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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2017-10-23 City Council Summary MinutesCITY OF PALO ALTO CITY COUNCIL FINAL TRANSCRIPTION Page 1 of 75 Special Meeting October 23, 2017 The City Council of the City of Palo Alto met on this date in the Council Chambers at 5:04 P.M. Present: DuBois, Filseth, Holman, Kniss, Kou, Scharff, Tanaka, Wolbach Participating remotely: Fine participating from Club Quarters Hotel, Main Lobby, 1628 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, PA 19103 Absent: Closed Session 1. CONFERENCE WITH CITY ATTORNEY Subject: Written Liability Claim Against the City of Palo Alto By Sarah Syed (Claim No. C16-0081) Authority: Government Code Section 54956.9. Mayor Scharff: I need a Motion to go into Closed Session. Council Member Wolbach: So moved. Council Member Filseth: Second. MOTION: Council Member Wolbach moved, seconded by Council Member Filseth to go into Closed Session. Mayor Scharff: All in favor. Passes unanimously. MOTION PASSED: 9-0 Council went into Closed Session at 5:05 P.M. Council returned from Closed Session at 6:57 P.M. Mayor Scharff: … returning from Closed Session, and there's no reportable action. DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 2 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions Mayor Scharff: Our first item is Agenda Changes, Additions, and Deletions. Staff has asked that we move Item 4 to—is there a date certain? November 13, that Item 4 be continued. I'll make the motion that we continue Item Number 4 to November 13, as Staff has recommended. I need a second. Greg Tanaka seconds. Where's the rest of them? As I said, Staff's requested under Agenda Changes and Deletions that we move Item Number 13 to—Item Number 4 to November 13th to allow additional Staff time to do further analysis before coming back to Council. Council Member Tanaka seconded that. MOTION: Mayor Scharff moved, seconded by Council Member Tanaka to continue Agenda Item Number 4 - SECOND READING: Adoption of an Ordinance of the City Of Palo Alto to Update the Fiscal Year 2018 Municipal Fee Schedule … to November 13, 2017. Mayor Scharff: If we could vote on the board. That passes—with Council Member Fine voting yes, Council Member Holman voting yes, Tanaka, Filseth, myself. Council Members Kniss and Wolbach absent. MOTION PASSED: 7-0 Kniss, Wolbach not participating City Manager Comments Mayor Scharff: City Manager Comments. Ed Shikada, Assistant City Manager: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the Council. Standing in for City Manager Keene, who is out of town at a professional conference. I do have a few items of note to spotlight for the Council. First, an update on our Public Safety personnel deployment to the North Bay fires. A quick update. Fire crews have returned from their deployment with both Engines Number 65 and 66 back from the Tubbs Fire and the Mendocino Lake Complex Fire. Crews were deployed for 9 and 7 days respectively. Crews provided structure protection, supported backfiring operations, mopped up hotspots, and assisted residents with re-entry to their homes. The crews appreciated support from the Council and Palo Alto and local communities. These crews along with the other officials from the Police and Animal Services will be recognized at a later Council meeting. As we're talking about emergency and emergency preparedness, a good time to remind us that the City is now conducting various activities to prepare for the upcoming winter storm season. This past Sunday the Emergency Services volunteer team members went through their annual storm and flood training conducted by our Office of Emergency Services. This Thursday, the 26th, from 6:00 to 7:30, Palo Alto and East Palo Alto will be hosting training by the DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 3 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 National Weather Service about their Sky Warn program. Sessions are open to the public and are available on our website, cityofpaloalto.org/emergencyvolunteers, also cityofpaloalto.org/storms, additional information available. A few upcoming items on our various programs. A call for artists for the Public Safety Building. The City of Palo Alto Public Art program is seeking qualified artists or teams to work on diverse media, interested in working on the upcoming Public Safety Building to be constructed at 250 Sherman Avenue. This Public Safety Building will house Police, 9-1-1 dispatch, Office of Emergency Services, and Fire administration. Additional information is available on our website, cityofpaloalto.org/publicart. We have the Diwali Festival coming up on Sunday, October 29th. The Library Department invites the community to celebrate diversity as we kick off the Celebrating Cultures initiative with the Diwali Festival of Lights event taking place this Sunday at the Rinconada Library from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. Finally, the Palo Alto Children's Theatre, voted 2017 Best Place for Live Entertainment, will open its 86th season this weekend with the classic Norwegian fairy tale, East of the Sun and West of the Moon, featuring nearly 40 youth participants in a cast and crew production. Tickets are available online at the Theatre's website. I believe that will cover it for this evening's report. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Oral Communications Mayor Scharff: Now to Oral Communications. We have 10; everyone will have 2 minutes. Our first speaker is Dr. Michael Papalian, to be followed by Steve Raney. Dr. Michael Papalian: Members of the City Council, thank you for allowing me to speak to you tonight. My name is Dr. Michael Papalian. I'm speaking tonight about the Southgate parking district area and the restrictions, specifically about the limited number of employee permits available and the process for getting them. I'm here tonight representing seven separate businesses at the 1515 El Camino complex. Only ten total permits were authorized for the entire Southgate area. There are at least eleven businesses in the area covered. Seven of the businesses that I am speaking for provide healthcare services to your residents, and some of our businesses have been at this location for over 30 years. These are seven separate businesses. Our ask of you today is to temporarily push back the start date of the parking restriction implementation for a few weeks and allow us to work with the City to come up with a reasonable, workable solution for our seven businesses. Your decision will have a direct effect on patient care and safety. To begin, I have copies of the Minutes from the Council meeting when you received a DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 4 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 report from your Staff about the Southgate parking area. You were misinformed twice. At the Council meeting, under the questioning of Mr. Filseth, the total number of permits to be allowed was discussed. Mr. Milo told you that there were only two businesses. That's very far from the truth. It would only have taken a quick look at the City business roster to see that that number is not correct. I'm aware of eleven businesses. Second in the Minutes, Mr. Milo indicated that he did speak to us. That is very far from the truth. Nobody ever spoke to us. Seven separate businesses at that complex, nobody talked to us. I do not believe that you were fully aware of this, and I think you were misled by your Staff. Before your decisions were made, I personally wrote to your Staff indicating some of these issues. I'm quite disappointed that nobody from the Staff ever contacted me or any of my colleagues. As well, I would have come to you sooner, but we too were misled by your vendor about the number of permits. We were told that each business would be allowed ten permits. Only last week, we found that that is not true. Again, I don't think you fully understand the concept of healthcare. At ten permits, eleven businesses, if we don't have Staff, we go out of business. We leave Palo Alto. We've been here for 30 years. We ask that you allow a dialog so we can talk about this and come to a workable solution. I think there are some very simple fixes. I've talked to your Staff. Every single one of them I've talked to says, "Sorry. Nothing we can do." It's really not appropriate. I'd appreciate a dialog. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Steve Raney to be followed by Julia Ishiyama. Steve Raney: Steve Raney from Crescent Park with a quick update on the fair value commuting project and the promise of huge traffic reduction for Palo Alto. The mechanism is a $3 a day carrot and stick. There's a fee on single occupancy vehicle commutes. Take that money, rebate it, pay the people to bike and take transit. There's evidence from Stanford University that we can shift SOV from 75 to 50 percent at no cost to employers Of note, the City of Palo Alto is the prime contractor on this project. Joint Venture is the principal investigator. This is one of eleven projects in the Federal Transit Administration's mobility on demand sandbox. For partners, we have cities, agencies, vendors, and employers, $1.1 million award awarded October of last year. We've made a number of presentations. This is the first presentation in Palo Alto. As policymakers, you'd ideally like to see an accurate daily commute dashboard of all the employers in Palo Alto. Here we're showing just hypothetically Veterans Administration, VMware, SAP, showing their SOV mode. You would roll that up into a dashboard for the entire City. Our project develops this dashboard, and then we also develop one policy option so you can squeeze traffic down. The mechanism is a State bill that enables councils to pass city ordinances to reduce commuting in gradual steps, medium and large-size employers. It's a simple majority vote by the State Legislature, and DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 5 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 a simple majority vote by councils. Here's an example where Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Mountain View, and Sunnyvale Councils all coordinate together and pass ordinances to reduce commuting. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Julia Ishiyama to be followed by Rachel Evers. Julia Ishiyama: Good evening. My name is Julia Ishiyama, and I'm here tonight to speak in support of Castilleja School's application for an updated CUP. I want to be clear that I don't believe Castilleja deserves any kind of special treatment. I do, however, want to push back against the narrative that Castilleja must be subjected to special scrutiny as an institution that's somehow less a part of the community than its neighbors. Members of Protect Our Neighborhood Quality of Life imply by their very name that Castilleja's desire to educate more girls is a threat to this neighborhood rather than an asset. They say they support the school and are simply opposed to the mechanics of its expansion, but they perpetuate an "us versus them" narrative that casts PNQL as speaking for Palo Alto residents and Castilleja as an outsider. Before you let these people tell you that they speak for Palo Alto, I want to tell you that I've been a Castilleja [sic] resident since birth, and my Castilleja education was the single biggest factor in my decision to pursue a life and a career dedicated to serving the community where I've grown up. I grew up next door to my grandparents, who moved to Palo Alto 65 years ago. I went to the same public elementary school that my dad did. Then, seeking small classes and a single sex education close to home, I spent the next 7 years walking 5 blocks from my house to attend Casti. The high value that Casti places on community service inspired me to volunteer in my old kindergarten classroom at Walter Hays, and Casti's emphasis on civic engagement motivated me to join Congresswoman Anna Eshoo's student advisory board. It's always been clear to me that Castilleja is an integral part of the Palo Alto community, and it expects its students to get involved and give back to all their communities as a life-long pursuit. My Casti values inspired me to attend law school, and they motivate me to spend my time outside the classroom providing pro bono legal services at Palo Alto's Opportunity Center. I'm just one of the 60-plus committed and engaged students that Casti graduates each year. Castilleja's asking you for an opportunity to double down on their commitment to Palo Alto by populating it with more young women dedicated to service while responsibly managing growth. I ask you to give their proposal the fair consideration that it deserves. Thank you very much. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Rachel Evers to be followed by Herb Borock. Rachel Evers: Good evening, Mayor Scharff, Vice Mayor Kniss, and members of the City Council. Thank you for this opportunity to share the facts about DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 6 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 Castilleja's transportation demand practices. I'm Rachel Evers, Director of Operations and Events, a position created to ensure compliance with our CUP and successful operation of a TDM program that goes beyond our CUP requirement. Since Castilleja implemented a comprehensive TDM program in 2013, we have consistently operated below the CUP requirement of 511 trips. That is an estimate of the car trips generated by the school in the year 2000. We are currently operating well below this limit at 425 peak car trips. This has been accomplished by creating a 21st century environmentally sensitive, commuting culture. Our TDM measures include free morning bus service, free shuttle service between school and Caltrain, offsite parking within walking distance of school, community education promoting walking, biking, and public transportation, and a carpool matching service. We also require employees to get to and from campus by means other than an SOV at least 3 days a week or perform traffic duty as well as maintain a daily record of their commuting behavior to keep this at top of mind. Our results have been monitored by outside traffic expert Fehr and Peers and peer reviewed by Nelson\Nygaard. The unannounced traffic and parking counts are conducted on multiple days twice a year. The transformation of our students' transportation habits has been confirmed by reports from these traffic experts. Since 2013, Castilleja has seen a 23-percent reduction in those arriving by car. This program has been successful due to the mode shift made by our community. The number of students that walk and bike to school has risen from 9 to 15 percent, and the number of students who ride the bus or shuttle has risen from 2 to 17 percent. Castilleja has demonstrated the ability to generate fewer trips with more students, important and meaningful given our request to increase enrollment without increasing car trips. Thank you for your attention. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Herb Borock to be followed by Liang Chao. Herb Borock: Mayor Scharff and Council Members, there have been recent newspaper reports about three Council Members who have written a proposal for increasing housing, including affordable housing. I haven't seen a copy of that; although, I believe it's important to have that available this evening because your decisions on what should go into the Comprehensive Plan on housing issues to be able to implement those ideas is a quasi-judicial decision. The public will need to be able to see the same information that's available to the Council to be able to rebut anything that's there. This evening at places for the agenda item on the Comprehensive Plan is a letter from Sandra Slater of Palo Alto Forward, signed by 184 people, that includes that the Comp Plan and the recent Colleagues' Memo on housing contain many good ideas for Staff and Council to build on. It seems that the public has already seen the letter, but not everybody. I believe that under both the Brown Act and under DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 7 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 the California Environmental Quality Act you should make copies available for all of us. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Seeing no Staff—I'd ask them to respond—I will just say, Mr. Borock, I understand your concern. My understanding is—I haven't even seen the Colleagues' Memo—it has not been released to the public. Is that correct? I think they're responding to what the newspaper—it was the newspaper article. I think I was out of town. It was the newspaper article. Liang Chao to be followed by Peter Rosenthal. Liang Chao: Hi. I'm Liang Chao. I'm from Cupertino. I'd like to invite everyone to attend Better Cupertino forum this Sunday on regional planning. I have left a few flyers in the back. It will be Sunday in Cupertino City Hall from 3:00 'til 5:00 P.M. We have four panelists. The first one is Kansen Chu, Assembly Member in Milpitas, Santa Clara, Fremont, and Newark area. Second panelist is Chappie Jones from San Jose City Council, and Richard Bernhardt who is the CEO of Bernhardt Communication and Strategy. He was a former Planning Commissioner and President of Chamber in Sunnyvale. We would be honored to also have Tom DuBois from Palo Alto City Council. This time the panel will be moderated by Yang Shao. He is a Fremont Unified School Board member. Also, this panel is sponsored by Better Cupertino. Yang Shao is not a member of Better Cupertino. He has worked very hard to strive to provide a very balanced, unbiased panel discussion on the very important topic of regional planning. We all know that this year the State work very hard on housing bills; however, no matter how much housing we build, it's only a band-aid on the root. If we don't look at the root problem on office growth and the lack of infrastructure for transportation, we are never, ever going to catch-up with growth. That require cooperation between all the cities. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Peter Rosenthal to be followed by Andrew Boone. Peter Rosenthal: My name is Peter Rosenthal; I'm a 40-year resident of Palo Alto. I wanted to comment on two issues that have been of great concern to me over the past 10 months. The first concerns the behavior of Council Members towards one another. I can't recall a time when there has been such open disrespect and demeaning of Council Members during various Council meetings. This has taken the form of direct verbal comments, tonal innuendo, and negative body language. It's painful to watch this, and it demeans each of you. I think you can all do better, and I hope that you reflect on this and its impact on your effectiveness, your work, and the tone and image that it projects of our City and other members of the community. I'm aware of the fact that there are major issues of disagreement on how we as a City should move forward. I think the frequent Council decisions that are often swayed DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 8 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 by a single vote in some ways reflects the fact that you can't find a suitable way to work together and find middle ground that can be more acceptable to both sides. This inability to compromise may be a reflection of the great division and lack of cooperation that we see on the national scene, but let's not allow this to trickle down to Palo Alto. The other issue I request you address is the inadequacy of data collection and analysis by Council and Staff on key issues affecting our future including parking, traffic, office space utilization, etc. We live in a City thriving on companies devoted to big data and data analysis; yet, we don't provide adequate funding and direction to City Staff to track key metrics that affect our decision-making. One small example is we don't seem to know how many residential parking permits have been issued by type of business, an important number to guide us in this decision-making. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Andrew Boone to be followed by Rita Vrhel. Andrew Boone: Thank you. Good evening. Mayor Scharff and Council Members, my name is Andrew Boone. I live in East Palo Alto on Woodland Avenue. I wanted to bring to your attention Stanford University's 2018 General Use Permit and the mitigations therein, which would fund some bicycle and pedestrian improvements. Those improvements can be a lot more visionary and a lot more beneficial to Palo Alto than they are. Some of those are just bike routes. We're talking about signs and sharrows. If Stanford University really wants to expand by 2.3 million square feet, that brings a heck of a lot of people—I don't know the exact number—into Stanford University and through Palo Alto every day, then they need to think bigger. They need to be more visionary. Stanford should be proposing to make major improvements to the most important streets that lead to Stanford University, and that's University Avenue and El Camino Real. There are significant barriers on those streets for walking and biking to Stanford University. First of all, the underpass on University Avenue to get to Downtown is a barrier for walking and biking. It's not a safe place to walk or bike, and it's not comfortable. Then, crossing Highway 101 to East Palo Alto is very hazardous and needs to be fixed. These major pieces of infrastructure can be fixed; it's just going to take driving a harder bargain with Stanford University. I think we deserve it. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Rita Vrhel to be followed by Stephanie Munoz. Rita Vrhel: Good evening. I just wanted to hand out to you a copy of the minutes for a groundwater meeting today that was held by the City of Palo Alto and attended by many. Also, I wanted to speak to the issue of Castilleja. My daughter graduated from Castilleja. I have to say that as making it okay for me to speak against Castilleja. I was a proud parent for 5 years, and I DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 9 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 think it's an excellent school. There's no doubt about that. When any entity in the City of Palo Alto disregards their neighbors and is out of compliance with their use permit for 15 years, then the neighbors have the right to speak up. I have attended two of the meetings required that Castilleja put on. One was the other day. I don't live anywhere near Castilleja, but I do live near a private school, a Catholic school. My concern is if Castilleja can get away with it, then any other private school in the City can get away with it. We have rules and regulations for a reason. Everyone needs to follow them. That is the definition of a civilized society. It's not the neighbors against Castilleja. It's many other citizens who are concerned about any entity wanting special treatment. I value Castilleja. The problem is it's getting too large and probably needs to move or separate its campus. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Stephanie Munoz to be followed by Mary Sylvester. Stephanie Munoz: Thank you, Mayor Scharff, Council Members. When I was in high school, a great deal of attention was paid to what we would call propriety. Saint Rose girls did not smoke on the street or wear lipstick in public. Palo Alto seems to me to be that kind of town, very tidy and prosperous and attractive and polite, civilized Council Members. I find it puzzling that you can tolerate homelessness in Palo Alto, particularly homeless women. When I leave the 22 bus at midnight and hear the guards rousting the sleeping passengers into the cold, I see the area they're being pushed onto with nary a bench or water fountain, not to mention hygienic facilities, but a large sign warning against public urination and defecation, and with the train station or what used to be called a train station closed and locked including the restrooms. I know the restrooms themselves are locked and have a sign that travelers who aren't patrons must pay $1. I'm astonished. What are you thinking of? Your parents and teachers certainly didn't teach you that. They knew you'd be important, but they certainly supposed you'd treat your subjects humanely. People have to sleep. They have to use the bathroom. This is not a third-world country. You don't have to get a Federal grant or a donation from a wealthy developer. The rise in homelessness is to a great extent due to your guidance of improvement of property in Palo Alto. At this point, I urge you to get a couple of port-a-potties and put them on the two lower floors of this building and hire a few monitors to stay awake and alert authorities if something goes amiss and allow unsheltered people to bring their bedding and stay on the floor from 7:00 in the night to 7:00 in the morning. Be thankful for the people who are helping themselves with cars and trailers to live in. Make it possible for them to park their cars on the streets and to park in garages. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Mary Sylvester to be followed by Arthur Keller DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 10 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 Mary Sylvester: Good evening, Mayor Scharff and Council Members. I'm Mary Sylvester. I am here to make a few brief remarks. First of all, I'd like to acknowledge Castilleja's earlier fine speakers. They attested very effectively to the school's work on the TDM and the fine education it provides young women. I would, however, like to raise several important points. One, historical news. Sixteen years the school has been out of compliance with the law. The frustration by the neighbors didn't just happen. In fact, for 3 years, the neighbors have tried to work with the school. In fact, it's the school that has promoted the "we versus them narrative," referring to neighbors as bullies, tree-huggers, and our opponents. I'd like to hold up for the audience and the Council our neighborhood campaign on finding a solution with the school. We met 2 weeks ago with Castilleja as Ms. Vrhel attested to and raised our concerns about let's just find a solution before this goes to Council and before we have a full-out chaotic situation within the community. Castilleja finally came clean to the neighbors. They are unwilling at this point to work with the neighbors on a solution. They are waiting for the results of a Draft Environmental Impact Report. Neighbors assume that they are hoping for a better deal than they can get with the neighbors right now. I urge Council and I urge the community and Castilleja please work with the neighbors so we can arrive at an amicable solution for all. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Arthur Keller. Arthur Keller: Thank you. I wasn't planning to speak, but I was confused by the interchange regarding Mr. Borock's comments regarding the letter from Sandra Slater. I'm going to just—clearly the letter that he was referring to said how the Comp Plan and the recent Colleagues' Memo on housing contain many good ideas for Staff and Council to build on. I believe there was only one Colleagues' Memo on housing that was made available, which was turned down on a 6-3 vote. I do not believe that's the one to which Ms. Slater was referring. I believe the Colleagues' Memo is the one that has not yet been made public. The understanding I have is that this letter was referring to a currently secret Colleagues' Memo that has not been made available. I do think that is something relevant to the discussion. I understand that Council Members may share information with certain members of the public and not other members of the public, but that puts those of us who do not have access to the Colleagues' Memo at disadvantage for participating. Thank you. Consent Calendar Mayor Scharff: Now, we'll move on to the Consent Calendar. We have one public speaker, Herb Borock, on Item Number 3. DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 11 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 Herb Borock, speaking on Item Number 3: Thank you, Mayor Scharff. I have a letter at places on this item. I'm requesting that you remove it from the agenda. The letter has the legislative history on the standards for sidewalk repair and replacement. The policy, due to budget constraints, of not following the standards completely but after all parts of the City have been gone through, which has now happened in all sidewalk districts, to go through and do the standards. What you have in addition at places is a memo from City Staff, which is not entirely responsive to my letter because it refers to standards but doesn't say what they are. Whereas, the letter I provided you gives objective standards. It refers to whether or not it's keeping track of individual temporary repairs or requested repairs, which has nothing to do with the policy that I have provided to you, which merely said that after all sidewalk districts had repairs done to a lower standard the City would go back to those districts that had the lower standard and do them to the original, higher standard. I believe the public has been on notice that a certain standard would be used. It seems to me that creates a liability for the City, not just for individual trip and falls but more of a class action type of people being treated similarly and are all at risk for the City going against that policy that was based on objective standards. Further, to the extent that Staff has gone and done something different, then the information I have given to you, to my knowledge, has never been reported to Council and gotten Council's consent in the past over 25 years. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Council Member Tanaka. Council Member Tanaka: I'd like to pull Item Number 3. Council Member Holman: Second. Council Member Kou: I'll third. MOTION: Council Member Tanaka moved, seconded by Council Member Holman, third by Council Member Kou to pull Agenda Item Number 3 - Approval of a Contract Number C18168777 With Nichols Consulting Engineers, Chtd. (NCE) … to be heard on a date uncertain. Mayor Scharff: That item is pulled, and we'll move it to a date uncertain. That's fine. What's left on the Consent Calendar. We will be voting on Item Number 2, which is donating a surplus fire engine to our Sister City. I'll move the Consent Calendar. Vice Mayor Kniss: Second. MOTION: Mayor Scharff moved, seconded by Vice Mayor Kniss to approve Agenda Item Number 2. DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 12 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 2. Resolution 9715 Entitled, “Resolution of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Donating a Surplus Fire Engine to our Sister City, Oaxaca, Mexico and Accepting $5,000 From Neighbors Abroad as the Purchase Price of the Fire Engine. 3. Approval of a Contract Number C18168777 With Nichols Consulting Engineers, Chtd. (NCE) in the Amount of $191,300 for the Sidewalk Assessment Study to Determine Next Steps Following the Completion of the Sidewalk District Cycle for Capital Improvements Program Project PO-89003. 4. SECOND READING: Adoption of an Ordinance of the City Of Palo Alto to Update the Fiscal Year 2018 Municipal Fee Schedule to Adjust Development Services Department Fees (FIRST READING: October 2, 2017 PASSED: 7-1 Tanaka no, Scharff Absent). Mayor Scharff: All in favor. That passes—Adrian? How did Adrian vote? Council Member Fine: I vote yes. Mayor Scharff: That passed unanimously. MOTION PASSED: 9-0 Action Items 5. PUBLIC HEARING/QUASI-JUDICIAL: 3001 El Camino Real [16PLN-00097 and 16PLN-00220]. Recommendation on Applicant’s Request for Approval of a Site and Design Review to Allow for Construction of a Four- story Mixed-use Development With 19,800 Square Feet of Retail and 30 Residential Units in the CS Zone as Well as a Three-story Multi-family Residential Building With 20 Units in the RM-30 Zone. The Project Also Includes a Request for Approval of a Preliminary Parcel Map for a Lot Merger to Allow for the Proposed Development, a Design Enhancement Exception, and a Parking Adjustment for Shared Parking. Environmental Assessment: A Draft Mitigated Negative Declaration (MND) was Circulated for Public Review on July 3, 2017 and the Circulation Period Ended on August 2, 2017. A Final MND is Available for Review. Zoning District: CS (Service Commercial), RM-30 (Multi-family Residential), and R-1 (Single-family Residential). Mayor Scharff: Now, we're at Item Number 5. Do we have a Staff Report? Claire Hodgkins, Associate Planner: Good evening, Council Members. Claire Hodgkins, Project Planner. The proposed project is located at 3001 El Camino DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 13 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 Real. Just a brief overview. The project in front of you tonight includes a preliminary parcel map for the merger of three lots into one lot and its redevelopment with 19,800 square feet of commercial retail and 50 residential units in a total of two buildings. The building fronting El Camino is a mixed- use development located within the Commercial Service zone district. The second building is fronting Acacia, and it's a multifamily residential development located within the area zoned RM-30. A few details on the site. The project site is currently three total parcels that would be merged into one parcel that is less than 2 acres. The site includes split zoning of CS, RM-30, and a small portion of the site is also zoned R-1. The site includes split land use designations of Service Commercial, Multifamily Residential, Single- Family Residential. It's currently developed with two buildings that total 9,100 square feet of retail/commercial surrounded by surface parking. That's the existing Mike's Bikes. This map just shows the project site in yellow and gives you an idea of how that zoning is split between the R-1, CS, and RM-30. Some key considerations for tonight. The project provides multifamily residential rental housing on a housing inventory site, which fulfills a need for the City. It is also close to office and to transit. This use is consistent with the Comprehensive Plan vision for this area. There are two requested exceptions to the Code. The first is a shared parking adjustment for six spaces. The second is a design enhancement exception to allow the garage ramp to encroach into the setback. Just a little bit about the parking and loading adjustment. The applicant is requesting shared use of six parking spaces, which is approximately 3-percent reduction. Four residential guest spaces would be shared with four retail spaces, and two retail spaces would be restricted for trash pickup hours. A parking analysis was prepared to justify the shared parking. It's included in your Staff Report as an attachment. The Code, so you're aware, allows up to a 20-percent parking reduction. The applicant is also requesting a Director's adjustment for one on-street loading space, which would be located on Acacia Avenue. A little bit about the design enhancement exception. The DEE allows the garage ramp to be located 5 feet into the 10-foot required setback. The circulation design is intended to reduce traffic adjacent the single-family residences. Cars can enter the site on Olive Avenue, but vehicles for the most part would generally have to leave toward Acacia. A 5-foot landscaping strip with trees is still proposed between those. This is subject to site and design review because it has more than nine units. It's a mixed development with more than nine units. A draft CEQA document was circulated for public review on July 3rd, and the circulation ended on August 2nd. The PTC recommended approval of the project on July 12th, and the ARB recommended approval of the project on October 19th. The recommended motion for tonight. Staff recommends that Council take the following actions: adopt the Mitigated Negative Declaration and approve the Mitigation Monitoring and Reporting Plan; adopt the Record of Land Use Action approving a site and design application including the Director's parking DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 14 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 adjustment, the design enhancement exception as well as the preliminary parcel map for the merger of three parcels based on findings and subject to conditions of approval included in the Record of Land Use Action in Attachment B. That's all for myself. I'll turn it back to you. Jonathan Lait, Planning and Community Environment Assistant Director: Mayor, I'll just note that Planning Commissioner Przemek Gardias is here if you want to hear from him first regarding the PTC's review of the project. Mayor Scharff: (inaudible) that's it. Mr. Przemek. Public Hearing opened at 7:39 P.M. Przemek Gardias: Mayor Scharff, Vice Mayor Kniss, Council Members, I think it's going to be very short and sweet. The Commission approved and recommended for your approval the plans for 3001 El Camino with all Commissioners present voting yes. We also found some recommendations that we directed to Architectural Review Board. I've heard from the Staff that all those were reviewed by ARB and agreed upon. With this, there is pretty much not much for me to say only besides one point that I also raised during the review. We didn't enjoy (inaudible) as large coverage as you enjoy tonight. As you know, we always ache for the public input, and we wish that many of them would be attending our meetings as well because they always provide us with additional input that we would like to have at all our reviews. Maybe there will be some other comments from the public. Otherwise, again, on behalf of the PTC I recommend the project for your approval. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Normally, then we have the applicant speak, correct, for 10 minutes. Is that right? Then, I should open the public hearing and do our disclosures or should I do them before the applicant speaks? Let's do them now. Council Members, this is a quasi-judicial procedure. First of all, I'm going to open the public hearing. If Council Members have any disclosures they wish to make. Vice Mayor Kniss. Council Member Fine: I have no disclosures. Vice Mayor Kniss: Although, I spoke to no one in person, I did visit the site today and spent some time walking around the property. I'm familiar with the area and with that address. Mayor Scharff: I actually spoke with a representative of Sobrato and learned nothing that's not in the public record. I think that's it. You have a disclosure? Council Member Wolbach: I also met with representatives from Sobrato many months ago and learned nothing that's not in the public record. DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 15 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 Mayor Scharff: Mine was quite a while ago too. No one else? Now, we'll go to the applicant, and you'll have 10 minutes. Tim Steele, Sobrato: Good evening, Mayor and City Council Members. My name is Tim Steele, and I'm with the Sobrato Organization, the applicant. First, I want to thank the Architectural Review Board and the Planning Commission for the opportunity to present this application and for the mixed- use project at 3001 El Camino. The feedback and direction we received from both parties has been helpful in designing the project we are presenting to you tonight. Appreciate both were actually unanimous support. Second, I'd like to also thank City Staff for all of their hard work and agree with this analysis, the findings, and recommendations in their Staff Report. I'm pleased to present to you a project that started with the design process directive to my team of being a compliant project with the existing zoning and all three zoning designations and multiple design guidelines that affected this site. Also important to the design approach was to consider its context and to be sensitive to Olive Street residents and minimize the traffic patterns impacting them while focusing this to the Acacia side of the project. As our project architect will present to you tonight, I think you'll appreciate that we've developed a careful, responsive, and thoughtful design project that has accomplished these goals and more. The subject site is currently in the City's housing inventory with nine residential units projected. The mixed-use project in front of you is providing for 50 well-amenitized rental units. Also in response to Council's expressed desires, they are smaller rental units with an average size of 750 square feet. In mixed use, we have roughly 20,000 square feet. In addressing other expressed interests on the Council for preserving retail, we in this case would only be required to preserve 9,100 square feet, which is what's existing today. However, we are making a commitment that all 20,000 square feet of that will be retail only, in response to the Council's desires. On a parking note, as suggested by Staff, we're proposing that two complementary parking uses share a very small portion. We're not asking for additional parking. We're asking to actually share complementary uses. To go on, the retail and parking requirements in Palo Alto actually have two different required parking ratios, one for standard retail and one for restaurants. In this case, we're designing to the standard retail; however, to be able to have the flexibility in the future to accommodate a restaurant, we are designing the garage under the CS with pits that will have plates over them, that will allow us to put lifts in for the residential at a later date, and then shift the security fence over so the gained lift parking in the residential extra will be added to the open commercial. The restaurant would then have the required retail rate and be able to accommodate a future retail use, which we thought was pretty nifty here in this case. We're very excited to bring this project to you tonight, especially with the unanimous support in Palo Alto of the ARB and the Planning Commission along with Staff's support. With that, DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 16 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 I'd like to introduce our team, my architect, Rob Steinberg who will make the next part of the presentation. We have Nick Samuelson, our landscape architect from Guzzardo; we have Karen Wright Matthew, who's our civil, and myself. If there are any questions that we might be able to help after the presentation, please let me know. Thank you. Rob Steinberg, Steinberg Architects: Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Council. I'm Rob Steinberg of Steinberg Architects. The view that you see on your screen is a view of the landscape site plan. I thought I'd begin by identifying a few of the site opportunities. As you heard, the site is made up of three separate parcels that have been merged together. You would think as a designer that would make it easier to have one parcel, but each parcel has its own specific requirements and the merged parcel has the need to respond to the El Camino Real Design Guidelines, the South El Camino Real Guidelines, and the Cal- Ventura Area Strategic Plan. A lot of goals and some of those are conflicting, but all of them are interested in activating and having a pedestrian environment. If you look at this slide, you can see we have an unusual condition on our site where the grade is actually increased about 2 feet in the middle of the site along El Camino Real. What that does is it pushes the pedestrian activities to the two corners, where people will be crossing and entering the site. This is a nice opportunity for gathering, for plazas, and socialization. We moved the buildings as far away from the single-family housing, out to the street, as possible, maximizing those setbacks. We've tried to make the buildings porous by having plazas, as I just mentioned, that would be open to the public on the corner as well as lobbies. Along Acacia, we put the two lobbies to the residential building and developed a pedestrian/vehicular entry plaza. We spent quite a bit of time thinking about traffic and how we minimize traffic along Olive. All of the residential parking comes from Acacia; 100 percent of it comes and goes. On the retail side, there is the ability to get into short-term parking off Olive. If you go into the garage for parking, you're forced to go out along Acacia. We're really minimizing any vehicular traffic on Olive. This is a view of the Acacia corner. You can see we're actually recessing the first floor in, so we have more room for dining or activity to spill out to the corner. As you can see, the building steps down in height as we move away from El Camino Real. We're also using wood-type material on the building. That's paying homage to the redwood trees on the opposite side of El Camino. We used a similar strategy on Olive, expanding the building, pushing the building back, having a plaza opening to the corner, really encouraging pedestrian activity there as well. In order to be sensitive to those residents on Olive, as I mentioned, we really have minimized the traffic. On Acacia, we've developed a pedestrian shared motor court that would have the restaurant spilling out to it as well as the lobbies, which is really going to activate those areas consistent with the guidelines that the City has put into effect. I'll just say that we are as a team and personally DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 17 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 as a resident of Palo Alto, someone who's done a lot of work here in the community, very excited about the collaboration between the ARB, the Planning Commission, the City, and ourselves. We hope you will support the Staff recommendation tonight. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. The applicant's done for that. We have two public speakers. Stephen Levy to be followed by Rita Vrhel. Then, I believe the applicant gets an additional 3 minutes, if you wish to use it or not. Stephen Levy: Hi. We often hear a lot of negative stuff about the Palo Alto process. I watched the entire PTC meeting, and that's the way it's supposed to work for me. Seven Commissioners who have different views often on a lot of stuff reached an agreement, talked with the applicant, worked with the Staff, and came back with the unanimous decision. I add my voice to theirs in support of the project. Two other quick things. I hope passionately that that spirit of collaboration can extend to the Wilton project, where there are 61 units for low-income adults and low-income special needs adults, something that we all said is a huge priority, so that can move forward without delay. Second, I'm not going to speak later tonight. There are a lot of people here who are, and you had a very long Closed Session. I hope, if you all are in agreement with the PTC, that you can move this quickly so these people don't have to wait to speak on the Comp Plan EIR. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Rita Vrhel. Rita Vrhel: Thank you. I have to admit I haven't been following this closely because you can only follow so much closely. I do remember reading in the paper that one of the residents indicated they had not received notice on this project. If we go back to the 900 North California Avenue situation again, that was stalled because the people near those three residential homes with basements and a low water table also had not received notice. What I didn't hear tonight is are these affordable housing or are these rentals or are they condominiums. Are we getting any below market housing out of this? What kind of housing is this? Thank you. Mayor Scharff: The applicant has 3 minutes if you wish to use it. If you don't, that's fine too. No. Then we return to Council for questions, comments, motions. Council Member Filseth. Public Hearing closed at 7:51 P.M. Council Member Filseth: I've a couple of questions. One, I'll wait for the City Attorney to come back. The Acacia building looks like it towers over the single-family home backyards on Olive Street. It looks like it's a lot higher. I'm wondering a couple of things. Did the ARB look at this? The Code talks DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 18 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 about low-density residential transitions. That's 18.13.060. I'm curious if the ARB looked at that. Ms. Hodgkins: The ARB has reviewed this project and definitely did look into that. In fact, in the last meeting it was further—the whole design was further lowered on the Acacia building by a few feet to further reduce the size of the building. I believe they are actually under the required—it's actually less than the required height of any normal structure, and it's set back about 10 feet further than a structure is required to be set back in that area. Council Member Filseth: That's on the Olive side—sorry. That's on the Acacia side, right? Ms. Hodgkins: That's for the building on the Acacia side, for the entirely residential building. Council Member Filseth: There's a discussion in the Code about transitions, not maximum height but transitions between. It's all single-family, one-story homes on the other side. The Acacia building is three stories, I think. Ms. Hodgkins: I know that one of the comments from the PTC at that time was to further review landscaping, and we ensured that landscaping was provided along that entire shared property line between those residences to reduce and provide some setback. As I mentioned, the building is set back much further than it's actually required to. That 35-foot height limit on buildings like this within 150 feet of residential zones further contributes to that. Council Member Filseth: Any more color on what they might be doing to (inaudible). As somebody who lives next to a large apartment building and who has been pleased to hear people from the apartment building say, "I love looking out my window into your backyard and watching your kids play," can you give any more color on what the applicant intends to do to mitigate that? Mr. Lait: Thank you, Council Member, for that question. What we have are the plans that have been presented, and Claire has talked about the different development standards. Other than that, we don't have any additional consideration for that. Of course, that may be a question you want to ask the applicant as well. Council Member Filseth: Could I? Mayor Scharff: You can. DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 19 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 Council Member Filseth: Thanks very much. Sorry. The question is you've got the—the Acacia building is quite a bit taller than the single-family homes on Olive Street. What have you got in between them? Mr. Steel: First off, we started—the Code allows us to be 35 feet. Council Member Filseth: I understand, but the Code also calls for transitions to low-density residential neighborhoods. Mr. Steel: I appreciate your comments. I'm trying to explain our (inaudible) and how we got to where we are. As I suggested at the beginning, we are trying to be very conscientious about the adjacent property owners, the single-family homes. In both the CS and the RM, the buildings themselves are pulled away as far as possible from the residential first. Even more so, in the CS building, if you will, there are no bedroom or living windows that face onto the residential direction. In the case of the RM-30 parcel, the Acacia parcel that you're referring to, the building also is pulled back as far as possible. The maximum height of that building also is only 27 feet versus 35 feet. That was in response to both the Planning Commission but primarily three visits to the ARB where we eventually dropped that building about 8 feet down, from 35 feet to 26 1/2-27 feet. We've pulled it all the way out to the street as far as possible and tried to mitigate it with a very large amount of large-size trees along that property line, all in response to trying to address the residential next to us. Council Member Filseth: Thank you very much. I had one other question for Staff; although, I don't see Molly here. Given the … Vice Mayor Kniss: Do you want me to go get her? Council Member Filseth: If she comes out, can I ask my question then? Mayor Scharff: Yeah. Liz will go get her. Council Member Filseth: In the meantime, somebody else can go. Mayor Scharff: It'll take a second. Why don't we come back to her? Is that your last question? I'll come back to you if you want. Tom. Council Member DuBois: Just a curiosity question. How was that R-1 lot formed? It seems to be a very narrow slice. Ms. Hodgkins: I believe this was part of the former railroad right-of-way for a potential future jitney going through this area. I'm not sure of the whole history about what happened. I know that the current Comprehensive Plan DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 20 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 does not foresee this as a current site, and a lot of those were piecemealed out. Council Member DuBois: They were public easements? Ms. Hodgkins: Yeah, I believe so. A piece of this was done through a … It was a lot line adjustment that was conducted a while ago for this project. Council Member DuBois: Is the R-1 space being used to contribute to the open space required on the other lots? Ms. Hodgkins: No, no. Council Member DuBois: Each lot is coming up with this open space that's required? Ms. Hodgkins: Yes. Council Member DuBois: What happens to the lot lines and the zoning after this project? Mr. Lait: The lot lines would be merged, but the zoning standards still stay as they are today. Council Member DuBois: What does that mean? Is there an R-1 portion of this merged lot? Mr. Lait: That's right. Ms. Hodgkins: Correct, yes. Council Member DuBois: That boundary is still there? Mr. Lait: The zoning designations won't change. The property boundaries will. Council Member DuBois: On Packet Page 75, 17c says we might have to remove parking on Acacia. Was that considered in the parking analysis, removal of that parking? Ms. Hodgkins: Are you asking about for the loading zone? Council Member DuBois: No, just the total parking. It seems like people are parking there today. It says we may restripe it and remove parking along one side of the road. Ms. Hodgkins: Sorry. Where are you referencing? DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 21 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 Council Member DuBois: Packet Page 75, 17c. Mr. Lait: Thank you, Council Member. This looks like a condition of approval from our Transportation Division, just noting that there are some off-site improvements that are necessary as set forth in Condition Number—this is a condition of approval, Condition Number 17. "C" is dealing with signage and striping and curbside management. It's not a definite, but it's a notation. I don't know that that specifically has been analyzed in the parking study. Council Member DuBois: I think it's just something to keep an eye on. Again, we're counting on this parking. I think the parking is being used. If we remove one side of the street, it exacerbates the problem. I did have a question about the loading zone too. Was there any discussion about putting the loading zone on El Camino instead of on the residential street? Ms. Hodgkins: We did not discuss putting it on El Camino. Part of the reason that we did not discuss that was because this project—the area is designed and is identified in our Bike and Pedestrian Transportation Plan as a potential future Class II bike lane. We didn't discuss putting it on El Camino. Obviously, we didn't choose to put it on Olive because we felt it would be more impactful to residents on that side. Council Member DuBois: I'm just concerned. Again, this is nearly a 2-acre lot, and we still can't find room for a loading zone on property. I just wonder how big a project has to be to have a loading zone. I do want to say to the applicant I do appreciate you moving the massing away from Olive, really do. It's still requesting a Design Enhancement Exemption (DEE) in the place where it's closest to people's homes. If you wouldn't mind answering, I'm just curious why you couldn't make the 10-foot setback work and why you need the 5-foot. Mayor Scharff: Would you like them to answer? Council Member DuBois: Yeah. Mayor Scharff: Why don't you guys come up? Mr. Steele: Good question. There was a lot of machinations, if you will, with this site to try to meet all of the parking requirements and accommodate the unit counts that this site warranted. To move that further into the site, when one of the design guidelines speaks to any driveways being as far away from El Camino as possible, you'll notice there are no curb cuts on El Camino. We're also trying to balance with any project entry off of Olive being limited. We found that the solution was the turn-about. Even if you come through the project, you can't go back to Olive once you come over to the turn-about. DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 22 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 That seemed to be a very good solution to restrict the kinds of traffic and trips that might want to gravitate from the Acacia side. To make that align and keep the driveway as far from El Camino as possible and get into a garage, we had a very slim, little window to do that. This was the best place to put it. In consideration of that, we went further in trying to design that that ramp dives down quicker so it doesn't get to the residential home. It allows us—I don't have the site plan up. Can we, Claire, put the site plan up please? The single-family home closest to us is up towards Olive in this case. If you look at what we're able to do here by pulling the parking away and allowing for the ramp on the southern portion of that, where the house is on the north is where we actually landscape almost 30 feet across that. If you follow what I'm trying to say, I don't have a pointer here. Council Member DuBois: I see it. Mr. Steele: It allows us to even pull the parking further away from their property line and most importantly bedroom windows and so forth on that by having that part of the podium not have a ramp or anything going there and the parking all pulled away. Council Member DuBois: I appreciate that. One other quick question. I saw you have a lot of EV-ready spots, but it seemed to be very few installed initially. I was curious. It seems like you'd be behind from the get-go. Mr. Steele: What's showing on there is what the requirements are for the City. We'll probably end up doing more eventually. We wanted to show that we're in compliance with the City's requirements. We're getting a big transition in our residential units to more and more people adapting to the all- electric plug-ins. At least on the residential side, we have pressure to almost have quite a bit more. Council Member DuBois: I would encourage you to do so. Mr. Steele: The power is there, but we are designating them to show that we are in compliance with the ordinance. Council Member DuBois: Thank you. A couple more questions for Staff. We have a lot of different guidelines for El Camino. On a project of this size, even though our guidelines discourage curb cuts, when will we consider a curb cut? Again, routing all this traffic off El Camino and running it on the side streets seems like it might have been a better approach here. I'm not suggesting we change this project; I'd just like to understand. It's nearly a 2-acre lot. It seems like a curb cut would have been reasonable in this case. DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 23 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 Mr. Lait: I think that's absolutely a fair question. To the extent that we can answer that here, this is a project that gets reviewed by a lot of different departments including our Transportation Office as well. While we have these different guidelines—two El Camino guidelines that apply to this property—we do try to balance that against the efficiency of operation of mobility. If we get requests from our Transportation Department that suggest it would be better to incorporate access from El Camino directly, that's something we look at, and then we can have a conversation about what has priority, the guidelines or this transportation policy. In this instance, our Transportation Office looked at this and found that arranging the site ingress and egress the way it was designed and pushing most of the traffic onto and off of Acacia is a desirable arrangement. I would say that it's not—there's room for a dialog about that. Council Member DuBois: I just want to point out one thing to my colleagues and this last item. On Packet Page 75, this section 17, offsite improvements, wasn't really mentioned in the Staff Report. 17a is installing a new crosswalk across El Camino with a pedestrian beacon. I have a lot of concerns about that. It's on Olive. There's a traffic light and a crosswalk 1 block away. There's another traffic light and crosswalk 2 blocks the other direction. It seems very disruptive to the flow of El Camino to have a crosswalk in the middle of the block. Just curious why we're doing that, especially when one of the worst intersections in the City is not too far away. Ms. Hodgkins: I'm actually going to let—we have a representative from TJKM, who prepared the traffic impact analysis, here, Colin. I'll let him speak to that. Colin Burgett, TJKM Traffic: Hi. Colin Burgett, TJKM Transportation Consultants. The current distance between signals is about a quarter mile. For someone to cross from the project site to the bus stop on the other side of the street, for example, they would essentially have to walk about an eighth of a mile to Page Mill, for example, which is not necessarily the most attractive intersection for pedestrian crossings. There's a lot of traffic. There's right- turn slip lanes. This is someone just trying to cross the street to catch a bus or, for example, there's an office park on the north side of El Camino. Some of the commercial customers would potentially come from that office park on foot. Given the lack of a protected, signalized crosswalk nearby, installation of a signalized crossing would be warranted in this case. Council Member DuBois: Portage is much closer; there's a crosswalk there. I would go there instead of Page Mill. Right across from Olive is the driveway to Palo Alto Square. It seems like an odd place for a crosswalk. DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 24 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 Mr. Burgett: It's roughly midpoint between the two nearest signals. Acacia is the other intersection that directly borders the site, but it wouldn't be possible to install a crosswalk at Acacia without cutting through the median. Council Member DuBois: But then Acacia to Portage is a pretty small distance. Mr. Burgett: In terms of the effect on traffic, there's a very long signal cycle just 1 block up at Page Mill, about 3 minutes during the peak. The crosswalk would require about 40 seconds. You figure 40 seconds out of 180 seconds. If this crosswalk is synchronized in a manner that the crosswalk would receive the walk signal roughly parallel with the east-west traffic on Page Mill, particularly the eastbound traffic flow on Page Mill, the eastbound through movements, there would not be an effect on the peak direction southbound traffic, which is the heavy traffic flow in the P.M. Does that make sense? You could sync it in a way that you're not going to affect the—the peak flow southbound on El Camino would not be affected. There's a left-turn movement from Oregon Expressway that would not be affected. Meanwhile, traffic today is delayed waiting for the green light going northbound. If you put in a crosswalk phase essentially a block south, it'll shift a portion of that time. People will have to wait—a portion of the time they're already spending waiting that they'd spend it south of Olive. Does that make sense? It wouldn't necessarily add net travel time. Council Member DuBois: Thank you. I'm most concerned about this. I see traffic back up at every single light along El Camino during peak hour. Those are my comments. Mayor Scharff: Vice Mayor Kniss. Vice Mayor Kniss: Let me go out on a limb and recommend the Staff approval on this knowing that both PTC and ARB have voted unanimously for it. I'll speak to it if I get a second. Mayor Scharff: I'll second that. MOTION: Vice Mayor Kniss moved, seconded by Mayor Scharff to: A. Adopt a Mitigated Negative Declaration and Mitigation Monitoring and Reporting Plan prepared pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA); and B. Adopt a Record of Land Use Action approving a Site and Design application, including a Director’s Parking Adjustment and Design Enhancement Exception, as well as a Preliminary Parcel Map for the DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 25 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 merger of three parcels based on findings and subject to conditions of approval included in the Staff Report, Attachment B. Vice Mayor Kniss: We speak constantly about the need for housing. This is in a particular part of town that, I think, can use this kind of housing very well. I'm concerned that it is very close to the stop light and so forth, but this is zoned—it doesn't deviate from the zoning. To be quite honest, having the Steinberg group involved in this, we know from that that it'll be a quality building and a quality design. I appreciated Steve Levy coming up earlier and saying, "Could we hopefully all work together tonight." I hope this is one of those projects where we can all work together. We haven't voted on something like this for quite some time. I'll be delighted to support it tonight. Mayor Scharff: I'll just be really brief as well. I was really impressed that the Planning and Transportation Commission voted unanimously on this. It seems like a good project to me. It seems like the applicant worked hard to pull the stuff back from the single-family neighborhood, which is really important. I'll be supportive of the project. Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: Thank you. There are a number of things to like about this project. The fact that it provides 50 housing units is certainly one of those, as it should, and respects the height within 150 feet of the single-family residences on Olive is good. I know the architect and know the capabilities. That said, I actually have respectfully a couple of criticisms of the design. They are these, and these are in our standards. The retail entrances, I appreciate that some of them are—they're spaced irregularly, but they are for the most part very much the same in look. The same with the upper story of both ends; that's different. Everything in between—this is a block-long project. It has the—I'm going to use a word that's harsher than I intend maybe—monotony of the same look. What we strive to get away from is projects that have that big block feeling. I would, through the Chair, like to give you an opportunity to respond to why this as opposed to something that's broken down into the look of more individual buildings, which is much more consistent with the look on El Camino and part of our standards, frankly. Through the Chair, I'd like to ask … Mayor Scharff: (inaudible) Council Member Holman: Mr. Steinberg. Mr. Steinberg: This was an issue that was raised by the ARB in our first meeting. We had three—maybe actually … I don't have all of the detailed drawings, Council Member Holman, to show you exactly. Initially, we had a very strong retail base. We decided to put the emphasis on the corners because that's where the pedestrians are going to come from. Our original DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 26 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 design had three equally spaced bays with equally spaced gaps between them. We worked on those proportions quite a bit. What we wound up doing was treating the corner and having a void that broke and separated the corner and using the wood materials to signify that that's a point of entry. We did that on both buildings. One is higher and one is lower, but it was the same idea of putting our emphasis on the corner, using the wood to signify the sense of entry. We looked at the bays, and what we wound up with was a rhythm of a single bay, a double break, a single, a double, a single, a double break, a single. We worked on the proportions of that quite a bit. We also changed— there are balcony railings only at the first two floors. At the third floor, there was a different kind of expression. We worked very carefully on the rhythms and the beats of the solids and the voids. That's a process that we went through both with the Planning Commission and with the ARB. If I had known we were going to delve into that, I would have brought a few more documents and really walked you through all of the evolution. That was the process. At the end, I think everyone felt that it was a very strong diagram, a diagram that was appropriate for vehicular movement along El Camino, that had the emphasis on the corners. When you design a building, you need some rest spots for the eye to relax between special events. We worked the corners, and we thought an interesting rhythm between them. That's the process that we got to. Council Member Holman: I can appreciate how you got there. I really do appreciate the corners and how you treated the corners. I appreciate that very much. That said, I look at the window patterns, and they look to be pretty much the same. Again, it doesn't help differentiate one part of the building from another. It doesn't break up the mass and scale. I'm looking right now, because it's easier to manage, at this. The same with the roof heights; there's not much difference in the roof heights there. I'd have to look at the plans to tell what, but there's not much between the plaster that's color number 2 and the color number 1 plaster. There's not much difference in height there. It's probably not more than 5 feet, I would bet. At any rate, there's not much—for me when buildings are friendlier to the community and friendlier to the passerby, if there's a deviation in setback, a deviation in roof height or roof form, it gives it less a monolithic feel. I'm really not trying to be harsh here. It's something that I'm really sensitive to and what I hear from the community. I don't want you to get pushback when this gets built. It's like, "Oh, God, look at that. Who knew it was going to look like that," which we've seen and heard on a number of projects. That's input. Mr. Steinberg: Councilwoman, design is not a science; it's an art. I will tell you on this particular piece of property there were three governing sets of guidelines that required certain rhythms and certain expressions. We went through three meetings with the ARB and with the Planning Commission. DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 27 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 When we really drilled down into the detail of what was being asked and what the guidelines were looking for, both groups were unanimous in their support. We tried our best. I think it's going to be a handsome addition to the City. Council Member Holman: I appreciate your comments. I think we know each other well enough—we didn't talk about this project—to know that I appreciate your work and your endeavor. It's just I'm not fully behind this design. I have a couple of other questions for—I don't know if it's you or for Mr. Steele. Why all market rate units and why no BMR units onsite? Council Member Fine: It's rental. Mr. Steele: Good evening. The project—we submitted the application over 2 years ago. At that time, there wasn't an inclusionary requirement nor was there a fee on the residential. However, in attending your Comp Plan meetings and stuff, we heard quite a bit of discussion around your desire to have smaller units. One of the beginning premises is trying to design this in a way to achieve that. Along the way of our process of getting our application moved forward through the ARB and the Planning Commission, the City subsequently amended their inclusionary housing to require $20 a foot, I believe is the number on residential. We are prepared to pay that and have small units at the same time. We're not in a position today to propose that they be affordable beyond the smaller unit design and paying the fee. Council Member Holman: A quick question for Staff. Thank you so much. A quick question for Staff. Of the basically $1.7 million in impact fees, those are development impact fees and residential in-lieu. Do you know how much of that is residential in-lieu? Ms. Hodgkins: Yes, $750,640 would be residential in-lieu fees. Council Member Holman: That's an information point for us to have going forward because that creates basically about a unit and a half of BMR housing is all. Having to do with the—before I forget. I actually appreciate Council Member DuBois' comments and concerns about the pedestrian hybrid beacon at that location. The landscape, I don't see anywhere in the plans or in the conditions of approval that that landscape between the R-1 and the RM-30 portion of the project is to be maintained for the life of the project. I didn't see any condition that required that. Ms. Hodgkins: I don't believe I did add a condition. We can certainly add a condition related to that. I believe both projects under the performance criteria—it was either Context Based Design Criteria or the performance criteria are required to have a certain amount of landscaping in between low- DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 28 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 density residential uses, but we can still reiterate that in a condition of approval if you'd like. Council Member Holman: That would be good to include. The reason is because sometimes it gets put in. If there's not a condition to maintain it, it's hard to enforce. A question about the loading zone. I've just got a couple more questions here. Let me do this one first. The conditions say that we're reliant on plans that were submitted and stamped October 10, 2017. This is only October 23, so how do these plans deviate from what the ARB and the Planning Commission saw? That's only 13 days ago these plans were stamped. Ms. Hodgkins: There was one addition that was made to the plans. I had specifically asked the applicant to add that the existing utility access point be vacated properly through the City process. I had them add a note to the plans noting that they would need to vacate that in order to construct on that. Otherwise, Building won't approve them when they come to building permit. Council Member Holman: I had a question about the loading zone if I can find it again. Loading dock actually. It says on Packet Page 85 that loading dock drains to the storm drain system may be allowed if equipment with a fail-safe valve or equivalent device is kept closed during the non-rainy season and where chemicals and hazardous materials, grease, oil or waste products are handled or used within the loading dock area drain to the storm drain system shall not be allowed. I appreciate the language, but I just don't understand how this would be enforced or who's going to monitor this. I get concerned about what might actually be discharged into the storm drain. Ms. Hodgkins: Where are you reading from? I'm sorry. Council Member Holman: Packet Page 85, Number 83, Condition 83, loading dock drains. Mr. Lait: While Claire is looking at that, you're hitting on a challenge that I have with the way that we draft some of these Record of Land Use Actions. The conditions that we get from a lot of departments simply reflect a lot of existing Code language that is thrown at the—when we send the plans out for review, we get a whole list of conditions. A lot of this stuff is just inherent in the Code already and just reinforced in the Record of Land Use Action. This is citing a Code section. Whatever systems are in place today with the Public Works Department or—this is actually Title 16 which is also the Building Department. When those reviewing agencies are taking a look at the plans in the building plan check phase, they'll be looking for compliance with the drainage requirements in these areas, making sure that they're designed appropriately. This is not a unique condition. This is not unique to this DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 29 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 particular project, but for any project that has a loading dock. It's an existing provision that is reviewed by Staff in the course of plan check review. Council Member Holman: Why would we allow drainage into the storm drains from a loading dock location at all? Mr. Lait: I think what it's saying is that we're … Council Member Holman: Given the concerns and considerations that are addressed here. Mr. Lait: I think it's talking about if there is—that's a fair question, and we can look at that as far as a Code provision. I don't know what the standard is in Title 16, which is our Building Codes. There may be a State requirement that says, when you have drainage, these are the things you need to do to account for it in order to separate out those toxics from the storm drain issues. I just don't have the history of that particular provision. Council Member Holman: Those are my questions and comments. I would like to ask the maker and seconder if you would add a provision that the landscape separating the RM-30 lot from the single-family homes—the maker's out, not here. Mayor Scharff: (inaudible) they're okay with it and if the applicant's okay with it or not okay with it. Maybe Liz will come. Council Member Holman: Mr. Steele. Mayor Scharff: Why don't you finish the question? Council Member Holman: I would like that to be added. Mayor Scharff: Sorry. Could you repeat it? It was the landscaping between … Council Member Holman: That there be a condition added to the—we've done this before. A condition be added that the landscape buffer between the RM- 30 parcel and the R-1 homes on Olive be maintained for the life of the project. Vice Mayor Kniss: Relatively innocuous, Karen. I think we can do that one. Mayor Scharff: I was just going to ask the applicant first because we normally ask the applicant. Mr. Steele: Happy to accept it as (inaudible). DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 30 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 Mayor Scharff: We both accept that. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “add a Condition of Approval that the landscaping buffer between the RM-30 and the R-1 along Olive Avenue be maintained for the life of the project.” (New Part C) Council Member Holman: Thank you so much. This is more for Staff. I am concerned about this loading zone thing and the storm drains. Also appreciate Council Member DuBois' concerns about the—what's it called? The pedestrian hybrid beacon. I think the location is awkward. Just a comment. These things that keep coming forward as DEEs are really variances. They're not DEEs. If you look at the language, it describes what a DEE is. This is a variance, not a DEE. Agree also with whoever it was that said it; I'm not quite sure on this large of a project why there needs to be a variance. I'm really torn. I like the 50 units. I like that we're getting that much housing, but I'm really torn about the design. I'm still not sure whether I'm going to support the project or not. I don't think it's going to be particularly popular when it gets built because of how big it is with this repeat pattern of building structures, with all due respect. I'm torn. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Kou. Council Member Kou: I have a question about the—I read that there's a plume that may flow under this piece of land. Is that correct? Ms. Hodgkins: Yes. The California-Olive-Emerson plume is beneath this site, in this area. Council Member Kou: If they're in the process of digging and its encountered, how does it affect the other homes? What's going to be done, including the businesses that are nearby, if that plume has toxins or what not in it? Is it contaminated? Ms. Hodgkins: I believe there is a mitigation measure that's been included in the project. Some additional testing is going to be completed at the site as a mitigation measure. There is a soil management plan that is required as a mitigation measure to address how soils would be handled if they are found to be contaminated. Council Member Kou: If it is contaminated, will the residents, the other property owners surrounding it and at what radius will they be informed, notified of the—that such contaminants are found and the mitigation plan on that? DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 31 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 Ms. Hodgkins: Unfortunately, I don't have the person here who reviewed this project, that has expertise in hazardous management. What would be released as a result of this plume is volatile organic compounds, which is a contaminant that once airborne is essentially not impactful. Council Member Kou: In the normal course of business when you're doing this, and if such a thing is discovered, what is the procedure that you use in terms of notification? I think that's one of the things that I'm trying to get at so that we are sure to protect the neighbors nearby. What is the procedure? Mr. Lait: As I understand it, it's the Regional Water Quality Control Board that has jurisdiction over these types of contaminated soils. They have their own set of procedures and requirements for how it gets mitigated and any kind of notification that takes place. We don't have any local standard for notification. I would also say that for the excavation that's taking place onsite, there is a couple of areas of concern. One is, of course, if there is contaminated soil, where is that being transported to. That's an effective contamination. If there's a need to put in vapor barriers and things of that nature, that is overseen by the Regional Water Quality Control Board. That's a localized issue relative to the onsite development and wouldn't extend over to the adjacent properties. Council Member Kou: Help me understand localized when you say localized and not site. Mr. Lait: Through the course of excavation—actually there's not a lot of excavation at least at the residential portion, right? There's some level of excavation that's taking place. It's in this area that we would be concerned if there was contamination found about the VOCs releasing into the building and getting trapped in spaces in the building where people could breathe that in. That's the concern. That's localized to the building itself, not necessarily to the adjacent property. Once it's exposed to air, there's two things that I've come to understand. One is that it dissipates pretty quickly when exposed to air. Two, it's these trapped, enclosed spaces that are the areas of concern. If contamination is found, a building would be—the mitigation monitoring program includes provisions that would require some passive and/or active systems be installed to ensure that the gases are being properly released and not trapped inside the building. Council Member Kou: That's just one type of the contaminants. What's the other one? This is the TC whatever, TCE. Mr. Lait: Just give us one second to look at the document. DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 32 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 Ms. Hodgkins: VOCs would be the contaminant found as a result of the California-Olive-Emerson plume. Just to note actually, we did make it a condition of approval that they do have the vapor mitigation system. That was actually something that the applicant put forth as something they were planning to do in the first place, but we reiterated it as a condition of approval. That will be implemented as part of the project. Related to the other potential contaminants, let me just find the appropriate section. Hold on one second. A limited Phase II analysis was prepared. After conducting a peer review and looking at some additional sampling that was done onsite, we did identify some additional sampling that we would like to do. The reason we put it in as a mitigation measure was because the locations that they were seeking those samples from would have been really impactful to the ongoing operation of the Mike's Bikes. We did put those as mitigation measures for things that needed to be addressed prior to starting soil excavation. The soil matrix samples that we've asked to have them take would be the CAM17 total metals, which was related to old railroad tracks, and then soils matrix samples collected at different levels for TPH and total metals. I believe the TPH was related to an old dry-cleaning facility that was on the site at one point. As I mentioned, they would conduct that sampling, and they would create a plan for how it would be treated and cleaned up if it is found on the site prior to starting construction. Council Member Kou: The permit would still be issued, but then the building, the development, the building—help me understand. They'll have to test it, and then you give them—it's a condition of getting the permit. Ms. Hodgkins: Yeah. We've made it a condition prior to issuance of construction-related permits. Council Member Kou: That's reassuring. Thank you. Also, I did see that the TDM is a part of this—it's a condition also for approval of the permit. I would like to see that the TDM is something that is transparent and brought towards the public for them to see that there is a TDM. A lot of times when we have TDMs, it's very much kept away from the public. Really we have no idea if it's implemented, what types of mitigations are taking place. I mean the demand management, what is there. It would be nice for the public to be involved in this so they know that there is such—that the owners of the property are indeed ensuring that there are reduction in vehicles and what are the different types of ways that they're encouraging other people—all the residents and people to use—how they can lessen their traffic use. It also needs to have, like it says, annual reports, but I'd like to be able to scrutinize the effectiveness. Then, I want to find out how are they going to assure that there's no spillage into the neighborhoods especially, especially since there is going to be—I understand that they had actually conducted studies. They had DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 33 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 people sitting out there looking at people who are parking their cars there now on the parking lot and found out that many of them are actually going to Equinox. If they take away that parking and off-street parking on Acacia, then are those people going to be going over to the neighborhoods? I would really like to see real good parking management or to be fully parked so that Ventura doesn't have to end up having an RPP in place. That is the hope that I would really like to see that that doesn't happen there. Is that something that's possible? You have a TDM that's a little bit more with spunk. Mr. Lait: I'll say that I think we've heard from the Council that there's a need for our department to have more robust TDM programs in … Council Member Kou: Robust is the word. Mr. Lait: I like spunk as well. It's not enough just to establish that, but also then to follow up and do the monitoring. That's a message that we've heard. For some of our previous projects, we just didn't have as great TDM programs. The ones that we are doing today are thoroughly reviewed in our Transportation Department. They're flexible so that we can choose the appropriate standards that we need to use for a certain project. We do have a system that's set up now where we require this annual review. In this particular project, Condition Number 18 requires that a third-party professional prepare reports that are submitted to the Director 2 years after building occupancy. There's a little tickler file that we have now, that brings this to the forefront. That's information that is available to the public. If anybody wanted to see the TDM plan or the results after it's been done, they can just contact our department, and we can make that available. Council Member Kou: I didn't realize people can ask for the TDM too. Mr. Lait: If we have a TDM plan that's approved, that's a public document, and that's available. Council Member Kou: Thank you. May I ask the applicant a question? Mayor Scharff: Yes. Council Member Kou: Council Member Holman or DuBois had asked—I don't remember. Somebody had asked about the units. You mentioned you have smaller unit size. Out of the 50, would you be able to tell me now—would you be able to share now what are the studios or one-bedrooms or two-bedrooms? What configuration do you have them at? Council Member Fine: It's in the report. DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 34 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 Mr. Steele: In the CS building, there's a total of 30 units. We have 12 studios. We have 6 one-bedroom. The studios are approximately 543 square feet on average. The one-bedrooms are 718 square feet. The two-bedrooms, we have two different kinds, one with a loft. One is just a flat. They range between 1,014 and 1,104 square feet. Again, this is in the CS building. That's 11 units. We have one three-bedroom loft unit right on the corner of Acacia and El Camino. That one's about 1,495 square feet. That's more of a favor of it being on the corner. It's a one-off unit because of that. The RM-30 is a total of 20 units. There we have another 12 studios. The average of those units is 557 square feet. We have 4 one-bedroom units, average 750 square feet. We have 4 two-bedrooms units and average 980 square feet. Mr. Lait: Council Member, I'll just note if you have the plans with you, that's Sheet A0.1. Council Member Kou: Thank you. Mr. Steele: Is that it? Council Member Kou: One more question. Do you have idea of what the range is going to be for each of these units that you'll be renting them out at? Mr. Steele: No. We have a general sense it will be market, but it's going to be 2 years or more before we get a building permit and get it built and get it occupied. We could be at the bottom of the market again or we could be higher than we are today. I'd just say it'll be generally targeting a market rate unit. Council Member Kou: Thank you so much. I want to make sure that because there is the RM-30—thank you, sir. Mr. Steele: Is that it? Council Member Kou: Yes, thank you. The RM-30 and the CS is abutting the single-family homes. Are we for sure that it is 100—what is the distance that it has to be away from the single-family homes? Is it 150 square feet? Ms. Hodgkins: The building doesn't need to be 150 square feet. Over 150 square feet, you can go up to 50 feet in height. Within that zone, it has to be within 35 feet. There is a sheet in the plans that shows the area. It shows the circles of where that area is. I'll just find that for you (crosstalk) let you know. Council Member Kou: I want to thank Mr. Steele and Sobrato group for bringing this to us. At the same time, I just want to say that I do have some DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 35 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 concerns in terms of the loading and unloading. It's going to be a project that will be actually very good for Palo Alto. I do want to say that at the same time I've always said that when you build a building, it has to fit into the neighborhood and conform to the neighborhood, not so much the other way around where the neighbors have to take on the impacts and the burdens and so forth. I hope that when you're going forward with this you will think of that. Parking is always an issue for me. I still think we have so much unproven assumptions going around, and these developments moving forward do have to be fully parked. I appreciate greatly that you are talking about retail right now for parking and also looking into a future that, when the time comes and if there is a restaurant that's going to go in, you have thought about that. I appreciate that you brought it to the front and talked about it and not coming in later with modifications and not finding enough parking there. I do want to emphasize please do right by the City and by your neighbors in Ventura. There's going to be so many more buildings going in along El Camino Real, especially on the south end. The impacts are going to be much greater on that side of town. I just want to ensure that—I think the Sobrato group also has the Fry's site. That's going to be coming up, and that's going to be a very big development. This is the first one that we're going to see how you interact with the community. It's an important one moving forward. Again, I thank you. Did you have … Ms. Hodgkins: I was just going to note—just referencing back to that page, it's A2.4 if you want to (crosstalk). Council Member Kou: One more thing is are we still encroaching into the setback for the parking garage underground? Ms. Hodgkins: Yes. Council Member Kou: I have an issue with that also. I know that we had done one in a previous development. I think it was the Compadre's site. I remember—I don't know if it's you, Jonathan, or Hillary that said that's not a precedent-setting thing. I don't want to see that continually happening. This is really moving into a setback, especially for businesses. It's a large portion. I'm going to say are we going to start doing that for single-family homes as well, encroaching into setbacks or are we going to hold that to what our Code says. That's something that I don't like. I see one project, and now I see another project coming in with that. I really want to approve this. On that note, I have a problem with it. That might be a stickler for me. Mayor Scharff: I think we're done. Council Member DuBois. DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 36 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 Council Member DuBois: Thanks. Just real quickly, I did want to propose hopefully a friendly amendment, which is to strike on page 75 17a and 17b, which is the crosswalk. Vice Mayor Kniss: I think that's a problem. Mayor Scharff: I will second your motion as a—for discussion purposes because Vice Mayor Kniss won't accept it. AMENDMENT: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Mayor Scharff to add to the Motion, “remove Condition of Approval 17a and 17b.” Council Member DuBois: Just super quick because we want to get on to the Comp Plan. 17a is the crosswalk. I think I spoke to why I was concerned. El Camino in rush hour … Mayor Scharff: Do we have a picture of where this is? (crosstalk) Council Member DuBois: It's further to Page Mill. It's like 2 blocks to Page Mill. It's 1 short block to Portage. There's another light at CPI. There's another light at Matadero. Traffic backs up literally completely full in the block. I drive it, commute every day. The second one, "b," are these bulb- outs, which is going to really impact the flow of traffic. I understand it's for a potential future Class II bike lane on El Camino. We have Park Boulevard; we have Hansen. I'm just concerned. This is a major thoroughfare, and we're just making it harder and harder. Vice Mayor Kniss: I'd be glad to eliminate the—if that's what you're after. Mayor Scharff: That's the bulb-outs? Council Member DuBois: "A" and "b." Vice Mayor Kniss: That's fine. Mayor Scharff: We'll both accept the bulb-out reduction. Vice Mayor Kniss: Let's take a look at the crosswalk exactly. Council Member DuBois: Okay. Mr. Lait: Mayor? Mayor Scharff: Yes. DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 37 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 Mr. Lait: Don't mean to interject here. We need a minute to look at this issue. We want to explore and make sure that this isn't a required mitigation measure to address an impact. Ms. Hodgkins: One of the criteria that we look at is would the project increase demand for pedestrian and bicycle facilities that aren't met by current or planned services. In our environmental analysis, we looked at the increase in pedestrian traffic in this area and the distance between the crosswalk at Portage and the crosswalk at Page Mill from this existing site and how we could improve the pedestrian experience in that area. How we're looking at that is essentially to better connect the retail areas and the residential areas. That was one of the reasons we looked at this crosswalk. Essentially … Vice Mayor Kniss: While you're talking, can somebody throw up a graphic? Ms. Hodgkins: We don't have a graphic right now of the crosswalk. We're looking at the crosswalk near the corner of Olive and (crosstalk). Vice Mayor Kniss: I was there this afternoon, so I know where it is. I'm not sure everyone else will know where it is. Ms. Hodgkins: Of course, we can throw up hopefully a … Mayor Scharff: Did you look at Tom's issue, which was how will traffic be affected by doing this? Ms. Hodgkins: We did, yes. Sorry. Let me just clarify a couple of things. Just to note back, this is included as a mitigation measure to improve pedestrian experience in that area and accommodate for additional pedestrian traffic. Our feeling was that people would start crossing in this area regardless of whether there is a protected crosswalk or not, which would be a safety concern. Our question was we would rather have a protected crosswalk than people crossing the street because they didn't want to walk an extra quarter mile to cross the street and take advantage of these retail/commercial/office uses. Just to go back to your question, Mayor Scharff, about whether we analyzed this. The traffic impact analysis on Page 10 of the TIA does include an analysis of how this would impact traffic. The conclusion was that it would not impact traffic provided that it was properly timed with adjacent traffic lights, which we have included as a condition of approval of the project. Mayor Scharff: This is on El Camino. We don't run El Camino. There have been all these issues with us being able to deal with traffic lights, like on— what was it? When Embarcadero hits El Camino, that's the reason, I've been told, it takes so long to get the timing right. There are other issues. When you come off El Camino onto Churchill, people have complained to me about DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 38 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 that light. I've complained to the City. I keep getting told that it's the State because it's a state route. How are we going to time the signals if I keep hearing we can't? Mr. Lait: Some of the signals that you were citing—there are some more complexities in the timing of those. We have made some adjustments along Embarcadero with the effort to try to improve that. There are some complexities. Mayor Scharff: Why are there not complexities with this? This is different. I'll take your word for it. I just want to know this is different. Mr. Lait: What I think I'm hearing Claire say is that an effort will be made to minimize impacts. The objective here is to improve the pedestrian flow, to mitigate a potential impact of pedestrians, to make it easier to get across the street at this location. Mayor Scharff: Without impeding traffic (crosstalk). If you're just saying we want to do it for pedestrians ... Mr. Lait: That's right. Mayor Scharff: … I just want to know what the impact on traffic is. Council Member DuBois: I'm glad you got the map up here. If you look at Olive, the crosswalk there goes over to a large parking lot. If you look at Acacia—keep it large like that—it's like a small block to Portage, which takes you to the Fish Market and McDonald's, which seems a lot more likely. My question is just if we do this for every building on El Camino, what's going to happen. Vice Mayor Kniss: The real question that I looked at this afternoon is why is there one at Portage. It makes actually more sense to have it at Acacia. Council Member DuBois: At Portage, there's the Fish Market, there's Fry's, there's the Footlocker. There are more things. Vice Mayor Kniss: When I looked at it this afternoon, I thought the same thing. A quarter of a mile isn't very much if you walk a lot. If you're not used to walking, the chances are you're going to take your life in your hands and try to cross the street there because that looks like an obvious place to cross. For me, Tom, it still makes sense to leave it there, but you've got a live amendment going. Mayor Scharff: You got cutoff. Did you want to say anything more? DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 39 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 Council Member DuBois: I think I made my points. I just don't understand it. If the crosswalk goes right into the parking lot at the Palo Alto Square, it doesn't really go anywhere. Mayor Scharff: I know Adrian wants to speak. Council Member Fine: I'll go quickly. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I am going to oppose the amendment here to remove the crosswalk. I actually think it's important for the pedestrian experience. Overall on this project, I do share some of the concerns of Council Members Kou, Holman, and DuBois about the exemption for the 5-foot setback. That said, if this is a regular thing that we're doing along El Camino for housing sites, perhaps we should look at our underground parking rules. That's it for now. Mayor Scharff: Before we vote, I've just got to get a little bit of clarification from Staff on this. You raised the issue that it was a mitigation. I need to understand what that means from a legal perspective or what that means—or if it's just something we—I can't think of a neutral word—that we ask the applicant to do. Is there a legal issue or are we good or is this just a preference? Ms. Hodgkins: If you could give us one second. Mayor Scharff: Sure. Council Member DuBois: Can you guys clarify if you … Council Member Holman: In the meantime … Council Member DuBois: … accepted the bulb-out removal? Mayor Scharff: She did accept the bulb-outs. Vice Mayor Kniss: (inaudible) Mayor Scharff: Right. Tom made the motion. Ms. Hodgkins: I do want to note something quickly if I could about the bulb- outs and the reason that they were added. One of the reasons why they were added was to improve the pedestrian's ability to visually see everything coming around that corner. We've been pushing for those—our Transportation Division has been pushing for those. Caltrans is pushing for those. All part of the Green Boulevard initiative. That was one of the reasons that we added those bulb-outs. If we do the crosswalk, it reduces the travel time across the street and, therefore, reduces the time period that the hybrid beacon would need to be on for pedestrian crossing. DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 40 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 Mayor Scharff: You're saying the bulb-out helps traffic as opposed to opposes it? Ms. Hodgkins: It technically would, yes. I would also note that it has been designed to not only not impact any of the lanes but to still accommodate a future Class II bike lane should it ever be proposed in that area. Vice Mayor Kniss: May I? Mayor Scharff: Yeah. Vice Mayor Kniss: Tom, it's sounding as though those two go together. I'm also going to guess that the crosswalk—will you have lights at the cross—will you have an indicator at the crosswalk of the lights at street level that someone is going to cross or not or is it a silent crosswalk? Do you know what I mean? I don't mean a traffic light. Ms. Hodgkins: I do understand what you mean. I don't know that the details have actually been refined enough to determine that. You're asking for a sound noise, is that what … Vice Mayor Kniss: No, no. Ms. Hodgkins: … you're asking or for lights on the ground? Vice Mayor Kniss: Lights at the ground. Ms. Hodgkins: I'm not sure if it would be lights on the ground or a light coming out. I'd have to verify. I think our traffic consultant does know. Vice Mayor Kniss: A light coming out, what do you mean? Ms. Hodgkins: It could be a hybrid beacon. Sometimes it's like a beacon that comes out, like a light pole that would come out and have a flashing light. I'd have to verify. Vice Mayor Kniss: We'll reconfirm it is not a traffic light? This is a crosswalk. Ms. Hodgkins: It is not a traffic light. It is not a traffic light, correct. Vice Mayor Kniss: I think the most effective ones are those that have what look like an LED flashing when you want to cross, which notifies everybody that somebody is about to cross the street. Ms. Hodgkins: Correct. Hold on one second. DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 41 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 Vice Mayor Kniss: Tom, I'm going to continue to support "a" and "b" with her explanation of the bulb-outs. Ms. Hodgkins: I'm going to have Colin respond to the type of beacon it would be first, and then we can discuss the other question. Mr. Burgett: A pedestrian hybrid signal is a signal that is only triggered if a pedestrian pushes the button. If a car is approaching from the side street, there's no signal, nothing changes. The design of the signal is somewhat unique in that there are some State laws that say when a signal is dark, you treat it as a stop sign. The hybrid signal is designed in a special way to prevent people from getting confused about that. It has a couple of extra signal balls. Essentially it's a signal that during most of, say, a peak hour, the signal is simply turned off. Whenever a pedestrian pushes the button, the signal turns on for that period of time that a pedestrian is crossing. Ms. Hodgkins: We're trying to understand is it crossing across—would it be lighting up on the street or where does it typically light up? Mr. Burgett: It typically does not light up the pavement. You can add that as an extra treatment. Essentially when the light turns red for traffic on El Camino, it'd be the same as any other intersection. Whether or not flashing lights on the pavement were added would be a separate discussion. Typically they would not include those flashing lights. Essentially it would turn on for about 37-42 seconds or so to allow that pedestrian to cross, and then it would turn itself back off. Again, it would only occur when somebody actually is going to cross. Vice Mayor Kniss: My recollection is that … First of all, I don't think I've ever seen that. My recollection is that those that I would imagine are on the street are pretty effective. Clearly, you've already done this design. I'm going to presume you've tried it somewhere else, and it's successful. Mr. Burgett: One reason that the hybrid design was selected is that Caltrans has recently been designing hybrid signal crossings up and down El Camino Real from Menlo Park to Santa Clara. Most of them haven't been installed yet, but I've been told they've been designing five hybrid locations in Palo Alto not including this one. They are a reaction to deaths that have occurred in several cities along the corridor. They are a relatively recent installation. In the past, they were typically installed—they're very limited. You would see them maybe near a school, maybe at a T intersection or mid-block. It's been very recent that Caltrans has been thinking about installing them at multiple locations. Vice Mayor Kniss: I'm going to have to trust you on this one. I can't quite visualize it. I would suggest for other times, if you come before us again at DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 42 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 some point, you have a graphic example of exactly how this works. Having the crosswalk there is very important. I'm going to guess that the light goes on; it stops the cars for a short period of time, and that walker needs to get across the street in that 40 seconds. Mr. Burgett: Yep. It's important to remember there is a crosswalk there today. Legally, that's a crosswalk, and people can cross. Legally, when a pedestrian is making that crossing, cars are legally required to stop even though they generally aren't necessarily going to. This simply takes that legal crosswalk and adds a safety element based on the assumption that this project is going to attract additional pedestrian trips, both residents traveling to transit, potential customers from across the street, the employment center. There was a mention of a parking lot across the street, but that's a parking lot for an employment center. This retail center is presumably going to include potentially a lunch option, for example. Good to attract some customers. There was discussion of a TDM. Up and down El Camino, it's not uncommon for people to drive across the street because there aren't good crossing options. Vice Mayor Kniss: I would characterize this as a major safety feature for this development. It sounds like it may be well over a hundred people who are in this area or more. Mr. Burgett: I think the number in an hour might be more in the neighborhood of 20 crossing. Vice Mayor Kniss: No, no, no. I'm talking about how many will live in the new development. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Seeing no further lights, if we could vote on the board on the amendment. That fails on a 6-3 vote with Council Members DuBois, Kou, and Holman voting yes. AMENDMENT FAILED: 3-6 DuBois, Holman, Kou yes MOTION AS AMENDED RESTATED: Vice Mayor Kniss moved, seconded by Mayor Scharff to: A. Adopt a Mitigated Negative Declaration and Mitigation Monitoring and Reporting Plan prepared pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA); and B. Adopt a Record of Land Use Action approving a Site and Design application, including a Director’s Parking Adjustment and Design Enhancement Exception, as well as a Preliminary Parcel Map for the DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 43 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 merger of three parcels based on findings and subject to conditions of approval included in the Staff Report, Attachment B; and C. Add a Condition of Approval that the landscaping buffer between the RM-30 and the R-1 along Olive Avenue be maintained for the life of the project. Mayor Scharff: Now, if we can return to the main motion. If we could vote on the main motion. That passes on an 8-1 vote with Council Member Holman abstaining. Is that correct? Council Member Holman: Yes. I never ever abstain, but I am so on the fence and torn about this project because of the balance of good and then almost my concerns. I never abstain, but that's—I'm really conflicted on this project. Mayor Scharff: No worries. I just wanted to make sure I had it right. MOTION AS AMENDED PASSED: 8-0-1 Holman abstain 6. Discussion and Consideration of the Planning & Transportation Commission's Recommendations Regarding the Comprehensive Plan Update and Adoption of Resolutions Certifying the Final Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the Comprehensive Plan Update; Adopting Findings Pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), and Adopting the Updated Comprehensive Plan Dated June 30, 2017 With Desired Corrections and Amendments, Which Comprehensively Updates and Supersedes the City's 1998-2010 Comprehensive Plan (Two Public Hearings Will be Held: October 23, 2017 and November 13, 2017. On October 23, 2017, the City Council may Consider Action on the Planning & Transportation Commission’s Recommendations, Providing Direction to Staff, and Certification of the Final EIR. Other Actions Will be Deferred Until the Hearing on November 13, 2017. Mayor Scharff: Now, we'll move on to the Comp Plan, which I know you've all been waiting for. I apologize we took so late, frankly. The first thing we do is have a Staff presentation. Hillary Gitelman, Planning and Community Environment Director: Mayor Scharff, Council Members, good evening. I'm Hillary Gitelman, the Planning Director. I'm joined by Elaine Costello and Joanna Jansen, my colleagues on this project. Elena Lee is also with us here in the audience. This is the first of two hearings that we've scheduled on the Comprehensive Plan Update. We're hoping to tackle this evening the first two items in the recommendations section of your Staff Report on Packet Page 118. This is a major milestone for this project and for the City. I wanted to start by thanking all of you for DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 44 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 your contributions to this planning effort. This presentation is maybe going to take a few minutes longer than we usually take in introducing an item like this, but I hope you'll bear with us. We're going to cover some background, highlight key contents of the Plan, talk about the PTC and their review of the draft Comprehensive Plan Update, talk about the EIR a little bit, and some next steps. We'll try in the course of our presentation to respond to some of the email comments that the Council received, and we can get into greater depth later on in response to your specific questions. First, let's remember— of course, we always like to remember—that we live and work in a beautiful place. We have a distribution of land uses in Palo Alto that would be the envy of any community. Over 80 percent of Palo Alto is made up of open space and residential, what we call R-1, neighborhoods. This will not change in the future. I know that the Council, the CAC, and now the PTC has tried to maintain that framework and develop what we believe is a responsible blueprint for the year 2030. You haven't done this work alone. The process began in 2008 and was reset by this Council in 2014. There's been extensive community engagement along the way. By that I mean public workshops, public hearings. We had the Summit. We used a digital commenter to gather input online. Everyone who has participated has contributed in some way or another through literally over a hundred meetings creating what we think of as a collective vision for Palo Alto in the year 2030. I think we all recognize that not all of us are going to get everything we want in this Plan, but the sum total of all our contributions create a collective vision and a Plan that, I think, will serve us all well for the next 15 years or so. Tonight, we thought we would ask the Council to open the public hearing, hear public comment, then we're hoping you will thank the PTC for their report, which is included in your packet, and consider their recommendations. Finally, we're asking the Council to consider certification of the Final EIR. All of those actions set the stage for the meeting on November 13th, where the Council will consider adoption of the Comprehensive Plan Update. Just to quickly review what's in your packet. You'll find that Attachment A includes the Planning and Transportation Commission's report to this Council. Elaine's going to describe that to you in a little more detail. Then, Attachment B contains the resolution that would certify the Comprehensive Plan Update EIR. Again, those are the two actions we're hoping you'll take this evening, the consideration of Attachment A and an action to accept those elements that you agree with, and then taking action on Attachment B. The remainder will really be for your discussion and deliberations on November 13th. What's in this Plan? We can't possibly summarize it all, but we have some images representing areas where we think there's important new content in this version of the Plan. First and foremost, we wanted to mention stimulation of housing. Thanks to the Council, the CAC, and the PTC, you've all articulated strong policies and programs to stimulate housing and build on the policy framework in the adopted Housing Element. I draw your attention to Goal L.2, called Sustainable Community, in the Land DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 45 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 Use Element. It contains a whole flock of policies and programs aimed at this outcome. At the same time, the Plan as it's currently drafted has a strong focus on the jobs/housing balance and making improvements to that in Palo Alto by limiting office and R&D development. We have a Plan that proposes to update the current cap on nonresidential development. The updates will make this cap, which currently applies to a subset of the City, apply Citywide with the only exception being the hospital area. Now, instead of focusing on all nonresidential development including retail and things we want, we're focusing on office/R&D. The result of that means if someone's converting from retail to office, for the first time that counts against the cap. We can explain that more if you like. It's important to note, though, that many of the conditions and impacts we're planning for in 2030 result from uses that are already here in Palo Alto. This is a very telling chart; it shows the amount of office/R&D in the City and then the relative amount of change that's proposed. The Plan and the preferred scenario in the Final EIR would result in less growth than if we do nothing. That was the—scenario number 1 in the EIR was what if we never update this Plan and we just bump along the way we're going. We'd end up with more office/R&D development than if we adopt the proposed Plan. Here's a good comparison of the current development cap in the current Comprehensive Plan and the one that's proposed in this Update. The current Plan has a 3.2 million-square-foot cap that applies to all nonresidential uses. The update proposes a 1.7 million cap. As I said, it's focused on office/R&D, so conversions from another use to office/R&D would count for the first time. We've heard from some commenters who were talking about 3 million square feet of development under this Plan. I want to make it super clear the Plan includes the 1.7 million square-foot cap. The folks who are talking about 3 million are also talking about the 1.3 million square feet that's already been approved at the hospital. It's approved and under construction. Elaine's going to take it from here. Elaine Costello, Management Partners: One of the other really key things in the Plan is the preservation of retail. As Director Gitelman just explained, this is a big change from the existing Comp Plan in that, instead of counting retail as nonresidential and putting it as part of the cap, there's really more of a focus on preserving retail and encouraging retail and laying out what some of the characteristics of the different retail areas of the City should be. This is in both the Land Use and the Business and Economics Element. Business and Economics Element talks about the kinds of contributions that different types of businesses make and puts a special effort at encouraging small businesses. Another major topic in the new Comp Plan is reducing the reliance on cars. This is in many elements, particularly the Transportation Element. It formalizes the TDM requirements. They're actually now formalized in the Plan, and it establishes specific, quantifiable goals for trip reduction for new development and closely related to mitigation measures in the EIR. Also DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 46 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 parking is covered in the Plan in a way that recognizes that over time there may be less need for parking with changes like autonomous vehicles, etc. Right now, that has not happened, so we call it poised for change. Right now, the Plan says that parking should be managed according to the existing requirements, to make sure that there is no reliance on on-street parking, and to protect residential areas from encroachment from business parking from new development. Another high priority in here is prioritizing grade separation, and that's listed in the Transportation Element. Another major change from the existing Comp Plan in the Natural Resources Element was a focus on connected ecosystems, instead of seeing the open space and the landscaped areas in the City as separate items. The CAC really worked on this, and they wanted to bring forward the idea that these ecosystems are connected and should be viewed in that way, which is consistent with the draft Parks, Trails, Open Space, and Recreation Facilities Master Plan. One of the things that I know we've talked about before that's true is that in developing the Comp Plan there was a really careful effort to make sure that we were consistent and provided the policy support with other plans that have been developed on these specific issues, which gets us to climate change, which is an entirely new issue since the 1998 Comp Plan. In this case, we were very careful to work in parallel with the City's Sustainability and Climate Action Plan. Issues around climate change are in almost every element, from the Land Use Element to ensure that new development addresses potential risks from climate change and sea level rise to the Transportation Element's efforts to reduce greenhouse gases to a number of elements in the Safety Element about ensuring that infrastructure is protected and monitoring the risk of flooding. Another thing that the CAC really worked carefully on—again, this happened through all the elements. We worked with Staff who were experts. In this case, it was with City Staff from the Office of Emergency Services, the Police Department, the Fire Department, and Public Works Department to really address safety issues including emergency preparedness and awareness. That was a real focus. We had a number of CAC members who had extensive involvement with emergency preparedness that they brought to the Plan. Another area is enhancing parks and open space. That's pretty consistent with what already exists and was continued. A focus on youth and serving youth and seniors is in the Plan. Another new topic in the Plan is supporting public health. Again, this goes through the entire Plan. There are issues like protecting the urban forest, which is viewed as having health benefits. Many issues, many topics were looked at from encouraging walking. There was much more of an awareness in this Plan of making Palo Alto a healthy community both physically and mentally. There was also a focus on fiscal sustainability that is incorporated into this Plan, and management of City revenues. Next, in the Business and Economics Element, a real support—this comes up in other elements too and came up with the Planning Commission. Supporting local serving businesses, nonprofits, and services, really looking DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 47 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 at these kinds of issues and what kind of incentives—encouraging creative incentives to innovatively find ways for these services to stay and grow in Palo Alto. Finally, there's much more. There's more historic preservation in this element that there was in the previous element. There's much more attention to construction dewatering. E-bikes are included, which was not in there. Much more encouragement of high density near transit. School impacts are now in the Housing Element and covered in the Land Use Element. I'm sorry. Those are the kinds of issues. The PTC—the last time the Council saw this topic was in June when you referred the Plan to the PTC and asked them to complete their review within 90 days, which they did. They held six meetings. They focused because they had limited time and they really wanted to delve into things. They focused on land use and transportation. They really went through and heard from the public and heard from each other, developed a whole bunch of comments. We would take their comments after each meeting and consolidate them and identify some areas of consensus. You have those areas of consensus on Table 2. They're called general consensus comments. Not everybody agreed with everything, but generally they were okay with them and considered them noncontroversial. Most of those are in the area of transportation. As they got to the end of the fourth meeting, the Commission said they really wanted to bring a report to you that was useful and they hoped influential. They said, "Let's take a look at all of those comments, and let's identify the most important topics for us to sit down and discuss and debate." They identified about 20 topics, and then they sat down and worked through them. They came up with—I'm sorry. There's a little bit of confusion. In one place it says there's 14, and in another—there's only 11. What happened is there was a typo, and three of them were repeated on one table. Eleven is all you have to work with. Typos happen in life. They worked through those, and they came up with these 11 high-priority, recommended changes, a couple of which there was a unanimous recommendation on. Those were in the areas of more emphasis on BMR housing. Housing was a big area they agreed would be important mostly to put more emphasis or to strengthen. The other one where there was complete—everyone agreed, all seven Planning Commissioners, was an emphasis on walkable neighborhoods and space for personal and professional services and nonprofits. The idea that there would be a walkable place where you could go to a doctor's office or a medical office or a music school and have the reinforcement of the walkable relationship between neighborhoods and commercial areas. They were unanimous in their agreement that that was important. We have actually taken a preliminary look at what it would take to—not that they recommended this, but just to give you a sense of what it would take to make these kinds of revisions. If they are the desire of the Council, they could be done for the November 13th meeting. We think there are ways to incorporate the Planning Commission's changes without great difficulty. It's up to you whether you'd want to, but we wanted to give you that sense that it's not a huge overhaul. DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 48 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 In the report to the Council, they recommended again—sorry about the confusion between 11 and 14, but it's only 11, which makes it less work. They recommended those; they transmitted the general consensus comments; they recommended certification of the Final EIR. They deferred their review of the implementation plan table because that's supposed to come back to them every year. They felt like that would be better as part of the budget process. They did welcome the Council sending their approved high-priority changes back to the PTC for their incorporation into the CPU, if that would be what you would like. That's the end of the overview of the Plan and the Planning Commission. Now, Joanna Jansen will present the EIR. Joanna Jansen, PlaceWorks: Thank you, Elaine. As Elaine said, I'm Joanna Jansen. I am with PlaceWorks, the consultant that's been supporting the City on the Comp Plan and EIR effort. I want to talk a little bit about the extremely thorough environmental review process that's been a part of the creation and development of this Comp Plan. Every planning process in California has to include this component. It's a requirement under State law to prepare an EIR to look at potential impacts of a proposed project and then consider mitigation measures that could avoid or lessen those impacts. In this case, the City has prepared what we call a program-level EIR. This is different from what you see for a project, when you know the specific plans and exactly where it's going to be located and all the features that it's going to have. The program level looks at more of a high-level analysis of the potential impacts and also considers alternatives to the potential Plan. In this case in Palo Alto—I hope in many cases—it's not just a legal requirement, but it's also actually helpful to the process and to making a strong and more effective Plan. Let's just look quickly at some of the key milestones in the EIR process to date. Tonight is going to be your tenth meeting on the EIR, so we've been working on this for a while. It's been concurrent with the Comp Plan process. We didn't wait until we had a Comp Plan to analyze to get into the nitty gritty of the analysis. What Palo Alto did is an innovative approach of looking at six different scenarios at an equal level of detail to consider a range of possibilities for how the future might look here and how the Comp Plan might affect that future. That goes above and beyond what's required under CEQA and resulted in a lot of detail and data about the range of possible alternatives, including Scenario 1 which is business as usual or, in CEQA terms, a no project alternative that, as Hillary said, considers what would happen if we didn't adopt this Comp Plan at all. We did look at that as one of the scenarios. The City started out with four scenarios. The Council then added two additional scenarios to even expand the range further. You really have a broad set of bookends here on your process that created a range of potential futures for analysis. This spring, based on that analysis in the Draft EIR from February 2016 and the supplement to the EIR in February 2017, Council gave us direction on a preferred scenario that falls in the middle of the range of what we looked at DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 49 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 for both housing and for jobs and would actually result in a slight improvement in the City's existing jobs/housing balance. Most recently, the Final EIR was released in August and, on September 27th, the PTC recommended certification of the EIR. That's something you'll be considering tonight. Since the Final EIR is the most recent document, I just want to give you a brief overview of that. The Final EIR is the last step of the process. The main new content in the Final EIR is that we actually have to respond individually to every single comment that we received on either the Draft EIR or the supplement to the EIR. That's the bulk of the content in the Final EIR. The Final EIR also summarizes the preferred scenario and presents quantitative and qualitative explanations of how it compares to the six scenarios that were analyzed. Chapter 5, which is the place where we respond to all the comments, includes some master responses. We spent a lot of time crafting master responses to deal with a number of different comments that we received on some very crucial topics including cumulative impacts and potential impacts to public schools here in Palo Alto. I just want to make a point here about the interrelationship between the EIR and the Comp Plan. Because of doing these two things in parallel, that means that the EIR doesn't just analyze and disclose the potential impacts of the Comp Plan, but it also can feed back into the policies and programs of the Comp Plan itself. What this resulted in is very effective, targeted policies and programs that flow directly from the potential impacts and the mitigation measures that we identified in the EIR for things like traffic congestion, TDM requirements, basement construction, sea level rise. All of those are cases where we developed EIR mitigation measures that now have been folded into the policies and programs of the Comp Plan so they will exist going forward. Despite the intensive work of Staff and the CAC and everybody to identify the most robust mitigation measures possible, which is required under CEQA, there are some cases where we identified for all six scenarios and for the preferred scenario some significant and unavoidable impacts. There are four significant and unavoidable impacts. That's a term of art under CEQA, and it means that, even though there might be some mitigations to lessen these impacts, they can't be mitigated below the threshold of significance. All four of these are interrelated impacts to traffic and then to air quality emissions. All four of these significant and unavoidable impacts occur because Palo Alto is in the midst of a growing and changing region. These impacts would occur again under all of the scenarios. They include not just Palo Alto's development but cumulative regional development. They would occur even if Palo Alto does not adopt the Comp Plan that you're considering tonight and at your meeting in November. Ms. Gitelman: Just quickly to finish up here. As I mentioned, this is the first of two hearings. We'll be back with the Council on November 13th hopefully for Plan adoption. We are suggesting to the Council, as we suggested to the DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 50 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 Planning Commission, that you defer your review of the priorities outlined in the implementation chapter. Those are really reflecting right now the CAC's priorities. That's a chapter that can be looked at on an annual basis. I think the PTC has said they want to look at it annually in advance of the City's budget process. You can do that as well, whenever you care to look at those priorities. Of course, the measures themselves, the actual entries in that table, are from all the other elements of the Plan. You've looked at some of them in quite a bit of depth. In the meantime, we're hoping—I'm sorry. After November 13th or on November 13th, we're hoping that the Council will also direct Staff to get started on a handful of key implementing actions. We can talk about this more on the 13th. They are just briefly a new traffic impact fee; some kind of implementing ordinance related to the housing issues that the Council has embraced in the Plan; the North Ventura Coordinated Area Plan that we've talked about in the past, that's the Fry's area; and initiating discussions with Stanford about the housing sites that the Council actually helped us add to the Plan, this idea of housing in the Research Park and elsewhere on Stanford lands. Tonight, again, we're asking you to open the public hearing starting with the Chair of the PTC, who'd like to summarize the work of that body. Then, if you would consider the PTC's recommendation in Attachment A and give us direction on any of those items you wish to incorporate and also if you would consider the resolution certifying the Final EIR. We'll defer the other actions to November 13th. Of course, all of us are here to answer your specific questions going forward. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you for that. It was a great presentation. I will do as I'm told, and I will open the public hearing. I will ask the Chair of the PTC to come forward and give us their thoughts. Please keep it under an hour. Public Hearing opened at 9:37 P.M. Mike Alcheck, Planning and Transportation Commission Chair: Thank you for having me here tonight. First, I want to acknowledge the PTC's tremendous sense of gratitude to those Staff members who worked so hard to facilitate our review of this Comprehensive Plan during the 90 days. In particular, I want to acknowledge Elaine Costello and her team. They were nothing short of extraordinary in their effort to accommodate our tangents and our inquiries and aid us in reaching the finish line. When we set out to being this review, there were some members of our Commission who were concerned that the summer wouldn't be long enough for us to complete the review. With the help of these Staff members, I think we managed to convince them that it was worth the try. I'm really happy to be here tonight to represent the Commission and our recommendation that the Plan be adopted. The Commission's review resulted in a collection of general consensus comments, areas where it was relatively easy for us to agree on certain recommended DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 51 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 adjustments, as well as a table of more specific suggestions that came out through a process by which the Commission attempted to build consensus through debate. This process by its very nature was a difficult one because the perspectives on the Commission are diverse. Many proposals that were made during the debate sessions failed by one vote and won't be in your list. That said, what did succeed to obtain a majority is represented in Table 3 on page 9 of the packet. I'd be happy to discuss any of those ideas later on tonight when you get to them, should you feel extra color commentary is necessary. There is one suggestion I would like to highlight for you. This is the suggestion that the Commission, despite its wide range of perspectives, unanimously felt was worthy of Council consideration. This is the suggestion that the Land Use Element's support for BMR housing should be strengthened. Every member of the Commission supported a motion recommending that the Council incorporate a stronger commitment to creating BMR housing inventory and opportunities for BMR development in the Land Use Element and to do so by specifically including a policy that would be consistent with and in support of the quantified goals for housing production in the already adopted Housing Element. Arguably, there is support for the development of BMR housing in the Comp Plan, but this recommendation from the PTC stems from the Commission's shared view that this support be prioritized at or near the very top. I'll leave it at that. I know there's a lot of people that would like to speak tonight. I will be here when you get—and I'll be at your next meeting as well. If there's specific questions about the work we did, I'd be happy to answer them. Mayor Scharff: Thank you very much. As I said, we've opened the public hearing. We have a number of public speakers. You'll each have 2 minutes. The first speaker will be Hamilton Hitchings, who is speaking for five people. I appreciate that he's asked for 6 minutes. That was good. You'll have your 6 minutes. Hamilton Hitchings speaking for Zika Zukowsky, Karen Machado, Mary Sylvester, Margaret Heath, Jim Purdy: Thank you very much, Mayor. I'd also like to thank the five people who supported me with their time, Jim Purdy, Margaret Heath, Mary Sylvester, Karen Machado, and Zika Zukowsky. I'd also like to thank the Staff. They have put in a tremendous amount of effort that many of you may not have seen, but it feels like thousands of hours into this. I want to thank them. Currently, Palo Alto is a great place to live with its family neighborhoods and its wonderful schools. It also a great place to work with leading technology companies like Tesla. I hope in 15 years it will also be a great place to live and work. Unfortunately, Palo Alto faces a number of major challenges due to its popularity. The National Citizens Survey is conducted every year for the Palo Alto City government to provide a statistically sound measure and solid data on how residents feel about Palo DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 52 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 Alto. These areas have recently been declining sharply in key areas of livability. In 2012, residents rated the quality of life as good or excellent for 94 percent of respondents. By 2016, it had dropped to 85 percent. As a place to raise children, it fell from 92 percent in 2012 to 84 percent in 2016. As a place to work, it fell from 88 percent in 2012 to 82 percent in 2016. Why? According to the survey, the following areas highlight the major concerns. Availability of quality affordable housing was rated as good or excellent by only 6 percent of the residents who responded. Ease of travel by public transportation only 28 percent. Traffic flow on major streets only 30 percent. Ease of parking only 33 percent. Thus, affordable housing, traffic, and parking are major areas of dissatisfaction for Palo Alto residents and should be effectively addressed in the Comprehensive Plan Update. This has been caused by the office boom. Recently around 20 office buildings have been built relative to only a couple of small multi-apartment buildings in Downtown because office is more profitable to build than housing. The recent office boom can also be quantified with data. According to the City of Palo Alto's 2014 existing conditions report, the average nonresidential square footage growth from 2008 to 2014 is approximately triple the annual rate of the previous 19 years. In terms of housing affordability, while many argue that building smaller market rate housing units will improve affordability, the evidence on the ground locally doesn't bear that out. For example, the new apartments in San Antonio Shopping Center called Carmel The Village—the new ones that are under 640 square feet rent for $3,000-$5,000 per month. In Palo Alto, these small units will still be luxury and unaffordable to middle-class folks without the inclusion of a practical number of BMR units as recommended by the PTC. The Comprehensive Plan Update also allows for 3 million square feet of office to be built over the next 15 years—as was pointed out, some of it's already being built—crowding out housing. Thus, we need to rezone some of that office for housing. In addition to frustrating residents, growing traffic problems hurt all Palo Alto businesses. Traffic congestion and poor level of service at intersections results in not only longer commute times but shorter employee attention and increased difficulty attracting and retaining top talent. For retail, they also hurt the ability to attract customers. That is why it is critical to achieve the TDM targets and not increase peak hour motor vehicle trips as we continue to grow. Caltrain trenching will absorb the majority of our transportation dollars for the next 15 years, so we need to be careful to limit our overall building to what our transportation infrastructure can realistically support. In terms of parking, as long as we're using residential neighborhoods to park office employees, unlike almost all other cities in the Bay Area, we should require new buildings to be fully parked for the parking demand they generate and their loading zone usage. In conclusion, our growth challenges can be effectively addressed by rezoning from office to housing with an emphasis on affordability and including BMR units; limiting our growth so our peak hour motor vehicle trips do not increase; reducing our DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 53 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 reliance on parking office workers in residential neighborhoods; and putting more effective mitigations into the EIR and making sure that we grow at a moderate rate so we don't outpace our transportation infrastructure. If we do all this, I believe Palo Alto can still be an amazing place to raise families and for high tech workers to innovative at groundbreaking companies. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Annette Glanckopf to be followed by Herb Borock. Annette Glanckopf: Good evening, and thank you for the opportunity of working on the Comp Plan. I agree with what Hamilton said and what Arthur is also going to say. More about BMR housing. Rather than allowing more multiunit developments that legislate only small units that high tech workers can afford, that will not be appropriate for teachers, public service workers to live in and build families, we need to focus on the Ventura plan immediately. Start immediately with at least two BMR affordable housing units. Two. The EIR mitigations in the Staff Report read very well. They should be overarching, but they are generalities that are unachievable and unenforceable if you look at the aesthetics section, land use, noise; or they're hugely expensive, the transportation section. If you look at the monitoring plan, you see repetitively all the time the many cases the mitigation is to review future Comp Plan policies. I think that's inadequate. Neighborhoods. I think the land use portion of the EIR doesn't go far enough to maintain the quality of life to protect neighborhoods. We do need healthy, safe neighborhoods with walkable neighborhood centers and a healthy mix of services and uses. We need a good business, economic, and retail plan. Page 10 of the Staff Report and Page 2 of the PTC report, there are a lot of permitted uses that are listed. These do not belong in the EIR nor do they belong in the Comp Plan. They belong in the Municipal Code. Auto repair, medical offices, nonprofits do not belong in the Midtown, Charleston Plaza, and Edgewood neighborhood centers. Our neighborhood centers are threatened by offices. You heard the example from Midtown last week, where the Asian Box actually has their corporate headquarters in ground-floor retail. Second-floor office packs people in nose-to-nose and probably more than the Fire Code allows. One symptom is retail customers cannot find parking. In conclusion, we do not want our neighborhood retail to be squeezed out by office and software companies. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Herb Borock to be followed by Annette Ross. Herb Borock: I don't believe that you can certify the Environmental Impact Report as being complete and adequate. Two days after the Planning and Transportation Commission made their recommendation on the EIR, the Governor signed 15 housing-related bills. The EIR needs to evaluate the impact of those bills against the policies and programs in the EIR. Prior to DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 54 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 them becoming law, it was not possible to evaluate them because we didn't know which bills would be enacted. As I understand it, currently Staff is planning a report by December 4. To be included as part of the EIR, it will first have to be reviewed by the Planning and Transportation Commission and make any modifications necessary in the environmental review. A second reason why the Plan is not completely adequate is that it's segmented. The impact of grade separations on the various policies and programs and how that would relate to the amount of employment we can have and how much traffic will be generated depends upon where grade separations are and how many there are. It can't be separated from the EIR for this 15-year period. I don't have a copy of the three Council Members' memo about affordable housing, but I have read the newspaper reports. It doesn't make sense. For one thing, it says it should have retail on the first floor. After our experiences with Edgewood Plaza and Alma Plaza and College Terrace Center, trying to use that retail as a way to get something else doesn't work. I would suggest it be limited to 100 percent affordable housing similar to the current PC zone where you have a choice between the PC zone and the State Housing Density Bonus Law. Otherwise, you take the Council Members' suggestion and the three concessions would be offices that generate more employment, which would negate the housing. Thank you. Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you. Annette Ross followed by Liang Chao and, after that, Bill Ross. Annette Ross: Good evening. Public Affairs Books wrote this compelling summary of a book titled How to Kill a City. The term gentrification has become a buzz word to describe the changes in urban neighborhoods across the country, but we don't realize just how threatening it is. It means more than the arrival of trendy shops, much maligned hipsters, and expensive lattes. The very future of American cities as vibrant, equitable spaces hangs in the balance. How to Kill a City takes readers from the kitchen tables of hurting families who can no longer afford their homes to the corporate boardrooms and political backrooms where destructive housing policies are devised. Along the way, Moskowitz uncovers the massive systemic forces behind gentrification in New Orleans, Detroit, San Francisco, and New York. The deceptively simple question of who can and cannot afford to pay rent goes to the heart of America's crises of race and inequality. In the fight for economic opportunity and racial justice, nothing is more important than housing. I am reading this book now, and I will gladly share my copy with you when I'm done. Better yet, I'll leave it here for you; I will buy another. Lest Palo Alto find itself on the same sorry list as the cities mentioned above, we need to be very conservative about nonresidential development and get the Housing Element right. I know the Palo Alto process is often derided as an obstacle to progress, but there is an upside to that. It helps us get things DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 55 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 right. I encourage you to read this book. It may help avoid some pitfalls that would probably irrevocably harm Palo Alto. Thank you. Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you. Liang Chao. Liang Chao: Hi. Mayor and Council Members, I'm Liang Chao. I'm a Cupertino resident. Although I'm on the Cupertino Union School Board, I'm speaking as an individual here. I'm speaking up for Cupertino residents since the addition of 3 million square feet of office space, the equivalent of 20,000 jobs, would impact Cupertino residents and workers significantly, whether it's being built or to be built. Cupertino has kept a good balance between jobs and housing. Although, the newly built Apple Park will add 14,000; it replaces an old HP campus with about 10,000 jobs and sits on 150-acre of land. The net job increase is only 4,000. From the 2015 Palo Alto City service report, the job/housing ratio of Palo Alto is already at 3.49 jobs for each housing unit. Cupertino, the ratio is only 1.3. Today, you have 74,000 more jobs than the number of (inaudible) residents. Add 20,000 jobs to that every day. More than 94,000 workers have to commute to Palo Alto. That's 1.4 times the entire population of Palo Alto including children and infants. Unsustainable job growth is driving up living costs and housing prices since these workers will compete for housing in surrounding cities. Who will pay for build transit and housing? Who will pay to build low-income housing? The taxpayers, all of us. You are literally taking money from my pocket and everyone else's to put in your pocket and the developer's. One might say if we don't build, other cities will build. The traffic will become worse anyway. Would you litter the street if everyone else is littering? Let's take responsibility for our actions. Stop littering, and start cleaning together. Come to the regional planning forum on Sunday. Let's talk about how to build a better Silicon Valley together. Be responsible and build sustainably. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Bill Ross to be followed by Stephanie Munoz. Bill Ross: Good evening. My comments are based on recent actions of this Council. I think it's appropriate to evaluate the baseline determination data of the NOP of May 30, 2014. Normally in a word in that CEQA guideline section is something that you should evaluate very carefully, especially after your workshop on the Stanford GUP. A more appropriate method for determining the environmental impact of the Comp Plan is a different environmental baseline if it's become known to you as the lead agency that there are other projects that are either going to degrade or improve the analysis of the physical impact of this Comp Plan on the environment. I suggest those are detailed on Page 5.4 of the FEIR. They were certainly amplified in your workshop of the 16th of October. Among the comments were comments by the Mayor, the Vice Mayor about the intense growth that would be required DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 56 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 by the Stanford Plan. I also think you need to have an internal consistency analysis as required by Government Code Section 65300.5. This is binding on Charter Cities. This was first raised in the first CAC meeting in September 2015. The response by the Planning Director has been, "We will deal with that later." It's not present. How can you meet the standard of an integrated and internally consistent plan if you don't know about the condition of those elements? In my written reports, I've pointed out an obvious discrepancy between the Safety Element as proposed and your action of last week on the 16th in setting the local hazard mitigation plan. The local hazard mitigation plan clearly indicates a high fire severity zone south of 280 on that portion of the City, while the Safety Element takes an exactly contrary position. I suggest that you clarify this information with the Staff. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Stephanie Munoz to be followed by Rita Vrhel. Stephanie Munoz: In this morning's Post there was an article by a rabble rouser saying that all of our problems were because of Satan. I certainly wouldn't go that far, but religion does have a concept of original sin. The idea is that original sin breaks down the perfection of the human—the integration of human good will and intelligence so that you may be a person of good will and intelligence and still vote for something stupid. For the last 50 years, this Council has been doing something that is so irrational. It's been voting for more work jobs than there is housing for them. This is not smart, and it's a big, big problem. You've just got to turn that around. The State is also lacking. They want you to have more below market housing, but the way they have it written the more below market housing you get the more offices in excess you get too. That's not very good. You have to insist from here on out that companies that hire more than a few workers build housing for their workers so that it evens out. You have to start with ourselves, our teachers, our firemen and then second Stanford because it has so much land and so many low-paid employees. God bless you, but you really have to provide more housing. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Rita Vrhel to be followed by Paul Machado. Rita Vrhel: Hello again. To me the Comprehensive Plan and the FEIR are missed opportunities. There is a lot of work that went into these plans. In the final editing, much of the public input was taken out to the detriment of the Plan. Because I'm concerned about groundwater, I'm concerned about the growth that is going to be allowed with the Stanford expansion and with more housing in Palo Alto; although, we need it. I'm hoping that the City will strengthen their Final EIR recommendations on hydrology because many of the mitigating measures such as monitoring of groundwater, dewatering and excavation projects. That is not a mitigation. That is an action. I also noticed DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 57 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 that there is notably lacking any protection for public or private property affected by dewatering. Protection for private and public property was removed from the original EIR. The public again, unless this is put back in, will be asked to pay for damage caused by private individuals. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Paul Machado to be followed by (inaudible). Paul Machado: Good evening, Mayor and Council. I am Paul Machado from Evergreen Park. During a recent Citywide satisfaction survey, my neighborhood was rated as perhaps the most dissatisfied in the City. There were many reasons for this, such as we were being used as a commercial parking lot, the few exits we have from our neighborhood were clogged with traffic, and many other reasons. The main reason for this was the explosion of commercial office space in the area and under-parked buildings. The mantra of jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs had led to housing and parking shortages and also traffic congestion. Now, we have a new mantra, housing, housing, housing. If we continue to build offices, we will never have enough housing. Also, if we build housing for platinum-collared workers only, your average wage earner and your low-income worker will be excluded from this City. Does the Comprehensive Plan before you clearly address the City's problems or does it merely allow the City to be transformed to a place for the privileged class? Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Neva Yarkin to be followed by Bob Moss. Neva Yarkin: Good evening, Mayor and City Council. My name is Neva Yarkin. Do you really think that by adding 3 million square feet of nonresidential space to the Comprehensive Plan—how will this help Palo Alto with major traffic, housing, and parking problems? With Stanford, Menlo Park, Mountain View, and Castilleja all trying to expand, when will this ever end? In 10-20 years, will all this expansion happen again and again? We also have the trains coming into town with construction on the horizon. How will all this figure into the mix? We need to fix what we have already so Palo Alto can continue to be a nice place to live for all of its citizens. Thank you so much for your time. Mayor Scharff: Bob Moss to be followed by Grant Dasher. Bob Moss: Thank you, Mayor Scharff and Council Members. First, I'd like to point out that when the statements were made that building more housing is going to bring costs down is false. It's only going to make the developer more profits. When they can sell it, they will. Building it is not going to make it any cheaper. For one thing, the land cost in Palo Alto is so high that the cost of actual housing is never going to be really low. Example, the Maybell site sold for $8.8 million an acre, and it's not going any lower. The tear-down house at 730 Los Robles sold for $2.6 million last weekend. Housing prices DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 58 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 are not getting any better. As far as employment is concerned, even if we didn't build another single square foot of office, the number of employees would increase because, over the last 5 years, the number of workers per square foot in office areas has increased. We are going to have, if we build the other 1.7 million square feet of office space, between 12 and 14,000 more employees. We should cut the amount of additional office space, which is allowed, from 1.7 million to no more than 500 or 600,000 square feet. We don't need more office space in Palo Alto. Our resources can only be used if you're going to have to service buildings, they should only be used for housing, not more office space and not for more employment and not for more traffic. That office space, by the way, will bring in another 25 to 30,000 car trips a day minimum. Mayor Scharff: Grant Dasher to be followed by Bonnie Packer. Grant Dasher: Hello. Grant Dasher, I live in University South. I want to start by thanking everyone, the Council, the PTC, the CAC, everyone else who's been in this process. I've only lived in this community for a couple of years. I started as a renter here, and I recently went through the process of buying my first home in this community. I really want to spend a significant amount of time as a part of this community. Sometimes I wonder if my generation is welcome in this community. Seeing the process that has led to this Comp Plan, especially the PTC recommendation, I feel that there is a commitment in this community to infill development, multifamily housing, a high quality of life in these developments in and around Downtown. I feel like I've become the example of what we're trying to do. I've stopped driving Downtown by moving into a large apartment building near the Downtown area. I'm one of the lucky ones because I have the money and I can afford it. I really do think it's important that we extend that dream as widely as we can to people who work and live in this community at all income levels. Obviously, more BMR housing is a good thing; I support that. We have to recognize that affordable housing does not just mean BMR. There's a whole spectrum of incomes, and the vast majority of people at all income levels live in market rate housing. The Comprehensive Plan's focus on coordinated area plans, on TDM, on developing more infill, higher-density housing is an effective way to reduce costs. By increasing the density, for example, you reduce the effective cost of the land because there are more units. You can reduce the land cost that way. The Comprehensive Plan, while it doesn't do everything I wanted—I would have wanted a higher housing density—it does do important things. It creates policies that localize office development into places where it makes sense rather than scattering it randomly across the City, and it supports increased housing and transportation policies. I encourage adoption of the PTC's recommendations and of the Comp Plan. Thank you so much. DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 59 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Bonnie Packer to be followed by John Guislin. Bonnie Packer: Good evening. I'm Bonnie Packer, and I'm speaking for the League of Women Voters of Palo Alto this evening. The League supports the City's efforts to increase the supply of housing for all, particularly for those with lower incomes. For that reason, we encourage you to adopt the recommendations of the Planning and Transportation Commission, which address housing. In particular, the League supports the PTC Recommendation Number 7, which says recommend that the Council include language that expresses a strong preference for affordable housing and housing that is affordable and the commitment to increasing housing supply over time consistent with the goals set by the City Council through the Housing Element process. Palo Alto has until recently been a leader in providing opportunities for creation of affordable housing. While our neighboring cities have been noticeably responsive in addressing the housing crisis, our City has fallen woefully behind. You can reverse this trend by adopting a Comprehensive Plan that unequivocally encourages meaningful increase in housing supply. You don't have to wait until this Comp Plan is certified; although, I hope it does get certified. The existing Housing Element Goals H-2 and H-3 already provide you with sufficient tools to begin to address the housing crisis through creative zoning changes. You recently directed the Planning Department to draft language for a zoning overlay for affordable housing projects. We urge you to move full speed ahead with that first step. I wanted to add one thing. The League supports the petition that was submitted to you. It's in your packet from Palo Alto Forward as evidenced by the large percent of League members who signed that petition. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. John Guislin to be followed by Larry Jones. John Guislin. No John. Larry Jones. If John comes back, let me know and we'll put him back on the list. Greg Schmid to be followed by Larry Jones. Larry Jones: Thank you very much for listening to me this evening. My name is Larry Jones; I'm a longtime resident of Palo Alto. Development is the most important issue facing the City. I hear constant discussion, should we have more housing, less housing, more low-income housing, more parking, on and on and on. Most of the emails I get from my neighborhood association have to do with development. People talk to me all the time. I came in here tonight; somebody gave me this button, Save Palo Alto. It is an important issue, and people should be concerned. Fortunately, we live in a democracy. Why don't we let them decide? Why don't we have a referendum? Why don't we let the people of Palo Alto decide? Palo Alto City Council, how many people think a referendum is a good idea? I'm sorry you don't believe in democracy. DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 60 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Our former Vice Mayor, Greg Schmid, to be followed by Suzanne Keehn. Greg Schmid: What's the big impact of this Comp Plan? For decades, Palo Alto has been the center of the country's most dynamic agglomeration economy. Agglomeration occurs in cities where important ideas and talented people move quickly across company boundaries. This Comp Plan will kill Palo Alto's special role in agglomeration. Every study on the subject of agglomeration agrees that when a city grows too dense, diseconomies occur. They come in the form of congestion, traffic, and rising cost of housing. These forces slow the mobility of ideas and people across company boundaries. We already know that congestion is with us. In our annual Citizens Survey, two- thirds of Palo Alto residents identify congestion, traffic, and housing costs as key concerns. The proposed Policy L-1.9 in the Comp Plan doubles the long- term impacts of nonresidential growth. In fact, nonresidential growth will be 3 million square feet in the period of the Comp Plan. Our historic moderate growth has fostered workers and resident mobility with ideas moving quickly. The proposed Comp Plan doubles growth impacts and increases congestion. Cut the impacts of nonresidential growth in Policy L-1.9 or lose what has made this City special. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Suzanne Keehn to be followed by Sue Dinwiddie. Suzanne Keehn: Good evening. I'm Suzanne Keehn, and I'm reading this letter from Joe Hirsch, who couldn't be here tonight. The extremely high volume of nonresidential building that's been going on in Palo Alto has to stop. You have allowed more and more nonresidential development to occur while not paying significant attention to the cumulative negative impacts to our City, our valley, our quality of life, our dwindling resources such as water, our inadequate roadway system, and our inadequate housing for people at all economic levels. Traffic is highly congested everywhere. You know that. Additional nonresidential development, particularly on the scale contemplated by the draft Comprehensive Plan before you tonight, will make that decidedly worse. This once great area is being destroyed one nonresidential building by one nonresidential building at a time with no end in sight. We should not be approving such development any longer. The draft Plan allows that to continue at a place that is double the average rate of growth of nonresidential buildings over the past 27 years. Accordingly, the draft Plan should be drastically revised to protect the quality of life that Palo Altans have a right to expect but see it gradually slipping away from us. You know how and where to do that. Please do it. We need bold leadership to look candidly at what has happened in Palo Alto during the past 15 years under the current Comprehensive Plan and what will be happening in Palo Alto under the draft Plan and recognize we cannot keep approving nonresidential development at DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 61 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 the level contemplated by the draft Plan before you tonight. You must save Palo Alto from the well-financed development forces in this community. We need you to do what is right for the people of Palo Alto, not the development community, and revise and approve a Comprehensive Plan that supports sensible growth going forward. Thank you, Joseph Hirsch. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Beth Rosenthal to be followed by Mary Dimeet. I missed Sue Dinwiddie. Sue, come on. Then Beth Rosenthal. Sue Dinwiddie: Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I'm Sue Dinwiddie, and I've had the privilege of living in Palo Alto on Jackson Drive for the last 57 years. I've seen a lot of change. There's no question that there's a tremendous need for affordable housing in this community. It's a very great challenge with the cost of property. We need to make sure that the present traffic congestion and gridlock with parking is addressed and not made worse by increasing the housing stock. Everybody's aware we have a serious parking problem, not just Downtown and on California Avenue but in many of the residential areas in town. I don't see much done in the way of moving people in a mass way other than in individual cars or those who can bike or those who have the time to walk long distances. Stanford serves a really good model with all of their Marguerites and the shuttles they have. I know we do have shuttles, but they don't run very often, and they don't cover a lot of the City. I would really like to see some of this addressed in the Plan. That would make a huge, huge difference. A lot of people are parking in—I live near the Edgewood Plaza Center. They park even down as far as we are, and then they walk and bike because there is no parking for them. One possibility is to build some massive parking in the Baylands and have shuttles to bring people in. I would just like to see the Comprehensive Plan address some of these problems. Thank you very much. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Now, Beth Rosenthal to be followed by Mary Dimeet. Beth Rosenthal: Good evening, Mayor Scharff and Council Members. I'm speaking both as a 40-plus year resident of Palo Alto and a longtime small business owner. I'm asking for the following. Please rescind the rollover provision for office construction if the 50,000-square-foot quota is not reached. Please do not authorize construction without also requiring the requisite number of parking spaces. Finally, please invest in adequate parking and traffic management before authorizing new construction. The difficulties we face today have been created by Councils' authorization of construction without taking the whole picture into account. To build more doesn't solve the problem of our imbalance of jobs and housing. You cannot build enough housing to address that problem. To build without adequate parking only DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 62 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 exacerbates an already terrible gridlock. I live on a feeder street near University Avenue entrance to the freeway. Last week, it took 20 minutes to traverse 1 block in order to get onto the freeway, and this is not an unusual situation. Because we cannot build enough housing to satisfy the needs of all who work here and want to live here, housing goes to those who can pay the most for it. That does not allow us to house our teachers, our firefighters, or our service people. The same is true for office space because we cannot build enough offices for all who want to work here. Rents for office space have skyrocketed over the past several years, and the space goes to the highest bidder. My rent will double at the time of my next lease renewal, and I will probably not be able to stay in Palo Alto. My building, 550 Hamilton, which was once referred to as the therapist building, is now increasingly becoming occupied by high-tech firms. Because the cost of doing business here is so high, we are losing professional services and many community-serving businesses such as Diddams, University Art, and Adolescent Counseling Services. Please pay attention to the repetitive messages from all of the speakers who have been here tonight. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Diane Morin to be followed by Iqbal Serang. Diane Morin: Dear Mayor Scharff, Vice Mayor Kniss, and honorable Council Members, I'm speaking to you tonight on behalf of the Board of Palo Alto Forward. Fundamentally, I'd like to synthesize what was already said to you in a letter that was sent a couple of days ago, and that is what I would synthesize in three points. The first one is substance. The second is process. The third is diversity. That is to say that substance. We heard earlier what this process has been already in terms of producing a Comp Plan. It is 7 years now in the making late. We've been working on it now as a City, we've been working on it as citizens for over 2 years. I know this because I personally was involved in many of these meetings where we discussed different facets of it. Staff has been involved in it. The Planning and Transportation Commission has been involved. Multiple people have been involved speaking to the process. This is not something that's suddenly come up. Finally, in terms of the citizenry, I'd like to point out that 45 percent, at least as I understand it, of the citizens are renters. There was a CAC, Citizens Advisory Committee, of 25 people working on it which, as I understand it, one was a renter, perhaps two. My point is for a long point of time a Comprehensive Plan has been put together. The Comprehensive Plan may not be perfect, but it's very, very good. It's a tool that we can finally use going forward. Palo Alto Forward, which I am here representing, sent out a petition, and that petition was signed by 184 people as of 2:00 today. By now there are probably more of them. It is an enormously diverse group of people. It is, as I said, almost 200 people. That is what I ask to be distributed to each of you tonight. To summarize, there is—I apologize. I thought that was the 1 minute warning. DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 63 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 To summarize, please read the letter and please read the petition. Thank you very much for your work. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Iqbal Serang to be followed by Don McDougall. Iqbal Serang: Good evening, Council Members. Perhaps I'm the only representative of renters in this City. It seems out of the four major points the PTC highlighted, three were transportation and one was housing. It is incumbent upon you to take that responsibility and that charge and make some very bold decisions. Once you do solve the housing issue or come close to solving it, the transportation issue also diminishes. I understand the General Plan is an idea being represented with certain formulas. I certainly hope that enough attention is given to the rental properties and the rental approach so that there are more and more workers that live in this City as well. Thank you very much. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Don McDougall to be followed by Tina Peak. Don McDougall: Mr. Mayor, Council, thank you for the opportunity to speak and particularly thank you for the opportunity to publicly thank particularly the Staff and the consultants that worked with the Staff on all of this effort. I'd also like to publicly thank Arthur Keller and Dan Garber for the thankless job of trying to lead the CAC over the last few years. The CAC did a good job, I think, of listening to citizens, individual citizens and citizens that represented particular groups. I think we did a good job of listening to the Council when the Council gave us direction to go back and look at different things. We cooperated with Staff most of the time. The rest of the time, we just simply overworked them, for which we apologize. The result of all of that was a very good document. It was just mentioned that this is a good piece of work. This is a very good piece of work. I would like to talk not so much about the specifics. Hillary did a nice job of summarizing that. I'd like to talk about the fact that the themes that we worried about, diversity and compassion and sustainability and safety and health in our City, were an important part of what we did. I would encourage Council to accept and move forward with the Comprehensive Plan as recommended by CAC and with modification suggestions relative to BMR by the Planning and Transportation Commission. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Tina Peak. No Tina. Mark Mollineaux to be followed by Elaine Uang. Mark Mollineaux: Hi there. Last week during that long rent control discussion, there was a lot of talk about economics, which is a very good place to start from. Council Member DuBois at one point said that Adam Smith's invisible hand has been driving people out of Palo Alto. I disagree. It's a manmade DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 64 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 problem. It's exclusionary zoning, and all the residents of Palo Alto are responsible. Let's go to rent control. In a vacuum, it is counterproductive. That is, it doesn't produce more housing units, but that's not the problem. If we wanted to produce, we could produce. The problem is more subtle, land values and (inaudible) of positional goods, not goods that are just produced. This was first introduced in this book by Fred Hirsch in 1976. He mentions that in practice destructive effects within the suburb can be checked in a variety of ways, notably through planning and zoning restrictions both in outward expansion in suburbs and development within them. To the extent that such restrictions preserve the quality of suburban living, by eliminating the number of newcomers in existing suburban locations we'll then reap capitalization gains and excess demand will be contained by price. This course, protection through exclusion, involves a hidden redistribution of economic welfare in favor of those established in the areas at the expense of those attempting to move in. People living in the particular areas gained and those excluded from them lose. Explicit measure of redistribution will be needed to counter this influence. Prop 13 does not allow this. Prop 13 is rent control, but it's for landowners. It's counterproductive for the very same reasons. If you are the people who gain by this, you will have the zoning plan you want. It should weigh on you, the suffering of the landless, the suffering of those who are housing insecure, the destruction of the environment that long commutes create. I just invite us all to talk from a common ground through economics and ideas of fairness and morality. I would hope to open many dialogs for what we all can agree on and not just simply what's in our own best interests. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Elaine Uang to be followed by Justine Burt. Elaine Uang: Thank you all for taking this up. I'm going to speak to you as an individual; although, I did serve on the CAC and didn't spend as many hours as you did, but spending some time. I urge you to—I know it's not perfect, but I urge you to accept the PTC's recommendations and certify the EIR. A couple of thoughts, just my own. Housing has been on everybody's mind. Housing, housing, housing has been talked about all night. I personally think the preferred scenario of 3,545 to 4,400 units is not as high as I would like; although, it does march us in the right direction. I want us just to remember that we're not an island. Our neighbors are approving many more housing units, 9,850 in North Bayshore Mountain View alone and 5,500 in Menlo Park's M2 specific plan. I just want to caution that if we aren't keeping pace, maybe we're creating a problem of greater scarcity and greater housing inaffordability. One of the things I was excited about from the Comp Plan process was the emphasis on sustainable transportation. As we know from the S/CAP process, we have really good greenhouse gas reduction goals, but 66 percent of those greenhouse gases come from inbound commuters. One DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 65 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 of the best ways to really decrease inbound commuting trips is to co-locate jobs directly next to transit. Bach has shown this to be successful in Redwood City. There's been a lot of talk about should we cap the number of square feet in terms of office/R&D. We should think carefully about where those 1.7 million square feet go. The Downtown is the most transit rich in our region, not just our City but in our region. It is the terminus of VTA, SamTrans, and AC Transit, and it has a baby bullet stop. Again, we're not an island. We've got neighboring cities putting millions of square feet each on Baylands nearby. Meanwhile, we have a very good opportunity to encourage greater sustainable transportation by co-locating nonresidential office/R&D square footage near our downtowns. Thanks. Mayor Scharff: Justine Burt to be followed by Max Kapczynski. Justine Burt: Good evening, Mayor Scharff and City Council Members. Traffic congestion is a big concern for those who don't want additional housing. There's an enormous potential to get people out of their single occupancy vehicles and into alternative transit. Earlier this year, I did outreach in support of the Palo Alto TMA to shops and restaurants in Downtown Palo Alto. My colleague and I talked to hundreds of people who work on and around University Avenue. We urged them to take the train, to take buses, to take shuttles, to bike to work, to carpool, to rideshare, to walk. A lot of them did not know alternative transit options they could use to get here. One man at the Verizon store said to me, "I'd love to. I live in Hayward. I can't take transit." I said, "Actually you can park at the Union City BART and take Dumbarton express right over to the Caltrain station that's nearby." He's like, "I had no idea. I'll do it Monday." There are a lot of opportunities to increase transit. Our efforts Downtown resulted in 75 applications for free transit passes. That was an increase in 10 percent of alternative transit among service workers Downtown. There are a lot of opportunities also among light office and municipal workers. If we're really serious about reducing solo drivers into Downtown Palo Alto, you all know what needs to happen. We need to charge for parking Downtown and take those revenues and give them away as free transit passes to the low-wage workers in Downtown Palo Alto and University Avenue, at Town and Country, and on California Avenue. That would go a long way to support our beloved shops and restaurants and make a difference. In conclusion, in the past 10 years I read 3.25 million people have moved to California. In that same amount of time, we've built 311,000 housing units, nowhere near what we need to do to—people wonder why housing prices have doubled in the last 7 years here. We need to add housing, and we also need to reduce traffic and congestion and all the parking Downtown. We can do all of that. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Max Kapczynski to be followed by Neilson Buchanan. DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 66 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 Max Kapczynski: Hello, good evening. The Plan you have before you is not perfect, but it is these Palo Altans best plan, best idea for a responsible plan for growth for the future. That's a good thing especially when it means building more housing. We've all been talking about congestion, traffic, parking, enough places to live. We should be asking ourselves how can we get all of those things and how can we get all those things here for everybody. If we develop more densely, more intelligently in the right spots, we can stand a chance to have enough housing for all the people we want and need to live in this town. Thank you very much. Vice Mayor Kniss: Thanks for your brevity. Neilson Buchanan followed by John Kelley followed by Arthur Keller. Neilson Buchanan: Neilson Buchanan. I'd like to suggest two things that could be included more strongly in the Comp Plan. They're relatively narrow. The first is that there is a huge baby boom aging factor. I don't think the Comp Plan has addressed very specifically the kind of housing that the aging baby boom is going to need. I can't go into the demographics in the short period of time. Bottom line is that you're going to need more Channing Houses or VAs. That's not going to happen on its own. It's going to take very special nurturing from the Comp Plan or the Planning Department so that over the next 4 or 5, 7 years other Channing Houses will evolve. They're all going to be controversial. They're going to be dense. They're going to be high. They're going to be expensive. In terms of education, the public would easily accept them. Number two omission. There's a very valuable statement in the current Comp Plan that's dear to my heart. It states the following: the Comp Plan encourages commercial enterprise but not at the expense of the City's residential neighborhoods. That's been a key rallying point on things that I care about and things that a lot of other residents care about. That doesn't bind the Council to that value statement, but it does given an opportunity to argue for it or against it, as the case may be. Palo Alto as a residential community is one of its key things. It's local public schools is the key thing. Without that value statement, it will be at risk. Very quickly, three other comments. Two of the most destructive words in the United States is affordable housing. I have spent a lot of time picking up newspapers. I've gotten to travel a great deal this last year. You can't go anywhere without finding newspapers rattling on about affordable housing. It just isn't constructive. I found the question that is most constructive is affordable for whom. If you can channel your discussion and the community's discussion to we're going to do housing, but it's affordable for whom. That also puts a price tag on it. The other two, I just don't have a chance to get into. I will come back on the 13th and follow up with you. Mayor Scharff: John Kelley to be followed by Arthur Keller. DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 67 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 John Kelley: Mayor Scharff, Vice Mayor Kniss, Council Members, I think I say this about every time I come here. I feel like I've been here before. You've been doing this a lot. I've missed some of the more recent meetings. If there's one thing I could tell you tonight, if this has been going on for almost a decade now—that's what I heard from Staff at the beginning of the meeting—tonight is the night to act. Tonight's the night to certify the EIR. Tonight is the night to move forward with the Comp Plan. We have been waiting almost a decade. I've been hearing from people whose entire families have been born during the time that the Council's been looking at the Comprehensive Plan. It's clear that we need more housing. I would associate myself with Elaine Uang's comments, and I would associate myself also with the first part of what Mr. Buchanan just said. We are going to need more housing for aging boomers. There's no question about that. The solution is not to say, "We're not going to have any more nonresidential growth in Palo Alto. We're going to cap that." That doesn't make sense. I personally came here, I think, last January to say we need 10,000 units. I'm not overjoyed about the number of 3,500-4,500, but this is what the community has seen as a reasonable compromise. It's time to stop dithering. It's time to move forward. It's time to act. I would ask you to act decisively tonight to certify the EIR and to move forward with the Comprehensive Plan. Let us not become like what happened to Flint. Let's not put a chokehold on noncommercial growth. Let's build the housing that this community needs. I want to commend you, if nothing else tonight, for moving forward boldly with the ADU plan. You really did a great thing. Many of you took a courageous step in voting for that. We're going to have an opportunity for more creativity and for more bold action to build higher density housing close to transit and in areas like Downtown. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Arthur Keller to be followed by Trina Lovercheck. Arthur Keller: Thank you. I'm speaking on my own capacity, not any public capacity. One important principle we need to understand is development should mitigate its impacts. If you can't mitigate the impacts, then you should limit development. In terms of this, in terms of Policy T-5.1, the idea of managing the parking impact of development doesn't mean anything. Instead, "should manage" should be replaced by "must provide for the parking demand it generates." The next thing is the traffic mitigations in the EIR are unrealistic. There's no trigger to adjust the office growth if these mitigations are not met. We do need a trigger to limit the office growth in that case. Otherwise, what happens? Continued strong office growth makes the jobs/housing imbalance worse. It makes it harder to build housing, especially low-income housing. What was mentioned is that other than Stanford Medical Center, there's 1.7 million square feet of office space. That's over 100,000 square feet of office space a year. That's a lot and more than has been before DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 68 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 the boom starting about 2010. Some say if office growth is not allowed, it will go to less transit-oriented communities like Menlo Park or Mountain View and instead should go where the entire Bay Area is investing the most transit dollars anywhere. That is the VTA build of BART to San Jose. That's where our jobs growth should be. It should not be as much in Palo Alto. That's where investing our transit dollars should be. Finally, I'll close with the idea that I sat here the other day and heard County Supervisor Joe Simitian mention that there was a requirement in this 2000 Stanford GUP of about— he mentioned this phrase that's in the 2000 Stanford GUP, maximum planned build-out potential in a sustainable community for Stanford University. What is the maximum planned build-out potential for Palo Alto? If it makes sense for Stanford, it makes sense for Palo Alto. We should consider what that is. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Trina Lovercheck to be followed by Amy Sung. Trina Lovercheck: Good evening, Mayor Scharff and Council Members. Thanks for the opportunity to speak. My name is Trina Lovercheck. I've been a resident of Palo Alto for 39 years now. I first want to commend the CAC on all their hard work on the Comprehensive Plan. I encourage you to adopt it with maybe some minor tweaks. I've served on many committees over the years for the School District and the City. I've seen many of the work products of those committees just put on a shelf and ignored. That's very discouraging to the people who are on the committee and to other people that might consider volunteering. Why bother if your work is going to be ignored. I have a few comments about the Comp Plan. First of all parking. The parking has been under-parked; the new buildings have been under-parked for a long time. That has certainly created much of the parking problem we have. The traffic situation has gotten much worse over the 49 years I've lived here. We used to say, "We live in the Bay Area, Palo Alto. We don't have a parking or a traffic issue here. Go to LA; that's where it's terrible." It's about the same now, which is unfortunate. The shuttle should be expanded. I live in Barron Park. My last job was on Hamilton and Webster. If I was to take public transit to get to work, I would have had to walk from the back of Barron Park, up to El Camino which is a good half mile or maybe more, take the bus to Downtown Palo Alto, and then walk down Hamilton to get to Webster. I have no idea how long that would have taken me, but it would have been far too much. We need service in the Barron Park area for people, so that public transit is much more accessible to us by expanding the shuttle. I want to say a couple of things about housing. We need more affordable, low-income housing. Even my children can't afford to live here. Putting housing near transportation, shopping, and other services is a positive environmental policy. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Amy Sung to be followed by Hugo Moortgat. DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 69 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 Amy Sung: Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and members of Council. My name is Amy Sung. I'm so excited to have this opportunity to give my piece tonight. Two years, I answered your call to the Summit, and it was May 2015. It was a calling for involvement from citizens. I thought what a way to contribute to my beautiful and beloved Palo Alto. It wasn't until I started joining the CAC group I realized that this is a project in the making in the decades. Ten years later, we are here to recycle all the arguments. I wanted to please ask the Council and the public to realize that this Plan is being considered and reconsidered. It has been considered down to the detail of the language. Tonight when I came here, I had prepared a speech that I was going to present to you, and I change my mind because a young person was here earlier today. She said to me she has moved here from other parts of California. She rented a year, and then a year later she realized our community doesn't want her. That truly does break my heart. As we here in the room, this is a community with aging population, and we need to take care of existing residents and also welcoming the newcomers so that together we will shape the future of Palo Alto and so that Palo Alto will forever be the City where everybody wants to be. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Hugo Moortgat to be followed by Terry Holzemer. Hugo Moortgat: Good evening, City Council. I'll be brief. I'll start by saying something that should be obvious. The current residents of Palo Alto have elected you as their representatives to and expect you to solve the problems facing Palo Alto in the interest of the current residents. It seems that this is not occurring currently. We are not adequately addressing the issues of traffic and other resource constraints resulting from existing developments but even less from developments already approved and still in the pipeline. It's, therefore, not reasonable to substantially increase the rate of growth over the current rate. I won't take any more of the Council's time. Suffice it to say that I strongly support the views that Palo Altans for Sensible Zoning have developed and made publicly available. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Terry Holzemer to be followed by Jennifer Hetterly. Terry Holzemer: Good evening, Council Members. I'd just like to take a moment to recognize all the residents that came out tonight wearing this button, Save Palo Alto. There were many of them here. Would you please stand up who are still here, please? There were many others, of course, that were here tonight. I'm sure you recognize them. The reason they were wearing these buttons is very simple. They believe in that message, saving Palo Alto. Why does Palo Alto need to be saved? It needs to be saved because this issue of changing our community is happening right now. This Comp Plan DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 70 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 will do that in a real life-changing way. Given the short amount of time to talk, I will try to keep my comments to three basic elements. First of all, it is very important to remind the Council that in this new Comprehensive Plan there is a very high level of nonresidential growth allowed. This growth really goes to the core of who and what we are as a community. Should we remain a vibrant, suburban community focused mainly on residential neighborhoods or change into an ever-growing, urban environment that is found in our larger neighborhoods to the south or to the north? With such needs of housing and not making the jobs/housing imbalance worse, we should be focused more on residential housing and not on high-growth nonresidential areas. Second and not least important is the housing issue. Many talk about a need for affordable housing, but the real question that needs to be asked is affordable to who. I suggest setting a different goal for the Comp Plan. Make your commitment today that any new housing project be at least 50 percent BMR units. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Jennifer Hetterly to be followed by Tiffany Griego. Jennifer Hetterly: Good evening, Mayor Scharff and Council Members. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. Like you and probably most of the folks here tonight, I am quite looking forward to the end of the Comp Plan debate. Despite lots of good stuff in here, as the PTC and many speakers here tonight indicated, it still doesn't quite hit the mark. I hope you'll try to get there. My comments tonight focus on schools. Yes, we need more housing, but we don't want it to come at the expense of our schools. According to the City's FEIR, elementary and middle school enrollment under this Plan will well exceed the capacity of our schools even at the low end of your housing goal range. That analysis likely undercounts the impacts using conservative assumptions about housing types and presuming PAUSD's ability to operate at maximum contractual capacity, which they've told you they cannot. Due to SB 50, CEQA doesn't protect communities from school overcrowding. There are no State mandates about mitigating school enrollment impacts. The FEIR does not offer you a basis for you to deal with our schools. Nonetheless, you and we, all of us here, cannot afford to presume that our schools can continue to offer a superior quality of education in healthy and safe environments without help from the City to manage enrollment growth. Yet, there is zero concrete provisions in this Plan to mitigate enrollment impacts from the new housing you seek. This Comp Plan doesn't assess and monitor enrollment pressures on neighborhoods specifically targeted for housing growth, Downtown, California Avenue, Barron Park, Ventura neighborhoods. It does not zone for space to accommodate future school expansions in those identified neighborhoods. Indeed, it increases competition for already limited space. It does not focus transportation planning on school-related traffic impacts in those targeted areas. It does not bring bicycle and pedestrian DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 71 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 improvements there to a level of safety appropriate for school commutes. A 15-year Plan that fails to take those steps or better ones, if you have other ideas, whether legally required or not is unfair to our kids and runs contrary to the values of this family-oriented community. I encourage you to direct Staff to add them tonight. Thank you very much. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Tiffany Griego to be followed by Whitney McNair. Tiffany Griego: Good evening. My name is Tiffany Griego. I am responsible for Stanford Research Park. Tonight I'm here to say thank you to City Staff and to the CAC, PTC, and City Council for your diligent work on the Comp Plan for many years now. Thank you for allowing us the many opportunities to participate and provide our feedback. You have designed and facilitated an extremely transparent process. I believe everyone who wanted to be deeply invested in this effort has had the opportunity to participate. Speaking on behalf of the Research Park employers, we have kept tabs on all the drafts and all of the elements, and we've appreciated the opportunity to do that. I can say in all honesty that we feel we've become more educated about what it means to be a good neighbor and what it means to contribute to Palo Alto as part of this community. I particularly wish to thank the Citizens Advisory Committee for their stewardship and efforts. For example, the CAC described the Stanford Research Park as a place that will continue to evolve over time in the coming decades as a major employment center. The Comp Plan calls for working closely with Stanford to ensure the Research Park remains competitive with others in the Bay Area and the nation, encouraging reinvestment to improve the appearance along El Camino Real and elsewhere, and providing housing and retail services in the Research Park to enhance the vitality and walkability of this area. These are all components we believe constitute a bright future for the Research Park. The CAC also acknowledged the Research Park is capable of providing opportunities to address issues of shared concern including easing commute-related congestion. We appreciate your efforts to carefully craft a bright future for Palo Alto for the next 15 years through the various decisions made by this Council from January to June of this year. We believe Council has brought forward with the help of PTC a very well-balanced Plan for Palo Alto with a modest amount of commercial growth coupled with strong support for adding residential units to the local housing stock. Thank you. We recommend you approve the Comp Plan as drafted. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Whitney McNair to be followed by Elaine Meyer. Whitney McNair: Good evening. My name's Whitney McNair, and I'm the Director of Land Use Planning for Stanford University. Tonight, I'm here to support the certification of the Final EIR and the adoption of the City's DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 72 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 Comprehensive Plan. I had the opportunity of participating on the City's Citizens Advisory Committee and saw the amount of work and effort that group put into the document over the past couple of years. Together the CAC and the community, the Planning Commission, Staff, consultants, and Council really deliberated over each and every goal, policy, and the program that's written in the Plan. It was really good to see and have people on both sides or all sides of the issue care so deeply about their position and engage in meaningful dialog during those meetings. As a result, the document is stronger because of it. The Comp Plan tries to balance a lot of things. It protects existing neighborhoods while recognizing and allowing modest growth. There's a recognition that having housing affordable to more people is needed throughout the region, including here in Palo Alto. There's the idea that the Research Park is an important asset to the community and to the General Fund, and it needs to stay competitive and recognizes the need for this flexibility and supports a mix of uses and some growth while mitigating traffic impacts. There's also the recognition that the way people shop is changing and that retail and retail centers need to evolve and allow for a mix of uses. The Plan really does provide a good framework to support the City's land use decisions over the next 10-15 years. It truly is just a framework for making decisions. It is meant to be a general document to provide some guidance, but it isn't meant to be a Zoning Code with that exact specificity in it. I urge you to approve the document and certify the EIR. I just wanted to correct—there's one number that keeps coming up tonight, the 3 million square feet. I just want to recognize that 1.3 million of that 3 million square foot number that's being talked about tonight was approved in 2011 by the City Council under the Comp Plan for a new hospital and an expansion to the Children's Hospital. It really isn't part of that number that should be carried forward to the Comp Plan discussion this evening. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Elaine Meyer. Elaine Meyer: Good evening, Mayor Scharff and members of the Council. We will never be able to house everybody who wants to live here. As long as we let businesses and developers bring more and more high-income workers into town, we're going to become both more crowded and less diverse. Our housing focus should be on below market rate housing, and the businesses and developers bringing in the high-income workers should pay for a large proportion of it. It's only fair. The development interests who lead Palo Alto Forward and some Planning Commissioners are just concerned about rich people who want to move here instead of being concerned about the people who already live here and who are being priced out. There also don't appear to be very much concern about the impacts on the infrastructure. By the way, what is affordable housing? I'm putting little quotes around it. It's a tricky word. It's slippery. Affordable by whom? By rich people, by poor people? In DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 73 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 practice, what it means is that the wealthy can afford affordable housing. Is there a written definition of affordable in the Plan or anywhere in the City? This Plan should specify that half of our housing expansion should be below market rate housing, and that definition should include middle-income workers. As you may know if you can find your way through the minefield surrounding the Citizens Survey document, there are three issues that are very highly—that citizens are very concerned about. Affordable housing, traffic, and parking. Those are the major areas of dissatisfaction. The survey results, by the way, are in Attachment B. They're buried in Attachment B of the Citizens Survey, but you can find it there. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Thank you to all the public speakers for staying late. I really appreciate it. You all made great points. So now we come back to Council. Now, I will close the public hearing. No? I'm not supposed to close the public hearing? I thought we were supposed to do that. Molly Stump, City Attorney: Just based on the thought that this may take another set of meetings, we may want to leave it open for additional public comment, not for folks who have already commented. Public Hearing continued to October 30, 2017. Mayor Scharff: I think that's fair. That's a fair comment. We will leave the public hearing open. Let's talk a little bit about where we are. It's 11:00. I think we should dither a little bit more, as someone said. We probably have about 3 hours on this more. We can find 3 hours next Monday. I think what we should do—I'm torn between one thing. We could do a round of questions. We could limit it to three questions. We could just continue it. Unless I hear Council Members really wanting to—raise your hands if you want a round of questions or if you just want to continue the hearing 'til next Monday. The plan is we will—I'll make a motion. We will continue this hearing to Monday at 5:30 on October 30th. Vice Mayor Kniss: Second. MOTION: Mayor Scharff moved, seconded by Vice Mayor Kniss to continue this Item to October 30, 2017. Mayor Scharff: If we could just vote on the board. Vice Mayor Kniss: Could I ask a question because this will always come up? We're continuing the meeting, which essentially means we never went anywhere other than the 7 days between now and then. If someone spoke tonight, can they speak again since it continues to be the same hearing? DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 74 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 Ms. Stump: No. Folks who had their opportunities tonight, that was their opportunity to address the Council. If new people attend, it would be a good idea. Vice Mayor Kniss: Just so we're clear on that. Mayor Scharff: With that in mind, there were actually a number of people that I noticed put their name down and then left. If people know those people and want to encourage them to come and speak, I would obviously be happy to have them come speak to us on Monday. With that, let's vote on the board. Council Member Fine: I'm a definite yes for this one. Mayor Scharff: That passes unanimously. MOTION PASSED: 9-0 Vice Mayor Kniss: Adrian, you should get some kind of award. I can't believe you're still wide awake or maybe you're not. Inter-Governmental Legislative Affairs None. Council Member Questions, Comments and Announcements Mayor Scharff: We're at Council Member Questions and Comments. Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: I went to an event yesterday evening with the United Nations Association of Film Festival. That film festival is continuing all this week. Encourage people to go. It's always a wonderful film festival where they offer films you might otherwise not get to see at all. Encourage your support. By the way, it did start here, and this is their 20th anniversary. It's a really good year to attend. Council Member Kou: Council Member Tanaka and I attended the Baha'i faith Oneness celebration. It was a beautiful celebration. Their intent is really good. They gifted this to the City. Shall I give it to you, Mayor? Mayor Scharff: Why don't you give it to the City Clerk? Vice Mayor Kniss. Vice Mayor Kniss: I had the privilege of opening the International Film Festival when it began on Thursday night. It's very exciting, because it's now the 20th anniversary. They have been so successful. Karen, you probably know more than I. They're going for 11 nights or 10 nights? I think it's until next Sunday. DRAFT ACTION MINUTES Page 75 of 75 City Council Meeting Draft Action Minutes: 10/23/17 Council Member Holman: I'm not sure, but it's through next Sunday. Vice Mayor Kniss: If any of you want to go, just look in the paper to find out what location it's going to be playing at next. Mayor Scharff: Meeting adjourned. Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 11:06 P.M.