuBois that we don't want to see that thrown out basically. We don't want to see that brushed over. That is our starting point. Speaking for my own preferences, not as direction to go in the motion but just some thoughts to make sure they're out there, Council Member Filseth actually really articulated one of the concerns that I had. I appreciate that clarity and also the response from Staff. I can envision the significant possibility, if not probability, that in the future Palo Alto will require as a community, especially a community that really includes Stanford and part of Los Altos Hills when you think about the School District area, will require a third school district. I can envision … Mayor Scharff: A third high school. Council Member Wolbach: Sorry. What did I … Mayor Scharff: A third school district. Council Member Wolbach: Pardon me. It is getting late. We would require a third high school. I can envision that as not a crazy idea at some point in the future. We all recognize now that the School District, back in the—three decades ago they probably made a mistake in selling off a lot of land. Yeah, it's great to have Seale Park. Most of that land that was sold is used for great things. It would be great if the School District had land available, especially when questions of when more people move to or more people in Palo Alto have kids, if our population grows, if the downward enrollment trends reverse and become more of an upward enrollment trend. Where are those kids going to go to school? Having the land available on which the School District could build schools remains and will continue to remain an important question. To the degree that the proposals that we consider do not foreclose potentialities for future schools even up to the size and scale of high schools on that site, that's where my personal preference lies. Again, I'm not going to put that into the motion. I just want to put that out there on the record. One other thing just related to Cubberley since it's been in a lot of the discussion recently of Avenidas, La Comida, the senior nutrition program. I can envision a real benefit to having a strong senior center and strong senior nutrition program TRANSCRIPT Page 87 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 in south Palo Alto in the long term. One of the biggest uses we've heard of our crosstown shuttle is people going from south Palo Alto to north Palo Alto to go use Avenidas and eat at La Comida at Avenidas. I can envision having an opportunity for people to use those services in south Palo Alto in the long term, not in exchange for but in addition to our current Downtown facilities. That's a great potential. Again, not putting that in the motion; just putting that out there to be on the record. Because it's getting late, I'll leave it at that. Again, I'm open—I hope Council Member DuBois will also be open—to potential amendments if they help improve the direction that we go. Mr. de Geus: Mayor, can I just add something? Mayor Scharff: Sure. Mr. de Geus: It may help. The Cubberley Community Advisory Committee and the volumes of work, which is foundational to the work of the consultant— if it helps, I think about it as that's almost more the scope of services in some way. That's going to be where we're going to build from. That's much more detailed and inclusive of all the things that I've been hearing from the Council Members. Mayor Scharff: Vice Mayor Kniss. Vice Mayor Kniss: Several things. Your idea, Karen, was to have a meeting with all of us and the School Board? Council Member Holman: Yes. I'm not comfortable at all with authority being delegated to the City/School Liaison Committee. There's nothing wrong with taking the plans there as one stop. It seem to really relegate authority. It says there's going to be a Study Session at Council if it's needed. Vice Mayor Kniss: We have discussed it there. I don't have any problem if we don't have a mutual meeting, but it's actually a good idea. Let me tell you why. Mayor Scharff: We had one last time. Vice Mayor Kniss: Pardon? Mayor Scharff: We had one last time. Vice Mayor Kniss: Did we? Mayor Scharff: Didn't accomplish anything, but we did have one. Vice Mayor Kniss: Were you the Mayor? TRANSCRIPT Page 88 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Mayor Scharff: No. We had a joint meeting with the School Board, and we talked about the Cubberley Advisory thing. Vice Mayor Kniss: Who ran it? How long ago? Mayor Scharff: I don't remember. When we did—in 2012, 2013. I don't think I was Mayor when we did it. It was 2012. Mr. de Geus: It was 2013 when we received the final report from the Cubberley Community Advisory Committee. Vice Mayor Kniss: It's probably time to do it again. I'm not putting that into the motion. What I would call your attention to is Attachment A. Attachment A is—even though it says the goal is to collaboratively develop a community vision and master design plan and so forth, if you look down three paragraphs, it says the overriding consideration regarding Cubberley is the need to provide for potential future school enrollment growth. That's about as plain as the nose on anyone's face. That says what the School District wants to do with the land, essentially landbank it. The question is for how long. The question to me is going to be how long a lease can we get. It was one of the discussions we had in 2013, how long a lease. If you can get a long enough lease, you can develop this in some way that would be very useful and at the same time keep it open, if it does happen at some point in the future that a high school was needed. When I talked to their School Board President today, she said their enrollment's been going down for quite some time. However, when Stanford talks about building again or we talk about more affordable housing, then the discussion almost always is about schools once again. I don't think there's any way we can misunderstand that essentially this is landbanking. It has been now for 40 years. For 30 of those years, I've actually heard the School District say they don't want to sell any more land because they might need it in the future. You've heard that; we've all heard that. It's just very clear. As we go forward with this, I would support the idea of us all coming together just because I would like to hear what they are thinking as far as school enrollment growth. Are we actually protecting this piece of land? If so, that's going to make a big difference in our lease and what we can put on that. We may have very different visions as to what actually should happen to the Cubberley property. We've got 8 acres, and that's all we've got of 35 acres. They have three times as much land as we do. Those are my concerns. I'm going to support the motion, but all of this needs to be incorporated into conversations that I certainly would hope that whoever is going to do the RFP has with us, with the School Board, with all of you, and so forth. This is not a trivial issue. You're talking about something now that has been on the table and discussed since—as I recall Cubberley closed in 1978. Am I right? I think so. Having said all that, I would say proceed but proceed with caution, and TRANSCRIPT Page 89 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 let's make sure that that old thing about assumptions—making an ass out of one. Let's not have assumptions be such that we think we know where we want this to go, and the School Board thinks really something quite different. The last thing you have are term limits. You're going to have people who are making big decisions on this now but won't be here in a couple of years. This is a big job for you, Rob, and your department. You've got a hard but fascinating road ahead of you. Mayor Scharff: Council Members Filseth and Kniss said a lot of what I was thinking, but my heart's with Council Member DuBois about moving this quicker. I'm very concerned actually. Our plan is not going to work. We need to have some constraints on this. We're acting as if we own the 35 acres. The notion of a stakeholder group and the notion of needs assessment and the notion of all that implies that we own all 35 acres. What really has to happen is the School District has to tell us the fundamental question of are we planning our 8 acres or are we planning 35 acres and over what time period. The School District may very well say they're willing to lease it for 20 years, they're willing to lease it for 5 years, they're willing to lease it for 10 years. Until we know that timeframe, how can a consultant even do a Master Plan? If we own it for 5 years, the amount of investment we can put into it is significantly less. If it's 10 years, if it's 15 years, 20 years, that's all a different level of investment. What I think your plan implies is we will hire a consultant that will go and engage everybody about what they would like to see at Cubberley. Is that the plan and what they want? What kind of services they want, what they did, what they're hoping to have there, what's the stakeholder group going to do? Mr. de Geus: It is intended to do that, but more than that it is to prioritize those interests and preferences. Mayor Scharff: What interests and preferences? What do we actually mean by that? Mr. de Geus: From all of the activities that are there now, from childcare to the arts to all of those programs that we cherish and love to the School District's interests and needs. They have some that they've shared, that they're going to explore as well. How specific they can get, we'll see as part of this process. Mayor Scharff: They're the owner and the largest—they're not really a stakeholder; they're the owner. Are they going to go out—is the plan that they go out to the community and ask what? Their mission is education. What Vice Mayor Kniss said, I read the same thing. Nothing's happened on Cubberley for 40 years. As long as I've been on Council, in fact as long as TRANSCRIPT Page 90 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 I've been in this community, people have been talking about a third high school. In fact, we have one Council Member—I don't necessarily disagree with him—who's just said we need to preserve this for a third high school. Former Vice Mayor Schmid used to say that all the time as well. That's the question. I actually don't understand—I really don't understand how this is going to work unless the School District, before we spend a lot of money with the consultant, puts the constraints on it. That constraint can be we don't need a high school. We don't know if we need a high school. If we don't know we need a high school, we're willing to say we don't need a high school for 10 years. We don't need a high school for 20 years. That's what we need to know. It's very different to go to the community and say, "Dream big. What do you want here?" We spend all this money on that. This is typical Palo Alto. We'll spend all this money on it, and it'll come back, and the School District will say, "I'm willing to give you a 5-year lease." I'm not going to vote to spend any money on improving buildings other than fixing the roof and paint maybe on a 5-year lease. On a 20-year lease, that's totally different. For a 50-year lease, it's completely different as well. That's the answer that we need to ask. I'm only really willing to vote to this tonight if I can figure out some way to get a constrained answer to those questions before we spend the bulk of this money. I am not comfortable with the notion that we just go out and ask the consultant to say, "Let's go meet all the stakeholders. What does everyone want?" That's not a process that's going to work here. It's definitely not going to be a process that gets us down the road and gets it done quickly. I don't think it's too much to ask the School District to have a meeting, look at it, decide as we go out for the RFP what are you willing to lease it to us for and how long. Without that, I don't see how the consultant can come up with something. I don't see how he can ask the community. I don't know what your advice to me on making an amendment to the motion on that is. I obviously can come up with some stuff. That's my concern. If you disagree, I'm open to why. That just seems to me the sticking point. Mr. de Geus: I don't disagree. It's just a complicated issue. Some of the answers to the questions we have are not there. I don't think they know, quite honestly, what they need and what timeframe. Mayor Scharff: How do they figure it out? Mr. de Geus: It's part of this process. We need to figure it out. We're pushing the issue. Mayor Scharff: Where in this process does this help the School District make a decision? If we were acting as the School District on the Council, hiring a consultant that does that, goes to the stakeholders group, doesn't work. I'd want a consultant that says, "Our enrollment for the next 20 years is unlikely TRANSCRIPT Page 91 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 to cause us to need a new high school; therefore, I can do a 20-year lease. We can't extrapolate beyond that" or "We can't extrapolate beyond 10 years, and we can't take the risk." I would want some consultant that tells me that, not what's in this RFP. Mr. de Geus: It could be that, if we played that out, there was 10 years, and then the District committed or we committed together to preserve the playing fields for community use throughout that period and some of the other community assets like the gyms and the pavilion and some of the rooms that are used. That could be built into what is ultimately the Master Plan. The 8 acres, if the City's interested and the community's interested in supporting a large construction project to build a multiuse community center or senior center, that could be much more specific, and that's something that's built. We can still use the other acres in the interim period. There's a number of different scenarios that could play out throughout this process. What we do know is the District is committed to master planning 35 acres. It's in the lease. Take them for their word they want to do that. They've said they're going to pay for half of it. Of course, until we get the funding agreement, I assume—that's assume—that's going to happen. There are some really difficult constraints and questions that are going to be difficult to answer, and some may not be possible to answer. It's true. That will also define then what the Master Plan will be. Vice Mayor Kniss: The first lease was 25 years. Council Member Filseth: I'm struck a little bit by Council Member Kniss' discussion of landbanking. I think that's the crux of the issue here. It may not be realistic for us to try to get at least upfront a specific commitment. You want to landbank it for 12 1/2 years. I'm coming back to the scenarios here. Mayor Scharff is dead on with we could spend a lot of money going around and asking people what their ideas on how to use the land are, and it wouldn't help us. What if part of the scenarios were a couple of scenarios on landbanking. If you were going to landbank it for 10 years, here's what some of these might look like. If you were going to landbank it for 20 years, here are some other options. What if that were part of the process and, as we come down to pick a scenario, then the School District—I'm glad we're doing this together with the School District—says, "I really like this scenario, and maybe we'll take a little extra risk by landbanking a little more in order to get that." That seems like the kind of thing we ought to be able to gravitate to. The Mayor is exactly right. Unless we have a clear vision of this is what these scenarios are going to look like and what we're going to try to decide, then we could spend a lot of consulting dollars on stuff. TRANSCRIPT Page 92 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Mayor Scharff: I managed to light up the entire board, I think. Council Member Fine, you haven't had a chance. Council Member Fine: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I do agree with my colleagues about this issue of landbanking and determining what kind of partnership we have with the School District and what they're interested in. I'll leave those comments said. Just a few quick questions about the RFP. Is what we have before us tonight the RFP you're planning to release or is it just a skeleton of that? Ms. O’Kane: It's a draft RFP, or it's a draft scope of work. It would be very similar to this if not this exact. Council Member Fine: Just a few comments there. Phase I, Task 1, is asking the consultant to read the CCAC report. I put forward that anybody who bids on this RFP should have read that report already and know that context. I'm not sure we should be paying them for that. On Phase II, I noticed there was a note saying the definition of Phase II will be negotiated after the completion of Phase I. I kind of know the answer, but I'll put it to Staff. Is it a good practice for us to negotiate the scope of the second phase in mid-project? Ms. O’Kane: It's my understanding that we have done this skeleton of a scope before with a second phase. The reason for it is we can check in at that point, one, if we like the direction that we're going, if we're pleased with the consultant's work. We're not committed to extending it beyond that point. Council Member Fine: We would have the option to just end the contract if we don't like what we're seeing? Ms. O’Kane: We would have the option, right. If some new information came to light between either the City or School District, we could stop at (crosstalk). Council Member Fine: That's actually helpful. Just the one comment. On Phase I, Task 2, let's look at that again. The talk here about landbanking and time horizons in terms of what flexibility we have and how much we would invest given a certain time horizon is a really important lens to look through this. Otherwise, like my other colleagues I think we would love to see some solution here. It's going to be a long time coming. We've got to figure out who we're playing cards with. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Kou, you haven't spoken, correct? Council Member Kou: Just one small question. Most of the questions I wanted to ask have been asked. I just heard you say that we're paying for half. TRANSCRIPT Page 93 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 They're paying for half, and we're paying for half, but they have more of the land. Is it appropriately divided or is it exactly half? Mr. de Geus: Thank you for the question, Council Member Kou. We did discuss that at Policy and Services Committee and with Staff and with the School District staff. I think the comfort level was 50/50 as a joint Master Plan. That was … Council Member Kou: 50/50. We're not getting half of the land. Council Member Wolbach: We get half the say. Mr. de Geus: We thought that was the better way to start the master planning process. Council Member Filseth: It's all the City. Mayor Scharff: Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: Just a couple of quick reactions, I guess, to comments I've heard. It's my understanding this is just the beginning of the design process. The City Manager and the Superintendent signed an agreement quite a while ago—was it more than a year ago—to work on this in good faith. Talking to School Board Members and the Superintendent, I think there's more appetite to move forward on Cubberley than there has been in a long time. I don't think this is just restarting this long discussion that we've had. When you look at the work that was done previously and some of the design thinking, even if we have 8 acres and they have 27 acres, we can work together to design academic buildings that use the land more effectively, to have shared athletic fields. A gymnasium came up earlier, but certainly soccer fields, baseball fields, tennis. We have our 8 acres; we can design a community center. It's very feasible we could have a very useful building for City services. A lot of these examples in here are schools with shared facilities, connected to community centers. That's the kind of thing we need to explore. If we don't do anything, we wait for the School Board to decide, we're never going to get started. They seem committed to start this design process. Task 5, the first phase is visioning. Part of this process is coming together with a shared vision. We're not starting with a shared vision. If we wait to have a shared vision, we'll never start. It's part of the project. I do hope you guys will support this. I just think we're going to have to work this process with the School Board. What was it? A year ago, there was a big push to turn Cubberley into a charter school. This is a resource of the City and the School District. We need to start a thoughtful process before something happens to this land that is not in everybody's best interest. TRANSCRIPT Page 94 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: Picking up on what I was saying before and echoing what I've heard in this second round of comments. If there is an opportunity to articulate different options based on how long a lease we could get or would plan to get, that would be useful. If the School District isn't able to identify that, if the School District says, "We're not going to be able to answer that question right now," then we should put together options that are based on different timelines. If the School District does say definitively, "We know we can't commit to not wanting to use it for a new school after X period of time," then we have a timeline. We should work within that timeline. Options should be fixed to that timeline. Absent that kind of certainty from the School District, different timeline options might be useful. Again, it's going to be an iterative process. Mayor Scharff: Rob, I just wanted to understand. We vote for this motion tonight; the School Board passes something similar tomorrow. Your two staffs are going to work together, develop the RFP. The RFP's going to go out, and at that point it's going to come back to Council. Right? It's going to come back to the School Board, I assume. We're going to then have a joint RFP. I'd encourage Staff to make it a crisper RFP. There are pieces that are missing out of here. I would just encourage you to think it through, make it a crisper RFP, and take back the feedback you heard, and obviously take back the feedback from school staff. Mr. de Geus: I really appreciate that. I agree we can make it crisper. Some of the comments that we heard we can include and we will include. It is a little unusual. We don't normally bring scope of services to the Council. We will certainly take that feedback as well as the School District and tighten up the language. Again, it comes back to the full Council to see the actual plan later this year. Mr. Shikada: If I could just note one clarification. It looks like from the School District's process, they will not be approving it tomorrow night. They do some type of two-stepper. It will be at earliest later in the month that they'll actually approve going forward. It gives us a little more time. Just to set the expectation with the Council, it may take a little more time to iron out what this joint first step looks like. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: Actually, I just want to ask—speaking of the two steps. I was thinking of this earlier and forgot to mention it. As you work with the School District to just do a second draft of the RFP before it goes out for proposals, is it advisable or possible to have it come back to us on Consent? TRANSCRIPT Page 95 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 I'm turning to Staff and colleagues and the maker of the Motion for thoughts on that. I'm not even sure it needs to go in the motion, but I'm putting it out there as a question. Vice Mayor Kniss: Could I speak to it? It's possible but … Council Member Wolbach: Basically, should we copy the School District's two- step process on this one? Vice Mayor Kniss: Why don't we ask Staff for guidance when we get to that point? If Ed or someone, Rob, says, "Fine. We think it'll work on consent." If not, then we've got to pull it back to us again as arduous as it is. We really do need a shared vision. That's going to be the hardest part. Council Member Wolbach: Right. What I mean is it should come back to us, and Consent is probably the best place to put it. We could always pull it if we still didn't like it. Mayor Scharff: I'm not sure that we should have it back. I'm looking at you guys. It's rare that it comes to us to start with. We've given at least somewhat clear direction to clean it up. We have a good Staff. They do a better job with RFPs than we do, to be honest. I trust Staff to do a good job on this. I don't need to see it again until it goes out. I'm just saying until we accept the RFP. That obviously needs to come to Council, as you understand. I noticed Council Member Holman has her light on. Did you need to speak again? Council Member Holman: Yeah, just briefly. I wish I could, but I'm not going to be able to support this as much as I really want to get underway with the Cubberley master planning. As I'd indicated earlier—there have been other questions raised by others too—the way this RFP is written, there are too many gaps in it, too many missing elements in it. The Mayor even mentioned about tightening it up and mentioned things that are missing. Those things that are missing, that I and others have listed, will affect what an RFP response—how accurate an RFP response will be. For that reason, I won't be able to support it. Mayor Scharff: Seeing no lights, if we could vote on the board. I promised Vice Mayor we'd get out by 11:30. That passes with Council Member Tanaka absent and Council Member Holman voting no and everyone else voting yes. That concludes that item. MOTION PASSED: 7-0 Holman no, Tanaka absent TRANSCRIPT Page 96 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Inter-Governmental Legislative Affairs None Council Member Questions, Comments and Announcements Mayor Scharff: I guess we're at Council Member Questions, Comments. Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: More on the lighter side. I haven't mentioned the donkeys in a good while. Last weekend, there was a project at the pasture where donkey handlers were bagging donkey compost. It's a project that gets the donations from the donkeys out in the community. Someone came up with—Jen Corralty [phonetic] actually came up with a funny name using the play off of Ben and Jerry's ice cream. The compost is called Jen and Perry's. The names for the compost are things such as Barron Park Gold, Shunky Donkey, and Pasture Nuggets. Anybody who wants to make a donation for donkey compost, you're welcome to do so. You can go to the donkeys' website or contact one of the handlers or me, and I can put you in touch with them. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: I just wanted to make sure everybody had seen the invitation, if you haven't yet, for the Peninsula Division of the League of California Cities. Our next quarterly event is going to be on Friday, the 22nd, so about a week and a half, Angelica's Restaurant in Redwood City, from 11:30 to 1:30. Please do RSVP in advance. This program is going to be about— what's the summary? How setting City fees, etc., can help promote a fairer, juster society. We're going to have some really great speakers including from the Sheriff's Office of San Mateo and also Director of the Financial Justice Office of the Treasurer for the City and County of San Francisco. It should be an interesting discussion. I hope you guys will participate. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Kou. Council Member Kou: I just want to announce that I'm very proud of our Office of Emergency Services. They partnered with other cities and jurisdictions in hosting the Urban Shield, especially for the CERTs. Over 100 CERTs participated from four different counties. It was a really great event on Saturday. Also yesterday, I did stop in at our Airport Day. It was attended by lots of people. It's actually a great event. I hope next year some of you will stop by. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Meeting adjourned. Thank you. TRANSCRIPT Page 97 of 97 City Council Meeting Transcript: 09/11/17 Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 11:15 P.M.