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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2017-12-04 City Council Summary MinutesCITY OF PALO ALTO CITY COUNCIL TRANSCRIPT Page 1 of 99 Special Meeting December 4, 2017 The City Council of the City of Palo Alto met on this date in the Council Chambers at 5:13 P.M. Present: DuBois, Filseth, Holman, Kniss, Kou, Scharff, Tanaka, Wolbach Absent: Fine Public Art Commission Present: Gordon, Migdal, Miyaji, Shen Absent: Ross, Taylor, Zelkha Study Session 1. Joint Meeting With the Public Art Commission - Discussion of Accomplishments and Future Initiatives. Mayor Scharff: We're here for a Study Session with the Public Art Commission (PAC). Why don't we just go around and introduce the Commissioners to the Council? I don't think we all know you. You guys were going to kick this off. Jim Migdal, Public Art Commission, Chair: Thank you for having us. We're excited to be here. This is the first year where we, after having done the master planning process, have actually done a bunch of the things that are in the Master Plan. That's an exciting place to be. We are looking forward to it coming up in discussion. We're going to go through some of the different programs and things that we've accomplished over the course of the last year with Staff or Staff has really accomplished. Let's just have a discussion. We'd love to hear your input, things you guys have been hearing from other folks in Palo Alto. First off, Code: ART. We talked about— where's Karen? We talked about doing things where we activate alleyways and can find art in surprising spots. Code: ART was our first pass at doing this. It gave us a chance to try to see what works in different places, how much work does it take. We learned a lot. It was a lot of work, but it was a huge success. We had over 10,000 visitors. We had 15 different teams FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 2 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 from the Bay Area, ten businesses that partnered with us. You'll see a new piece of printed material on Code: ART. We also got funding from the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA). I don't know how forthcoming that's going to be in the future. We also had a couple of local businesses that participated just across the street, Houzz, Palantir, and other local businesses and then Verizon as well as Institutes from the Future. This brought a lot of foot traffic to—I don't know if you guys remember or were here for Code: ART, but we had a ton of people wandering out. It was a beautiful weekend. Friday and Saturday night, there were a ton of people just wandering around, meeting the artist. It felt like we were punching way above our weight in terms of what we're doing with art. We'll hold questions to the end if we can. Let's move ahead. Commissioner Gordon's going to talk about policy stuff and temporary public art as well as some awards we've won. Loren Gordon, Public Art Commissioner: Hi. I know this is a busy slide, but it's basically telling you how we're making progress on our Public Art Master Plan. Looking at short term, locate art in unexpected places. As Jim just said, we successfully hosted Code: ART last summer in June. Another thing we'd like to point out to you is that we installed some very cool benches designed by Colin Selig. Those are still on University Avenue and—do we have a couple on California Avenue (Cal. Ave.) or are they all on University Avenue? University Avenue. In process, to integrate impactful and permanently sited public art in business areas. You are familiar that we'll have a new Public Safety facility and garage and also a Downtown garage. Those are in process. We have a panel for the California Avenue garage. We've selected artists for the Public Safety Building; it's in process. For the Downtown parking garage, we've actually selected an artist, Amy Landesberg. Also in progress, to integrate art into the design of the Junior Museum and Zoo. We've selected an artist there, Charles Sowers. He's a San Francisco artist, and we're very excited about him. Also, we are in progress with the pedestrian bike bridge. We've selected an artist, Mary Lucking, who is working on a design for that. Looking ahead, using our available tools to engage the public in the public art program. Our team, Nadya and Elise, have done a great job with Facebook and Instagram and Twitter as you can see. On Instagram, we've had 131 that are #public art. In process also, to engage partners in educational initiatives. We have been working with the Art Center doing an exhibit right now called Play! Toby Fraley has a piece of work in front here, temporary artwork, The Artwork Forge, where you can create your own artwork by inserting four quarters. It's kind of cool. We're also, of course, integrating with the Junior Museum and Zoo with the artist Charles Sowers. In process, to build stronger connections with Stanford University. It's interesting. We had an award- winning temporary exhibit called The Running Wall. After that was broken FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 3 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 down, the 2x4s that were used to construct The Running Wall went to the Masters in Fine Arts (MFA) program at Stanford. Some other things. Moving ahead. In process, provide public art training to local artists. We had a speaker, Franz Myer, here in October 2016. There are a couple of other things I'd like to mention. Updating our policies to ensure artwork maintenance, conservation, and collection. We've reviewed them accurately, and we've also updated the accession policy. There's quite a bit here. National standards and best practices. We're waiting to approve a murals policy that's in process. The other stuff, to ensure ongoing Staff support for successful administration of the Public Art program, that's all ongoing. Temporary public art. We've had some very interesting installations. Lee Benson, The Running Wall, that was out on the Plaza. That was designed to bridge the plaza hardscape with the alley of the trees. The Murmur Wall that was installed for Code: ART was up until October 2. That was a very interesting structure of steel and acrylic tubing that showed light and digital text displays. Perhaps you saw that when it was out on the Plaza. Currently on the Plaza, we have The Artwork Forge by Toby Fraley, which creates unique artwork for people stopping by. Also Colin Selig's benches, you can see on the slide there, those are very interesting in that he makes those from used propane tanks. Basically, turning a wasted object into a functional seat with what the artist calls a sensual design. I'll have to say they are quite colorful. We've received a lot of comments about these benches. This is a collaboration between the Department of Public Works, Downtown Business and Professional Improvement Association, and Palo Alto Public Arts. This year, we have won three awards for—our artists have won three awards for their public art installations. One is one that you're very familiar with by Susan Narduli. It is the Conversation that is in this building. It's a great installation. The second is what I mentioned earlier, The Running Wall. It was a 2x4-structured wall out on the Plaza. The third, which is pictured here, is on the Visa Building over on Sherman, which is called Tabula. This is a very interesting piece. They all won awards from the Americans for the Arts this fall. Thank you. I guess I'm speaking about the California Avenue tunnel, which is one of my favorite things. Chair Migdal: Loren, before you go on, procedurally this is a meeting for discussion. If you want, we're happy to take questions after each section or do you want to do it at the end? What's easiest for you? Did you have a question? Vice Mayor Kniss: Yeah, I have one particularly about the benches. I'm very fond of them. I've talked to Colin about them. My recollection is that they weren't going to stay forever unless the money was raised to buy them. Is that correct? FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 4 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 Ms. Gordon: I'm glad that you're asking that. There was a Go Fund Me for that, and there was also some funds granted by the artist, but the Commission has voted and passed to bring the rest of the funds to keep the benches. Vice Mayor Kniss: I think they're colorful. They're a conversation piece. They're also comfortable, which is really the biggest surprise. Ms. Gordon: They're functional. Thank you for that question. Vice Mayor Kniss: I'm really glad to hear that. Ms. Gordon. Tunnels. Tunnels are challenging places for artwork. There's water seepage, little or no electrical, poor lighting, and 24-hour public use. In this case, this beloved tunnel had an existing piece of artwork, an underwater mural painted by Oscar Castillo. Artist Castillo was contacted, and he approved a second muralist and artist, Morgan Bricca, coming to repair and enhance this beloved piece to make the Cal. Ave. tunnel a delight for all. I have to say I'm thrilled with the way this mural turned out, and I hope you are too. Hsinya Shen, Public Art Commissioner Shen: Hi. I'm going to talk a little bit about the logo and some of the recent developments and some of the new developments that are up and coming. Now, we have a logo. You'll find it on some of the Public Art Commission activities like the art walk that we did earlier this year. The two public developments. This one you see is from Stanford. It's by Brad Howe. I think he's known as an abstract sculpturist, and he's known for his color and playfulness. The other one was the award- winning one done by Visa. I think it's Charlie Gadeken. What's really interesting about his artwork—I don't know. It's in the earlier slide. It's on the Visa Building on Sherman. It's interactive Light Emitting Diode (LED) light work. The lights changes based on the seismic data feed that's coming from the United States (U.S.) Geological Survey (USGS). It's interactive; it's industrial. It reflects a lot of diversity in the artwork that's in Palo Alto. The up and coming municipal projects. The first thing you'll find is there are nine projects here. They are located all over Palo Alto. The artwork is actually quite evenly distributed. I was able to participate in one of the selection processes for one of the garages. Through that participation, I got a glimpse of how the Staff works. There's a lot of diligence that got into research and preparation and coordination for finding the potential artists. We interviewed them; we got to know their work. We had local business input. We had a lot of different participants in deciding the selection of the artwork. From the artists, if you look at their artwork, you'll notice there's quite a bit diversity in the material, the style, the methodology, and their influence. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 5 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 There's no one look, but the one consistent thing you'll find in their work is that their work is quite thoughtful. There work product is actually quite fine. Those are, I think, the standards that govern the theme in their selection. Chair Migdal: I want to jump back to one item in the event some of you have questions in talking about the bridge and underpass. University Avenue, we have spent a lot of time thinking about that, and Staff has spent a lot of time thinking about it. I personally have done some digging around on it. It is a very challenging space. We've decided as a Commission to not invest more time in that. In the event Public Works decides to or something happens where there's going to be some refurbishment for the underpass, then I'd say let's take it up again. Doing it on our own based on what we've done so far—we can discuss this further if you like—it's not something we're going to be taking on other than just the (crosstalk). Mayor Scharff: I would like to know why. Chair Migdal: There are a few reasons. One is electrical. Two is the condition of the walls. We had a collaboration with—was it the MFA program at Stanford? We had a proposed—we invested about $30,000, I think, doing some prototyping. What we got back was something that was really challenging to build. We've looked at—anything electrical is a mess— recoating the walls. Re-muraling would be a good idea. In the same challenge we had with the underpass on California Avenue, you have seepage. You don't have a surface that you can really deal with. The spaces are narrow and not well lit. If you had a mural, you're not going to see it that well. I personally looked into doing something where we could put in panels that you'd put against the wall, and then you'd cover them with a decal. There are a bunch of different reasons that are not that interesting. That's also not a practical solution. Ben Miyaji, Public Art Commission, Vice Chair: Good evening. I'm talking about public art. As was mentioned, The Artwork Forge is out on the Plaza. For $1, you get your own unique piece of art. I urge you to go ahead and do that. Make sure you have four quarters. The first project that's on the left part of the scree is the Blue Trees project by Konstantin Dimopolous. That's coming to the Plaza in May 2018. In the words of the artist, the color and the tree come together to transform and affect each other. The color changes in the tree into something surreal, something out of this world. While the tree, rooted in this earth, reflects what we may lose. That'll be coming in May 2018. The color of the tree is just striking. This blue is just a striking color. In 2019, the project to be determined is Megan Geckler … FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 6 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 Chair Migdal: Ben, could you explain the process of the pigment that he uses. We're not actually using paint on the … Mr. Miyaji: I think I'm going to have to defer to Staff on that. Elise DeMarzo, Public Art Program Director: It is a nontoxic pigment that the artist has utilized at sites all around the world. It has, of course, been signed off by all the City Staff in Urban Forestry, so it will not harm the trees in any manner. We're partnering with Canopy on this particular project as well. Chair Migdal: One other thing that's very cool similar to the piece that's on Embarcadero Road—I'm blanking. What's the artist's name from D.C.? It's all our beautiful twigs. Ms. DeMarzo: Patrick Dougherty. Chair Migdal: Patrick Dougherty. A number of us and the people in the community all collaborated in putting it together. This will be a community collaboration, where people will be involved in pigmenting the branches. Mayor Scharff: Where's it going to be? Chair Migdal: It's the stand of trees right in front of City Hall. Vice Mayor Kniss: Does it wash off? Mr. Miyaji: Yes. Council Member Holman: I had a question on that one. I love the image of it here. My question is—I know you said it's signed off by the Urban Forestry Department. The material, whatever is being put on here, breathes? Ms. DeMarzo: Yes, it does. Council Member Holman: It breathes? How does—what is it? Ms. DeMarzo: It's not a paint; it is a pigment that essentially he's had created specifically for this project. We've had storm water sign off on it. Essentially, it's a secret sauce that we've gotten to glimpse, but we cannot distribute. Council Member Holman: I want to use it at home. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 7 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 Chair Migdal: I already asked to do the trees in Crescent Park, and I was refused. James Keene, City Manager: I think we could have our own blue man, blue woman group up there. Mr. Miyaji: Megan Geckler in 2019 will have a project coming forward. This is an example of what she does. A million things to make your head spin, that's in Sydney, Australia. That consists of tape, wood, paint, and hardware. She does these beautiful, flowing projects. What we're looking for possibly in front of City Hall is something coming from the top of the building, flowing down the side of the building into the Plaza. 2019, look forward to that. Mayor Scharff: It's in Sydney right now? Mr. Miyaji: Yes. She has a website. I'm not sure if this project is still up or not. A lot of her stuff is temporary. Now, we get into the accession, the Public Art Master Plan. We thank you for your support of the Master Plan. It has a section on deaccession which has been turned into policy. Two pieces were voted for deaccession last month. There are a number of conditions that can be applied when an artwork is considered for deaccession. Remember, disliking a piece is not a condition for deaccession. The first project is the one on the right of the screen. That's Digital DNA by Adriana Varella and Nilton Maltz. It's in Lytton Plaza. There are a number of conditions. One of the one's I'll mention is the artwork requires excessive maintenance and has faults in the materials and repair is impractical or infeasible. The next project, the one on the left, is Go Mama by Marta Thoma. It's on California Avenue. One of the problems with that piece is the structural condition may pose a threat to public safety in that people hang off that rear leg that's up in the air. It only has one point of joining into the stand itself. In the past, this was actually surrounded by shrubs and stuff, so it had some protection. Now that all that's gone and it's bare really, people especially during the farmers market will come and sit around that piece and have something to eat. You'll see kids hanging off that leg. It's a real safety problem. The other piece—the piece that's in the middle—is California Native on California Avenue by Sue Steinman. We will be voting on that next month for deaccession. Murals. Murals are a … Vice Mayor Kniss: May I ask one about … Mr. Miyaji: Sure. Vice Mayor Kniss: I have some concern about the running man or whatever that name is. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 8 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 Mr. Miyaji: Go Mama. Vice Mayor Kniss: I think that's a very popular one. I have a feeling we'll hear from the public about it. Mr. Miyaji: Yes. Chair Migdal: We have extensively … Vice Mayor Kniss: Just saying, as we say. Chair Migdal: I would add that there's—it's a really good sign—a really spirited debate, those that like and those that dislike the pieces. The decision to deaccession the pieces had nothing to do with—as Ben pointed out—the subject "I like this" or "I don't like it." It's a public safety concern. I personally have seen kids hanging on it. The last thing we want is a lawsuit because a little kid gets hurt, and the thing falls on him, and it weighs hundreds of pounds. Vice Mayor Kniss: It makes sense. It may not to the public. Mayor Scharff: Cory and then Lydia. Council Member Wolbach: This is definitely one of the areas where I'm glad we're pausing for a second to talk about this topic because it's gotten a lot of attention. The press and the public, a lot of us are thinking and talking about it. In front of the egg, I noticed during the tree lighting ceremony on Lytton Plaza that the Mayor Master of Ceremonied (MC'd) last Friday there were people with "save the egg" signs, which I thought was very interesting. I understand that the cost of upkeep is significant. I understand that the safety issue is a concern with Go Mama. Personally, I'm not crazy about Go Mama, but I know a lot of people are. I happen to like the egg, but I think the point was well made that subjective or personal preference is not the reason for decommissioning these two items. I was hoping maybe we could talk about—if anyone, the Staff or Commission Members, could talk to us about what happens to these pieces. Are there other places they could go? Is there a property owner who might be interested in taking on the egg or might there be somebody who's interested in providing some donations in order to help defray the cost of maintenance. With the safety issue, are there other locations in the City where Go Mama might—we might be a little less worried about that liability? Chair Migdal: The process for deaccessioning started last August, when we voted to put it on the agenda. That came after the conservatorship report. My understanding is that we've looked at a couple of different locations in FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 9 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 the City, and we've had one—I think the artist started a Go Fund Me campaign. My recollection—I'm sorry? For Digital DNA. It topped at less than $1,000. The last repair bill was, I think, a multiple of that, $8,000 or something like that. It's a tricky thing to sort out. I would not recommend it if given the choice. That's why we voted where we landed, to invest more in this piece that's going to continue to have issue. Menlo College has expressed interest. It's now in the artist's court, and she has 120 days—90 days in order to find a new home for the piece. If at which point she doesn't find a home, then it's our responsibility to pay for moving it and finding it someplace else to go. No one wants to see art removed or destroyed. Ideally, we're going to find a home in the next couple of months or she will. It's not our call, but it's not an expensive thing. A crane is going to cost again thousands of dollars to move it and set it somewhere else. The same issues from a maintenance standpoint will be there. It's not the easiest piece to take for an outdoor location. Hopefully Menlo College will step up and they can take it. Council Member Wolbach: Any other insights into future homes for Go Mama? Ms. DeMarzo: The artist has already expressed that she plans to take it back. She's researching where Go Mama will go next. Rhyena Halpern, Community Services Assistant Director: If I could just add one thing to this. Deaccession is always a touchy subject. We look at public art as a construction project. Sometimes a building has to get torn down. It's not whether you like it or not. It's just about the building's life is over. These projects are very similar. It's not whether we like them or not. It's that, when you look at all the factors, we have made this recommendation and the Commission has supported for deaccession. We never just throw a piece out. We go through a lot of steps to try to take the most care that we possibly can with what will happen to the art next. Council Member Wolbach: Thank you. I really appreciate that. That's an important point for us all to keep in mind. I really do appreciate what Staff and the Commission are doing, working with the artists and looking for new homes. Both of these pieces do bring a lot of joy to people. If they can find a new home and each continue to bring delight to audiences, that will be very nice. Glad they're not just going in the bin. Thank you. Mr. Miyaji: If I could add onto what Rhy was talking about. A lot of communities are grappling now with deaccession. When I started in public art 25 years ago, there was really no thought of what happened to a piece when it tore down, got broken down, if the building got torn down or FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 10 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 whatever happened to it. Now, like Palo Alto we're grappling with what happens with these pieces. That's why this policy really needs to be in effect, so we can treat these pieces fairly. We can offer—we do have public comment. We have 90 days of public comment and all that so we can fairly deaccession a piece if it needs to come to that. Part of that is materials that over the years may just rot away if it's wood or something. Those are things that we need to think about as we go forward in our public art. Mayor Scharff: Lydia. Council Member Kou: My question has been answered. Mainly it was about where does the art go after deaccession. Council Member Wolbach asked it. It's interesting. The art is actually—it actually belongs to the designer, the artist. It's just loaned to the City. Is that what it is? Ms. DeMarzo: No. These are projects that were commissioned by the artist for the City. The City owns the artwork. The copyright always remains with the artist. In the case of deaccession, it is best practice to give the artist the first right to make arrangements for the artwork for 90 days. If there is some value to the artwork, usually it's sourced through auction records or something similar. The City would give the artist the first right to purchase it back. In the example of Digital DNA, for instance, that is the only public artwork that that artist has. There is no commercial value to it, so we're offering it back to the artist at her cost of removal. Council Member Kou: Thank you. Ms. DeMarzo: You're welcome. Mayor Scharff: Karen. Council Member Holman: Elise and I and a member of the public had some email communication about the deaccession. How do members of the public find out? Is there something they can sign up for in case there's a deaccession occasion? How do members of the public find out about deaccession? Ms. DeMarzo: Signing up for our e-news would be an excellent way to do that. We blast it out through social media, through our e-news, every platform we can find. Council Member Holman: That's the Art Center e-news? Ms. DeMarzo: That would be the public art program e-news. Council Member Holman: Thank you. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 11 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 Mayor Scharff: You guys want to continue? Chair Migdal: We're doing murals now. You want to carry on? Commissioner Miyaji: We're talking about murals now. You see up here the Greg Brown piece that, I believe, is on the post office that's just down the street. The Public Art Commission and Staff and community has a strong desire for more murals. With that, we need to finalize a mural policy. One example here in the City is the Greg Brown murals. The one example we have here is The Fishing Boy. Of these murals, high resolution pictures have been taken. We've got those stored away. If something happens to these murals, we can product them in some way. Challenges with murals is private ownership, desire to animate spaces, and preservation versus deaccession. That's part of the problem with murals. You'll notice as you travel around there are a lot of murals that go up in different communities. The (inaudible) fresco conservation is on the Roth Building. This artist worked with Diego Rivera on many projects, his work is also in the Coit Tower in San Francisco and the former Palo Alto Medical Foundation building. It depicts the modern advances in medical practices juxtaposed with more primitive medical practices in black and white. These important treasures will need approximately $100,000 to restore them. Staff is exploring grant opportunities. These are really nice frescoes. Frescoes are a lot different. The way they're made is that the pigment is actually blended into the cement as they're made. That's why they last a long time. These really need to be restored. This is a great piece in Palo Alto. Council Member Holman: Before you leave those, those are modern medical practices and techniques as of 1932. If somebody hasn't gone by and looked, there are more frescoes including behind the fence currently and on the front of the building as well. It's pretty remarkable. Council Member Kou: Have pictures been taken of these as well? Your high resolution pictures. Ms. DeMarzo: Yes. Mr. Miyaji: This is a graph of all the projects triggered in public art and private development in Palo Alto. There's quite a lot of projects going on. Now, the priorities for the coming year. Complete murals policy and private percent for art amendments. Focus on increasing awareness of the collection through mobile applications. Increase Staff capacity for project management and support for municipal projects. As more and more projects come online, we have two Staff people. We need to get them more help to manage all these projects that are coming online. Commissioners will act as active ambassadors for the program. Expanding locations and FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 12 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 scope of temporary art installations and, where possible, incorporate interactive light and sound. Those are our goals for the coming year, priorities for the coming year. Questions? Vice Mayor Kniss: I have a question. Going back to the murals. Some of the first murals I can remember in Palo Alto were Greg Brown's. They're so unique. Now, that Greg has died, what is the plan for keeping these fresh? The paint does peel and so forth. What is the plan for long-term safekeeping of Greg's work? Ms. DeMarzo: In the field of public art, murals can be restored. Eventually through enough restorations, you really lose the artist's hand. That was part of the idea behind making sure we had high res documentation of these murals now at this moment in time. We cannot guarantee the future of those murals. Generally in public art, murals are not considered forever. They're considered long-term, temporary. Many of them are actually on private property. Again, that's another reason having a murals policy, where there's an understanding and an agreement on the maintenance and the longevity of those pieces, could help us navigate that. At some point, those murals may cease to exist in their current state. Vice Mayor Kniss: You talked about putting a policy together as it dealt with murals. I don't know what our policy is now. If somebody wants to put a mural on the side of their building Downtown, do we have a policy on that? Ms. DeMarzo: Not currently. With discussions in the last retreat with the Commission, there is very much a desire to have more murals throughout the City. This is a challenge that we have in what that looks like, whether the Commission is reviewing murals on private property. If it's funded by a private property owner and/or if there is something that is jointly commissioned, what is the agreement for the maintenance and longevity of that mural if the building changes hands and someone decides they want to paint over it? That's exactly the reason why we would like to have a policy in place so that we can move forward with murals. Ms. Halpern: We do have a draft policy, and we're working with the Attorney's Office on that. I do recall, Council Member Kniss, last year when we did this you talking about the Greg Brown murals and your love of the whimsy of them and what the whimsy gives the community visually to have that. You suggested that, if these murals end up ending their life in the physical realm, we do more. That is precisely our plan. We first need to do the policy so we can move forward. This question does come up quite a bit. People want to paint the sides of their buildings. There are opportunities to do things all over; it's not just on buildings. We do see this as a growth area FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 13 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 over the next few years. We also really do like—we'd like to do projection of past murals by doing these high-quality photographic installations of them, where we can exhibit them sometime. That will keep them but just in a different form. Vice Mayor Kniss: I was reminded—I was in Boston this weekend. If any of you have driven toward the airport in Boston, there's a famous Corita painting that's on a gas tank, I think. It's supported now by the City. It's been there for several years. It has become such a landmark that there was an outcry when they talked about changing it in some way. Sometimes that kind of thing becomes a real landmark for a particular area. The city finally took it over to keep it painted. It's probably an expensive, I'm guessing, project. Thanks. Mayor Scharff: Tom. Council Member DuBois: First of all, thank you all for volunteering your time. It's really appreciated. I hope you guys are doing this; I assume you are. I would say make sure you look for opportunities throughout Palo Alto, not just Downtown or Cal. Ave, the Piazza shopping place, Midtown retail district, Edgewood Plaza, even San Antonio Road. It'd be great to see things spread out throughout the City. I think it would be interesting when you guys come back or maybe even before then to get a breakdown on the percent for art and understand where that money is going, how much is in the fund. It'd be nice to get a breakdown of what's being spent on long- term installations versus short-term or residencies or staffing, those kinds of things, almost a measure of how much overhead there is in this fund. Can we use some of that percent for art for preservation of existing art like the murals? We can't. It has to be for new installations? Ms. Halpern: It's actually illegal to do that. Council Member DuBois: When it comes to murals, I'd be careful that we distinguish between art and commercial signage. We have to keep an eye on that. The last thing, I see your priorities here. You say when possible incorporate light and sound. I would just caution a little bit on that one. We get people coming to us talking about light pollution, noise pollution all the time. Just be sensitive to that. I know the Visa Building won an award, but it's also right next to multifamily housing. I would just think about light and sound and where it's appropriate. Thank you, guys. Mayor Scharff: Karen. Council Member Holman: Thank you. Thank you for all you do. I think most of you at least know that it's one of my favorite, favorite subjects. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 14 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 Because nobody else will probably comment on it, love the logo. Nice job, very nice job with that. A few things. The benches in front of Keene's Shoes that were in your slides, huge success. It so happens—I know retailers can move or change or whatever—that it's so perfect in front of that store because of what they do inside. It's ideal. Did you say those are permanent? Ms. DeMarzo: Yes, they will become permanent. Council Member Holman: Maybe the Keen shoe operator might like to know that. The last time I was in there, they weren't clear that it was going to be permanent. They're great; they're wonderful. I want to reiterate what Council Member DuBois was saying about the Visa Building. I'd raise concerns about light impacts from that project. Understand it's award winning, but the people who are judging it for its creativity are not living next to it. That's a big, big difference. It goes in spurts sometimes. We get a lot of comments and complaints even about the light pollution from that. Even on some occasions that it appears it's advertising as opposed to informational. That's some of the feedback that we get. Considering context. The owls at Mitchell Park Library has been my favorite, favorite, favorite pieces. I'd ask that you all also keep in mind, though, the surroundings there and a very different context. When I go up to those owls, I don't want to see these lines from the pavement reflecting up on the owls. It's such beautiful, sleek surfaces that the owls are made of. They're gorgeous; they're beautiful; they're so cool. Then, you have these lines form the pavement that are coming through. If it's possible to consider what the ultimate placement's going to be and what could be reflecting or impacting those images because they're fabulous. Something that isn't shown here that is also some of my favorite and a community favorite too is the lighted and changing light art pieces at the Rinconada Library and the Art Center. What a homerun those are. They're really, really fantastic. Chair Migdal: Do you get complaints about light pollution for those? Those, I think, are pretty subtle, and there's nothing directly around them, but there are houses across the street on Newell. Council Member Holman: No because the light is so subtle and because there isn't anything directly adjacent to them. It's pretty subtle. It doesn't travel offsite like the Visa Building does. No, only complimentary on that. I have shared interest with Vice Mayor Kniss on this. When the Greg Brown murals came up before for discussion, we had a brief conversation. I look forward to actually having a longer conversation about potentially landmarking the Greg Brown murals. More than any murals in this town, they're so identified with our Downtown since that's where all of them are. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 15 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 There won't be any more. His personality comes through so clearly in those murals. They're cherished in this community. I know there can be some complexity to doing that, but we did protect and preserve the one on the post office. We don't know who's going to end up owning that, but that is a protected mural of Greg Brown. Code: ART, again congratulations, hats off, terrific. My only disappointment is that it isn't permanent. Understood it was going to be temporary, but what a great success that was. Thank you, I really appreciate—I've talked for years about enlivening our alleys, so I look for a permanent way to be able to do that on some of our alleys. Something else I've talked about for a long time, that I'm still looking forward to, is finding a way to incorporate more functional art, especially having to do with wayfinding. Barron Park with the donkeys, there's a really great opportunity with the paths and the tracks. There are so many people that don't even know the donkeys exist back there, that Bol Park exists, and the history of that. I think there's a great way to do some three-dimensional donkeys that do wayfinding, that functioning as wayfinding elements for that area in particular. We could brainstorm about other things. You all are good about doing that on your own. Thank you for what you do. I really appreciate it and look forward to the next projects and our next meeting together. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Eric. Council Member Filseth: Thanks very much. I want to chime in on that. Thank you very much for doing this. Thank you very much for doing what you do. Our town is better for it. I wanted to ask a follow-on question about the Greg Brown murals. When we were here last year, do I remember right that there might be some Greg Brown art in other places in Palo Alto? Chair Migdal: There's a few. There's one on Forest near Hale. Some are private residence. Is that what you mean? Council Member Filseth: Or in other towns. Chair Migdal: Other towns. Ms. Halpern: Private residences (inaudible). Council Member Filseth: Does it ever become available? Listening to the discussion of Council Member DuBois. Ms. Halpern: We could find out for you Council Member Filseth and get back to you. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 16 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 Council Member Filseth: If it ever becomes available and we have funds available for acquisition of art, maybe it's something we'd consider. Thanks. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Kou. Council Member Kou: I just want to add that the Greg Brown murals are very, very—are treasures. I agree with Vice Mayor Kniss as well as Councilwoman Holman that if there's anyway to preserve them further, it'd be great. It's relatable. There's that lady who's smelling a rose and watering it on Bryant. I almost went and smelled the flower too because it was just so real. I hope that there are ways you can find in terms of preserving it. I just wanted to ask also in terms of the art is there every an opportunity to involve the youth in it. Have you considered involving the youth, especially through Project Safety Net or something like that so that they're included in it and develop their artist side? Ms. DeMarzo: That's a great question. Through our public art master planning process, the consultants met with various groups in different avenues to engage youth in artmaking. They determined that that really isn't a focus of the public art program itself. The public art program is really looking at this overarching, different quality of artwork and that there were substantial other opportunities for engaging youth in artwork. That being said, there are opportunities, if the site seems appropriate, to have an artist- led engagement to involve youth in the project, but not necessarily youth- led artwork. If that makes sense. Council Member Kou: Thank you. Mr. Miyaji: As part of our public art Master Plan steering committee, we had two high school students on our committee. They provided really good input into the Plan. Council Member Kou: I think that's what I'm also looking for, to involve them a little bit. I just want to say thank you very much for your work. I think there's a lot of great art in there. I look forward to more of them. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: Also on the Greg Brown murals, I was wondering. On our City website, are the images available for each of them? Can people look on our website and see all the images for the Greg Brown murals? FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 17 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 Ms. DeMarzo: On the public art website all of the murals should be available there. All of the items in the collection are available on the database, cityofpaloalto.org/publicart. There's a tab for the collection. Council Member Wolbach: I missed that. Thank you for pointing that out. I'll take another look. Ms. Halpern: The whole, entire collection including the Greg Brown murals. Portable artworks too. Council Member Wolbach: That's great. Does that include—here's the question. Does that include the Greg Brown murals which are on private property? Something that might be worth pursuing—obviously not giving direction tonight—might be worth doing unless it's already been done is having a map of Palo Alto with all the Greg Brown murals that are both—all of the public art and I'd say even the privately owned Greg Brown murals so people could do a walking or bike tour. As they're exploring the City, they could check those out. Sometimes people say, "I've lived here for 20 years," or "I've lived here 40 years. I just saw another Greg Brown on the side of a building. I had never really noticed it before." It's something fun we might think about. Mayor Scharff: Vice Mayor Kniss. Vice Mayor Kniss: Poor Greg. We really are beating him into the ground tonight. During the centennial, Greg did the hats through the centuries picture. Many, many copies were made of that. Do you know where the original is? Have I asked you that before? Ms. Halpern: Remember, we talked about it. Yes, and we got the answer. We'll get back to you on that because we did find the answer to that. Vice Mayor Kniss: Did it exist still, I hope? Ms. Halpern: I recall it did. We'll get back to you on that, if that's all right. Vice Mayor Kniss: My recollection is it was hats through each decade. Many people had a print of it. I did once upon a time, and I cannot remember where it is anymore. That was lots of fun if we could ever locate—probably in somebody's living room. Mayor Scharff: I just wanted to say thank you as well and also say our Public Art Program has come a really long way since I joined the Council in 2010. It's something that's really satisfying to me, to see how far along it's come. You guys are really doing a great job. You're getting the mix of FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 18 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 temporary and permanent right. It's really heartening to see all these policies and thinking about it. In 2010, we didn't have any of that. I remember how it was. We didn't even have percent for art for private projects; it was just public projects. It's huge where you've come. I actually think it's great. On the Visa Building, I haven't heard any complaints. I don't recall getting any emails. That doesn't mean we didn't get any. I usually focus on that stuff. I actually don't think we have any, but it would be a good thing to look and see if there's any of the public. Ms. Halpern: We have public email too, and we have not received email complaints. We do get quite a bit of community input through our public art Commission email. Mayor Scharff: I'm watching how much public input I'm getting on the deaccession of the egg. No one seems to really care about Go Mama. I'm getting lots of comment on the deaccession. I'm thinking I get nothing like that on the Visa Building. In fact, a lot of people have told me on Cal. Ave., because my office is down there, how much they like it and how wonderful it looks and all of that. I do think it's important to be sensitive to noise issues especially and light issues at times. On the other hand, that's a real positive piece for the City. It's something you guys can be proud of. Council Member Holman: Can I just follow up to that? I can assure—I don't think Council Member DuBois would have made it up. I certainly have gotten emails complaining about the Visa Building. Mayor Scharff: You may have gotten them directly to you. That's why I asked them to check. I don't recall getting any, and I don't recall seeing any on the public stuff. Whereas, when it comes to the egg and all of that—two or three people might be complaining. It's possible. I don't know because I haven't gotten those emails. I have heard a lot of people on Cal. Ave. talk about how nice it is and what a great thing it is. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be sensitive to noise and light. I think we should be. I'm just saying I'm watching the egg issue and seeing how many emails we're getting. Frankly, when we had the whole fountain—a lot of you weren't on the Council—there was huge public input on the fountain. That rose to the level of we really noticed what was going on. That's really all I'm trying to say. Council Member Tanaka, you had a few words you wanted to say. Council Member Tanaka: Just briefly. I wanted to thank the Commission for your work. You guys have been doing a great job, and I really appreciate it. Ms. Gordon: Mayor Scharff, thank you for announcing all of us. I just wanted to point out the Staff that's here. I had a Council Member ask me FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 19 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 who is the Staff behind all this. They're sitting right here. I wanted to maybe have a shout-out to them as well. Mayor Scharff: That's great. Our Staff does great work. It's Rhy Halpern, right? And Elise DeMarzo. Nadya, you want to raise your hand? Ms. Halpern: We also have another hourly worker named Brittany Amante, who's also very wonderful. We're very lucky. Mayor Scharff: Thank you to all and everyone for what you do. We really do appreciate it. Why don't we take a 3-minute break while everyone gets the chairs fixed? Council took a break from 6:06 P.M. to 6:10 P.M. Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions Mayor Scharff: … Item, Item Number 14, consideration of authorizing the Mayor to sign a letter of support for the Dumbarton rail link. We had already taken a position on the Dumbarton rail link and sent a letter to Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) supporting that. On that basis, I'd already signed the letter, frankly. Unless you want to take that issue up and have me retract it in some way, there's really no point in going forward on that item. I'm going to make a Motion that we delete Item Number 14. James Keene, City Manager: That would be appropriate. Mayor Scharff: That would take a second. Council Member Wolbach: Second. Vice Mayor Kniss: So moved. MOTION: Mayor Scharff moved, seconded by Council Member Wolbach to remove Agenda Item Number 14- Consideration of Authorizing the Mayor to Sign a Letter of Support for the Dumbarton Rail Link … from the Agenda. Mayor Scharff: If we could just vote on the board. Council Member Holman: Before we vote, I want to know are we going to get to see a copy of it. Mr. Keene: Yes, we will. Mayor Scharff: I assume so. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 20 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 Council Member Holman: It's not loaded on the website or anything. Mr. Keene: We will do that. We put this on very late, at the very last minute just in case we couldn't get it. It's just been over the weekend, so we'll get it to the Council. Mayor Scharff: If we could vote on the board. That passes unanimously with Council Member Fine not here, but Council Member Holman voting in that seat. MOTION PASSED: 8-0 Fine absent City Manager Comments Mayor Scharff: City Manager Comments. James Keene, City Manager: Thank you, Mr. Mayor and members of Council. I did want to announce or restate that this Saturday, December 9, Lucile Packard Children's Hospital is scheduled to open the first phase of their hospital expansion. They've had a series of open houses and ribbon cuttings and that sort of thing. They'll be receiving the first new patient at their new facility beginning this weekend. The project includes a new main building and adds approximately 521,000 square feet to the adjacent, existing hospital. Key features include state of the art operating suites, additional single patient rooms, more spaces for families to be with their child during treatment and recovery, 3 1/2 acres of outdoor areas and healing gardens, and flexible floor space to adapt to new technologies and streamline services. More phases will be open in coming months through May 2018. The hospital project, as you know, was entitled as part of the Stanford University Medical Center Development Agreement, and many City departments and literally dozens of City Staff past and present have worked on negotiating and implementing the Development Agreement and on review and inspections of the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital expansion project. For the Council and the community, I'd like to particularly recognize Staff of the Planning Department, Fire, Public Works, Utilities, City Attorney's Office, and Development Services. Kudos to all on this longtime coming, multiyear project. Just a reminder related to development of Council Priorities 2018. We are asking our community to weigh in on what priorities they would like to see the Palo Alto City Council consider for focus in 2018. For members of the public, you can share your thoughts on Open City Hall, where your feedback is used to help discuss and define what priorities the City Council will consider for accomplishment next year. A Council Priority, by Council policy, is generally defined as a topic that will receive particular, unusual, and significant attention during the year. There is a goal of adopting not more than four to five Priorities each year and generally would have a 3-year FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 21 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 time limit. Just as a reminder, the 2017 Priorities cover the five areas of transportation, infrastructure, Healthy City Healthy Community, budget and finance, and housing. All of our community feedback will be incorporated into the information the City Council considers at its Retreat in early 2018. More information is available on the home page of the City's website. Two events this week from the Library Department. Tomorrow, Tuesday, December 5, at 12:30 p.m. in the Mitchell Park Library, our community's invited to attend a ceremony accepting a donation of Korean language books. The South Korean consular plans to attend the ceremony. The donation was made possible by the Korean Language and Culture Foundation and the Campaign Center of the Books Applying for Overseas Koreans. The donated adult books will be added to the Mitchell Park Library's Korean collection and the children's books will be added to collections at Children's and the Mitchell Park Library. Secondly, in the California Listens digital stories premier program will be occurring Saturday, December 9, at 6:30 p.m. at the Rinconada Library here in Palo Alto. These stories were recorded back in June during the California Listens workshop, funded by a California State Library grant. We're looking forward to sharing them with our community. Many of the storytellers will be on hand to share their stories and their experience in participating in the workshop. Ultimately, these digital stories will be added to our Library's collection and made available through the website. All are invited. That is this coming Saturday, December 9, at 6:30 p.m. again at Rinconada Library. Lastly, always a popular event. The Senior New Year's Brunch theme will be Breakfast at Mitchell's and will be held at the Mitchell Park Community Center on Friday, December 29, from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Tickets are now on sale at Cubberley, Lucy Stern and Mitchell Park Community Center as well as at Avenidas Senior Center for $10 each, which includes a full breakfast buffet, champagne and sparkling cider toast, and live music by the Tenth Avenue Band. Space is limited so please plan on purchasing your tickets by December 22. A limited number of tickets will be available for sale at the door. That's all I have to report. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Oral Communications Mayor Scharff: Next, Oral Communications. We have a number of speakers. Our first speaker is Terry Holzemer, to be followed by Sea Reddy. Terry Holzemer: Thank you, Council Members, for letting me come and speak tonight. I'd like to talk about an issue that will come in front of you next week. It's part of your Consent Calendar. It's about the addition of 40 additional spaces in the Evergreen Park Residential Parking Permit Program. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 22 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 I'd like to see if this could be removed from the Consent Calendar so a discussion can be made through the Council. I think certain questions need to be asked by this Council. First of all, why was there not any significant public outreach or a meeting of the neighborhood, including my neighborhood, about this change, this addition? I'm not aware of any public outreach that was done on this particular issue. The second is I'd like to know why there was no other possible mitigations that were considered in this process. Why wasn't there any other proposals besides adding additional commercial spaces? Why was this needed? This is something that's going to come before you next week. I hope you'll take a close look at it. Also on tonight's Consent Calendar, really quickly, I'd like to mention that the Rail Committee Guidelines are a concern to me. One of the things that, I think, I've learned throughout all the grade crossing meetings is there seems to be a great desire by a vast majority of Palo Altans for the tunnel and trenching option. I hope that won't be removed as the number one thrust of this Committee. I think that clearly is one of the things that I've going through the public outreach meetings. Lastly, really quickly, I would like to mention I live in the California Avenue neighborhood. I'm very close to the Visa Building; it's only a block from my house. I'm more disturbed by the brightness than I am about the scenes that are shown. It is very bright and disturbing. Sometimes when you're driving past the building, all of a sudden the light will shift and change, and it'll be a distraction. Your eyes suddenly look up or move away or look at the building. That could be a danger for the future. I hope that's looked at because I think there is an issue there. Thank you. Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you. Sea Reddy. If you look up behind me here, you'll see the order in which people are going to speak. After Sea will be Jeannine Marston. Sea Reddy: Good evening, the Mayor and the Vice Mayor and the City Council and citizens of Palo Alto, 17th and 18th Districts, and all of California. I would like for us to remember Pearl Harbor on December 7. Thirty-four hundred innocent people were preempted by a horrible attack from a nation that we know. We'll reconcile with the families are still hurting. Let's not forget the sacrifices that were made. I was sitting in India, a very secure region of Indian. I remember the horror. I have visited Pearl Harbor. Nobody should ever forget the sacrifices the country made, the nation made for horrible things that happened to Europe and rest of the world. Second thing, changing the subject, I want to congratulate the City and the Edgewood Shopping Center Plaza for having a beautiful store finally. It looks gorgeous. Please visit it. I hope something can happen to College Terrace as well. It's just a beautiful setting. You go in the morning. A great Starbuck with the right—I'm an ergonomic industrial engineer—beautiful FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 23 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 ergonomic tables and all that. Much better than anywhere else. It's just a joy to go in the morning and have coffee there. I also want to tell you, but I don't want you to laugh at me of things that I'm going to say. It's not about winning. It's not always about winning. It's always about making ideas come true, making the statements. I am planning to, with your support, announce candidacy for the primary for California U.S. Senate under Senator Diane Feinstein primary next year, June 5. I will need a lot of your support. I'm not asking for donations. It's self-funded. It'll be a very e-campaign. I've already given 18,000 tweets so people know my positions. Some of them are funny; some of them are—but never saying anything negative about Palo Alto. I love Palo Alto. I love Newport Beach. I love California. I love Texas. It's going to be an inclusive, integrity-based, innovative California—I'm looking for north, south working together, not divided. I hope I can come to you and get your help. I thank David Price, The Daily Post, for allowing me to give a $48 ad that I have put in for the last six, seven—two or three years. The reason I'm doing it is because Joe Simitian is going to be the County Supervisor until 2024. I'm not sure I'll live that long. I need to do something to present my ideas. Thank you all. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Jeannine Marston to be followed by Peggy McKee. Jeannine Marston: Good evening, Mayor Scharff, Vice Mayor Kniss, Honorable Council Members. My name is Jeannine Marston. I've been a Castilleja teacher and a Palo Alto resident for 4 decades. Before I begin my remarks, I'd like to state that Castilleja's leadership is in talk with neighbors to possibly suspend comments at every session at City Council. We know this, but our small group had been preparing to talk since September. With your permission, we'd just like to go ahead and finish this evening. Castilleja badly needs to modernize its campus. The classroom where I teach has remained essentially the same for 40 years. Leaky roofs, difficult stairs, and substandard ventilation are just a few of the problems the students and faculty encounter every day. Right now, I'm sitting on the upper school experience committee. We've identified important ways we must widen the curriculum and, thus, our numbers to meet the instructional needs of young women in this rapidly changing, technological world. It's really opportunity, access, and better preparation that propels our request for a moderate enrollment increase. As an old Palo Alto resident myself, I empathize with our Castilleja neighbors. Frankly, my husband and I were at times annoyed during the simultaneous five construction on Waverley Street. Now that they're almost finished, we admire the results. We realize they've improved our neighborhood, and frankly they've added to our property values. I am completely convinced that the Castilleja project will do the same. I've been very dismayed by the tension that our plans have FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 24 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 engendered, but I'm not the least bit disheartened. I understand the passion of all of us who live here to get it right. I'm sure many of you as I remember the 4 long years that one newspaper called the war of the roses, the intense debate over whether to approve our now-treasured Gamble Garden Center. In conclusion, we at Casti have never seen anything quite like the sustained schoolwide effort to be a good neighbor and reduce traffic. It reminds me, by the way, of how we don't leave our taps running anymore. This pattern is now part of the school's DNA and is codified in our proposal. What I'm asking personally is to trust us in turn to get our plan right for Palo Alto. Thank you very much. Mayor Scharff: Peggy McKee to be followed by Dave Story. Peggy McKee: Good evening, Mayor Scharff, Vice Mayor Kniss, and Honorable Council Members. My name is Peggy McKee. I live at 2025 Cowper and have been a Palo Alto resident for 52 years. For 45 of them, I taught history at Castilleja. No one knows Castilleja's history and its mission better than I do. First, I second Jeannine's comments about Castilleja's need to modernize its plant. I support the CUP's expansion. I appreciate that the neighbors do not not support either Castilleja or women's education. Perhaps some of them think as I do that Castilleja is one of the crown jewels of Palo Alto. For more than a century, Castilleja has offered state of the art, ahead of the curve, cutting-edge education for girls and young women. Encouraged by David Starr Jordan, our founder Mary Ishbel Lockey was committed to academic excellence, which commitment continues in the Kauffman era. I offer two arguments in favor of expansion. A larger school offers more girls and young women the opportunity to do their college preparation at a world-class institution. Given its mission to support diversity and inclusion, a larger Castilleja could and would enroll more students from traditionally underserved communities. A larger facility makes it possible for Castilleja to sustain a broad menu of curricular choices in foreign language, the humanities, and STEM. A smaller school requires limiting options, perhaps choosing between offering an elective in Russian history or AP computer programming. I conclude by referring to Castilleja as the crown jewel. Our City and community benefit from the myriad ways that Castilleja alumnae give back. They are making their mark in the Silicon Valley as engineers and venture capitalists. Seven Casti girls are doctors at PAMF. I know a particular Castilleja alum who participates in these meetings and in the discussions on commercial real estate development in this area. Thank you for attention. Yea for Castilleja. Mayor Scharff: Dave Story to be followed by Chuck Jagoda. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 25 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 Dave Story: Good evening, Council Members. I'm coming to speak to you tonight about women's education and Castilleja and ask you to increase enrollment by increasing their usage permit. First, I'm not a Palo Alto resident at this time. Why am I here? Why did I stand here? Why did I write a speech? Why am I missing dinner? Why is my stomach grumbling? I'm actually coming to you as an employer in Palo Alto. While I lived in Palo Alto from 1987 to 1990, I most recently served as Vice President of Engineering for Tableau Software, a public company, that was founded here at Stanford and was initially based in Menlo Park. I was instrumental, as the anchor for the Palo Alto office or as the anchor for the Bay Area office, in moving our offices from Menlo Park to Palo Alto because I'm a huge fan of Palo Alto. In fact, I met my wife here in 1987, while we were both working at Hewlett-Packard at 1501 Page Mill Road. I was instrumental in selecting our new office location, which is a brand new building on California Avenue next to the former Keeble and Shuchat, on the site of the Edge nightclub, where I often went to shows when I was living here in earlier days, not so much anymore now that I have three kids. I'm passionate about Palo Alto. I shop and drive through Palo Alto. I'm an employer in Palo Alto, and I've grown tired of seeing yard signs, which I see as opposing women's education, which brings me to why I'm here, to argue for an increase in attendance at Castilleja. Not because my wife teaches there and has for the last 15 years, but because as an employer I could not find enough women qualified for the high-tech jobs that we've created at Tableau Software. I've participated in the Castilleja community for the past 15 years. I've coached and mentored students. I've presented and interacted with classes. I've judged projects. I've reviewed papers that were published in top tier journals. I've watched these girls progress over their time at Castilleja. I have learned at Castilleja that there's a special quality to a women's only education, one that co-ed schools don't provide. I have three boys unfortunately for me having a wife at Castilleja. When I compare my boys' co-ed school experience to Castilleja, I see that at Castilleja the women get more leadership opportunities. Women fill all the roles on a STEM project, not just designers and implementers but also the leaders on those projects. These are exactly the kind of opportunities, learning and leading, that women need. The women with this experience are painfully scarce in technology. These are the women who should fill the jobs at Tableau Software and at the many other tech companies in Palo Alto. As City Council Members, I believe you have a responsibility to think beyond yard-sign slogans and a year of inconvenience of construction to the future of Palo Alto, including the future of your tax-paying businesses. Especially now as equal treatment of women is a national subject, I believe you have a responsibility to increase the opportunities for women to get leadership opportunities in school. I believe you have an under-appreciated asset for women's education here in Palo Alto. I urge you to increase enrollment and FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 26 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 provide more opportunities for women and for their employers to hire women. Thank you very much. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Chuck Jagoda to be followed by Ester Nigenda. Chuck Jagoda: Good evening, Mayor and City Council. I am glad for this opportunity to speak with you. I'm a member of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom's Housing Committee. We've so far met with Greg Tanaka and Tom DuBois. We're trying to meet with Liz Kniss and Cory Wolbach. Hopefully we'll eventually meet with all of you. We're concerned about the lack of housing. It wasn't encouraging a few weeks when all of the landlords spoke about how destructive rent control would be. You heard them and repeated what they said very well, but you missed one of the things a number them also said, which is you guys have the power to grant or not grant development applications. You need to stop granting the big, expensive developments and pass applications for low-cost housing. I'd like to remind you of a couple things. The French Revolution. I know you're thinking, "What the? That wouldn't happen." We didn't think Trump would be President either. The French Revolution, I hope and pray it doesn't happen again, but we're flirting with it. We didn't worry enough about Trump obviously. I don't think we worry enough about another French Revolution. I'd like to cite Palo Alto's ongoing war against the homeless. Some of the highlights of which are the parkification [sic] of San Francisquito Creek, the site/lie ordinance, the law against sleeping in parks, the years of avoiding putting bathrooms in parks, the usurpation of the commons at Cubberley which was a common resource of all people but then it became a resource for not homeless people, only white neighbors who live nearby; the attempts at banning people living in vehicles in 2011 and 2013; the resistance to building low-cost housing. If there hadn't been a City Council resistance to it, it would have happened, but it hasn't happened for 40 years. We're quite short on affordable housing. It's a crisis. We all admit that, but you guys are in a position of being able to do something about it. I hope you do. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Ester Nigenda to be followed by Rita Vrhel. Ester Nigenda: Ester Nigenda for Save Palo Alto's Groundwater. Good evening, Council Members and members of the public. On October 23, the City received from Todd Groundwater the preliminary results for its groundwater budget, which we have handed copies to the City Council. It can be found in the City's website. The sustainable yield estimate for Palo Alto is 2,500 acre feet of groundwater per year. It is also only 20 percent of Palo Alto's annual projected 2020 water use. Dewatering regulations are on City Council's Consent Calendar for next Monday, December 11. We believe FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 27 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 the amount of groundwater sustainably available should be considered when permitting dewatering for underground construction. It is not mentioned at all in the proposed ordinance. Based on 2017 dewatering results, in the worst case scenario without clear regulations and metrics we estimate that the proposed construction of the Marriott at San Antonio Road would possibly pump 2,909 acre feet. This is more than our groundwater budget for any given year. Other major projects that will likely require dewatering, such as our Public Safety Building, are also in the pipeline. Without careful accounting, we can easily overdraft our groundwater budget. The proposed ordinance does not address the groundwater budget, does not specifically address commercial dewatering, and moreover says that projects will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Special consideration might be useful for unusual projects, but it serves builders, residents, Staff, and any other interested parties best if we have clear guidelines with clear metrics that apply to everyone. Case-by-case basis for all or most projects should not be the default position. Thank you very much. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Rita Vrhel. Rita Vrhel: Good evening. Ester said it very lovely, a lot of what I was going to say. I did hand out to you the Palo Alto groundwater pumping for 2017. What you can on here is that there's a huge variation in the technique of the cutoff wall or the non-cutoff wall, but more just the amount of groundwater that was pumping. I'm particularly concerned about Item Number 5 which is the commercial building over on Park Avenue. If you look at the start date and the finish date, they went the entire distance. In fact, there was concern as to why were they pumping so long. When we contacted Public Works, we were actually told that they forgot to waterproof the basement. Even though they were on the first floor and they were building that, they actually forgot. They went back and waterproofed it, and then they could stop pumping exactly on the due date of October 31. One of the things that is missing from the 2018 recommended ordinance is best practices for construction. They are not described. They are not in the ordinance at all. We feel, based on this one example, that that is actually crucial. On November 30, Public Works had a meeting open to the public, construction individuals. Ester and I attended that. Sterling Banks, the man who does all of the inserting of the wells for dewatering, had an interesting idea of requiring four bore holes instead of one bore hole. He said this would give him more information on each site's topography and soil composition. He probably would be able to put in wells that were less deep than the standard 32 feet and, therefore, pump out less water. Phil took notes, and hopefully these will be put into the recommendations that come before you on December 11. If they are not, I would urge you to pull this item off the Consent Calendar and allow Public Works to insert the concerns FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 28 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 made by the construction professionals and also to require use of cutoff walls for large commercial buildings and residential basements over 4,000 square feet. There is nothing—may I just finish? There's nothing in this about railroads, trenching, or the massive amount of dewatering that will occur if that option is pursued. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Minutes Approval 2. Approval of Action Minutes for the November 13, 2017 Council Meeting. Mayor Scharff: I need a Motion to approve the Minutes. Vice Mayor Kniss: So moved. Mayor Scharff: That's seconded by Council Member Filseth. MOTION: Vice Mayor Kniss moved, seconded by Council Member Filseth to approve the Action Minutes for the November 13, 2017 Council Meeting. Mayor Scharff: If we could vote on the board. That passes unanimously. MOTION PASSED: 8-0 Fine absent Consent Calendar Mayor Scharff: Now, we're on to the Consent Calendar. If I could have a Motion on the Consent Calendar. I'm going to let Jason Matloff speak first on the Consent Calendar then. Come on up, Mr. Matloff. You'll have 3 minutes. Jason Matloff, speaking regarding Agenda Item Number 9: Thank you very much. I'm a member of the north Old Palo Alto community. I wanted to just comment briefly about the consent for the Rail Committee Guiding Principles that will be amended and submitted for Consent. First of all, I wanted to thank you for the revision. I agree with the revision to include all options or, I guess, to not exclude above-ground options. It's great to consider everything, get all the data on the table including the viaduct and berm options. I would say contrary to a prior comment—by the way, I've attended two community meetings where I saw Councilwoman Holman last week. At one of them, there is strong interest in above-ground options. There's dozens and dozens of people showing up for these meetings and lots of interest in above-ground. The reason I came here tonight was to ask you to consider adding special consideration or even exclusion of things that will FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 29 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 destroy neighborhoods, specifically road underpass options that will through eminent domain, destroy neighborhoods. In the City's own reports, there are literally 100 homes at risk in certain of the proposals, specifically the road underpass, which will result in something like an Oregon Expressway or Embarcadero Road underpass at the four different intersections. I live at the Churchill intersection. These would destroy our neighborhoods. At a time when you, our City Council, and the citizens of Palo Alto are trying to foster growth in housing, destroying 100 homes is just not acceptable. I would ask that, while I approve and like all the other elements of the amended principles, you put in a new number to the amendment that includes consideration if not exclusion of anything that takes eminent domain of homes. For all the various reasons, you know taking homes will impact our community. Thank you very much. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Rita Vrhel. Rita Vrhel, speaking regarding several multiple Agenda Items: I'm doing the Consent Calendar. Mayor Scharff: Which item? Ms. Vrhel: I guess 6. Mayor Scharff: You can speak to all of them if you want. Ms. Vrhel: I'm curious as to why Item Number 6 is on the Consent Calendar. This is something that could go up to $800,000. We have Number 5 which is $800,000—Number 5 is $311,000. Number 3 is $136,000. I get over $1,246,000 that's being discussed on the Consent Calendar. I was under the impression that we had a budget. I'm also under the impression that we have a huge problem with not having enough money to fund our pension plans. I'm just curious as to why this amount of money is being discussed on the Consent Calendar. That's all. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Council Member Tanaka. Council Member Tanaka: I'd like to register a no vote on Number 3. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: I'd like to pull Item Number 9. Mayor Scharff: Do I have any seconds to that? Going once. Going twice. The Chair of the Committee is pulling it? FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 30 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 MOTION: Council Member Holman moved, seconded by Council Member Kou, third by Council Member DuBois to pull Agenda Item Number 9 - Adoption of an Addendum to the Rail Committee Charter to be heard on a date uncertain. Council Member DuBois: Yes, based on comments I've heard from the public since our meeting. Mayor Scharff: That item is pulled. Yes, Council Member DuBois pulled it. That item—what would you like to do? Would you like to hear it tonight or would like to … Mr. Keene: No, tonight's agenda is too busy for it. Next week is completely full too. The first meeting would be January 22 of the Council. Mayor Scharff: We'll do it to a date uncertain. Mr. City Manager, to a date uncertain? Mr. Keene: Yes. Mayor Scharff: Anything else on the Consent Calendar? Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: My understanding is we can ask a single question to City Manager. I'd ask a question about why … Mayor Scharff: I don't think there's any such rule, a single question rule. There's no such rule. Council Member Holman: It's just not have discussion, but we can ask a question for clarification. Mayor Scharff: I'm not aware of this rule, Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: We've done it in the past. Mayor Scharff: Can you point to somewhere in the rules we have it? Mr. Keene: It's not familiar, but … Mayor Scharff: Let's go on. That brings us to a vote on the Consent Calendar except Item Number 9, which has been pulled. We need a Motion. I'll move the Consent Calendar. Vice Mayor Kniss: Second. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 31 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 MOTION: Mayor Scharff moved, seconded by Vice Mayor Kniss to approve Agenda Item Numbers 3-8, 10. 3. Resolution 9725 Entitled, “Resolution of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Approving the Verified Emission Reduction Agreement (VER Agreement) With the Integrative Organization of Oaxaca Indigenous and Agricultural Communities to Purchase 17,000 Tons of CO2e for a Total Purchase Price of $136,000.” 4. Approval of an Agreement With Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board in the Amount of $83,838 for 2018 Caltrain Go Pass Program. 5. Finance Committee Recommendation That the City Council Approve a Second Allocation of FY2018/19 Human Services Resource Allocation Process (HSRAP) Funding in the Amount of $311,118. 6. Approval of the Purchase of Mobile and Portable Radios for the Police, Fire, Public Works, Utilities, and Community Services Departments in an Amount Not-to-Exceed $800,000. 7. Resolution 9726 Entitled, “Resolution of the council of the City of Palo Alto Amending and Restating the Administrative Penalty Schedule and Civil Penalty Schedules for Certain Violations of the Palo Alto Municipal Code and the California Vehicle Code.” 8. Adoption of an Ordinance Amending Section 2.040.160 (City Council Minutes) of the Palo Alto Municipal Code to Provide for Action Minutes and Video/Audio Recordings as the Official Record of Council Business, and Directing the Clerk to Prepare Sense Summaries of Council and Council Standing Committee Meetings for the use and Convenience of Council and the Public. 9. Adoption of an Addendum to the Rail Committee Charter. 10. Policy and Services Recommendation to Accept the Accuracy of Water Meter Billing Audit. Mayor Scharff: All in favor. Council Member Tanaka registered a no vote on Item Number 3. That was correct? If you'd like, you have 3 minutes to talk if you wish to. MOTION FOR AGENDA ITEM NUMBER 3 PASSED: 7-1 Tanaka no, Fine absent MOTION FOR AGENDA ITEM NUMBERS 4-8, 10 PASSED: 8-0 Fine absent FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 32 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 Council Member Tanaka: The idea of a carbon offset is a good idea because it's trying to make sure that we don't emit more greenhouse gas. I think that's generally a good concept. There are better ways of doing it than shipping it down to Mexico. We all know about the terrible forest fires we've had in Sonoma and Napa, our neighbors to the north. These are Californians who have lost their houses. A ton of trees have been burned; that will take a long time, and it'll be pretty expensive to restore. At the same time, our City's projected to run a yearly budget deficit. For those that are more interested, you're welcome to attend tomorrow's Finance meeting. It's not very appropriate for us to be shipping our dollars down to Mexico while at the same time our neighbors in the north, Californians, are really suffering up there. These kind of dollars could stay here in California, could help our fellow Californians to restore the forest that has been terribly burned. That's why I think this is not appropriate for us to be approving and for us to be shipping dollars out of California instead of helping our neighbors. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Action Items 11. PUBLIC HEARING / QUASI-JUDICIAL, 1451 Middlefield Road [17PLN- 00147]: Council Approval of: (1) Resolution 9727 Entitled, “Resolution of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Adopting the Mitigated Negative Declaration (MND), Mitigation Monitoring and Reporting Program (MMRP), and Rinconada Long Range Plan”; (2) a Record of Land Use Action (RLUA) for the Junior Museum and Zoo (JMZ) Architectural Review Application; (3) a Park Improvement Ordinance for Improvements to the JMZ Within the Rinconada Park Long Range Plan Area; (4) Amend the Fiscal Year 2018 Budget Appropriation Ordinance for the Capital Improvement Fund by Increasing Other Revenue by $270,124 and Increasing the JMZ Renovation Project (AC-18001) by $270,124; and add a Part-time Unbenefited 0.48 FTE Position Limit Dated Through September 30, 2020. Mayor Scharff: Now, that brings up to our first action item, Item Number 11. Do we have a Staff presentation? Rob de Geus, Deputy City Manager: Good evening, Council Members. Rob de Geus, Deputy City Manager. It's a real pleasure to be here to help present this exciting project to you this evening. It's been a labor of love for many people, some of which you'll see this evening, in particular a labor of love from our friends groups. The Friends of the Junior Museum and Zoo are a mighty friends group that we appreciate greatly. Also the Staff at the Junior Museum and Zoo that work there every day just do an outstanding FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 33 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 job. It's been many years, as we said, and we're finally here and ready to make it happen. I'm joined here with Kristen O'Kane—she's the Interim Director of Community Services—and also Assistant Director of Community Services Rhy Halpern, who oversees the Arts and Sciences Division. The agenda for today, we gave you a big packet and a lot to read. We do want to take a little bit of time with the presentation, do a brief background of the project, a summary of Council actions. We'll introduce the President of the Friends of the Junior Museum and Zoo, and then they'll go over the design of the new facility, also walk through the Rinconada Park Long Range Plan and the CEQA review of both projects. We'll talk about the project's next steps and then, of course, be back to Council for questions and action. Just by way of background, we have with the Friends of the Junior Museum and Zoo wanted to rebuild the Junior Museum and Zoo for well over a decade. In 2013, the Friends recommitted their fundraising to make this happen. In 2014, we approved the Letter of Intent for construction of the new Junior Museum and a plan to transition operations of the new Junior Museum to the Friends' nonprofit. In 2015, Council approved a change in the Letter of Intent to postpone discussions of the transition of operating the Junior Museum and Zoo with the Friends and have that discussion after the new facility is built. In 2016, Council reviewed the downsizing of the new Junior Museum and Zoo design to a one-story building to keep within the $25 million capital campaign goal. In early 2017, the Friends reached their $25 million fundraising goal. In the remainder of 2017, we completed the design and went through the various Boards and Commissions for review. That brings us to Council this evening. We have four actions that we hope will get approved this evening. The first is a resolution adopting the MND for the Long Range Plan and the Junior Museum project. The second is a Record of Land Use Action from the Architectural Review. A third is a Park Improvement Ordinance. The last is an amendment to the budget offset by grant revenues of $270,000. With that, I will pass it onto Rhy Halpern. Rhyena Halpern, Community Services Assistant Director: Again, we wanted to state again that in February of this year, the Friends of the Junior Museum and Zoo reached their goal of raising $25 million. This was a long time in coming. It was about 6 years of concerted effort. On the part of the Board President, Aletha Coleman, it's really been her vision and her mission to do this for well over 15 years. With that, we wanted to extend our acknowledgement and appreciation to Friends and ask Aletha to say a few words. Aletha Coleman, Friends of the Palo Alto JMZ President: Mayor Scharff and Vice Mayor Kniss, I'm not really good at this. I'm thrilled to be here. It's been a very long time. I've been Board Chair for about 12 years now. When I started, we wanted to rebuild the Zoo, and we thought it might cost FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 34 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 $7-$10 million. We had some plans drawn up, and then things—it was just really hard. We had so much to do. We've gone from a $150,000 bat cave remodel to a $500,000 bobcat cage 5 or 6 years ago. Then, we made the commitment, this wonderful Board that I've worked with for years, to try and raise $25 million. I am so proud to ask you to recognize my Board. If my Board and the supporters would please stand, I'd like to recognize you now. We've got Steve Emslie here. We've got Lauren Angelo, Kelly Bavor, Mark Murray, Andrea Helft, Marshall Koch who led our capital campaign. There's Tim Stitt from Vance Brown who's been working with us for the last 5 years on the building project itself. There's Jane Rytina who's headed our PR campaign. I think Steve Reller is supposed to be here. That's more than half of my Board. I just said come out tonight, and they're here. They are the mainstays of a community that I love very much. What I wanted to say was we've had a long-term dream to rebuild. We've built the Board with people with negotiation skills, finance skills. It's been wonderful because we've been working with the City, and we're thrilled to be in a partnership with the City to give this $25 million historic gift to rebuild the Junior Museum and Zoo. We feel that we're going to be helping thousands of children in the community with more science education and a new, fantastic, wonderful building. With that, I'm just going to introduce Sarah Vaccaro, who is with CAW Architects. She will give the details of what we're hoping to be able to give to you. Sarah Vaccaro, CAW Architects: Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council Members. Thank you very much for having us tonight. Again, my name is Sarah Vaccaro. I work with CAW Architects. We've been partnering with the Friends and the City on this project for the last 6 years and are very excited to be here tonight to present to you our proposed design. As some of you may recall, we were here about a year ago to present an introduction to our project. We brought Sequoyah, the JMZ's bald eagle, along with John Aiken, the Executive Director, to speak in support on our behalf. Over the last year, we've worked tirelessly to develop the design. We're really excited to show you where we've progressed to tonight. Just a recap the existing site constraints and conditions. This is one large, City-owned parcel. This redline just denotes the property line, so this is just a portion of the site. It's zoned public facility and houses the Lucie Stern Community Center, the Children's Library, a shared parking lot, the Lou Henry Hoover Girl Scout House, the existing JMZ, Rinconada Park all the way over to the Rinconada Pool and Embarcadero on the far side. This is Walter Hays Elementary School; it abuts our site. The JMZ's tucked into this corner here. Some of our neighbors on the site. The Lucie Stern Community Center is a national Category 1 historic resource known of its Spanish Colonial Revival building style and integrated landscape. The Lou Henry Hoover Girl Scout Building is of historical significance as well and eligible for the California Register. The FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 35 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 top image is the existing conditions of the park entrance from the parking lot. As you can see, there's a lack of clear wayfinding and safe pathways through. The lower image is the existing Zoo fence facing the parkland. Both of these are looking to significantly in the proposed design. This is the existing JMZ. It's a mostly one-story building with a small two-story popup. The lower image is the existing street frontage along Middlefield. Some of the existing constraints on the site that we're working around with our proposed design. There's an existing utility corridor that runs underneath the JMZ Zoo currently. The Rinconada Park boundary is this green line with green hatch. The existing JMZ Zoo sits in parkland; the existing JMZ building does not. We are working to—our new building will meet the proper setbacks of the site. We're also working to preserve and feature a number of specimen trees around the site. Our starting point was many years ago collaborating with the Rinconada Park Long Range Master Plan team. The Plan calls for a reconfigured shared parking lot in the same location as the existing parking lot; an expanded JMZ footprint similar to our current footprint today, our proposed footprint; and then a new entrance to the west end of Rinconada Park including a park arrival plaza and relocated play structure area. In further collaboration with the City's Landscape Architect, Transportation Engineers, we worked to clarify the site circulation for pedestrians, bicyclists, and vehicles. In this diagram, we're showcasing a public promenade that connects from Middlefield to the JMZ entrance to the park arrival. We're also looking to create a dedicated pedestrian entrance only at the intersection of Middlefield and Kellogg that will bring bikes and pedestrians into the site safely through the parking lot and then connect to bike paths throughout Rinconada Park. Lastly, we're reorienting and reconfiguring the parking lot to create a simple, clear, safe loop for vehicles. We're proposing one single driveway along Middlefield, a clear loop for vehicles through the parking loop, and then one ingress and one egress driveway along Hopkins. These diagrams have all collaboratively shaped our proposed site plan as you see here today. Our new building will wrap around the existing dawn redwood tree to create a U-shaped courtyard building reminiscent of the courtyards within the Lucie Stern complex. The JMZ promenade will, again, start on Middlefield, tunnel through our building, link to a gracious JMZ entrance plaza, and then connect to the park arrival plaza beyond. The new JMZ Zoo will sit generally where the existing Zoo footprint is within parkland. We are adding an outdoor animal management area to better support and care for the animals at the JMZ. We're also proposing an outdoor classroom area underneath the existing pecan tree. The concept for the JMZ promenade is to draw visitors and public into the JMZ mission, which is to engage a child's curiosity for science and nature before they even enter the building. The promenade is open to the public, and it will allow visitors and public alike to interact with child-scaled science and nature exhibits. Things like bridging over a bioswale, tunneling through FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 36 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 a rainbow light tunnel interacting with wind and child-activated pendulums, opportunities to hop and jump like an animal along side views into the Zoo. The massing concept for the building is pretty simple. We're wrapping around the dawn redwood tree, breaking the building with the tunnel, extending the building to create entry porticos, all to shape the framework and the stage for the JMZ promenade experiences. We're proposing a gabled roof form building in keeping with the historical and residential context of the neighborhood. Over the last year we've worked to respond to and listen to ARB, HRB, and community input to refine and develop the design of the building and to better reflect the Palo Alto aesthetic. In an earlier design such as this rendering, we were proposing a metal roof that wrapped down as the skin of the building in portions and also featuring more of the building structure. Some of these aesthetics raised concerns among Board Members that this was just too industrial of a look for the Palo Alto looks, so we've worked to respond to that. With the HRB, we studied a number of color and finish options. This is one of them, not where we landed but a previous version. We were looking to respond to some of the concerns about durability and maintenance of materials. The ARB also proposed a number of concerns about the wing along Middlefield being pretty long and requesting for us to modulate that and further break it up to better reflect the residential neighborhood. All of these comments and design iterations have led us to the design we're presenting to you today, represented in this aerial here. We're proposing a taller mass in the middle of the site to create the entrance to the JMZ as well as the larger exhibit gallery. The roof of this building extends over the entrance plaza to create a covered entrance portico. The exterior wall materials we're proposing are mostly cement plaster siding along with accents of wood siding in places. As I mentioned before, the building wraps around existing trees to create these nice courtyard spaces. We're also playing with a playful pattern of windows on the facades. Along Middlefield, we're lowering the building mass to a lower height. We've looked to pop-up clerestory windows to let natural light into classroom and office spaces. We're integrating wood screens for sun- shading and then creating a featured entrance portal through the tunnel to the other side of the building. All of these things are a way of further modulating this facade. We're also relocating the signature JMZ sign to be a prominent location along Middlefield. Once the visitor or public steps off the Middlefield sidewalk, they'd step onto a bridge that would overlook a planted bioswale or storm water treatment area, and then visitors would proceed into the tunnel experience. It'll be filled with rainbows and lights and colors, different exhibits. The tunnel would have a larger portal entrance along Middlefield that would taper down to a smaller, child-scale portal on the dawn redwood side. Our goal here is to allow all visitors to enter with a childlike mindset into the project. At the dawn redwood courtyard side, children will be able to jump off the pathway onto boulders set in the storm FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 37 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 water treatment area to play and act like animals. Beyond that, you can see the building wrapping around the existing dawn redwood tree. The goal is to feature this tree as a part of the JMZ experience. This is a section through that space. Visitors, Staff, educators will be able to walk around the Jurassic era dawn redwood tree and experience it along with contemporary planting, fossils, rocks that explain the story of the Jurassic and Cretaceous eras. We're also looking to add a full-scale dinosaur sculpture. We're proposing the California State dinosaur, which I cannot pronounce. This would be a life-scale sculpture for children to climb on and interact with. The entrance to the JMZ is further down the pathway. This is the dawn redwood courtyard, which we were just speaking about. On the far side of the entrance is a play area underneath the existing pecan tree with views into the zoo. The JMZ entrance plaza is partially covered by the roof extending off the building, creating a covered entry portico that will visitors to purchase their tickets in this area and gather in groups before entering into the JMZ. They'll also have views into the exhibit gallery beyond through a large glass window. Featured within the entry portico will be the public art installation. The Public Art Commission has selected Charles Sower as the art for this project. He has amazing experience with science and nature- based installations. His initial concept for this project is really exciting. He's looking at integrating full-scale pendulums that children can interact with at the entry plaza level. They will pop up through a skylight in the roof and interact with wind at the roof level. It'll be a very dynamic feature. Moving into the building, we'll walk through the JMZ visitor experience. Starting in the entrance plaza, visitors will enter through a small lobby into the exhibit gallery space. From here, they'll be able to exit into the exterior Loose in the Zoo. In the other direction, they'll be able to exit into the exterior dawn redwood courtyard. On the far side of the courtyard are the education spaces. Along the back spine, along Walter Hays, are some of the back-of- house support spaces. Our floor plan pretty much follows that diagram to a "T." To walk you through it in a little bit more detail, this is the lobby and the exhibit gallery. This is a higher-volume space that then wraps around, connecting to a multiuse room that could be used as a classroom or event space. The other is a second classroom on the far side of the courtyard, along with the collections hub which will house the precious collections as well as the teaching collections that they take out to their science outreach programs. The Staff office is here, and then along this back spine we have our program animal rooms that house the teaching animals that go out to the various science outreach programs. There's a shop to support the exhibit gallery, public restrooms, and then additional program animal support spaces. These are two sections cutting through the exhibit gallery. You can see out here the covered entry portal, the pendulums representing the art installation. This is the lobby space, and this is the large exhibit gallery space. Our goal is to maximize flexibility along with height, FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 38 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 structure, and materials to allow for many different changing exhibits and durability through the years that building will be in use. There will be clear wayfinding out to the dawn redwood courtyard here, to the multi-use, and in the other direction out to the Zoo. We're also proposing large skylights to let a lot of natural daylight into the space. From the exhibit gallery, visitors will circulate into the Loose in the Zoo experience. This will be a fully netted enclosure with birds and small animals free to fly and roam around along with the kiddos. Within the netted aviary, there will be a number of smaller animal enclosures for animals that cannot be loose. Just walking around the loop, we'll have a tortoise hill, a rabbit meadow, a turtle and fish pond. We're relocating and rebuilding the raccoon exhibit. There will be a new waterfowl pond. The existing bobcat, which was rebuilt a number of years ago, will be maintained and preserved. We'll have a new meerkat exhibit. At the center of the zoo experience is a large tree structure. This will have a crawl-through root zone for children to interact with animals that can be found within roots and underground. The branches will extend up to support a future phase tree fort at the up level. This will be a very lush planted aviary experience within the Zoo. These are some smaller-scale renderings of different interactive exhibits for animals and children alike. From the park side, the netted Zoo and trees within will blend nicely with the exhibit tree canopy within the park, almost start to disappear. At the lower edge, there'll be a Zoo wall that ranges from 8-10 feet. This will be composed of horizontal wood-board fencing as well as cement plaster wall over CMU block. Along this wall, we'll have places for interactive exhibits and displays and potentially views into the Zoo. The City is in the process of redeveloping a plan for the west end of Rinconada Park, and that's what you're seeing in the foreground here. They're proposing to relocate the play structure and rebuild, some new paths, and new picnic grounds. Just as a quick reference point, the existing JMZ Zoo footprint in the parkland is about 8,800 square feet. Our proposed footprint is about 14,000 square feet, and that's a delta of about 5,200 square feet. Most of that delta is the outdoor animal management area, which again will help to better and support the animals of the JMZ and allow for accreditation, which is a main goal of this project. That concludes our presentation. Thank you very much for your time and your attention. Mayor Scharff: Thank you very much. Mr. de Geus: We're going to talk a little bit about the Long Range Plan for Rinconada Park. For that, I'll pass it onto Kristen. Kristen O’Kane, Community Services Acting Director: Good evening, Council Members. Kristen O'Kane, Community Services. Sarah introduced you to a bit of the Rinconada Long Range Plan. I'm going to go into a bit more detail. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 39 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 The Rinconada Long Range planning process began in 2012 and is intended to guide future improvements to Rinconada Park over a 25-year period. The project team worked closely with the community and stakeholders to establish priorities and, as a result, the plan represents a community- supported vision for the park. The analysis and outreach identified a need for improved circulation and gateways into the park as well as enhanced play areas and social space, natural areas and recreational amenities. The goal of the Long Range Plan is to maintain the existing character of the park while creating better connections to all the community facilities that exist around and within the park. Another goal is to update the existing park amenities to reflect current and future needs of the diverse group of park users and respond to park usage as it relates to the surrounding uses and neighborhood. Finally, the Long Range Plan addresses safety concerns and Building Code and infrastructure improvements including ADA requirements. The purpose of this slide is really just to show the robust public outreach and community engagement steps that occurred since the project's inception in 2012, including outreach with Walter Hays School, Commissions and Boards, and the Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee. The Plan divides the park into 12 elements and describes an implementation plan for each of these elements, which will be accomplished over the next 25 years through multiple phases. Implementation will result in improvements to vehicular and pedestrian circulation, parking safety, and accessibility. The Long Range Plan will also create a sense of aesthetic consistency throughout the park and will include clear wayfinding signage and program identification, upgrades to park furnishings and pathway materials, and preservation and integration of heritage trees and water-wise landscaping. In the nearer term, the improvements will occur on the west end of the park, closest to the Junior Museum and Zoo and includes creating a new, beautiful park entrance plaza to the park and JMZ as Sarah showed in the diagrams. It will upgrade the playground, landscaping around the plaza entry and Girl Scout House, ADA improvements to the Girl Scout House, improved refuse enclosures, new restroom signage, and updated park amenities such as benches and picnic tables. I will now turn it back to Rhyena, who will talk about the CEQA process. Ms. Halpern: We only have a couple more slides, and then we'll be able to go to your questions and discussion. I'm must going to quickly go over our CEQA process and our approval process with our Boards and Commissions. You can see here that we started the CEQA process almost 4 1/2 years ago. We've had a lot of community meetings and public input on it. We did get approval in the fall of 2017. It's been quite a lengthy process. The CEQA process was of both the JMZ and the Rinconada Park. The CEQA studies covered air quality analysis, arborist reports, archaeology, historic resources, historic evaluation, geotechnical investigation, noise assessment, and FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 40 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 transportation impact. In terms of Board and Commission reviews, we did go—we being Friends of the JMZ, the architect, and City Staff—did go to the Parks and Rec Commission no less than five times. We were at the ARB about four times before formal submission, and we were there twice. About six times at the ARB and twice at HRB. We had two community meetings as part of our CEQA process, and we've had several focus groups as well. I'm just going to conclude with our next steps just so you know what's coming. In the new year, 2018, we'll be coming back in January on the contract to remodel Cubberley Community Center. That is where we will be for about 2 years during the construction. The JMZ will temporarily relocate there. We'll be coming back to you in the first week of February with two really important items. One is our three agreements with the Friends of the JMZ, and all things budget, both looking at the operating budget for the future JMZ and looking at the capital budget for Rinconada Park and the JMZ. We'll also be coming with a naming rights plan, we hope in the spring. We expect to break ground on the project in June '18. It's going to be a very, very busy and tight schedule to get us there. We really appreciate and recognize the work of Vance Brown, especially Tim Stitt who is here tonight. It's about an 18-month construction period. We'll be planning to open in May 2020 the new JMZ. Along with that, we'll be coming back for additional phases on the Rinconada Park Master Plan improvements. With that, we have the actions for your consideration after questions and discussion. We wanted to open it up to Staff as well as Friends as well as the architects. Mayor Scharff: Do we have any speakers from the public? No public speakers. That means we come to Council for comments, questions, motions, etc. Council Member Wolbach. Public Hearing opened and closed at 7:20 P.M. without public comment. Council Member Wolbach: As the liaison this year to the Friends, I've got to say I've been incredibly impressed getting to work with this group of dedicated residents and people who are committed to seeing kids science education in Palo Alto. I really do want to repeat Aletha's commendation of the entire Friends Board and everybody who has been affiliated with it. It's really been impressive. I do have a couple of questions. We talk about May 2020 as a prospective opening date. Given some of the other infrastructure projects we've done in recent years or are currently in the works, where we've not quite hit our targets for having them completed on time. Some have been ahead of time and have done great, like the Rinconada Library. Others have taken a little longer. Can Staff provide any insight into what we're going to do to make sure we hit our targets both on time and also on budget? FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 41 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 Ms. Halpern: Thank you for that question. One thing you'll see on February 5th when the agreements come to you is that we are actually leasing the land to Friends of the JMZ for those 2 years. They are actually managing the construction project. We do believe it will be on time. Council Member Wolbach: I don't know if anyone from the Friends wants to weigh in on that at this time, if the Mayor would allow it or if they'd like to save that for a discussion next time we discuss this. Mr. de Geus: I would just add, Council Member Wolbach, we're fortunate to have such a well-organized Friends group for one thing, and secondly to have Vance Brown close to this. They have a reputation for delivering projects on time and on budget. We feel very confident they'll be able to do this. Council Member Wolbach: I actually do think that's a good point. I appreciate that. James Keene, City Manager: I want to do a full accounting. In general, our projects really are on time and under budget, much more so than not. We had that one huge challenge with the Mitchell Park Library. That still ended up coming in under budget, but time was the issue. Almost all the time, once we get to the point of being able to proceed with a project and award a contract, we can manage the costs and the schedule. In this case, of course, we've got a great partner. Council Member Wolbach: The point is well taken. That doesn't diminish the concern of the public. Just to make sure with this project in particular we do move forward expeditiously and we keep a close eye on the budget and escalating costs. Obviously there has been some increase in costs over time, but I think that's been accounted for here. I also just wanted to say I appreciate Staff being transparent and pointing out that there are going to be some hard conversations we're going to have to have in the next year. On page 245 of the packet, it does talk about how we're going to have to have some serious conversations. We're going to have to think very carefully about our prioritization of infrastructure projects and how we're going to continue to fund them and how we're going to close an almost $3.5 million gap. That doesn't diminish my desire—I don't think it diminishes this community's desire to see this project move forward as a very high priority. I do appreciate that Staff is keeping us appraised of the challenges and giving us a preview of the hard conversations that we are going to have to have next year. I would like to move the Staff recommendation as a Motion. Vice Mayor Kniss: Second. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 42 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 MOTION: Council Member Wolbach moved, seconded by Vice Mayor Kniss to: A. Adopt a Resolution approving the Mitigated Negative Declaration (MND) and Mitigation Monitoring and Reporting Program (MMRP) in accordance with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) for the Junior Museum and Zoo (JMZ) project and Rinconada Park Long Range Plan (RPLRP); the Resolution also approves the Rinconada Park Long Range Plan; and B. Approve a Record of Land Use Action (RLUA) referencing the Resolution and approving the Architectural Review application for replacement of the existing JMZ with a new JMZ and site improvements including reconfiguration of the Lucie Stern Community Center parking lot, vehicular driveways, enhancement of pedestrian and bicycle circulation routes through the site; and C. Adopt a Park Improvement Ordinance (PIO) referencing the Resolution and approving improvements to the JMZ, within the Rinconada Park Long Range Plan area; and D. Amend the Fiscal Year 2018 Budget Appropriation Ordinance for the Capital Improvement Fund by: i. Increasing Other Revenue by $270,124; and ii. Increasing the JMZ Renovation Project (AC-18001) in the amount of $270,124; and E. Approve the addition of a part-time unbenefited 0.48 FTE position limit dated through September 30, 2020. Mayor Scharff: I think Vice Mayor Kniss beat you by a hair. You want to speak to your Motion? Council Member Wolbach: There isn't a whole lot more that I need to add beyond what's already been said. An excellent presentation, thank you for that. When I was a kid going to the JMZ, I loved it. This proposal is just going to blow that experience away. This is truly going to take a gem in Palo Alto and more than polish it up. I also want to, again, emphasize the work that's been done by the Friends in raising $25 million. I know everybody thinks money just grows on trees around here. Finding $25 million is not a small feat. Making that available for philanthropic purposes, to serve the public at large, to gift that essentially to the community of Palo Alto and the region is something worth commending. What that also means FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 43 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 is we're getting dollars for the pennies. We're putting pennies in compared to the dollars we're getting out. The ROI, return on investment, for the City of Palo Alto on this project is truly remarkable. If only we could do that with all of our projects. Thank you so much for everybody on the Staff side and the Friends and the community who has helped get us to this point. I'm very happy and proud to push this forward to the next step. Mayor Scharff: Vice Mayor Kniss. Vice Mayor Kniss: I was very impressed when the President of the Zoo group—I don't remember your name; I'm so sorry. Could you say it again? Ms. Coleman: Aletha Coleman. Vice Mayor Kniss: You and your group obviously have done a remarkable and rather miraculous job. There are lots of other groups in town trying to raise money. This is extremely impressive. Could I ask one question? I don't know who to direct this at. It may be the man working at Vance Brown. Is that you at the back of the room? Do you mind coming to the mic for a minute? We'll put you in the hot seat. I don't recall that we have leased any property previously to a nonprofit group. Am I right, Jim Keene, or not? Have we ever done that before. Mr. de Geus: We have done that a couple of times, Vice Mayor Kniss, for different playground improvements and other things. Heritage playground, I think, was done that way. Vice Mayor Kniss: Maybe not a project of this size. Mr. Keene: We have permanent leases. Avenidas, for example, is leased. Vice Mayor Kniss: I don't recall leasing for construction and then it's going to return to us. Avenidas is on their own. They require very little help from us. I see this as a somewhat new endeavor. We're always the on time and under budget folks. It doesn't always work out that way. Can you give us some reassuring words tonight to say that's what's going to happen? Once we start in February and in February of 2020 it'll be all ready to go. Tim Stitt, Vance Brown Builders: We recently completed a somewhat similar lease agreement with the Palo Alto Unified School District. We built their gymnasium. That was also the (crosstalk) Foundation. Vice Mayor Kniss: Fabulous. Mr. Stitt: That was on time and under budget. That was roughly $35 million. It was a great collaboration between our firm and the Unified School FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 44 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 District of Palo Alto. That's one example. There's really just two things we need as a general contractor, timely payment and timely decisions. We're working together with the City, with John, and a great architect here. They've done a lot of work in Palo Alto as we have. Just getting the timely information is really the key. I think we've proven it over the years here in Palo Alto. Vice Mayor Kniss: Vance Brown and company definitely has done that. I appreciate your saying something about that. That's going to be really important as you bring together a nonprofit and your kind of profit company. You do so many things. I don't know whether you really make a profit or not. Mr. Keene: We hope they do. Mr. Stitt: Just a tiny profit. Vice Mayor Kniss: It certainly isn't our business as to whether or not you do. You're very generous throughout town including on Avenidas. Mr. Stitt: That one, we're not making any profit on it. Vice Mayor Kniss: You'll be doing it almost at the same time, right? Mr. Stitt: It'll be concurrent for about 6 months. Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you so much for saying that. Mr. Stitt: You're welcome. Any other questions before I sit down or should I … Vice Mayor Kniss: Having said all that, you all have been wonderful raising the money, putting it forth, Vance Brown with the construction. I have one other question that's probably a little less happy. We're going to increase our costs on a yearly basis and our staffing costs. Correct? Once this is complete. Mr. de Geus: Yes. We're still working on the operating budget and trying to refine it further. It's a bigger facility, a slightly larger program. There will be some additional costs. Vice Mayor Kniss: My question then would go back to—is it Elise? Maybe I don't have her first name correct. Aletha. Would you anticipate—maybe you'd come back to the mic so we get this all on the record. Otherwise, it usually doesn't transcribe. As you come up, I want to know long term would FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 45 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 you anticipate that you would have volunteers who stay involved with the Museum and Zoo. Ms. Coleman: I can't imagine that the people I've been working with over the last number of years would not want to stay involved and that the Friends would not want to continue to support the programs that we do now. As a matter of fact, we have been the biggest supporter of the science outreach program which Palo Alto technically can't fund. We've done that for the last 10, 15 years. We've given money for exhibits. We anticipate continuing our support. We're, as a matter of fact, discussing now how we're going to do that in the long term. Nothing's final. Vice Mayor Kniss: Having that discussion about how you're going to do it in the long term is really important and important for the Council to know as well that you'll stay involved with hands on and so forth. Ms. Coleman: I can't even imagine why we wouldn't with the good faith gift of $25 million. We're not going to stop now. Vice Mayor Kniss: That's a lot of faith. Ms. Coleman: I did want to add about Tim. My daughters went to Menlo School, and they rebuilt the middle school and the high school in a 15-month period so that only 1 year was impacted. It was absolutely amazing. Vance Brown has done a fabulous job in the community for so many projects. When Lauren Brown said, "Tim's on your board," I was thrilled. Vice Mayor Kniss: Thank you. I appreciate your having shared all that. This is a big commitment on our part. It really will change how that whole part of town is used. Rob. Mr. de Geus: Vice Mayor Kniss, I just wanted to add we'll be talking about the pro forma of the new operating Junior Museum and Zoo in the new year. We're working on that pro forma with the Friends group. They will be there. They're committing to additional support and contributed income. We're very confident that they're going to a big supporter in the years to come. Vice Mayor Kniss: It's going to be a exemplary project when it's done. It's certainly very impressive on paper. We'll look forward to the finale. Thanks. Vice Mayor Kniss: Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: First of all, thanks to the Board and the Friends. This looks like a great project. We're really excited. Thanks to the generosity. I had just a few questions about some the surrounding areas. If FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 46 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 there's a chance when this comes back, it would be great to see some renderings or the 3-D video from different sides. Some of it's a little hard to tell from the drawings. I was curious about the impact on Lucie Stern parking. Today part of that lot is separated. It looks like it's going to be merged into one lot. Has there been any discussion about events at Lucie Stern and events at the Museum? The parking's for both facilities? Ms. Halpern: The parking lot has 95 spaces right now. In the new design it will either have 93 or 94 spaces. We're losing one to two spaces. Council Member DuBois: It's kind of implied by the separate driveway, but it's not spots are assigned to one or the other. Is there any anticipation of particular events or times where it's going to be a challenge? Ms. Halpern: It's a highly used area because we have the Lucie Stern Community Center. We have two theatres. We have the Junior Museum and Zoo. We have the Girl Scout House. We have Boys Scouts. We have the park, and we have Walter Hays, and we have the pool as well. We feel really good about keeping the same number of parking spaces while increasing the efficiency of the circulation in the parking lot, just making it a lot more functional, making it a lot safer for children when they walk through it, for bicyclists as well. The pedestrian and bike pathway is going to be a new feature that will really make it much more accessible by bike and foot and much safer. Right now, it's used a lot. All those amenities are at the went end of the park. We seem to not get too many complaints at all about parking. Sometimes we'll have weddings and theatre at the same time as other things. There is that parking, and there's street parking nearby. More and more people bike and walk. One thing I'm very excited about is the new parking lot allows buses to go through. When we bring students in, we'll be able to much more easily accommodate them in a large bus instead of many cars. I think it will work out pretty much like how it does now. Council Member DuBois: It was hard to tell from the drawing. Is there less setback in trees in front of the Girl Scout Building in the future plan than there is today? Ms. Halpern: We might have to pull it back up. Council Member DuBois: Maybe the architect knows. Ms. Vaccaro: We are reconfiguring—currently there's a parking lot that sits between Lucie Stern and the Girl Scout Building. There's about a 50-foot, maybe 45-foot, landscape buffer in front of the Girl Scout Building before you reach the parking lot currently. In our proposed design, we are pushing that edge back about 15 feet. We'll still be well over 30 feet from the Girl FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 47 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 Scout Building with the parking lot edge. The plan is to invest in additional landscaping and pathways within that area to resemble the current buffer that's there today. Council Member DuBois: It is a nice buffer today. I know you met with Parks and Rec. I didn't see any Parks and Rec Minutes in the Staff Report. For a big project next to a park, that would be good to see. What were the comments and feedback from the Parks and Rec Commission? Ms. Halpern: We did have the link in the Staff Report to the Parks and Rec Commission. I think we detailed in the Staff Report some of their comments. Over the five times that we had gone to the Parks and Rec Commission, their main concern at the beginning was reducing the footprint of the JMZ into the park. That's why you saw that we actually decreased the footprint by about 5,000 square feet. That was the main concern that they had. They were also really interested in the parking lot improvements that we were doing. They were interested in landscaping improvements. One thing that you see in this design is we're going to for the first time have an actual park entrance. This is very exciting. It's close to the Girl Scout House, so we'll actually be doing some landscaping around there as well. They were excited by that. Council Member DuBois: Did they actually vote on anything? Ms. Halpern: They voted to approve the Park Improvement Ordinance. They did. Council Member DuBois: Are there any expected impacts on the school during construction? How is that going to be managed? Ms. Halpern: We do have a relationship with Walter Hays where we informally exchange information if it's going to impact the parking lot. Sometimes we use their parking lot on Sundays when we have events at the JMZ and vice versa. We'll be in communication with them to let them know. Council Member DuBois: Any mitigations for noise during school hours? Ms. Halpern: We've working on phasing the construction of the new parking lot so that it's never entirely closed. On the average it'll be … Council Member DuBois: I'm talking about mostly the building construction period. Ms. Halpern: That's what I was referencing. Council Member DuBois: I thought you were talking about the parking lot. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 48 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 Ms. Halpern: During construction, the parking lot will not be completely closed. Council Member DuBois: I'm asking about construction noise during school hours. Is that just going to unavoidable? Ms. Halpern: Pretty much. We could have Tim talk about that. Mr. Stitt: I'm also sensitive to that because all three of my kids went to Walter Hays. I will admit that we did park in your parking lot when we dropped off our kids, and we snuck over to Walter Hays and back. My wife didn't; she always went over to the tennis courts. There will be an impact, as Rhy mentioned. We'll probably take up probably 70 percent of the parking lot. We'll only have about 30 or so stalls in the northern half for the first part of the project. The way we're going to try to phase it is if we start this summer, we'll have a full summer while Walter Hays is closed. On the back end, we'll have another summer to reconfigure the parking lot. We're going to try to do most of the heavy lifting during those summer months. Council Member DuBois: I support the Motion and the project. I just really wanted to understand what the impacts might be. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Karen. Council Member Holman: Congratulations. Congratulations are in order. I have some specific questions because of clarity and because it's our job. There were some questions asked. One of them is there's $2.6 million in the Rinconada Park Improvement CIP. There's also unfunded $3.4 million for exhibits, FFE, parking improvements, and signage. Where are those in approval or future approval or prior approval? Can you remind us, job our memories, or anticipate? Mr. de Geus: The $2.6 million is an existing CIP. That is already in the 5- year budget. Actually it's in this fiscal year's budget, I believe. The $3.4 million estimate is unfunded. We don't yet have a source of funding to come up with that gap. We recognize that it's needed, but we also know there a number of other significant capital projects that are underway that are also overbudget. The months of December and January, Staff will be doing a lot of work on the capital budget to look for additional sources of funds, for ideas about prioritizing the different projects, so we can not only find the $3.4 million but balance the entire CIP budget. The Council has a meeting on January 22 to take a look at the capital budget as a whole, understanding that there is a significant gap. This will be included in that, and we'll have to make some choices about what goes first and what has to be delayed or FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 49 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 scope has to change in some of the projects that Council would like to see happen. Council Member Holman: The way I read the response to the question, whoever asked it, it looked like—I don't remember that the Council has authorized the utilization—maybe we don't have to because it's at the park. I don't remember that the Council has authorized the use of the $2.6 million for the specific part of the project that's being proposed here. In response to the question, the way I read it—the question was what's the City's anticipated total capital investment in the JMZ effort. It seems to include the $3.4 million for exhibits. I'm trying to anticipate how—there's nothing in the motion that address either one of those things. Mr. de Geus: That's correct, Council Member. Council Member Holman: The way I heard your response, it didn't seem to include that the City's committing the $3.4 million. It's unfunded. Your response to the question sounds like we are anticipating committing it. I'm confused. Mr. de Geus: It's a fair question. We're not asking the Council to approve any capital budget this evening. We still have some work to do on that. What we're sharing with you is the cost estimates as we anticipate them for the City for this project. We do have this one CIP that's $2.6 million that we think can contribute, but we're $3.4 million short at this time. When we come back in the year—I think it's February 5—with the contracts with the Friends, we will have a plan for funding the project. Council Member Holman: Along with Council Member DuBois' questions, when this went to Parks and Rec, I know that they had interest in shrinking the intrusion into the park. Maybe it's a question for the City Attorney. What was the discussion around the Park Dedication Ordinance and encroachment in to the park and Park Improvement Ordinance versus having our Park Dedication Ordinance apply such that a vote of the public would have to take place to utilize this for another purpose? If you could provide some clarification around that, it'd be great. I would imagine Parks and Rec did discuss this. Mr. de Geus: Good question. That was probably the primary interest of the Parks and Rec Commission, to retain as much of that turf area of Rinconada Park. The project team was very responsive in trying to reduce the size of that without compromise the scope of the program and project. We got to a place where they were comfortable with the design and voted unanimously for it. The Zoo, I think, was there before we had that particular ordinance for dedicated parkland. That being said, it does allow for recreation, park, FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 50 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 and conservation purposes, which is largely what the Junior Museum is all about. I think it's a very fitting use of parkland. That was the conclusion that I'd come to as Staff. Molly Stump, City Attorney: We agree. The Junior Museum and Zoo is consistent with the requirements of parkland. Council Member Holman: This is helpful. Again, these are necessary questions and appropriate questions. If we could just wave our hands and say everything's fine and wonderful—it is fine and wonderful, but we do have responsibilities to follow up. What other entities such as this does the City fund the Staff? What conversations have happened with JMZ about the Friends supporting the staffing? The Art Center, the City supports Staff there. I'm trying to think where else. Mr. de Geus: It's across Community Services and Library Department. Council Member Holman: Libraries are not … Mr. de Geus: The Children's Theatre is another example. It's a pretty distinct program where the City manages all the Staff. The Mitchell Park Community Center and all their teen programs, the City supports and provides the Staff. The Art Center is another good example. It's an institution, but it's supported by another great foundation. Largely, the City supports the program by providing the Staff. Ms. Halpern: Excuse me. Were you asking about our nonprofit arms that actually pay to offset the cost of Staff? Council Member Holman: That's what I'm trying to get at, yes. Thank you. Ms. Halpern: I could speak to that a little bit. The Art Center actually does transfer to the City an allocation that does support part of two people's salary. At the Children's Theatre and at JMZ, there are direct expenses from those nonprofit arms that the nonprofit arms spend directly. For instance, at the Children's Theatre there are some contractors that the FoPACT pays for as opposed to going through—they don't transfer the money to the City. They pay directly. The Friends of the JMZ is really responsible for offsetting to a large extent education outreach costs. Some years it has come through the City. What you're asking is a bigger question about can we partner with our nonprofit arms for our nonprofit arms to offset more City costs. Is that what you're going towards? FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 51 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 Council Member Holman: Yes. We don't have a standard model. How do we do that? Especially as we're talking more and more about the fiscal picture. Ms. Halpern: You might remember when this project started a few years ago, Friends of the JMZ was actually interested when the new building opened in becoming the governing authority, the operator, of the JMZ. That is something they have decided to defer. We have agreed within the first 5 years after the new building opens to bring up that conversation again. What you're really talking about is best practices in the field and how municipalities have rolled off their civic cultural amenities to be operated by nonprofit arms. That's something Palo Alto hasn't done yet. It's something we'd like to look at the feasibility of doing in the future. It's not something that we're ready for right now. It's something that—what you're getting at is for these kinds of institutions to really grow, the nonprofit sector is a more appropriate home than the public sector. Is that what you're getting at? Council Member Holman: Exactly. You stated it very well. I would not expect to change models in midstream for the Junior Museum and Zoo or anyone else. I would suggested when Staff comes forward with—when we're looking at our infrastructure and our budgeting and prioritization in February, that this be on that agenda. It's not capital, but it is expense. It's something that Finance Committee has been talking about quite a bit too, the FTE and the benefits that go along with that. City Manager, you want to say something? Mr. Keene: I don't know how prepared we will be for an in-depth discussion along those lines in comparison to the capital piece of it. We understand it's part of the larger context for where we're going through different phases and long term for the project. Council Member Holman: I can appreciate that. I hope everybody here including the Junior Museum and Zoo folks know it's something we have to be looking at from a prudent standpoint. We all have budgets to attend to. Having asked those difficult questions, I'm happy to support the motion. Congratulations on almost being at the end of this road. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Kou. Council Member Kou: My questions might have already been answered by answering Council Member Holman's question. I just want to clarify. What you're saying is that the Museum and the Zoo is actually considered as part of the parkland. We're not really removing any parkland or taking out of parkland acreage. Correct? That's actually very reassuring. As you know, we're already at a deficit parkland per resident. It would be really FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 52 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 concerning. I remember in the past former Director Greg Betts had instilled into me not to take away from parkland because it's so important. I have never gotten that lesson that he had sat me down and told me about. It's also good to know with Vice Mayor Liz's question about the JMZ Friends continuing after this is all done. We're going to need the PR in order to bring people in to visit. One of the things I was wondering is—I know this is down into the weeds. For the residents, would be there consideration of something like what we have in Hawaii, a local rate so that it's less for residents? Residents right now visit the parks for free. Is that consideration in there too? Ms. Halpern: Yes. When we come back February 5, you'll see a lot more on that. Council Member Kou: That will be great. With the park itself, which one of the play areas is the one that is being redone? Is it the tot or is it the playground? Mr. de Geus: I understand both are being redone. Currently, they're separated, which is actually difficult for families that have kids of different ages. The idea is to bring them together and redo them. Is that correct, Kristen? Council Member Kou: Is this for Rinconada's renovation which is separate from the Junior Museum and Zoo? Mr. de Geus: That's correct. We want to take advantage of one construction cycle to try to do them at the same time if we can. Council Member Kou: Is there any consideration that perhaps, just to be consistent since on the south there is a Magical Bridge—anyway we can have that playground be Magical Bridge also and maybe raise some funds for that with the Magical people? Ms. O’Kane: We did submit a grant request to the County as part of their accessible, inclusive playground grant program. We should know by the beginning of the next year if we got accepted for that grant. The design that we submitted for that grant application incorporates a lot of the same features that are at the Magical Bridge playground. It was for Rinconada. Council Member Kou: It was for Rinconada? Ms. O'Kane: Yes. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 53 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 Council Member Kou: That would be super. I can just imagine the kids going through the Museum and the Zoo and then being able to go out to a playground which would be very inclusive of all kids, even adults. Ms. Halpern: If I could just add. One of the actions for tonight that you're approving is actually a Federal grant that we got to address accessibility and inclusion in the new JMZ. Council Member Kou: That's super. Are the Magical people being consulted on this playground? Ms. Halpern: Yes. Council Member Kou: I'm very much in support. Thank you for all your work and your dedication. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Tanaka, did you … I just wanted to say that I also am thrilled that you guys are pulling this off. This will be an incredible addition to the community. I wanted to say I'm just proud to live in a community where you guys can go out, raise the money, envision something like this, and get it to this. I live in that neighborhood. My kids went to Walter Hays. We went to the Junior Museum and Zoo all the time when they were little. It was great. I'm just really happy about. There are few moments in life when you can sit back and say, "This is great. They community's moving forward. We should all be happy and proud of our community." This is one of them. I actually wanted to offer my sincere thanks to all of you for the hard work you've done on the Junior Museum and Zoo as well to our Staff who has supported you on this effort. Thank you very much. With that, we can now vote on the board. That passes unanimously with Council Member Fine absent. Thank you very much. MOTION PASSED: 8-0 Fine absent Council took a break from 7:58 P.M. to 8:07 P.M. 12. Review and Provide Direction to Staff Regarding City Comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Report for the Stanford General Use Permit (GUP) Application to Santa Clara County. Mayor Scharff: We're going to call the meeting back to order. Staff, if you want to go forward with a presentation. Hillary Gitelman, Planning and Community Environment Director: Thank you, Mayor Scharff and Council Members. I'm Hillary Gitelman, the Planning Director. I wanted to introduce and thank Meg Monroe to my right as well FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 54 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 as the consultants we've been using from Dudek and Hexagon to help prepare for this next item. What you have before you is a draft comment letter on the Draft Environmental Impact Report about Stanford's General Use Permit proposal. The County of Santa Clara is the lead agency for this EIR. They have extended the comment period to February 2nd. We have quite a draft comment letter for your consideration. It was distributed in the packet. You'll see it contains a brief cover letter raising five or six big picture issues, and then attached to that is a whole long series of technical comments. The comments fall into two buckets. Most of them are related to the Draft EIR specifically and engage on the issue of the California Environmental Quality Act compliance. Some of the issues raised in the letter are more policy-related issues that we're asking the County to consider in their deliberations on the University's use permit proposal. I'd just note one thing before launching in which is, subsequent to sending you the draft, we heard from the School District that they don't agree with the declining enrollment projections in the Draft EIR. That's something we might want to add to the next draft of the letter. With that, we're open to public comments, you comments and questions. The City Manager wanted to say something as well. James Keene, City Manager: Obviously, the cover letter itself is relatively short. I would just say one thing. We would, as we finalize the letter, reorder these items. I would point out on the very first page, for example, we call out issues of primary concern. The first thing we mention is in the area of fire services. Of late, we've been making some tremendous progress collaboratively with Stanford. Just to recognize that, we would restructure and reorder where that particular comment is. We'll be welcoming other comments from the Council themselves. That's it. Mayor Scharff: We have one public speaker, Neilson Buchanan. Neilson Buchanan: Good evening. Far be it from me to be able to add any narrow item to the lot that's already been written. It's been written by experts and far above my pay grade. When I sit back and think about what this agreement means for Stanford and for the City, it staggers my imagination. I frankly don't think I'm going to be around for the wind up of this thing. Maybe I will, maybe I won't. From a really big picture view, I just encourage you to have a full discussion of how do you manage any conflict or resolutions that have to have happen in a large span of time. I don't know how those mechanics really work. I haven't been able to figure it out. You're binding yourself and Stanford and the County to an agreement that it's hard for me to believe life will be perfect over a long period of time. Not that there's anything malicious about what people will think and do. It's just there's so much variance and unpredictability of what our world is going FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 55 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 to be like. It's just hard for me to imagine how three powerful forces, Stanford, the City, and the County, will ever—things will never be perfect. The question in my mind is to encourage you to fully discuss how would— what legacy are you going to leave for the future Councils to reconcile conflict that inevitably will arise. I hope it won't. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. You want to speak? Stephanie, come on up and speak. Stephanie Munoz: Good evening and thank you especially much for letting me come up late. I attended that meeting on the GUP. I thought it was remarkable that Supervisor Simitian went to so much trouble sending out those cards to everybody. I would have thought that the cultural center would be filled. It had a respectable crowd. I've been looking at Stanford many, many years. My grandmother used to take me when I was 4 or 5 to see Stanford and the big chapel with the murals because my father went there. I got the impression—we've always had people working at Stanford. We had students from Stanford staying with us. I got an impression of Stanford as a very special place that cared about the people of California and the people that work there. It was called the Stanford family. Anybody that worked at Stanford's child, if he passed the examination, could go to Stanford for free. In the late '50s after Sputnik, somebody—it was Professor Terman actually—got this wonderful idea that Stanford could be something better than the Stanford family, helping out the world and California. It could be a money maker par excellence, and it became that. It became a cynosure in the entire world. That's not all there is to life. When they got together with Palo Alto, the Council Members of that time looked at the map of Palo Alto and the projected housing, which was going to go up naturally in the Stanford Foothills, and they changed it to industry. Look where we are now. We have people out in bus stops homeless. This is not what Mrs. Stanford wanted. We have to give some more thought to at least keeping Stanford's employees housed at Stanford. Thanks so much. Mayor Scharff: Thank you. We come back to Council. I don't know if people want to do a round of questions they may have on things. I'll just look for some lights. Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: One question for us is really around process. We now have 60 days more. I don't know if we want to treat this—it is an action item. Mayor Scharff: Do you want to move to continue? Council Member DuBois: No. I want it to be treated as Staff hearing feedback from us, and it comes back with another draft with time to make FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 56 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 final comments before it gets submitted. I would suggest we do that. I had one question. Is it better in this type of letter to make very specific requests or to raise general issues? How does Staff think about that in the cover letter? Ms. Gitelman: In my experience, it's appropriate to do both. Usually some large, general framing issues are appropriate, and then very specific technical comments. Council Member DuBois: I have a lot of comments. The other question I would have is specifically around affordable housing changes. I didn't see it; I might have missed it. Did Staff have a concern with the changes to where that money can be spent in the current proposal versus the existing? Ms. Gitelman: I don't know that we expressed a concern about the use of the affordable housing funds. We talk a lot about housing and meeting more of the University's housing demand on campus. I think that would be a comment that we could certainly add. Council Member DuBois: That's one of my concerns. The other one is what is our current impact fee. I thought it was like $35 now. The GUP is still at $20. Was that an issue that you guys raised? Ms. Gitelman: I know that's an issue that the County is looking at because they've asked us for our nexus study and our Housing Impact Fee Ordinance. You're right. Our current impact fee is $35 for office uses. Council Member DuBois: You didn't raise it in your letter? Mr. Gitelman: We did not. Council Member DuBois: Those are my questions. I'll have comments later. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: I'd actually agree that we should probably treat this essentially like a Study Session, have it come back and then do a final approval. That would probably be in the new year because we're not going to do this next week. Just to mention a couple of things. I'm glad that we're talking about storm water and flooding. I'm glad there's reference to potential future school site and also talking about that in the context of transportation. A couple of things. If you look at Page 11 of the comments in the EIR, I would recommend taking a look at those, especially "c" through "f." They probably could have been a little bit clearer. That's under transportation and traffic. We could have been more specific or more clear FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 57 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 about what it is we're talking about and why we're talking about it. I felt the same about Item 17 on Page 7 of the comments on the Draft EIR. Maybe I needed to spend a little bit more time with. I didn't really understand the argument we were making there. Maybe we need to clarify that. Either reconsider or maybe it just needed some clarification. Similarly on the top of Page 8, it talks about undercutting reliance on a no net trips policy. That should probably be—the more we clarify why we have that concern, the more effective the letter will be. Ms. Gitelman: Excuse me, Council Member Wolbach. Maybe you could use packet page numbers so we find your references. Council Member Wolbach: Sure. I was referencing the—that's fine. I was talking about Packet Page 495; that's Page 8 of Attachment 12A. Pretty much all my comments are about Attachment 12A. At the top of Page 495, Page 8 of 12, where it says undercuts reliance on a no net trips policy. The argument could have been clearer there. I'm not offering specific language. I'm not going to make a motion on this. I'm just pointing out things where I thought we could have been clearer. The following, page, several of the lower case lettered items on Packet Page 498 or Page 11 of 12 could be more specific and more clear, especially "c," "e," and "f." One I had mentioned before, Packet Page 494, Page 7 of 12A, is Item 17. Maybe I was misreading this. Is this a question we talked about as we were finishing our own Comprehensive Plan? Does our Comprehensive Plan need to incorporate the CUP? Now, does the GUP need to incorporate our Comprehensive Plan? We should be very careful about how we're wording that and phrasing it, again being clear about whatever case we're trying to make. I have mixed feelings about Packet Page 490, Page 3 of 12, "b" at the top, where it talks about prohibiting housing. It says prohibit redistribution of housing or academic square footage to arboretum development district. It says or lands designated campus open space. In general, I don't think we want to discourage adding housing along El Camino, especially if it's not even in Palo Alto. I have mixed feelings about that. I understand there is an aesthetic character to that area. I'm not going to make a strong recommendation right now, but that's something we should think about if we're going to take another crack at this in a few weeks. Just think about whether that's a statement we want to make or how we want to word that. Those are my comments. Thanks. Mayor Scharff: Vice Mayor Kniss. Vice Mayor Kniss: I'll start with one that has troubled me before. It has to do with the academic growth boundary. I have just lost the page for a moment. Looking at open space protections on Packet Page 46, we've FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 58 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 brought this up a number of times. This was a major deal with the last GUP. 2025, saying it's not acceptable is absolutely the case. I'm not sure how we can make that any more definitive. This was such a major discussion when the last GUP was voted on. I'm somewhat surprised that the public has come forward to talk about it. They may just not understand, and they may think that 2025 is still 7 or 8 years away. I don't know how else you can put this more strongly. I've noticed that Ms. McGowan is in the audience. I've talked to Joe about it as well. I'm surprised if that isn't something almost everyone would feel strongly about. Even though I have heard that there's no plan to go outside the academic growth boundary, there's not going to be anything in writing. Whatever is in writing is usually what's going to count 10 years from now. One other area is, again, to talk about the schools or whether or not there will be something like 186 more kids in the school system. I think among the hardest things to predict in Palo Alto is how many kids will be in the school system in 10 years. Right now, we're seeing declining enrollment without question. It may be that that could all turn around again. We've watched in Palo Alto as this went from 17,000 kids in the '60s to—by '85, it was down to 7,000. I don't think there's any great predictability unless we can figure out who and how we're going to have more children. For a while, to go back for a bit in the '70s, people only had two kids or somebody looked at them disparagingly in Palo Alto. That isn't the case anymore. We also may say that that could grow again. This is very hard to predict, what could happen over the next 10-20 years. We've seen this happen with Cubberley, which has now been empty for 40 years. At this point for us to try and plan definitively what's going to happen to the school population is probably a useless discussion to have. Others may go in another direction, but that's how I feel about that one. That's it for my comments. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: Thank you to Staff for the cover letter and the analysis. I agree with Council Member DuBois. I suppose you would need a motion on this for clarity that we use this as an interim comment period and come back to the Council for review what would then be our final comments in the third week, I would guess, of January. Would Staff need a Motion to that effect? Ms. Gitelman: I'm going to let the City Manager address the process part of this. Mayor Scharff: What I've heard is that we're going to treat this as a Study Session with comments. Staff's going to come back with a letter. We're FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 59 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 going to put this on probably the 29th, I would guess, or the 22nd. We only have two meetings in January. Mr. Keene: I know this is going to be hard for the Council to swallow probably. We have just those two meetings. We have a lot on those agendas. I'd like to propose the potential of us listing it on Consent, hoping we got it right, knowing just in case we were fortunate enough we could do it that way. If we miss the mark, you all can pull it off. Mayor Scharff: I actually don't think that's a good idea. I hate to disagree with you. It's been my experience that when we have those full agendas, this is something that we will then actually have to get out. I would assume that people want to take a last look at it, make some comments. One of the dangers of the way we do it here is that Staff will listen to what we say— they may not get it right—and one Council Member may make a one-off comment. If we're not going to be voting on it, then those may be comments that we don't want in the letter. We should bring it back on action, and we should move off some of the other stuff we need to do, if that's what we're doing tonight. I don't particularly like to move stuff off, but I think that's the only way to do it. Just putting it on Consent, most likely it gets pulled. Mr. Keene: We don't need a Motion. We understand what you want us to do. We'll come back. Council Member Holman: I agree with you 100 percent. Can we agree that January 22nd is more realistic than the 29th because that's just that far from the end of the comment period. If there are things that we want to add in or pull out—the public will have comments as well. Can we target the 22nd? Mr. Keene: We'll give it a shot, and we'll work with the Mayor and Vice Mayor on the schedule. Council Member Holman: I know one of the frustrations from the public is it's December 4 and comments are due today. We don't want to be in that situation again is what I'm trying to get at. Because I made comments throughout, I might skip around just a little bit, and starting in no particular place. I appreciate that air quality is in here, but I was surprised in looking at the DEIR that there's not a significant unmitigable impact when our own DEIR did have a significant unmitigable impact. As I understood Staff, it was likely any other jurisdiction around, because of the Bay Area conditions, that would be a resulting identified impact. I want to put that one out there. I don't know why this amount of development would be any different than what we did in our Comp Plan. Something that also needs to be FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 60 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 considered—it's sort of address in here. The open space, I agree with you. That is on Packet Page 486, Page 2 of 3 of the intro letter. I absolutely agree with you about the open space protections and what the Vice Mayor has said about academic growth boundary. Absolutely agree with that. "C" on housing, Council Member DuBois alluded to this. I commented about this before, some time or other. $20 plus inflation just doesn't seem realistic or feasible or rational in this regard. If ours is $35, it ought to be a minimum of that. We ought to build in cost of construction, cost of project, escalators. This is a long-term approval, and a lot of things can happen in 10 years that would change the cost of construction of affordable housing, for instance. A lot is said here—thank you very much—about no net new trips on Packet Page 487. For instance, there's a lot of reference to TDM, but there's absolutely no specificity to the TDM programs. I appreciate that you have added in the cover letter, in "E," to specific in advance the specific trip reduction measures and transit capacity enhancements. What doesn't seem to be realistic in the DEIR is Caltrain capacity. Even by the time this is approve, Caltrain capacity seems to be totally unrealistic. Up and down the Peninsula, Palo Alto included, we rely on Caltrain for Go Passes and other TDM programs. We can't all do that when we're at capacity now. I'm not sure what the best way is to address that. Caltrain capacity is a huge one. I want to support what you've written on Packet Page—this is the DEIR comments—489 or Page 2 of that, the future potential changes in land use or distribution. I absolutely support what you said in Number 3. I would also add that—I'm not exactly sure if this should be a DEIR comment, but it needs to be addressed somewhere. A program EIR, as the Stanford GUP DEIR is, should not supplant or take the place of project-level environmental analysis. When individual project review happens, they have to also be individually reviewed for environmental impacts exactly because of—other reasons too—what's on Number 3 under project description, because of changed location, changed conditions. Flooding impacts, upstream retention ponds, absolutely support that. I think I agree with Council Member Wolbach that affordable housing and housing demand doesn't necessarily need to be located at transit centers. El Camino might be a good location for that as well. In addition to Caltrain, if I wasn't clear on this, we have to also consider what kind of—if we can get promises or what we can anticipate from VTA since VTA continues to take service away from north county. There's some information having to do with Marguerite supporting information that I wasn't able to find, the technical analysis having to do with Marguerite, having to do with Caltrain, having to do with VTA ridership, boardings, capacity, potential future capacity and service. Another really important one and one that's very, very important to the community is on Page 10, Packet Page 497, under recreation and the parks. I don't understand why some of those other parks aren't being included in the analysis. What's being proposed is some improvements to a park in College FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 61 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 Terrace. What is more needed is possibilities in funding for park creation, identification and acquisition. When this is accurately evaluated, see if the acquisition funding would be a reasonable mitigation. I also wasn't clear about El Camino Park. It's not referenced here. It has an end of life potentially on it, hopefully not, because it's leased parkland. The other is whether the Mayfield playing fields were included in the analysis. It didn't seem as though they were. They either should or shouldn't be, but that also has a horizon line on those fields. Agree with comments that have been made about school impacts. Also on that same Page, 10 Packet Page 497, about school impact, I think you'll be hearing directly from the School District about that and those impacts. Back to transportation and transit just for a moment. We're talking about in the DEIR peak hour. It was one of my frustrations. I'll be consistent with what I said the City's DEIR and FEIR. I think we should be dealing with peak hour. It's peak period. We have this spread of time that's impacted by transit these days. Not quite meeting in the middle but getting closer to that. This probably should have been one of the alternatives. I would still say it's a comment worth making. The proposal should be scaled to fit with whatever amount of housing can support the amount of development and whatever amount of transit can support the development. I've often said that mitigations are mitigations. Sometimes they work just fine; a lot of times they really don't. The cost of mitigations escalates than the rate they can be put in, and sometimes mitigations aren't feasible, even though they're well intended, because there's not land to accomplish them. I would suggest that—a comment would be that the proposal be scaled to the amount of housing that can be satisfactory to the amount of demand and also to the amount of transit that can support the amount of expansion. I think those cover my comments at this point. Thank you very much. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Kou. Council Member Kou: We received a letter from a member of the public. I would hope that you would take that into consideration. It's from Elizabeth Alexis. There's a lot of good points in there. I noticed on Packet Page 499— it talks about the crossing guards in Item 29H. I would like to have that as some contribution that goes towards the crossing guards since it also does address students from Stanford, the children. For now, that's about it. Thank you. Mayor Scharff: Tom, I don't know if you wanted to make any comments. You did questions. We've all moved into comments. Everyone's made comments but you. I thought I'd give you the opportunity. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 62 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 Council Member DuBois: Even though there's very few public here, a lot of public turned out for the County planning meeting. I have been hearing a lot from people in the community. We should rearrange the cover letter a little bit. Maybe the first one should be the academic boundary. I support the comments of my colleagues about trying to maintain and extend that. Affordable housing is important enough that it should be expanded in the main letter and the more detailed point later on. We should talk about multiple things. We should talk about tying it to our current affordable impact fees. When project is approved, whatever current fees are should apply. It's really important that those housing fees remain to be used within a certain radius of Stanford itself. As you point out in the letter, the imbalance between academic space and housing space really has an impact on Palo Alto. The current language shifts it to be used anywhere along Caltrain. I'm worried we're going to see the impact but not any of the affordable housing money. That should be highlighted. On traffic, a couple of specific suggestions maybe you can work in. We should widen the timeframe of measurement to what peak means, and maybe some comments on how the measurements are actually conducted. You had some language in there about parking off campus. It could be done by an independent person on an unannounced day. The method of measurement could be looked at. I don't know if my fellow Council Members support this one. I think we should look at some kind of Highway 280/Page Mill Road transit center that could serve the campus and the Research Park. I brought it up when the County was here. The parking exemptions made sense except for the high-density faculty and staff housing one. We should look at that again. That seemed to be a pretty big loophole for parking requirements. On rail and mass transit, the two issues of Caltrain capacity and what would happen if we did no grade separation, what would the DEIR impacts be. They should both be brought up. Levi Stadium is a good example. One of the letters from the public brought that up, that there were commitments but then the trains were all at capacity. The second is really is there a way we can work with Stanford to expand the Marguerite buses and have those buses impact our traffic less. One idea I've brought up is routing some those buses through campus to the Research Park rather than adding to the traffic at El Camino and Page Mill. The last comment I have is on the cumulative projects on Packet Page 49. You call out our Comp Plan and you call out some of Stanford's developments in other areas. I wondered if we should look at that list, if there are other specific developments particularly on El Camino in Menlo Park that we might want to call out in that cumulative section. Thanks. Mayor Scharff: I had a few comments myself. First of all, I thought Staff did a fairly good job on the letter and the comments. You encapsulated a lot of what people were thinking. We should probably put the open space FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 63 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 protection front and center and go with that. That's something that's really important. I don't want to see us expanding into the Foothills. On the other hand, I didn't really like the sentence in "c," in the housing thing, where it talks about—packet page 486. It says "we urge the County and the University to reconsider parameters in the current proposal and either reduce housing demand or increase affordable housing proposed with and proximate to the campus." I agree we should increase affordable housing. What I don't want to give is the impression that we think they should reduce the academic space. One of the things that's going on—you see with the new Trump tax proposal—is an attack on higher education. We need to be very supportive here of more faculty, more education, giving people more opportunity. Stanford provides a unique role in America. We need to be supportive of that while, at the same time, being really careful on the mitigations. Council Member DuBois' comments were really good in terms of a Highway 280 transit center, beefing up the Marguerite. Those are the kinds of things we should be focusing on, how do we deal with the traffic, how do we deal with the effects of this. I, for one, am not interested in telling Stanford that they shouldn't build more academic space. To me, that seems—in fact, I'd rather see Stanford build the academic space than us build any more commercial space between those two choices. We have to look a little bit and ask ourselves about the parking. I wanted to clarify a little bit with Council Member DuBois on that. One the things Stanford has done a good job at is actually not provide parking for a lot of things. That creates an incentive to use transit. Since it's a closed system, it's not like if you're a faculty member and you don't have the parking requirement, parking on campus that you could really go into the Palo Alto neighborhoods and keep your car. That's not going to work. I actually do think limiting the parking on campus is a really good way induce people to use transit or to be car free as much as possible. I was a little unclear what you meant by that. Council Member DuBois: I'd asked Staff to go look. This was an exemption from being counted under the no new trips. Mayor Scharff: This wasn't parking. Council Member DuBois: They had exclusions for emergency vehicles and other things. It included high-density staff and faculty housing or something, which seemed odd to include in the same category as emergency vehicles. Mayor Scharff: I misunderstood. I thought you were advocating for more parking there. That's why I wanted to clarify that. I wanted to reiterate that the approach in this letter should really be what kind of mitigations will solve the problems that Stanford has. Stanford actually has a really good FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 64 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 track record of this. We're a little schizophrenic on this sometimes. We hold them up on their TMA. We hold them up on how they've reduced traffic. It's right to be skeptical in our letter a little bit about no new trips and how that's going to work. On the other hand, so far Stanford has performed on it. I think they have some credibility there. We should give them some benefit of the doubt while thinking of ways that it works. That's different. We should overall take a tone in the letter that's not necessarily negative about stuff in that way, but is positive on those issues. The tone of our comments should be to encourage Stanford to meet its no new trips goal and put teeth in it where we can. The way I read this it was the City does not believe the approach is sustainable. I thought that was a little too harsh. I would think we would like to believe it's sustainable; we just want to make sure if it's not, there are other things that occur. That's different. Given that we do hold up Stanford as a model for others. That seems to be something we do continually. People do conferences about Stanford and how much they've reduced traffic. Those are the questions. Can they push that traffic number—I don't remember where they are. How much percentage do they need to push it down and is that realistic over time that they're going to do that? That seems to be the crux of it. That's my comments. With that, you'll come back to us, and we'll have a redrafted letter. I would encourage us to put the open space stuff and rejigger the letter as the City Manager said. Vice Mayor Kniss: Lydia, you made a good comment on the CARRD letter that came in. One of the things they mention is the criticality of the GUP's reliance on Caltrain as the backbone of the TDM. If that is indeed the case, then we should mention. Lydia's right. This is a particularly good letter from the CARRD group that analyzes this extensively. Mayor Scharff: Karen, you had something quick. Council Member Holman: A question for Staff. If there are in particularly public communications that we want to have referenced, can we say please reference also … communication? That's one. I asked for last week—thank you very much to Stanford for facilitating this—a handful of hard copies. It's a huge document. To do something that large on line is very, very difficult. County Planning brought just two copies to the public meeting. How can people find out—I understand there are a lot of copies available that are already printed. How can people get a hold of a hard copy if they want one? How can they request one? Ms. Gitelman: Thank you, Council Member Holman. I have one extra set. I did talk to the County Planning Director, and he actually said they don't have a lot of extra copies. They didn't make a big overrun. They were able to FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 65 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 find those two sets that they brought to the meeting. My understanding is they don't have a lot of additional hard copies. We do have a copy that people can use in our offices and at the Development Center, and they're at the Libraries. Council Member Holman: This is a huge document. It's an investment in a few copies that people might want. How could people request a copy and get one? Ms. Gitelman: They should reach out to the County staff. It's their process and their document. Mr. Keene: It's the County's project. Council Member Holman: I understand that. I was hoping the city would help facilitate that. It sounds like you tried. Mr. Keene: We did. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Filseth. Council Member Filseth: Since this is a Study Session, I'm going to take probably more license than appropriate even for a Study Session. My impression watching this whole process is it's similar to what was done in 2000. Stanford's got a perceived need for some expansion. There's going to be all these impacts. How are we going to mitigate them? We're rightly spending a lot of time thinking about that and trying to figure out what they all are and how we're going to do this. We'll get through this one. In another decade or 20 years, there will be another one. We had the discussion already about what's the maximum build out. Stanford's really reluctant to commit to a maximum build out. The process that we're going through, it's good that we're doing it. The community's doing it. I think it's good we extended it another 60 days to continue to flesh this out. It feels very incremental. We're going to do the expansion. Here's the impacts. We're going to mitigate them. This is only half a thought. I wonder if we're thinking big enough; Council Member DuBois' comment about a transit center on 280. The fact is we have finite land and transportation capacity in this part of the world here. Should the expansion be designed around how the transportation and housing works as opposed to the other way around, for example? I don't know. I don't know what the answer is. As we continue with this process. I wonder if we shouldn't be looking at this radically differently at the same time, given that this is likely to continue a long time in the future. That's all. Mayor Scharff: Thank you very much. I think that ends that item. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 66 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 NO ACTION TAKEN 13. Discussion and Direction to Staff Regarding the State Housing Bills Effective January 1, 2018. Mayor Scharff: Now, we're on to the housing stuff. Hillary Gitelman, Planning and Community Environment Director: Thank you, Mayor Scharff and Council Members. Hillary Gitelman, the Planning Director again. I'd like to welcome Sandy Lee from the Attorney's Office and offer thanks to Albert Yang in the Attorney's Office as well as some of the Planning Staff that helped with this summary. There's a lot more to do here, as you'll see, but we wanted to give the Council a first look at the 15 housing bills adopted by the Legislature and signed by the Governor this year. All of these bills takes effect January 1. If you read through our memo this evening, you'll understand we think it's going to take a little while to fully understand their impacts on the state and on Palo Alto. We tried in this report to give you at least some early feeling or thoughts about how they might impact us here. We're going to focus on the bills out of the 15 that we think will have the most effect here in Palo Alto. The first of those is SB 35. This is the one that's been called the by-right housing bill. It really sets up a three-step process. First HCD, the State Department of Housing and Community Development, decides which jurisdictions are subject to the provisions of this bill based on how jurisdictions are doing in producing and meeting their Regional Housing Needs Allocation or RHNA allocation. As we indicated in the Staff Report, we feel that Palo Alto is going to be subject to this bill, given where we are in that process. The second step is whether an applicant can demonstrate that they have an eligible project. We're going to talk about what that means and what makes an eligible project. The third step is the ministerial review process and the parking exemptions that come with being eligible. First, let's talk about what makes projects eligible under SB 35. Basically, the State has said any housing project with two or more units or a mixed-use project where two-thirds of the floor area is for residential use can be eligible if it meets a bunch of other criteria. First, it's got to be on a site that's zoned or planned for residential or residential mixed use. It can't involve demolition of a historic resource. It can't be on a site that has hazardous materials. It can't be on a site that has rental housing or had housing within the last 10 years. We're not going to see use of this bill for sites that currently have housing on them. It can't apply in open space areas. It's not available where zoning changes or variances are needed. If someone proposes a PC Ordinance or a project that needs a design enhancement exception, those are not going to be eligible. It doesn't apply where projects need a subdivision. It only applies if applicants agree— this is applicants with ten or more units being proposed—to make at least 10 FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 67 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 percent affordable at certain affordability rates and if they agree to pay prevailing wages. The expedited project review and approval process. Basically the City has 60 days to determine whether the project is eligible for this expedited review. If it is, then the City has to approve the project within 90 days. It's 60 days to review, and another 30 days and the project is out the door. The reduced parking requirements are eligible to all projects that meet the requirements and that are within half a mile of transit. They don't define that in a lot of detail. If you remember, we looked at this when we considered the ADU Ordinance. A great deal of the City meets this definition. I would say probably most of the City where we'll see residential multifamily and residential mixed-use sites with a possible exception of the far reaches of the Research Park. I brought that graphic that shows how land is used in Palo Alto or how it's designated. This is from the Comp Plan, but it could have just as easily been zoning designations. What it's showing is that we have a lot of the City that's devoted to open space where this bill will not apply. We have a great deal of the City that's devoted to single- family residential use and single-family homes and second units are allowed. This bill is likely to have very little relevance there. We have multifamily zones, mixed-use zones, business and industrial zones that could have some multifamily projects that meet the definition and are eligible for this expedited process. We thought a little bit about how this might apply to sites in Palo Alto. It's a little hard to predict, but we do have some situations here that would tend to minimize it's effect here in Palo Alto. One is that most of our housing inventory sites are pretty small, less than a quarter acre and many contain existing buildings. This is one of the issues when we go through the Housing Element update process. Increasingly, HCD is going to be skeptical of us including those sites in our Housing Element. We routinely see housing projects that require design enhancement exceptions or that require rezoning, a legislative change. Again, those kinds of projects will not be eligible for this process. We do have some potential for large housing sites, where we may have property owners who are interested in using this bill and might choose to design a project specifically to meet provisions of this bill. An example we thought of is in the Research Park. While the floor area ratio for residential projects in the Research Park is pretty low, the FAR, the density is pretty low, the sites are big. Even with a 0.4 FAR you could get a pretty significant project. If the project qualifies under this bill, we would not be able to require a use permit, which is currently the requirement for residential projects in the Research Park zoning district. It's really going to be hard to predict the impacts for a while. Property owners are probably going through the same thing we are; just trying to figure out based on sites they won, the value of the property, what the zoning currently allows, what might be possible on their site without legislative change or a variance or exception of some kind. I brought the map of our housing sites. As I said, most of these are pretty FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 68 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 small. We'll have to see if owners of these sites start to see a financial incentive to pursue this expedited redevelopment of their sites. There are a couple of recent examples of housing projects that the Council's seen. One was the Compadre's site. If you remember, that was 3877 El Camino. It involved 17 units on a relatively small site. It needed a design enhancement exception for the garage ramp. Again, because of the design enhancement exception, it wouldn't have qualified for the expedited process. On the other hand, because of this bill, parking would not be required on that site. If the property owner felt it was feasible to develop 17 units of housing without any parking, they could have avoided the design enhancement exception and been eligible for this process. It's going to come down to a market decision for a lot of people. Do they really want to build housing without any parking and, if they have parking, can they fit it on the site? Another recent example is the Mike's Bikes site; that was the 3001 El Camino, 50 units in two buildings. Again, that required a design enhancement exception. That site had some hazardous materials, so that would not have been eligible for this expedited process. We're going to move on to the next of these bills. There's actually several of the bills that amended a current State law referred to as the Housing Accountability Act. That law requires agencies who want to disapprove or reduce the density of housing projects to make very specific findings. It sets a very high bar for agencies who want to deny or reduce the size of residential projects. The changes in State law expand this Housing Accountability Act to mixed projects. The same threshold that we talked about under SB 35, two-thirds of the floor area for residential use. It also increases penalties substantially for local agencies, and raises the bar, the standard of judicial review. It is super hard to deny or reduce the size of a project that's zoning conforming, that involves housing under this Housing Accountability Act. There are also some changes to the Housing Accountability Act that are just going to be super difficult in terms of their procedural impacts. Like SB 35, there's an accelerated timeline for agency review. In this case, agencies have 30 days after the application is deemed complete to identify all of the objective standards in the Code, in the Subdivision Act, and the General Plan that apply to the project. If you miss something in that 30-day review, you can't bring it up later. It's going to be a little bit of a scramble as these applications come in, both the applications that purport to be eligible for SB 35 and just any housing application that walks that's available to the protections of the Housing Accountability Act to get the Staff reviews done and protect the City's interests on those projects. These are some of the procedural challenges. We can talk about these further. Basically, we're thinking we're going to have to put a very strong application intake process in place so we only take in applications that include all of the information and the background studies that we need to make these decisions about whether the objective standards have been met and whether the projects are eligible for SB 35. Under the Housing FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 69 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 Accountability Act, we're going to have to do that review within 30 days, comparing the project to the objective standards. Under SB 35, we have 60 days to do that review. In the 60 days, we also have to determine whether the project is eligible for that expedite processing. If it is, we have to actually approve the project within 90 days. It's going to be quite a change in terms of getting geared up and ready to make these quick decisions. There are even more bills that came in this package. One of the most interesting and potentially difficult sets of changes related to Housing Element reporting during the housing cycle. HCD already requires, State law already requires us to report on an annual basis how we're doing against our RHNA. We do that. For the first time, Charter Cities are required to hold a public hearing on that annual report. We'll come to you in March with a public hearing on our annual report, which is always due on April 1. There are penalties for not reporting in a timely fashion. The big news for us practitioners is that for the first time, HCD can review actions by agencies or inaction by agencies on implementation of their Housing Element and find them out of compliance. The current law allows HCD to weigh in at the time a Housing Element is adopted to determine whether it meets the requirements or not. You're pretty much free and clear then for the 7 or 8 years of the housing cycle. Now, HCD can weigh in at any time. If they hear from a housing advocate or from a developer that the City isn't doing their fair share, they can take a hard look at our Housing Element and decide that it's not up to snuff and basically revoke their certification. This is a big deal. One of the housing bills also requires ongoing monitoring. This bill specifically is not—Charter Cities are not subject to this bill, which is a good thing. Effectively, I think we're going to have to do this same kind of recordkeeping because of this provisions allowing HCD to look at our Housing Element at any time. Other bills. There were two funding measures, one transfer tax that's already in effect. That actually makes funding available for local agencies to do some of the planning and revisions we're all going to need to do because of these new bills. We'll be submitting a letter to HCD on January 2 asking for our money to fund any planning work we need to do in the coming year. In the good news department, there was a bill that we call the "Palmer fix." It allows agencies once again to require inclusionary units in rental housing. Since a court decision that's referred to as Palmer happened, we couldn't have inclusionary units in rental housing, but now we can. We will have the ability to bring you an updated inclusionary ordinance to add that to our Code. There were also some bills that created new districts to streamline housing similar to specific plan districts, coordinate area plan districts here in Palo Alto. They didn't really add any benefits that don't exist in the current specific plan law. A lot of agencies are talking about those aren't going to be that much use. There were some bills that adjusted the ADU requirements. Specifically, there were three adjustments, one related to parking, one just confirming that FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 70 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 ADUs have to be allowed with construction of a proposed single-family home, not just an existing single-family home, and that all districts that allow single-family homes must allow these ADUs. We actually have a Code cleanup ordinance heading to the Council. It was at the Planning Commission this past week; it'll go back to the Planning Commission one more time and then to Council. We've included these ADU changes. Actually the only two of them we really needed to change the Code about in that cleanup ordinance were pretty simple adjustments. As you know, you've asked us to come next year with another look at ADUs generally. We'll be able to talk about that subject in more depth. Just a couple more slides here. I'm sorry this has gone a little long. Our implementation observations and considerations, in other words what can we do to prepare for all these changes that happen January 1. First and foremost, the Planning Staff and the Attorney's Office are going to be review and revising our internal procedures to address application intake and processing now that SB 35 and the Housing Accountability Act changes are better understood. The Council could consider and adopt an ordinance memorializing the new procedures in the Code. That's probably something we'd want to do. We could take a look at our General Plan Land Use Element and the Zoning Ordinance and see if there are any objective standards that we want to clarify, any new objective standards we want to put in there because that's going to be the way that we review these projects. Next steps. Again, we're going to review and revise internal procedures as soon as we can. We are going to request funding from HCD for the planning and Code revisions we want to do in this coming year. We are working at your request on a Work Plan related to housing that we had targeted for the end of January, but we may need to rethink that now that we're doing another draft of the GUP letter. We will bring you a Work Plan as you've requested, outlining all of the things we could do on housing from that Colleagues' Memo, from the Housing Element, from the Comp Plan. It'll give you an opportunity to prioritize. We'll put in that Work Plan some of these improvements and this relook at our objective standards to meet the provisions in these new bills. Given any direction we get from you on the Work Plan, we'll work to prepare a draft ordinance, bring it the Planning Commission and the Council. We're here to answer (inaudible). Mayor Scharff: Do we have any public speakers? No. Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: I have a couple of questions about this. How does the State Density Bonus Law play into all of this? Ms. Gitelman: That is a really good question. When I said that projects to be eligible for SB 35 could not request any exceptions or variances, that FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 71 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 doesn't include concessions that are available under the State Density Bonus Act. A project could come in and ask for additional FAR, ask for waiver of a setback, or something like that. If they are eligible under the State Density Bonus Act, they could achieve those … Mayor Scharff: Maybe you could remind us what those are, those eligibility requirements? I think it's pretty easy to meet. Ms. Gitelman: Having a certain percentage of a project being affordable can … Mayor Scharff: Isn't that within our 15 percent? Ms. Gitelman: Yeah. Mayor Scharff: Aren't all projects—why don't we just say all projects are eligible? Isn't that pretty much right? Ms. Gitelman: Currently, rental housing is not eligible because it doesn't have to have the … Mayor Scharff: We're having the Palmer fix, so all projects will be eligible. Ms. Gitelman: If rental housing is changed so that requires 15 percent affordability, then all housing projects would be eligible some density bonus concessions. Projects that offer a higher level of affordability, would be eligible for more concessions. Those don't preclude someone from using the expedited process in SB 35. Council Member Holman: Remind me and remind us, have we cleaned up our Code such that the Density Bonus Law can only be used for more affordable housing or more housing as opposed to, for instance, you're providing 15 percent affordable units and you get height and density and all the other kind of bonuses, you can't use that for office? We talked about doing that. Can you remind me if we did actually make that change? Ms. Gitelman: I think we do have some cleanup that we would like to do for the State Density Bonus Law. I'm not certain that that is—I don't recall exactly how we would accomplish the goal you just articulated. We will take a look at that. There's at least one cleanup item were thinking of maybe more—because of a state density bonus change that was made last year. Do you want to add anything, Sandy? Sandy Lee, Assistant City Attorney: The upcoming density bonus amendments do not address the issue that Council Member Holman raised. They do things—for instance, the 2016 legislation clarified that a project that FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 72 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 qualifies for a density bonus because it provides affordable units doesn't actually have to use those bonus units, but they can still be eligible for concessions. That's one clarification. Another amendment, which the Council will hear more about, is there are other projects that will be eligible for a density bonus. These are projects that include units for foster youth and homeless veterans and things like that. It doesn't address the issue that Council Member Holman raised, which we can look at. Council Member Holman: Something you just said, they don't actually have to use the units. What do you mean by that? I tripped over that a little bit. Ms. Lee: Projects that provide affordable units can achieve 20-35 percent increase in density beyond what the zoning or General Plan land use designation would allow. However, those projects that would qualify for that density bonus don't actually have to use those additional units. They don't have to construct a bigger project. Because they provide affordable units, they can take advantage of the various concessions that the City has available in the Density Bonus Ordinance. Ms. Gitelman: We have had projects like that, where someone was eligible for a density bonus because they provided affordable units. They didn't build the bonus units, but they used that eligibility to get design concessions. Council Member Holman: Interesting. Maybe there's a little more cleanup. James Keene, City Manager: It depends on what the tradeoffs are in the concessions. We may want the concessions rather than the density also. We might. Council Member Holman: It depends. Clarity is always good where we can get it. Speaking of clarity, since we're talking about this. We had a conversation; there was some confusion recently about TDRs. After the meeting, it was clarified that TDRs can now be used for housing. Isn't that correct? Thank you for that. The cleanup that I would look for, if we can do it legally—it's always seemed counterproductive that we create some affordable units, but then we create more office that creates more demand than we're actually providing. It seems like an unintended consequence, maybe, of the law. The inclusionary rental housing, whether it's rental—we did have this conversation. Rental, we'll just focus on that. Can we raise the percentage from what it is now? Is there any advantage or disadvantage to that within the new laws that you know about or can identify yet? FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 73 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 Ms. Gitelman: The new laws don't address that issue. I know it was raised in the Colleagues' Memo. As we develop the Work Plan to bring back to you, we're looking at what level of effort would be required for that analysis. I think we'd need to do an economic analysis to show that raising the percentage is feasible. Council Member Holman: Is there any way to address various levels of housing, whether it's affordable, middle income? Is there any way to address the different strata of housing? Ms. Gitelman: Some of the ideas that were in the Colleagues' Memo that we're going to think about for this Work Plan did address that issue. I don't know that any of these bills—the by-right bill when it requires 10 percent affordability for projects of ten units or more has specific affordability requirements for that 10 percent that may vary right now from ours. There are going to be some slight variations. As far as I know, there's nothing in the bills that would represent a change or a real examination of these other issues. Council Member Holman: You're more familiar with it than I, so I thought maybe you had some additions to that. Thank you very much. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Filseth. Council Member Filseth: I just wanted to ask one question. A lot of the emphasis in the Sacramento package is on different tiers of affordable and below market rate housing. Do we have the ability now to track how many BMR units at different levels we have in Palo Alto today? Do we actually have the ability to do that? Ms. Gitelman: We track on an annual basis how many units in different levels we produce going backwards to the universe of units. I'm not sure that we can break it all into the different income levels. We certainly know how many below market rate ownership and rental units we have. It's a fair guess that most of the rental units are low or very low. The ownership units are probably … Council Member Filseth: We can actually track inventory, not just how many we did last year and this year? Ms. Gitelman: It might not be as accurate looking at the whole universe of past actions, but we could come up with an estimate. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 74 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 Council Member Wolbach: It's kind of funny. I've been a part of a couple of Colleagues' Memos about housing around the same time the State was doing stuff, but each we came up with independently. First, we were talking accessory dwelling units, and we said we want to move forward with that. The State moved forward and said, "You better move forward with that." Put some fire under us. I felt the State went a little too far in taking away our local control on ADUs as much as I wanted to move forward with ADUs. The same thing has happened here. The Colleagues' Memo that we recently brought forth. You guys worked on the Work Plan. We started working on that and thinking about that back in March and really spent some time with it. Over the summer with the League of California Cities, I and some others did some advocacy, even went up to Sacramento and testified to one of the Senate Committees on behalf of SB 540. I think Staff might have missed— there is actually—on Slide 15 you said there's not really an advantage to these new things that are like coordinated area plans. There's money, so there is an advantage. If a city—I'm not sure that Palo Alto will want to— does want to use the new pseudo-specific plan process suggested and allowed by SB 540, there is some money available to help pay for those studies. I think that's the advantage. That's why we went up to advocate for that. Around the same time, we were also going through the Peninsula Division of the League of Cities to our local legislators and saying, "We're not fans of SB 35." Again, this went a little too far as much as I'm an advocate for housing. I appreciate the patience of my colleagues that I'm just venting right now. I just had to say that. I know that they made some amendments and toned it down. I still think it removes too much local control. For tonight, are we really making motions or are we just treating it like the last item? Mayor Scharff: I thought we're treating it as a Study Session. It is done for action. People wouldn't be out of order, but I would encourage them not to. We really need to understand this and give it some deep thought. Council Member Wolbach: I agree. I'm not going to make a motion. I will point out a couple of other things. At this point, just recommendations to Staff to encourage what I saw in the Staff Report and the presentation tonight. A Palmer fix ordinance change to take advantage of AB 1505 is something I'd like to see come back to Council. It looks like Staff is already intending to that. I would encourage that. What's discussed on Slide 16 about revising intake procedures and possibly codifying that is something I would encourage. Whether codification is necessary, I'll leave that up to Planning and City Attorney Staff to determine. Getting ready for a potential inflow where you're going to have a very narrow window to do a very careful analysis, I fully appreciate that that is going to put a lot of burden on Planning Staff. Best of luck. Let us know what we can do to support the FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 75 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 Planning Department as you revise your procedures. However you need to have the resources to handle that, let us know. What we don't want to do is have projects come in, and we're not able to do the analysis, and then State law prevents us from later pointing a problem with the application. On Packet Page 537, I do think Staff is right. We should start thinking about— I'm not sure how soon we need to start this—when our next Housing Element is put together. The recommendations contemplated by Staff on Packet Page 537 are pretty good. In order to make sure we have something that's more defensible, our next Housing Element should probably have fewer programs, be clearer, have a realistic implementation schedule. Those are good points recommended by Staff. Those are things we should think about carefully as we initiate our next Housing Element cycle. Also, the suggestion that defer elimination of sites on San Antonio is probably smart just to cover our rears. I don't think we're going to do that with the sites we've already approved to transition to hotels. For the others, Staff is right to have looked very carefully and to continue to look carefully at pitfalls we might step into and try and help us avoid those. I just want to say I really appreciate Planning Staff and City Attorney Staff working very quickly together to bring this to us. Thank you for keeping us apprised of this. Mayor Scharff: Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: I actually have a bunch of questions just to help understand it better. Can you explain the no net loss provisions in a lot of these housing bills? Is that a loss against our Housing Element? Ms. Gitelman: I'm going to need help on this. My understanding is that's in the bill that doesn't apply to Charter Cities. If it did, we would be in a tough spot. As housing sites get developed for other things like hotels or as housing sites that we counted as affordable sites in our Housing Element get developed for market rate projects, then we have a deficit, and we have to show HCD that we have sufficient sites for that deficit. It puts local agencies in this position of constantly having to add sites to their Housing Element or having to have a Housing Element that has four times more sites than you need for your RHNA. Council Member DuBois: The no net loss doesn't apply to destruction of existing affordable housing. If something is torn down, is that included under that? Ms. Lee: That's correct. The no net loss provision doesn't apply to Charter Cities currently. I believe the bill may at one point have included Charter Cities, but ultimately Charter Cities were not included. For general law cities and for those Charter Cities that adopt the State Planning and Zoning Law FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 76 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 wholesale, the provision requires if the city approves a project at a lower density for the income level as compared to the Housing Element, the city has to identify other sites that will make up for that loss of residential density at that income level. If the city is unable to do that through its Housing Element, then the city must find other sites and rezone a site within 180 days. Ms. Gitelman: The only thing I'd add to that in terms of relevance to Palo Alto is where it will come into effect is AB 72, that bill that allows HCD to review an agency's implementation of their Housing Element. If we're not doing a good enough job, if we're losing a lot of affordable housing or not approving more housing projects to meet our RHNA, HCD could examine our Housing Element mid-cycle. Council Member DuBois: That could include existing affordable housing that's not part of the current Housing Element. If we lost that, would HCD … Ms. Gitelman: I think they'd be looking at the Housing Element as a whole. I'm sure we have policies in our Housing Element that say we're going to preserve existing housing. They could find us out of compliance. Council Member DuBois: In all these bills, what sources of funding are there that Palo Alto could use? You called out the one, but are there other sources of funds? Ms. Gitelman: There were two bills that were specifically about housing. One is going to put an item on the statewide ballot in November of next year. That funding isn't available unless the voters say yes. The other is a transfer tax that's available immediately. That's the money we can ask for our share of in the first year after January 1. As Council Member Wolbach indicated, there are two bills that create the ability for local agencies to create these districts. There's some planning money from HCD to do those districts. It comes with strings, though. You're basically signing onto HCD oversight of your local planning effort; that was my interpretation. Council Member DuBois: I had a question. I think one of those was the workforce housing opportunity zone. What is that? What are the strings, the pros and cons of that one? Have we looked into these? Ms. Gitelman: We looked at them very briefly and determined that they weren't as beneficial as what's in the current State law about specific plans. SB 540 would allow agencies to get funding for a specific plan—this new workforce housing opportunity zone. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 77 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 Council Member DuBois: I didn't really understand what that—is that housing specifically for people that work in your city? Ms. Gitelman: I think that's just the name of the district they're letting you apply for. Council Member DuBois: It doesn't really live up to its name. Ms. Gitelman: You could add provisions to stimulate the kind of housing in that district that would appeal to the workforce. It was more to address procedural matter. If you establish this district, then any subsequent project that came forward within the district could be approved within 60 days. Council Member DuBois: It would be a district of affordable housing with the idea that workers could live there. Is that essentially what it's doing? Ms. Gitelman: I'd have to look at the bill more carefully. I'm not sure it was affordable or even necessarily mandates that it's workforce. Council Member DuBois: It had percentages of income levels, I think, required in the plan zone. Ms. Gitelman: One of the down sides of that bill, as I understand it, you have to go through all the hassle of putting it in place, and then it's really only good for 5 years. Whereas, a coordinated area plan can live on for a long time. Council Member DuBois: I did see one funding for veterans. Does that apply to us? Ms. Gitelman: I will have to research that. I don't know. Do you have a bill number? Council Member DuBois: I can look it up. You said open space is excluded. I assume our open space residential zones—are they excluded from these bills? Ms. Gitelman: They would be excluded from SB 35. Council Member DuBois: What about the others? Ms. Gitelman: The Housing Accountability Act, I think, is really only multifamily, so it's not going to be relevant there either. The veterans housing is in that bill that requires a vote of the people. It's a bond act. Council Member DuBois: It's coming up. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 78 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 Ms. Gitelman: It'll be on the November ballot. Council Member DuBois: The affordability for rental, can you explain a little bit more how that would work? Ms. Gitelman: The Palmer fix? Council Member DuBois: Yep. Ms. Gitelman: We have an ordinance that requires 15 percent of all ownership projects to be affordable. We could adopt an ordinance saying that rule applies to rental projects as well. The new State law requires that we offer the owners an alternative, like paying a fee or something, so they don't have provide the units onsite. We could certainly bring the Council an ordinance to reinstitute that requirement. Palo Alto originally had that requirement, but after the court decision we weren't able to enforce it. Council Member DuBois: That stays with the rental property forever? Ms. Gitelman: That's right. Mayor Scharff: (Inaudible) clarification on that. My understanding is what you just said is different than what I think you mean. I thought we did have an ordinance on the books; we just weren't enforcing it because the Palmer decision didn't allow us to enforce. Now that we can enforce it, do we actually need a new ordinance or do we have something on the books? I thought we actually had something on the books. Ms. Gitelman: Alas, we updated our housing impact fee and Inclusionary Ordinance and removed that provision because it was in conflict with State law. Now, we have to go back and put it back in. Council Member DuBois: You showed that one map. In the State law, is there a definition of public transit within half a mile in terms of headways? Ms. Gitelman: I looked for one today. I didn't see one. I think it's subject to interpretation. Council Member DuBois: Is that something we can define as a City? Ms. Gitelman: We struggled with that with the ADU Ordinance, and the Planning Commission recommended something that we brought to the Council. The Council went in a different direction. I think we can do some amount of interpretation of that. Do you agree, Sandy? FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 79 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 Ms. Lee: I think it says a public transit line. Many cities have interpreted that to mean just a public transit stop as opposed to specifying headways. We would have to look at whether or not that's a reasonable interpretation. Potentially it could be. Council Member DuBois: I think we should look at it again. We may want— I think we used a 30-minute headway or a 1-hour headway for ADUs. We should really understand the impacts of all these laws. We may have some unintended consequences if we use that one assumption for everything. We had this discussion—I don't know if we ever resolved—about is the half mile walking distance because we used as the crow flies regardless if there are train tracks or other things you have to walk around. A lot of transit really doesn't reach as much as we showed. You would have to walk quite a ways to get to the actual bus stop. Some quick comments. The State laws are directing us to get serious about affordable housing. I'd certainly like to see us maintain local control, but the focus on affordability is good. We as a Council have been a little wishy-washy about our terms and throwing around affordable. The State is helping us focus there. These bills are defined for various levels of income. We have homeless issues, elderly housing issues, special needs. These laws will help us meet those needs. I would like to see us, when we come back with this Work Plan, have a structured discussion broken into sections. I would like to see us talk about funding and what the City and the City's role can do, whether that's impact fees, potentially buying land, maintaining existing units; what we can do with our land authority. We've talked about a new kind of mixed use, a retail-residential zone. I bring up many times short-term rental impacts and what that does to our zoning. I am interested in AB 1505, the inclusionary rental law. I agree with Cory's comments on that. I'd really like to see us set an affordable housing goal. I've been reading a lot lately. Boulder did something very interesting. They set a 10-percent goal for all their housing units to be affordable. They started off at about 2 percent; they're up to over 7 percent now. It's going to take that kind of focus in our area if we're really serious about affordable housing. In terms of middle income, we should think about how do we protect existing middle-income housing, whether it's rented or owned. We've taken a good stab—we have a pretty diverse housing stock. The ADU Ordinance helped on that one. We talked about Stanford tonight. Stanford actually has the biggest impact on our housing, I think. Strengthening our partnership with Stanford—the Mayor talked about not wanting to decrease their commercial, but the other way I interpreted that letter was we want them to increase their housing. That's totally fair. It's a huge amount of lab space, and it's probably one of the biggest impacts on our affordability. In terms of affordable housing, we need to be thinking about people aging in place and what we're doing for seniors. When I looked at the Staff recommendations, I'm going to suggest FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 80 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 we should do a motion. Staff wants to request funding from HCD. They want to start reviewing internal procedures. I would move the Staff motion. I would actually like to amend Number 3. It's on the presentation, Page 17. I hope my Colleagues will support me. I'm moving the Staff Motion with an extension to the third item, which is "C" on the screen, which is in addition to the current items in the draft Housing Plan, I would like Staff to think about coming back with an affordable housing goal as a percentage of our housing units and some ideas on how we could fund that and what kind of policies it would take. I'm not eliminating anything that was in the Colleagues' Memo. We should get fairly focused. A lot of the State laws are directed in this area. That's my motion. Mayor Scharff: (Inaudible) come back to your Motion. I wanted to speak first a little bit and give Council … Council Member DuBois: There's a second. Council Member Holman: I'll second. MOTION: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Council Member Holman to: A. Direct Staff to review and revise internal procedures to address application intake and processing; and B. Direct Staff to request funding from the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) for planning and code revisions immediately after January 1, 2018; and C. Council receipt of draft Housing Work Plan (requested November 6) and consideration/direction regarding potential code changes in that context (tentatively scheduled for January 29, 2018); and In addition to current items in draft Housing Work Plan, have Staff also propose an affordable housing goal to serve very low-, low-, and moderate-income households, including people with disabilities, special needs, and the homeless; and i. Establish a specific target percentage of permanently affordable units; and ii. Establish clear funding priorities to accomplish the goal; and iii. Identify or create new policies or funding resources to accelerate progress; and FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 81 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 D. Direct Staff to prepare a draft Ordinance for review by the Planning and Transportation Commission and consideration by the City Council thereafter. Mayor Scharff: Want to speak to your Motion? Council Member DuBois: I don't need to speak very long. Primarily I'm moving the Staff Motion. What I'm suggesting is an addition to this draft Housing Plan, which we'll have a chance to review and comment on when it comes back. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: I like the Motion because it sets some definitive steps forward for us to take to try to accomplish some things, if you will, at our terms, to try to take advantage of some things that we do have within our own purview. I like the motion, supporting it. Mayor Scharff: Vice Mayor Kniss, you had your light on. Vice Mayor Kniss: I'm not going to support the Motion for a very different reason. I feel like I'm déjà vu'ing it tonight. We've talked about affordable housing here for years now. We have—except for Buena Vista where we used the maximum of money that we had at that point. We haven't done an affordable housing project, I'm thinking, since 2011. Is that the last time this group voted on an affordable housing? As you all recall … Council Member DuBois: We voted on several maintaining existing affordable housing, renewing things. Vice Mayor Kniss: We haven't created any new affordable housing. As I recall, not to get too direct, very recently we turned down a 60-unit affordable housing project. Whenever we bring up affordable housing, we seem to run into this issue of it isn't in the right place. It's not at the right spot in town. It's not on the right street. It's not something. It's an area where I'm tending to get exercised about it because we have talked about it for so long. Are we suddenly saying, because the State has put forth a bunch of new bills, we'll now do affordable housing? We could be using some of the money that Stanford has had, which didn't get all used on Buena Vista by the way. I'm not sure … Council Member DuBois: I'm confused. I keep proposing (crosstalk). Mayor Scharff: Tom, she has the floor. She has the floor. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 82 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 Council Member DuBois: You're saying you're not going to vote for it because it's … Mayor Scharff: Tom, she has the floor. Vice Mayor Kniss: Rather than going on any further, I've made my point. Until we really vote for something that is new affordable housing units, I'm not going to think we're very serious as a Council in providing affordable housing. Mayor Scharff: I wanted to speak a little bit to this, not to the whole thing. Actually these bills are a lot to take in. It's a little—I'm not so sure there's much harm in this motion in some ways. On the other hand, these bills give me pause in the larger context. In Palo Alto, we really like to think we can thread the needle. We can have it exactly this way and not that way and be really strategic about it. These bills change some of that. It may change the way we think about things. I, for one, want to be thoughtful about this. We've done a Colleagues' Memo on housing that comes back. I want to think about it in terms of what we're trying to achieve. Housing is a really important goal. It is actually not the only goal we have. What I mean by that is I don't think I'd want the Stanford Shopping Center to convert to housing and lose the ground-floor retail. I remember when we almost put in the Comp Plan that Town and Country could have housing. I want to make sure when we look at these bills that we're not setting it up by right that you could demolish Town and Country tomorrow, which we didn't put it in and do it or that you could suddenly put anywhere in the Research Park housing. Some of those places in the Research Park away from transit, away from El Camino, may not be appropriate, but I'd have to think about it. There's a lot in this that we're not—we could basically—when we talk about can we define, no disrespect meant. Staff says it's unclear. To me that means the court's going to decide. If the court's going to decide, it seems pretty obvious. If I'm a judge and it says near transit and there's a Marguerite shuttle that runs right there or there's a Palo Alto shuttle that runs along the route and the stops are within a half mile, that's within transit. I don't think the courts are going to thread that and say, "It's not Caltrain; it's a bus stop or its a Marguerite shuttle, not the AC Transit." I think they're going to say—if I remember looking at that, that's most of Palo Alto. What this bills says is if we don't meet our RHNA numbers, SB 35 kicks in. You can basically—I recognize that Staff said this is for when you're not asking for a design exception. I'm laughing about that a little bit. It means if you have—what do we call them? If we have the State density bonus concessions, a design exception falls to that really quickly. I don't think that's going to be the holdup on doing this by right. It seems to me that under these bills—just a first take—that it's going to allow people to build FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 83 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 housing where we've zoned for housing without parking basically pretty easily. That's something we need to think about as we zone for housing. What it's really going to bring us to and what we're going to be really thoughtful about is where we zone for what we want. A lot of these housing overlays that we talk about doing, we're going to have to think about do want housing in that spot or do we not want housing in that spot. We're going to have to make some real choices. I remember when we did the Housing Element last time, it was really hard for people to make those choices, to add new housing sites. We're going to be doing that. We're going to look and see in a serious conversation about where we want new housing sites. I've also got to say I'm fascinated by our Ventura plan that we're going to do. I'm thinking to myself Sobrato has by right X number of units that he can build with density bonuses and all of that. That's a lot of units. That's a Housing Element site and all of that. That's going to make it really interesting to see how we do a planning process where the developer already has this right more housing than the community is thinking about on that site, especially since it's not that big of land value. This changes a lot. It changes how we think about housing at the Stanford Research Park, how we think about housing at the shopping center, how we think about housing Downtown. One of the more interesting things is people want to build something that is maybe a 30-percent parking reduction. We get a whole bunch of people and we get a whole bunch of people on this Council saying we need to provide parking. As far as I can tell, this bill says you don't have to provide parking anymore for housing. Build as much as you want. It becomes a market stuff about how much housing. Frankly, if you can get the RPP permits, why would you build the housing? Just get the RPP permits, park in the neighborhoods. If you can cut the price of your $60,000 a unit per parking space—that's $120,000 right there—you're going to take that profit. You're not going to build the parking; you might build some. All of those issues are going to be something that we as a community have to think about. Housing growth could be substantial or we could end up with a lot of lawsuits. We don't really know what this is going to bring. I just think we need to be thoughtful and not—I'm not being oppositional to it. I'm just saying we need to be thoughtful about what we want to achieve. I don't think it's that easy. I don't think we're used to thinking this way. We're used to thinking that we can turn any project down we want. Here's another thing. How are we going to handle ARB review on this? As far as I can tell, the ARB doesn't approve anything until they've had at least three looks at it, if not more than that. We're going to do that within the streamlined period of 90 days? Ms. Gitelman: It's an even bigger question than procedurally what does the ARB do. Right now, the ARB findings are all subjective. They're not objective. There's really no place in the SB 35 process for this. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 84 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 Mayor Scharff: Part of our Code cleanup, we can do away with the ARB for multifamily housing projects. Ms. Gitelman: For those projects that meet the requirements in this bill. Mayor Scharff: I'm not advocating that. Please don't think I am. I'm just saying that we're being—with all due respect to Tom's motion, which has— it's Staff's stuff. There's a whole bunch of ramifications to this. When we talk about growth and no growth and being a pro-growth faction and a non- growth faction, all I have to say is "Seriously?" on this issue. If you're talking about changes to the community, this has the potential to do it. It may do it in a real positive way. We may get tons and tons of housing. Downtown may have lots and lots of housing. California Avenue may have housing. El Camino may have a wall of housing. I don't know what this brings. I'm just saying that when you talk about changing the character of your community and having rapid change, this is the kind of thing that can actually achieve that in a way that may be very different than people imagined what this look like. That's the kind of stuff we should be thinking about, what do we want our community to look like. I'm thinking how many fights we had on the Comp Plan when people stood in the audience and said they want 10,000 housing units. Cory basically agreed to 3,500 reluctantly, thinking we should have more housing. Other people thought we should have less than that. I'm not so sure this bill doesn't make a lot of that moot if we don't handle it correctly and we don't think about the ramifications of all of this. I'm totally supportive of affordable housing. I think those are good things, but there's a larger issue here about what kind of community we want, what do we want it to look at [sic], how does this affect what we've been talking about in the (inaudible), how does this affect what we've been talking about in parking and traffic and all the things. We just spent hours talking about how Stanford is going to create all these impacts we have. The impacts of this could be far more than that. We have to be thoughtful about it and start to think about what this looks like in the community. I don't know what those impacts are. I do think we have to have the discussion, and we have to be thoughtful about it. That's really what I wanted to say. What do I think of the Motion? It's too soon. I'm not sure there's much harm in it. I wanted to Staff to think about what we said tonight and come back with some concrete stuff. A lot of the stuff up there, Staff's doing anyway. Staff will be reviewing and reviewing internal procedures. I don't view that as a Motion that we need. Staff's going to be out looking for HCD for funding for planning and Code revisions. I know they're going to be out doing that. Establishing a civic target percentage for permanently affordable housing units sounds right. I don't know what the Staff impact is, what the amount of work is. I don't know if that's even something that—what happens if people want to produce more affordable FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 85 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 housing than our target? Also, I don't think we have clear what—I think our RHNA numbers are those targets on affordable housing. I think we have those. That's what we're supposed to do. I guess I'm going to oppose the motion because I'm not sure it's well thought out in terms of the RHNA numbers, which basically are our target. They are very clear about the different levels of affordability. If you wanted to come back and say—I'd rather Staff come back and say one of the things we need to think about is how we meet our RHNA number, so we're not part of SB 35. There's two things on it, how do we meet those tiers and do we get some credit, which takes on more importance in my mind for the Stanford housing that they build that we get no credit for and we do have to think about how we get some credit for that and how we make that happen. I actually am going to oppose the Motion. Council Member Wolbach. AMENDMENT: Council Member Wolbach moved, seconded by Mayor Scharff to remove Part C, “Council receipt of draft Housing Work Plan (requested November 6) and consideration/direction regarding potential code changes….” of the Motion. Council Member Wolbach: A couple of things. Going back to the question— there was an exchange between Council Member DuBois and Staff on the workforce zones. I was mentioning this earlier during my comments. Just to add a little more color to that. Basically, that's SB 540. SB 540 was sponsored by the League of California Cities. Our number one goal with the League of California Cities is to protect local control. Our hope with SB 540 and the reason I drove up to Sacramento early one morning to testify on behalf of it and why the League pushed so hard for it was that the Legislature, the Governor go with that instead of SB 35. We thought SB 35 goes too far in stripping local control. I don't think anyone doubts that I'm a pretty big advocate of more housing. The point of our recent Colleagues' Memo is we should loosen our local restrictions, but we should be able to make that choice locally. For a lot of the reasons the Mayor just identified, SB 35 really does go way too far. Our hope was that SB 540 would be a compromise, where cities have the opportunity with carrots, which is more money, to do some planning up front, but they have some more local control. It would basically say the State gives you some money at the city level. The city then does planning for an area. It's like putting a little coordinate area plan together for an area where you'd say we're okay with more housing be done here for the next 5 years. You do CEQA for that whole area. When housing proposals in the following 5 years come forward, you wouldn't have to do CEQA again. You do the CEQA upfront. You still have the environmental protection, but then the individual projects don't have to go through the CEQA process. It makes it easier for the housing to get built. It makes it easier for the City to only have to do the CEQA stuff FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 86 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 once, and you get the funding from the State. I just wanted to provide that about SB 540 and why I thought it was a really good idea. Even though I'm not sure that Palo Alto will use it, it's something we should be open to looking at. It might be useful. There might be an area where we're thinking about doing a coordinated area plan; maybe we do a workforce housing zone in the future. The point is it's on the table. It's now an option. It's up to us whether we ever use it. Going to this motion. There are a couple of questions I have about the motion. I don't think we can do Item C tonight. Item C is in Staff's next steps. The idea was that in the new year, late January or now maybe early February, that's when Council will receive the draft Housing Work Plan. I don't think that was something that should go into a motion. I thought it was just part of Staff's presentation saying—I'm getting nods from Staff—that they're letting us know that's going to happen in a couple of months. I don't think we can receive it because they haven't done it yet. "C" should come out. The bullet points that are the sub-bullet points under "C," I'm more sympathetic to this motion than the Mayor was. He's right that we do this. There's this claim I've heard a few times that we aren't clear about what affordability really means, but we are. Affordable housing is identified as certain percentages of average median income. That's what it means. That's identified in our Housing Element very clearly. We work with HCD on it and at ABAG. I don't think there's a lack of clarity. I do think the subpoints are, especially subpoint 1, not necessary because we do that. As far as "2" and "3," I'm not opposed to them, but I don't see why they're directly relevant to this agenda item. I'd propose it as a friendly amendment, remove Item C. Again, half of it we can't do, and half of it is redundant of things we already do. If that comes out, I would support the rest of the motion and maybe make a couple of other additions. I'll just leave that one amendment for now and propose it as friendly to remove Section C. Council Member DuBois: I appreciate those comments. First of all, I pretty much am not in disagreement with what the Mayor was saying or what Council Member Wolbach's saying. The impacts of these State laws need to be understood. I am just using Staff's recommendations for next steps in the presentation. That's where this language came from. Staff saying they're going to review and revise our internal procedures, they're going to move forward to request the funding, and they are working on this draft Housing Work Plan, none of that is new. That's not my proposal. At the heart of my motion—I don't want to delete it—is that as part of that Work Plan we have a discussion about a target for permanent affordable housing units. Our RHNA numbers are zoning for the next—I forget; is it 8 years— for new units. What we don't do as a City is think about where do we need to end up in terms of our housing stock. It seemed like the Work Plan is the perfect plan. It's asking Staff to propose that and have it as part of the FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 87 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 discussion. It's going to come back to us in January or February. "D" here, the draft ordinance, again was just following Staff's language. I don't disagree with what you said, Greg, but you were talking to these State laws in general, not necessarily this motion. The thing is how do we analyze those laws in the way you were discussing. That's what I was trying to get to. Mayor Scharff: I actually agree with Cory just said. Council Member Wolbach: I have a friendly Amendment. Would you accept it as friendly? Council Member DuBois: Again, I would take out maybe the first sentence of "C," that piece. Council Member Wolbach: We can go through these one at a time. Let's try that. Is that friendly to remove just that section that's highlighted? Would that be okay with the seconder too? Council Member DuBois: That was just Staff's next steps. It doesn't need to be in the Motion. Council Member Wolbach: It's going to happen anyway. Mr. Keene: We're going to give it to you. You may not receive it. Council Member Wolbach: We can't receive it tonight. We literally can't do that. Council Member DuBois: Karen, is that all right to just remove that? Council Member Holman: There's a phrase for this. I think it's much ado about nothing. This is what the Staff has said are the next steps. Why is there so much consternation about making this motion that includes what the Staff says is going to be the next steps? I just don't understand that. Council Member Wolbach: This doesn't say we're going to do it. It says we do it. There are times we have a motion which says receive a report because we're getting that report that night. We can't receive the draft Housing Work Plan because there is no draft Housing Work Plan tonight. Mr. Keene: The Council will receive the Work Plan. Council Member Wolbach: Sure, you could have the word "will." I don't want us to say we're doing something that we literally cannot do tonight. It's a bit redundant, but you could also add the word "will" or "will prepare FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 88 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 to." I'm not sure how it's useful to have that section in there. That's why I suggested just … Mayor Scharff: I was the second to your motion. I seconded your amendment. Council Member Wolbach: I'm okay with also breaking this into smaller motions. Let's remove the—I'll change the friendly amendment to just remove that first section that's highlighted. Are you okay with that? Council Member DuBois: I'm okay with that Mayor Scharff: Is Karen okay with that or not? Council Member Holman: Much ado about nothing. To move us on, okay. AMENDMENT RESTATED AND INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to remove from the Motion Part C, “Council receipt of draft Housing Work Plan (requested November 6) and consideration/direction regarding potential code changes in that context (tentatively scheduled for January 29, 2018).” Council Member Wolbach: That's out. I just want to have—just like we were talking about cleaning up the letter earlier, I want to clean up this motion. Thank you for that. We can take them one at a time. "1," "2," and "3" should become "D, "E," and "F." We can just talk about them independently. Let's make them severable because some might be more necessary than others. Vice Mayor Kniss: Are we going to vote on each one separately? Council Member Wolbach: Maybe. Mr. Keene: Could I just clarify? Everything in this Motion is a prelude to us coming back anyway, which includes a lot more stuff than is in this Motion. Council Member DuBois: It does include a lot more stuff. Council Member Wolbach: Let me just be clear that we … Mr. Keene: In one sense, everything is much ado about nothing. Council Member Wolbach: Honestly, I do think the Motion is not absolutely imperative because most of this will happen anyway. In the interest of having us be on the same page, having some consensus on the Council on this, and showing the community and the Staff that we're behind this and FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 89 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 showing Staff that we support the efforts that they've suggested, I'm fine with having some stuff in here. Basically, I'm looking for a way to support the Motion. I don't understand "C" as it's currently phrased. Can you explain what it means? Council Member DuBois: "D," "E," and "F" were subpoints of "C." That's what they were referring to. In addition to the current items in the draft Housing Work Plan, which were the items in the Colleagues' Memo, have Staff also propose an affordable housing goal. The main point of this is to have a specific target. Council Member Wolbach: That's already in our Housing Element. Council Member DuBois: No, that's just our RHNA numbers for the next 8 years. Council Member Wolbach: I'm not talking about subpoint 1 but the stuff before that, having an affordable housing goal. We have affordable housing goals; they're our RHNA numbers. Council Member DuBois: The point of "I" is the description of that goal. Council Member Wolbach: Right. You could just go with "I" and skip over the part before that. You don't need the part before that. Council Member DuBois: If you want to delete the "very low, low, and moderate income including disability, special needs, and homeless," you could. I just thought it gave it color. Council Member Wolbach: I don't think we need that in there. We have this. Can we remove that section? Here's my friendly amendment. In addition to the current items in the Housing Work Plan, have Staff also— after the word "also," get rid of the rest of that section until you get to "I." It would be "have Staff also" and (crosstalk). Council Member DuBois: That was the intent of the original Motion. Council Member Wolbach: It reads better. It makes sense. I can read it; it's more logical. Are you okay with that as friendly? Council Member DuBois: I don't think you're changing the intent. Council Member Wolbach: I'm not trying to change the intent. I'm trying to make the wording better so we can all support it. Is that okay with the maker and seconder? FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 90 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 Council Member DuBois: Yep. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to remove from the Motion Part C, “propose an affordable housing goal to serve very low-, low-, and moderate-income households, including people with disabilities, special needs, and the homeless.” Council Member Wolbach: The next step is—because it's part of the Work Plan, rather than having Staff establish these things and put them into an ordinance, Staff should bring forward recommendations to do these things or options to do these things. Mr. Keene: Can I … Maybe I'm a little off base. Just reality check. It seems to me when we come back with the Work Plan, we're not being limited with what we're going to bring back in the Work Plan. We're going to have things from the Colleagues' Memo if this passes or it doesn't pass. We're going to bring back some things specifically related to this. If it doesn't pass, you're going to bring them up at that meeting again anyway. There are going to be a whole bunch of other issues that we're going to want to deal with. Do we build more housing that reduces the traffic impacts in our town? Are we going to look at things other than just the affordable housing issue? Do we want to let some folks who wouldn't go in affordable housing be able to age in place by selling the property and moving? There's a whole host of things you guys are going to want to talk about. I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish tonight other than maybe giving us a few extra little directives, knowing that there will be a lot more conversation the next time we come back. I'm just arguing as to why it has to get that perfected right now. Council Member DuBois: That was the intent. I didn't think it was going to be controversial. "D" could be changed to just say "Staff will bring the draft Housing Work Plan." Council Member Wolbach: That's already in "C." Council Member DuBois: We deleted the part that said they're going to bring it back. Council Member Wolbach: My next recommended friendly Amendment would be to eliminate "D" because it's not clear what that Ordinance would be. We're already working on all these things. I'd recommend eliminating "D." Council Member DuBois: That's fine too. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 91 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 Council Member Holman: We're telling Staff not to do what they're saying their next steps are? Council Member DuBois: They're going to bring it to us first for discussion before the ordinance happens. I think it's the same intent. Council Member Holman: I'm okay with that. It's just we're spending a lot of time on something that should have been pretty simple and straightforward. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to remove Part D of the Motion. Mayor Scharff: We didn't need the Motion to start with. Council Member Holman: Never mind. Council Member Wolbach: Again, what I'm trying to get us to is a Motion where we find more consensus on the Council. I'm hoping even some of those who have expressed dissatisfaction with this motion may, as it gets amended, maybe we could pick up more votes. The last thing is to—my last friendly amendment it to change the words "have Staff also explore establishing and identifying or creating." This would be adding onto—we had a lot of things in that Colleagues' Memo. This would be what Staff's looking at with their Work Plan. This would be adding a couple more things. That's the language we tried to use before. Council Member DuBois: I'm fine with these changes. I don't think you're changing the intent. Council Member Wolbach: Not my intention to change the intent. I support the intent. Is that okay with Karen? With those changes, I'm okay with this motion. I don't think it's absolutely imperative, but I can get behind this intention. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “explore” after “direct Staff”, replace in the Motion Part C.i., “establish” with “establishing”, replace in the Motion Part C.ii., “establish” with “establishing”, replace in the Motion Part C.iii., “identify” with “identifying.” Mayor Scharff: Council Member Filseth. Council Member Filseth: This is a good discussion. It's much ado about something. The Motion is kind of interesting because it's actually somewhat disjoint. There's really two things going on in here. As the Mayor said, I'm FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 92 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 not even sure we need a Motion for all this. You guys are going to do it anyway. First, the Sacramento housing package. The first "A" and "B" are about the Sacramento housing package. From a really broad level, I don't see that issue as entirely about housing. I see it as about who decides how we manage our City's resources. Do a majority of Palo Alto voters do that or do some guys in Sacramento do that? Even if you agree with the policies that they're trying to get in Sacramento, this is legislative overreach on a huge scale. We're having a discussion about density bonuses. We had density bonuses. Now, we've got all this stuff on top of it. I don't think SB 35 is the worst one. There's some other stuff in there about paying each other's legal fees if you lose the suit that's going to deter people from doing anything. I don't think people in Sacramento ought to be figuring out do we need townhouses in the Research Park and condos in Town and Country Village or vice versa. That ought to be done in Palo Alto. I see what we need to do. We're all trying to figure out what this means. Like the Mayor said, we don't know. I think that's what Staff's trying to do, figure out what it means and also figure out how do we return some measure of control over to a majority of Palo Alto voters for this kind of stuff as opposed to a stack of legislation. We say we don't understand it. I don't think anybody in Sacramento understands what this is going to do to communities either, and they're making this policy. If we're doing it ourselves and we do something wrong this year, we can go that doesn't look like it's going in the right direction. We can fix it. With Sacramento doing it, we can't do that. The first half of this is how do we figure how to get back in control of our destiny, which brings me to the second one. It's clear, though, that one of the impacts of the Sacramento housing package is we are going to need to grapple with the issue of affordable housing. The point about the RHNA numbers, to some extent that trust. I think we ought to get out in front of it. I like the idea of really taking a look at what affordable housing means in Palo Alto. That's not necessarily just the traditional categories of affordable housing. If you look at this chart, you've got major classes of people that can't afford to live in Palo Alto, that aren't traditional, low-income people. We need to recognize that. It's not a problem they have in Sacramento, but it is one we have in Palo Alto. I like the idea of getting out in front of this and really grappling with what affordable housing means in Palo Alto. That's what I saw the bullet C pointing us toward doing. On that, though, there's so much discussion to be had around bullet 1, figuring out what we mean by permanently affordable units and what a target percentage would be. Bullets 2 and 3 are way premature. We could have a long discussion just about the first part. I'm not sure it makes sense to have those at this point. It's going to be a longer process than that. Mayor Scharff: You want to remove them? FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 93 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 Council Member Filseth: I would probably vote for this thing if those two went away. Mayor Scharff: Make a Motion. Council Member Filseth: I'll make a friendly Amendment we get rid of both Number ii and Number iii. Council Member DuBois: What are your concerns again? Council Member Filseth: It's premature. We haven't even figured out what Number i means. Now we're trying to figure out how to fund it and pass ordinances for it. There's a longer discussion about it. To multiple people's point, I think we're going to do this anyway whether there's a motion or not. Two and three are premature. Mayor Scharff: Do you accept his Amendment? Council Member DuBois: I guess I'll accept it if the seconder accepts it. Council Member Holman: I hate to be a contrarian on this, but I don't accept it. Here's why. Mayor Scharff: You don't need to say why. I'll second it. AMENDMENT: Council Member Filseth moved, seconded by Mayor Scharff to remove Parts C.ii. and C.iii. from the Motion. Mayor Scharff: You want to speak to you … I agree. If we do Number 1, Number 1 is a larger discussion. "Two" and "3" are premature. You're absolutely right about that. It'll slow the process down as we go through this. You said something else, and I'll come back and make a motion on that. There are classes of people that are not included in our RHNA numbers. If we're going to talk about affordable housing—we've talked a lot on this Council about how do we provide housing for teachers and other of those—I don't know if well them middle income or what that is. There's that group. Council Member Filseth: It's the gap. Mayor Scharff: It's the gap. After we do this, I'll come back and talk about that, or you can. Anyone want to speak to the Amendment? Vice Mayor Kniss: I'll speak to the Amendment. I would support this. It's almost getting to a point where I can support the Motion. Establishing a specific target percentage of permanently affordable units and asking Staff FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 94 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 to go off and do that is a fool's errand, to be honest. Nothing against Staff. How you do that in a way that nine of us can accept I don't know. Establishing clear funding priorities to accomplish this goal? Are we going to look at the General Plan? What are we going to look at? I don't think either of those are realistic. They may be at some point. There may be some city that has actually established a permanently affordable number of units with a specific target, but I don't know what that city is. Can you name one? Mr. Keene: All these things have layers of complications to them. Vice Mayor Kniss: Absolutely. If we could take those two off, identifying and creating new policies or funding resources can't be harmful. I'm not quite sure where we're going to find those. Mayor Scharff: Cory. Council Member Wolbach: I just want to make sure. Did the Staff capture the Motion as Council Member Filseth intended? I will support this Amendment because this is more in keeping with the rest of the Work Plan. As far as I see it now, it's just adding one more thing to an already very long Work Plan. I'm okay with that. I'll support the Amendment. Mayor Scharff: Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: I think other cities have done this. Boulder specifically has done this. To me it's a flow; it's a process. We would agree to a target as a group. It would be a tough discussion. We would figure out how we actually make that happen, which was "2" and "3." That was the intent. Do that later. Mr. Keene: We are going to do it later. We're going to come back February 5. You're not going to be done with this on February 5. These are some of the biggest things you're going to have to deal with. For us to try to start tying things up along the way—November 6, you gave us a whole bunch of direction as to what to come back with. We haven't even spoken to much of which is encapsulated in what you've been talking about right here. You should cut bait right now and vote or get us some direction and let us get back here on the 6th. The reason for this meeting was technically these new laws go into effect on January 1. We thought it was clearly important that there be a public review and discussion of those. I do think what Council Member Filseth said and the Mayor said also—in many ways the big issue here is this. The world has changed. You need to talk about how much you want to drive and steer where we're going to go versus have it be done. That is way more than these things up here. Not to say that some of these aren't a part of that. Settling on getting this one in or that is like what FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 95 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 difference does it make because we should add 20 more or whatever. Again as Staff, we don't have a position. You are in a sense wasting time right up here right now, really. We're just going to be back there. We're not going to resolve anything. We're not going to do anything different the next time we come back from this Motion than we would on anything else. You have the word "explore." We could start exploring and say we haven't gotten very far. Ms. Gitelman: Maybe I can add one thought. The reason we really raised the Work Plan in this context is we thought, since we're doing the Work Plan anyway, it was a context in which we could evaluate the objective standards in the Code and the Comp Plan and the SOFA II plan and see if there are any adjustments we should make because the State housing laws are taking effect. It was important to say we're coming to you with a Housing Plan because of the State housing bills. We're going to have to try and put that information and analysis into this. We'll do our best. Mayor Scharff: We're responding with something totally irrelevant. It's okay. It's what we do. Mr. Keene: It's relevant. It's just in this moment it's out of context. It needs to be in a fuller context for you to ultimately be able to make a read decision other than just some direction to us tonight. That's all. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Filseth. Council Member Filseth: If I go where I think the City Manager is going, he's suggesting we vote no on the whole thing and let them do their job and then deal with it when it comes back next year. Mr. Keene: Yeah or you vote yes on the whole thing right now and we'll still come—to be honest with you, it's six of one, a half a dozen of the other. I can guarantee you on any of these we'll come back and saw we haven't done more or we've done a bit of this and we have these other things that you need to consider. Council Member Filseth: You're saying whether it passes or fails, you'll do the same thing. Mr. Keene: Yeah. The thing that has me worried is we know that there's this whole big discussion that we really have to have. All we were doing was transmitting this thing. We're having this big hard discussion. That sort of says what's the real discussion going to be like. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 96 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman, if you want to speak. Let's vote on the amendment. That fails on a 4-4 basis. AMENDMENT FAILED: 4-4 DuBois, Holman, Kniss, Kou no, Fine absent MOTION AS AMENDED RESTATED: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Council Member Holman to: A. Direct Staff to review and revise internal procedures to address application intake and processing; and B. Direct Staff to request funding from the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) for planning and code revisions immediately after January 1, 2018; and C. In addition to current items in draft Housing Work Plan, have Staff also explore: i. Establishing a specific target percentage of permanently affordable units; and ii. Establishing clear funding priorities to accomplish the goal; and iii. Identifying or create new policies or funding resources to accelerate progress; and Mayor Scharff: Let's vote on the main motion. That fails on a 4-4 motion. We are done with this item. The next thing is … MOTION AS AMENDED FAILED: 4-4 Filseth, Kniss, Scharff, Tanaka no, Fine absent Mr. Keene: We're really looking forward to when we bring it back. Seriously. Vice Mayor Kniss: I'm one of the ones that voted against this. I think sometimes those need to be explained. We have sought affordable housing since I was brought back to the Council in 2013. We have talked and talked and talked about it. I'm not sure how we could have gotten to a point tonight where it suddenly became a priority when we haven't been able to vote for any for 5 going on 6 years. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 97 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 Inter-Governmental Legislative Affairs 14. Consideration of Authorizing the Mayor to Sign a Letter of Support for the Dumbarton Rail Link Item on the SamTrans Board Agenda on December 6, 2017. Council Member Questions, Comments and Announcements Mayor Scharff: Council Member Questions, Comments, etc. Council Member Kou, you had your light on. Council Member Kou: I actually have a question. PTC had their Chair and Vice Chair nominations. Congratulations to Ed and to Susan Monk. I did have a question. When there is a—how do you say? Tie for a position, what is the procedure from there? Vice Mayor Kniss: You usually vote again. Council Member Kou: Vote again. If it's still a tie, you just keep voting? Molly Stump, City Attorney: It depends on what the local rules are that govern the particular body. Mayor Scharff: The Mayor makes the decision. Council Member Kou: You weren't there. Ms. Stump: Council Member Kou, I had a brief conversation with the attorney who staffed that meeting about the procedural issues that were raised. Perhaps you and I could have a conversation offline about that. If you still have questions or if it's of interest to the rest of the group, I can write folks an email. Council Member Kou: That'll be great in case something like that comes up. I know ARB is having theirs next. It's good to have it answered since it just seems like it would go on and on until Commissioner Suma graciously gave it up. Ms. Stump: One thing to be aware of is that the City's Boards and Commissions are not necessarily under the same rules that the Council is under. The Council has some special local laws and its own set of procedures. The Commissions are often slightly different. We'll talk. Council Member Kou: I think it'll be nice to give them some kind of direction rather than just keep on being uncertain about things. Also in terms of getting the Motions on the screen, I find it really helpful that we have our FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 98 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 Motions on the screen. Maybe this is for City Manager. Is there anyway to provide them that, the Commissioners? Ms. Stump: The Clerk's Office does that for you here with two full-time Staff it takes to support that effort, one doing the Minutes and one providing that real-time. I believe the Clerk's Office does not have the Staff to support the Boards and Commissions. Staff under the City Manager, liaison Staff from the departments, do that function of doing the administrative work to support those Boards and Commissions. They don't have the skill level or the personnel power to have two folks sitting there managing that process. Council Member Kou: There's no way in order to even provide some assistance to them? Sometimes I find them missing words and really managing to figure out what the Motion was. You know as well as we all do that one word can change the entire meaning of the Motion and the intent of the Motion. I was just wondering if there was any way to reexamine that. The Commissions, as some of the Council Members have been on the Commissions in the past, have said they wanted to have some relevance. I would really like to see these Boards, especially ARB and PTC, to have some relevance and to give them some backup there. I don't want to have a discussion right now obviously, but I would really like for you to think about, and maybe I can come and visit and we can chat about it a little bit more. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: A couple of positive notes. The Palo Alto Tree Lighting Ceremony on Friday was a wonderful, successful event. We had tons of people show up. The tree is beautiful. The Mayor did a great job MC'ing. I really just want to extend my thanks to the City Staff for putting that together. That event has really come along in the last few years since it was established. It's really special. When I had family visiting from out of town, they wanted to see the tree on Saturday. Also on Saturday, the Buena Vista Posada, six of us, I think, were there. I saw Council Member Holman, Council Member Tanaka, the Mayor, Council Members Kou and DuBois as well. I was there. I've just got to say the mood at the Buena Vista Posada this year was joyful and full of relief as opposed to years in the past where we were all trying to smile and faking smiles and trying to stay hopeful and keep each other hopeful because we didn't what was going to happen. It was a really nice holiday celebration. Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: On the high side, I was also going to say that the Posada had a lot more happy people this year than prior years. It was what we've been looking for, for many, many years. Now, come to a conclusion. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 99 of 99 City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 12/4/17 It was the Posada to end all Posadas. Sadly and on the low side, I would say that I don't make enough money in this job to be treated so rudely by the Chair. I look forward to the next meeting being much more collegial. I would really appreciate that. Mayor Scharff: I did want to say that I thought the Posada was fantastic and really well done. I was really impressed with the homework club at the Posada. I don't know if you had a chance to see it. The woman that's running it is amazing, and the kids seem really engaged. They were actually in there doing some homework when I first got there, which was really impressive. I think they're doing a really great job. Thanks. Meeting adjourned. Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 10:33 P.M.