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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2018-02-12 City Council Summary MinutesCITY OF PALO ALTO CITY COUNCIL FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 1 of 87 Special Meeting February 12 2018 The City Council of the City of Palo Alto met on this date in the Council Chambers at 5:00 P.M. Present: DuBois arrived at 5:03 P.M., Filseth; Fine arrived at 5:03 P.M., Holman arrived at 5:05 P.M., Kniss, Kou, Scharff, Tanaka, Wolbach Absent: Closed Session 1. CONFERENCE WITH LABOR NEGOTIATORS City Designated Representatives: City Manager and his Designees Pursuant to Merit System Rules and Regulations (James Keene, Ed Shikada, Rumi Portillo, Sandra Blanch, Nicholas Raisch, Molly Stump, George Sakai, Terence Howzell, Lalo Perez, Kiely Nose) Employee Organizations: Utilities Management and Professional Association of Palo Alto (UMPAPA); Service Employees’ International Union (SEIU General), Local 521; Palo Alto Peace Officers’ Association (PAPOA); Palo Alto Fire Chiefs’ Association (FCA); International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), Local 1319; Palo Alto Police Managers’ Association (PAPMA); and Unrepresented Management, Professional Employees, and Limited Hourly Employees Authority: Government Code Section 54957.6(a). Mayor Kniss: We will shortly go into Closed Session. Let me read what this says. Conference with labor negotiators. City designated representatives: City Manager and his designees pursuant to Merit System Rules and Regulations, Jim Keene, Bob Johnson, Ed Shikada, Rumi Portillo, Sandra Blanch, Nicholas Raisch, Eric Nickel, Molly Stump, George Sakai, Terence Howzell, Lalo Perez, and Kiely Nose. Employee organizations: Utilities Management and Professional Association of Palo Alto, (UMPAPA), Service Employees' International Union, (SEIU) General Local 521, Palo Alto Peace Officers' Association, (PAPOA); Palo Alto Fire Chiefs' Association, (FCA); International Association of Fire Fighters, (IAFF), Local 1319; Palo Alto Police Managers' Association, (PAPMA); and Unrepresented Management, FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 2 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Professional Employees, and Limited Hour Employees. Authority: Government Code Section 54957.6(a). I would love a Motion. Vice Mayor Filseth: So moved. Council Member Wolbach: Second. MOTION: Vice Mayor Filseth moved, seconded by Council Member Wolbach to go into Closed Session. Mayor Kniss: All those in favor. We will now adjourn to Closed Session. We will not be out before 6:30 P.M., and it might take just a bit longer if anyone is listening currently. Thank you so much. MOTION PASSED: 6-0 DuBois, Fine, Holman absent Council went into Closed Session at 5:01 P.M. Council returned from Closed Session at 6:44 P.M. Mayor Kniss: Good evening, everyone. This is a continuation of our meeting. We've been in Closed Session since 5:00 P.M., and there is nothing to report out from this evening. We will go on with our regular meeting. We have already done roll call as we did at 5:00 P.M. Special Orders of the Day 2. Proclamation Expressing Appreciation to the Foothill College Paramedic Program for Educating Paramedic Students and Their Support of the City of Palo Alto’s Emergency Medical Services. Mayor Kniss: We will proceed with our Special Orders of the Day. The first one is a Proclamation for expressing our appreciation to the Foothill College Paramedic Program for educating paramedic students and their support of our City's Emergency Medical Services (EMS). Chief Nickel. Eric Nickel, Fire Chief: Good evening. I'm Eric Nickel; I'm the Fire Chief. Thank you for welcoming me back to the podium. Here with me this evening is Dave Hussman. I'd like him to stand up as I read these prepared comments. He is the EMS Director of the Foothill College EMS Programs. Now, Foothill College educates Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT) and paramedics to serve in fire agencies, private ambulances, hospitals, and other clinical settings here in Palo Alto, Santa Clara County, and beyond. I don't know if you knew this or not. February is American Heart Month. It's a federally designated event. It's an ideal time to remind Palo Alto citizens to focus on their hearts, encourage them to get involved in the community FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 3 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 by learning Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) and downloading PulsePoint, and to recognize organizations that represent the values of the Fire Department and have a heart. We're here to recognize an organization that does have a heart, Foothill College Emergency Medical Services Programs and their Director, Dave Hussman. We've had a relationship with Foothill College that goes back to its inception in 1994. There's even history before that when it was a shared program with Stanford University and Foothill College, that really goes back to the earliest days of paramedics in the mid '70s. Trained EMTs and paramedics don't just magically happen. They're hard to come by, and they're in high demand across our region. Many Palo Alto Fire Department EMTs and paramedics were trained at Foothill College. We have partnered with Foothill College to train many paramedic interns out in the field as they're learning their skills. Our community has been very fortunate as we have hired many of their best and brightest graduates. In addition to the work that they do training generations of emergency medical professionals, Foothill College also supports important community events, including staffing first aid booths with EMT and paramedic students and supplying automatic external defibrillators, (AED). In fact, it was Foothill College paramedic student Katie Peters who you recognized last fall and Foothill's AED that came to the aid of that citizen who had collapsed after the Moonlight Run. It was not a City AED; it was Foothill's AED. When we presented this to you, there was so much activity going on and we moved on to the next presentation that we didn't get a chance to adequately recognize Foothill College and Katie for their work that evening. Heart health and community safety are a shared responsibility, and we certainly will continue to partner with and recognize supportive community groups such as the Foothill College program. I would like to turn it over to Dave. He has a few words, and then he will be introducing his President of his Board of Trustees. Dave. Dave Hussman, Foothill College EMS Director: Mayor Kniss, Council Member, and Chief Nickel, I want to thank you for the opportunity to acknowledge the relationship between the City of Palo Alto, its Fire Department, and Foothill Community College. We have been very fortunate to enjoy the longstanding relationship between the two organizations. I would like to take a moment to highlight some of the things that Foothill College has done and then collectively some of the things that we have accomplished together. Most importantly, through fostering this relationship the number of meaningful opportunities for employment, for increased productivity, service to the community has significantly increased because of our joint efforts. Foothill College produces emergency medical responders, emergency medical technicians, and paramedics that are more than adequately prepared for the job market. We boast a 100 percent success rate on the National Registry EMT Exam for paramedics that go directly to FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 4 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 work once they've completed the program. Many of these EMTs and paramedics are able to meet their certification requirements because of clinical time performed in Palo Alto. In addition, we also offer noncredit courses to help those individuals who cannot afford getting started in a profession, and we provide textbooks. A lot of those folks are coming from all over the Bay Area and also Palo Alto. In addition, we are designing a simulation center, which will be at the Sunnyvale campus. We hope to work in collaboration with the EMS Division at the Fire Department here in Palo Alto. Our hope is that firefighters and nurses and folks of all different disciplines will come to that center to improve the skills that they need to have so that they can adequately provide the highest standard of medical care to the citizens. Recently the relationship between the City of Palo Alto and Foothill College combined literally to save a man's life as Chief Nickel just talked about. Kate Peters, who is here, along with Robbie Parry, the Park Ranger, did an excellent job in that collaboration that we're talking about. Foothill College employs emergency responders and other healthcare professionals from the Palo Alto area as part-time instructors, and we regularly invite City of Palo Alto employees to attend our training sessions, including the invaluable Stanford clinical anatomy lab. We work quite closely with Chief Nickel and Chief Roderick in mentoring our students to be better equipped and to look for opportunities, whether it be the fire service or other EMS-related professions. Our ability to work together cohesively allows us to better provide quality professional medical care and opportunity to those people that we're created to serve. Together Foothill College and the City of Palo Alto have shared many successes. We look forward to many more. Thank you. I'd also like to take an opportunity to introduce the President of the Board of Trustees for the Foothill-De Anza College District, Mr. Bruce Swenson. Bruce Swenson, Foothill College Board of Trustees President: Thank you, Dave. I'll just add my thanks on behalf of the Board and the District for this wonderful Proclamation recognizing the contributions of our EMT Program to the City of Palo Alto. The Proclamation touches on a core part of our mission, namely providing high quality career education at affordable cost. We're particularly moved when we can see the fruits of these labors illustrated in such dramatic fashion as the incident we've seen here shown. Let me add one more thing. The District is currently asking for input from the community on educational priorities at Foothill-De Anza. We have a very brief questionnaire out in the hallway that we're asking—this is really directed to the audience here—for your input on the priorities we should establish at Foothill-De Anza. It's your chance to have a voice and speak to the Board of Trustees and the District leadership. Thanks again very much for what's transpired here tonight. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 5 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Mr. Nickel: Madam Mayor, I turn it back over to you for the reading or the "therefore" on the Proclamation. Mayor Kniss: I am going to read the Proclamation, and then I will come down and, of course, deliver the Proclamation. She read the Proclamation into the record. The person who was treated that night is not here tonight, is he or she? Mr. Nickel: No, he was here back in, I believe, November. Mayor Kniss: Is George Perry here tonight? I do know that Kate Peters is here. Kate, could you maybe come up to the front? Congratulations. I'll come down and deliver this. Hopefully, those who are watching and sitting here will applaud. 3. Recognition of the Palo Alto Science Fair Student Winners. Mayor Kniss: Now, we have a second and very special program on the Synopsys Science Fair Championships. I'm going to ask our Vice Mayor, who is very familiar with this, to read that, and then he and I will present the commendations to the students. Vice Mayor Filseth: Tonight, I am pleased to present certificates of recognition to the winners of the 2018 Synopsys Science Fair Championship. The Synopsys Championship showcases middle and high school students in Santa Clara County who will go on to become our future scientists, technology experts, engineers, and mathematicians. We are proud to recognize these talented individuals for their hard work and thought- provoking, independent, project-based research. Before I recognize these students, I'd like to introduce Forrest Williams, Board Member for the Santa Clara Valley Science and Engineering Fair Association, to say a few words. Mr. Williams. Forrest Williams: Good evening, Mayor Kniss. How are you today? It's been a long time. We served on the Valley Transit Board together. I want to thank the Mayor and the City Council for recognizing these outstanding students. They are our future. The responsibility of the Santa Clara Valley Science and Engineering Fair Association is to awaken in each individual student the idea of excitement and challenging opportunities and failures and recouping from failure in engineering and science, technology and mathematics. We need to encourage them because they are our future. That's why we are so happy to have them here this evening for you to recognize your own, the ones that you're responsible for. They're doing good work for you, and they are really challenging the world, not just the Synopsys Championship. We take them to the international fair as well. We FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 6 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 do well there because of their commitment to science and engineering. On behalf of the Santa Clara Valley Science and Engineering Fair, I would like to have you present the certificates to our students tonight. Thank you again very much. Bye-bye. Vice Mayor Filseth: Thank you. Let me ask if the students can join me here. Mayor Kniss: Thank you, everyone. That was really a privilege to do that tonight. Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions Mayor Kniss: Bringing us back to the Agenda for tonight, are there any Agenda Changes, Additions, or Deletions? City Manager Comments Mayor Kniss: We will now go to our City Manager for his comments. City Manager Keene. James Keene, City Manager: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Council Members. A number of items to report. First of all, the lack of precipitation this winter so far. We've heard from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC), who is the City's potable water supplier that the February 1st snow surveys in the Hetch Hetchy watershed show that the snowpack above 8,200 feet is at about half of normal for this time of year. The entire snowpack is at about a third of the average for this time of year. While the snow pack is lagging, water system storage remains high for this time of year. Demand continues to be below pre-drought levels. The SFPUC does not anticipate requiring water use reductions even if precipitation conditions for the remainder of the year are exceptionally dry. The low precipitation and snow pack levels are also starting to have an impact on our Utilities' hydroelectric forecast. Palo Alto's electric supply portfolio includes sources from hydroelectricity, solar, wind, biomass, and biowaste. Because last year was such a wet year, reservoir levels remain above average for this time of year and, therefore, our total hydroelectric generation forecast for the next 12 months is still roughly equal to the long-term average levels. Yet, this represents a sharp decline from our outlook just a few months ago, when we projected well above average generation levels for 2018. For the upcoming 12-month period, we currently expect our hydro resources to provide about 52 percent of our electric supply needs, but this is down from a projected supply level of 64 percent at the end of 2017. At this time, we do not anticipate the need for an electric rate increase in the next Fiscal Year (FY) to cover the cost for a reduction of hydroelectric supplies, but we will keep the Council apprised if this outlook changes. On the energy front, a couple FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 7 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 of weeks ago Hewlett Packard (HP) unveiled a new sustainable garden at its global headquarters in Palo Alto partly funded by a rebate from our Utilities Department for an energy efficiency project at the campus. Mayor Kniss delivered the honors of breaking ground in the new planter beds to give root to some pollinator-attracting flowers. The City worked with HP last year on a site-wide retro-commissioning project to optimize the efficiency of existing heating, ventilation and air conditioning, (HVAC), systems; upgrade building energy management software; and install Light Emitting Diode (LED) lighting. By participating in the City of Palo Alto's Empower Palo Alto Program, HP received a rebate for the energy savings and used the funds for employee sustainability projects including the garden, which employees will be able to tend. HP is seeing savings at the facility equivalent to the amount of energy needed to power roughly 250 homes in Palo Alto for a year. Quite commendable. I think the Council has been made aware of two pieces of legislation introduced both by Senator Weiner. Senate Bill (SB) 827 would automatically increase zoning densities and building heights notwithstanding a local government's Housing Ordinance. As Council has adopted Legislative Priorities to oppose bills that preempt or reduce local authority, we have already begun opposing this bill. Our lobbyist has met with Senator Weiner's staff to voice our opposition and concerns. We've reached out to the League of Cities to join their efforts. Today, Mayor Kniss signed a letter to Senator Weiner noting our formal opposition. A copy to Council will be forthcoming. Secondly, it's been brought SB 828 also introduced by Mr. Weiner is a Placeholder Bill. It intends to affect housing but may not. In its current form, the bill requires the State Housing Department to take certain actions relating to unmet housing needs and requires a local jurisdiction to make certain plans for its housing allocation. It's important to note that currently this is a bill meant to hold a spot open in the Senator's larger bill package so he can meet the Friday bill introduction deadline without having to complete a bill. The League has taken a watch position actually, and we will continue to track SB 828 if it moves forward. As a Placeholder Bill, it would not be appropriate to take an action opposing it at this point in time. We will watch it carefully, though, and return to Council as needed. A happy early Valentine's Day. Last Saturday, Cubberley Artist Studio Program (CASP) artist Marianne Lettieri and community artists Lynn Green and Lisa Van Dusen hosted their third annual Valentine Making Party at Cubberley Community Center. More than 35 people who represented a broad cross-section of the Palo Alto community came together with an alchemy of creative focus and collaboration to create Valentine cards for their families and friends. This event, held at the Art Lab, a space dedicated for community engagement programming and exhibition opportunities by the Cubberley Artist Studio Program. That being said, I would just send out an early Valentine's Day wish to my wife, just in case I forget to do something later this week. Finally, I just got a quick notice from the Clerk's FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 8 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Office on the annual aerial treatment of Bay marshes along our section of the Baylands east of Bayshore Drive. It is spraying that is done to reduce the population of nuisance mosquitoes. That is scheduled for February 14th. It is an annual program to prevent the spread of mosquitoes, specifically the winter saltmarsh mosquito. The treatments are scheduled to start at approximately 7:30 A.M. in the Palo Alto marsh areas and then move to the Alviso area further south in the County for the Zanker Marsh and nearby ponds. Please be aware the areas will be treated with a naturally occurring soil bacteria that activates when consumed by mosquito larva a mosquito- specific hormone, which prevents them from becoming adults. There will be some planes, I guess, flying over that area on the 14th. Lastly, I would remind us all again today is February 12th, which is the actual birth date of Abraham Lincoln, our greatest President ever arguably. Happy Birthday, President Lincoln. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: Thank you, City Manager. I would add to that it was a real pleasure to do HP's sustainable garden as my husband worked at HP for many years. It happened to be at the building he worked in. We congratulate them again for their accomplishment. Oral Communications Mayor Kniss: Taking us back to our regular Agenda, taking us to Oral Communications. Listed up there are the Oral Communications. We'll go in the order. I'll call out your name, but if you come closer to the mic, it'll make it easier long term. We'll start with Rob Levitsky. Rob Levitsky: Just a point of information in this rush to get self-driving cars and the effect it's going to have on parking garages. We know that Uber and Tesla and Waymo are all working very hard on getting self-driving cars. There's going to be an effect, and we don't know exactly what it is. Leading design firms are now building parking garages with external ramps so that they can easily be repurposed in the future if the parking garage is no longer needed. What you see up here is a parking garage at Marsh Road that was just built. You can see there an external ramp on the outside. The idea is if you don't need the parking garage anymore, you can repurpose it easily as office space. I don't know if we've investigated that at all for our $40 million California Avenue thing. It's just a point of information that might be useful. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: Thank you. Our next speakers is Bill Ross followed by Stephen Rosenblum. Bill Ross: Good evening. My name is Bill Ross; I'm a taxpayer and resident. I would first like to acknowledge and thank the recited efforts of the City FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 9 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Manager and the Mayor with respect to Senate Bill (SB) 827. It has the potential for being very destructive of the local land-use police powers of local government. Secondly, I'd like to raise an issue with respect to a matter that took place before your Planning and Transportation Commission (P&TC) at its January 31st meeting, specifically Agenda Items Number 2, 3, and 4. I wish to respectfully and factually raise the conduct of one Planning Commissioner, which any reasonable person upon review of that proceeding would at a minimum come to the conclusion that it was disrespectful of his fellow Commissioners, members of the City Staff, and members of the public. That Commissioner engaged in activity, which would be violative of (inaudible). That Commissioner engaged in offsite texting. Whether or not ex parte communications were involved or not, I do not know. I would respectfully suggest that it's also violative of the standards of which he should be aware in Assembly Bill (AB) 1825 dealing with hostile workplace environment. He interrupted his own Commissioners, members of the public, and the applicant's representatives concerning those matters. I don't think that's the kind of conduct you want to sanction. I would invite your review, and I think there is a need for whether or not those hearings, which were both legislative and adjudicatory, afforded due process to members of the public, the applicant, City Staff, and the fellow Commissioners. The name of that Commissioner is Michael Alcheck. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: Thank you, Mr. Ross. Stephen Rosenblum. Stephen Rosenblum: Good evening, Mayor Kniss, Vice Mayor Filseth, and Council Members. I'm here this evening to comment on the Staff investment activity report at the bottom of tonight's Agenda. I'm particularly pleased at the new attention that is being paid to the role of fossil fuels in the City's portfolio as a result of the Council's recent action asking Staff to propose a divestment plan from fossil fuels. There are three concrete actions that I'd like to applaud. The recognition that the City's investment in Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) bonds should be eliminated and replaced by bonds from untainted sources. Secondly, the purchase of the City's first Green Bond issued by the Santa Cruz County Capital Financing Authority, and thirdly the commitment to review the City's banking partnerships to eliminate relationships with the present partner banks, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, United States (US) Bank, and Union Bank, which are all financing fossil fuel consumption and replace them with clean banks. I look forward to Staff proposing new guidelines for investing and banking that eliminate organizations investing in fossil fuel extraction and consumption and to the Council approving strong guidelines. The $.5 billion that Palo Alto invests should be used to express our values as well as protect the City's financial future. Thank you. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 10 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Mayor Kniss: Thank you for coming. Melanie Liu followed by Penny Ellson. Melanie Liu: Good evening, Council Members. I want to echo Steve's comments. Really appreciate the moves forward that the City Manager and the City Finance Staff have made to align our money with our values. I want to make a note that the investment activity report mentions that Palo Alto is not invested in the production and/or drilling of fossil fuels. I want to say that this is a three-legged stool. There are the extractors. Cities like Mountain View are directly invested in those extractors of Exxon and Chevron. The second leg of the stool is the converters, and that's TVA. We can't drink oil. We can't eat coal, so we need the converters to change what is dug up from the Earth. That's Tennessee Valley Authority. We are looking forward to the City of Palo Alto getting that off our books. The third leg of the stool is the banks. Without the financing, none of this could happen. I would like to just let you know that on December 1, 2017, US Bank entered into a new filing with Energy Transfer Partners, which is the company behind Dakota Access Pipeline, not only that but Mariner East, Rover, Bayou Bridge, and Energy Transfer Crude Oil Pipeline. Our main bank, US Bank, is part of Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) new $4 billion credit deal. Sonoco Logistics merged with ETP last year, and they have the worst oil spill record in the history of any company in the industry. We met today with River City Bank. I want to thank Lalo and Tarun for meeting with River City Bank. It's a local, regional bank that does not have ties to Wall Street. It's good enough for the City of Davis to move their money to, and good enough for many, many clean energy groups. About 12 of them bank with River City. Mayor Kniss: Thank you for coming. Penny Ellson and then Stephanie Muñoz. Penny Ellson: Good evening. I'm Penny Ellson, speaking as an individual. I'd like to comment generally on infrastructure finance actions of the last couple of weeks. I've been out of town and unable to comment before now. Some decisions have been made about certain infrastructure projects without really considering the context of the total Infrastructure Budget and the new Comprehensive Plan (Comp. Plan) and overall community needs. I see an increasingly driver-focused budget shaping up. Massive parking garage funding is being prioritized over bicycle/pedestrian safety projects. Finance Committee is starting to talk about cutting or reducing elements of at least one longstanding school route project that's out to bid. How does a $68.5 million investment in automobile parking align with Comprehensive Plan Goal T-1, create a sustainable transportation system complemented by a mix of land uses that emphasizes walking, bicycling, use of public transportation, and other methods to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 11 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 single occupancy motor vehicles. I'm concerned about the relative lightning speed with which parking projects are moving forward while bike/pedestrian projects seem to be headed for delays or cuts. What we're cutting here are projects that are directed by the Comp. Plan Transportation Element. Some of you ran on that element, and all of you approved it. Some of you helped write it. Studies of road operations and safety that were done in response to community concerns about Charleston-Arastradero preceded 1999. We've had plenty of delays on this project. They're at 100 percent plans right now, and after more than 16 years, 15 public hearings, and countless community meetings, we find ourselves holding our breath again, waiting to find out if this project is going to move forward. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: Thank you. Stephanie Muñoz. Stephanie Muñoz: Good evening, Mayor Kniss and Council Members. As you look straight ahead of you, back at Vince Larkin in the Olympic t-shirt, it might give us the occasion to remember that we're part of a larger world. Most of the time, we just really tend to our own knitting. We feel that you're certainly doing your duty by paying attention to only Palo Alto. It's a whole world that's pretty interconnected. When I mentioned to a businessman about use of space, I was trying to say, "I'm trying to convince the Palo Alto City Council that we should have older people housed in just a single private room and bath for themselves, but then in the same building they'd have other opportunities for socializing and woodworking and computing and all those good things. He said, "Buy a building." I was thinking, "He's really"— I had a building; I used to. He's really telling me that it's rich people with their money who can influence public policy. I don't think that's a good idea. To start with, I'll ask you tonight seriously to consider an organization called Mayors for Peace that Women's International League for Peace and Freedom has been promoting. All of us feel that you people down here have an understanding of people's needs that the people up at the top, in Washington DC and in Seoul and Pyongan Yang and Peking, don't have. It's about what people need. One of the things that surprises me is that we aren't asking ourselves if we couldn't make a happier life for ourselves if we did pay attention to what's happening on the national screen. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: Thank you. Sea Reddy and Terry Holzemer. Sea Reddy: Good evening, Mayor and City Council and citizens of Palo Alto and surrounding areas. Happy Valentine's Day. If you haven't read in the last few minutes, one of California's 17-year-old young lady won the gold medal. I don't know how to butcher her name, but her last name is Kim. She happens to be from Torrance, California, where I used to live, worked. Very inspiring. She trained in Switzerland, which is my favorite country after FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 12 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 where I live. Back to here. I've again gone to this location called Foothill Produce on 2310 Homestead Road. It's as small as College Terrace Market, a thriving, thriving produce market, a lot of produce. It could be a great place for us in College Terrace. If the power bees can help us facilitate that, they might be willing to come and serve our community. The third thing is I would like to propose that you consider the City of Palo Alto take the initiative to declare Good Friday as a faith day for all of us. You don't have to be a Christian; you can be Jewish or any other religion. We call it a faith day and declare that as a holiday. Most of the people don't work. Even if they are at work, they're thinking about Easter anyway or those holidays. I don't know what it takes to call it a holiday, but we should consider that. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: Thank you. Terry Holzemer and then Suzanne Keehn. Terry Holzemer: Thank you, Madam Mayor and Council Members. I'd just like to also reiterate something Mr. Ross said earlier. I attended that meeting at the Planning Commission and was appalled at the behavior and some of the off comments that were made by the said Planning Commissioner. I hope that is notified in the record, that I was there and I did see the things that Mr. Ross claims. The second thing I want to mention really quickly is SB 827. Obviously, the letter which the City Manager has produced and the Mayor has signed, I guess, and you put together is wonderful. I applaud the Council for doing that. However, I think a much bigger message needs to be sent, especially to our State Legislators. We need to send a message that this kind of legislation, that basically takes control of our cities away from the citizens, should not be allowed. We should send a very strong message publicly, not just in letter form but publicly. I urge the Council to do a special press conference sitting out on the City steps of City Hall, announcing their opposition to such laws. It's time that we take a much stronger stance against State Legislators who would do this. The State Legislator who is proposing it, of course, is from San Francisco. He believes in an urban environment. I don't consider Palo Alto to be an urban environment. We came here and live here because it's a suburban environment, not an urban environment. That's something that we want to try to maintain. Last but not least is that I urge the Council to look closely at also SB 828, which is also the other bill that's in conjunction with this and try to do something to talk to our Legislators and prevent these laws from coming even forward. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: Thank you. Our last speaker is Suzanne Keehn. Suzanne Keehn: I would agree with everything that Terry said. Having a press conference in the front out here would be a great idea. I just found FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 13 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 this letter to an editor. This is really interesting. The State of California has filed more than two dozen lawsuits against the Federal Government. We claim State's rights. I've been really happy we were doing this to enforce our own laws with healthcare, gas and drilling, net neutrality, etc. Our own State government is taking away our local control from all 400-and-some cities. The problem we have in this State is poor planning. We're certainly losing livability. It's led to unsustainable development, and we still don't talk about water is not going to run forever for more and more people here. The housing crisis usurping the cities' rights to self-government and future development, I think we need to really look at overpopulation, gridlock, and environmental destruction, which worsens the quality of our life. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: Thank you. That ends Oral Communications for tonight, taking us back to Approval of the Minutes. Minutes Approval 4. Approval of Action Minutes for the January 22 and January 29, 2018 Council Meetings. Mayor Kniss: Anyone want to approve the Minutes? Vice Mayor Filseth: Move to approve the Minutes. Council Member Wolbach: Second. MOTION: Vice Mayor Filseth moved, seconded by Council Member Wolbach to approve the Action Minutes for the January 22 and January 29, 2018 Council Meetings, including changes to the January 29, 2018 minutes as outlined in the At Place Staff Memorandum. Mayor Kniss: There's been a Motion and second to approve the Action Minutes for January 22 and 29. Could you vote on the board? Beth Minor, City Clerk: Mayor Kniss? Mayor Kniss: Yes, ma'am. Ms. Minor: Can we also include the At-Places Memo for the Minutes for January 29th? Mayor Kniss: Yes, if the maker and the seconder approve. Vice Mayor Filseth: So move. Ms. Minor: Thank you. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 14 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Mayor Kniss: Yes, they will add that to the Motion. Thanks. Voting on the board. That passes unanimously and takes us to the Consent Calendar. MOTION PASSED: 9-0 Consent Calendar Mayor Kniss: Items 5-10 tonight. Council Member Scharff: I'll move approval. Vice Mayor Filseth: Second. MOTION: Council Member Scharff moved, seconded by Vice Mayor Filseth to approve Agenda Item Numbers 5-10. 5. Resolution 9735 Entitled, “Resolution of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Approving and Attesting to the Veracity of the 2016 Annual Power Source Disclosure Report.” 6. Annual Review of the City’s Renewable Procurement Plan, Renewable Portfolio Standard Compliance, and Carbon Neutral Electric Supplies. 7. Review of Fiscal Year 2018 Mid-year Budget and Approval of Budget Amendments in Various Funds. 8. Approval and Authorization for the City Manager to Execute Contract Number C18169608 With Clean Harbors Environmental Services, Inc. for Household Hazardous Waste Management and Emergency Response Services for a Term of Three Years With the Total Not-To- Exceed Amount of $990,000. 9. Park Improvement Ordinance 5426 Entitled, “Ordinance of the Council of the City of Palo Alto for Peers Park Dog Off-leash Exercise Area (FIRST READING: January 29, 2018 PASSED: 9-0).” 10. Ordinance 5427 Entitled, “Ordinance of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Amending Section 2.08.120 of Chapter 2.08 and Section 2.30.270 of Chapter 2.30 of Title 2 of the Palo Alto Municipal Code to Update job Titles of Attorneys in the City Attorneys’ Office to Conform With Changes Adopted by Council in the FY 2018 Annual Budget (FIRST READING: January 29, 2018 PASSED: 9-0).” Mayor Kniss: There's been a Motion and a second. Anything anyone wants to say on that? If not, would you vote on the board? FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 15 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 MOTION PASSED: 9-0 Action Items 10A. Review and Accept a Proposed Housing Work Plan for 2018-2019 and Refer Specific Elements to the Planning & Transportation Commission for Preparation of Related Zoning Ordinance(s) (Continued From February 5, 2018). Mayor Kniss: That takes us to 7:40 P.M., and it takes us back to last week's meeting under the first item under Action Items, which is 10A. If you remember, we began this last week. We had a Motion on the table and a second. The person who made the Motion was Adrian Fine, and he spoke to it. The second was Greg Scharff. I don't believe you finished speaking last week. Council Member Scharff: I didn't. Mayor Kniss: You did? Council Member Scharff: I did not. Mayor Kniss: We will come back to you. Then I think it was maybe Tom and Karen. To go to Staff, we're reviewing and accepting a proposed Housing Work Plan for 2018-2019, referring specific elements to Planning and Transportation for preparation of related zoning ordinances. As we said, it's continued from last week. Welcome. Hillary Gitelman, Planning and Community Environment Director: Thank you, Mayor Kniss. Mayor Kniss: We'll have you catch us up. Ms. Gitelman: Mayor Kniss and Council Members, I'm Hillary Gitelman, the Planning Director. Jeannie Eisberg is here with me. We really didn't intend to review our presentation again. I thought the Council started off a good discussion last week. We're happy to continue that discussion with you, any questions or thoughts you have. The Motion as it stands so far basically reflects the Staff recommendation. MOTION: Council Member Fine moved, seconded by Council Member Scharff to: 1. Direct Staff to: FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 16 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 i. Complete ongoing projects and initiatives designed to stimulate the production of affordable and workforce housing; ii. Develop and adopt one or more zoning amendment Ordinances with provisions designed to encourage production of a diversity of housing types in appropriate locations; iii. Prepare the economic analyses necessary to prepare and consider Ordinances increasing inclusionary requirements from 15 percent to 20 percent for new development, applying inclusionary requirements to new rental housing, and requiring payment of in-lieu fees or off-site replacement if existing units are removed from the housing stock resulting in a net loss of units; iv. Use the City’s affordable housing funds to stimulate the rehabilitation and development of new affordable housing; v. Partner with other agencies and organizations to meet the needs of underserved members of our community and to engage in community conversations about the use of publicly-owned land for affordable housing; vi. Add an item to the 2018 Ordinance to increase housing Floor Area Ratio (FAR) in the Downtown, California Avenue, and El Camino Real areas; 2. Refer Work Plan Items 2.1 through 2.6 to the Planning and Transportation Commission for input on the preparation of a 2018 Housing Ordinance and a recommendation for consideration by the City Council; and 3. Refer Work Plan Items 3.1 through 4.2 to the Policy and Services Committee for input on possible policy changes and on the use of City housing funds. Mayor Kniss: We have a couple of speakers who want to talk tonight. I checked earlier with our City counsel, who said this is permitted under our rules. They are … Beth Minor, City Clerk: Suzanne Keehn and Terry Holzemer. Mayor Kniss: If you would come forward. Thank you. Terry Holzemer: I'd just like to make the comment that housing, of course, is a very critical thing in this City, and we need more of it. What we really, FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 17 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 truly need—I've mentioned this before to this Council—is more Below Market Rate (BMR) units. Below market rate should be the focus because that is where low-income workers, the people who desperately need the housing and don't have access to it. I'll give you a prime example. Near where I live there's a huge sign on one of the buildings that says "for rent, we have open spaces for $3,800 a month." For most people, that's more than how much they earn in a month. They're obviously not going to rent those units. It isn't so much that there isn't units available. The fact remains that there aren't units that people can afford. We need more subsidized housing, more below market rate housing. I urge the Council to look in that direction first and foremost. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: Thank you. Suzanne, are you the other speaker? Suzanne Keehn. Suzanne Keehn: Again, I agree. We need to in our directions at least have 25 percent of any new housing below market rate. The other thing is I'd really like to say we have this very important discussion here tonight and the next one. I really want to say that we really need more time, to not rush things through. With issues like this one and then Ventura and Fry's, there needs to be public meetings where we have discussion. We need to also define what we mean by this word housing. What kind of income do we need to get one of these? The other thing is apparently we have gotten rid of 11 firemen, and we don't have any Police Department for traffic. We have a Police Department, but not a traffic enforcement department. All these things needs to be taken into consideration before we make big decisions. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: Thank you for coming. Those are our only two speakers on this item tonight. We had several speakers last week. We, I think, are finished with public speaking for this evening. That takes you back to what is Item 10A, which is, as I said, reviewing and accepting a proposed Housing Work Plan. This is a Plan to further look at our opportunities for increasing our housing supply. We are not voting on any zoning changes tonight. We are voting instead on a Plan for '18 and '19. Adrian, I don't think it would be fair if I didn't give you at least some opportunity if you need to add to what you said last week as this is your Motion. Council Member Fine: I spoke briefly to it last week, but I'd be happy—I just wanted to put something out there so we knew what we were working with. I'd be happy to speak later after I hear some comments and questions from my colleagues. I'll come back. Thank you. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 18 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Mayor Kniss: Why don't I come back to you later on? Council Member Scharff, you asked for the opportunity to finish off your comments. Council Member Scharff: I did. The first thing I wanted to say is I had the pleasure of being at the Regional Planning Committee for Association of Bay Area of Governments (ABAG)/Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) last week. I was really shocked and happy to find out that MTC has efforts to link transportation funding with building affordable housing. Guess who was the eighth best builder of affordable housing in 2015 and 2016? It was actually Palo Alto. We always sit here and beat ourselves up about how little we're doing. We're one of the top 15 cities in the Bay Area for building affordable housing for 2015 and 2016. We came in as number eight. When I actually thought on a per capita basis, we are the best in Santa Clara County on a per capita basis. It's not like we're building no affordable housing. In fact, it was nice to be sitting there in the meeting when they called us out as being one of the best cities for building affordable housing. I'm sure that since Mountain View is building 10,000 units and other people are building all this, we will fall quickly off that list. For the moment, we can bask in that glory. Now, I just had a few little questions about the Plan that we have in front of us. My understanding is this is the Work Plan for the entire year. Is that correct? Ms. Gitelman: This is actually a 2-year Plan. Council Member Scharff: It's a 2-year Plan for it. I wanted to understand some of the things. We have remove any constraints to special needs housing in particular. That seems awfully broad. We don't say that about any other housing type. Are we doing away with height limits? Are we going to allow no parking? Why is it so broad? Ms. Gitelman: Just to reiterate how we got here, what we tried to do in this Work Plan is take the implementation programs that the City committed to in the Housing Element, what we did in the Comprehensive Plan (Comp. Plan), and then what was in the Colleagues' Memo and organize them in a way that we could conceivably get them done in the 2-year timeframe. The special needs item you just referred to came from our Housing Element. We can check while we're sitting here right now that the wording is the same. I think it is. There was a desire at the time the Housing Element was updated to do anything we can to increase the production of special needs housing. Council Member Scharff: We should check that. We're not going to build 100-story buildings. We're not going to probably break the 50-foot height limit unless that's what we're talking about. I wanted to know—we should be a little more moderate in the way we write these things sometimes unless FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 19 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 that's exactly what we're going to do, remove any constraints to building it if you come in. Ms. Gitelman: It is in the Work Plan. Council Member Scharff: It's in the Work Plan at 2.4.7? Ms. Gitelman: Page 16, it recaps that Housing Element Program 4.2.1, on Page 16 of the Work Plan. Council Member Scharff: This is in the brochure, right? Ms. Gitelman: Yeah. It says ensure the Zoning Code facilitates the construction of housing that provides services for special needs households and provides flexible development standards for special needs service housing that will allow such housing to be built with access to transit and community services while preserving the character of the neighborhoods in which they are proposed to be located. Council Member Scharff: That I would support completely. That's the right statement. Statements like remove any constraints is just—just seems like it goes too far. Allow parking reductions based on Transportation Demand Management (TDM) plans, we already do that, correct? Ms. Gitelman: Let me confirm this. I think we do that for commercial development but not always-- Council Member Scharff: We don't do it for housing. Ms. Gitelman: Let me confirm before I respond. We'll look it up. Council Member Scharff: It's a good idea that we do it for housing. I wanted to talk a little bit about parking. When I read through this, from the last time this came before us, we've just had two meetings with the neighborhoods on Residential Preferential Parking (RPP). We talked about 40 spaces in Ventura and 10 spaces in Southgate. Parking is really something that excites people. When we do this, I'm not okay with building the wrong amount of parking. I'm not okay with building too little parking and having the parking spill out into the neighborhoods. I'm also not okay with building too much parking. The way I saw this at first is that you're going to do a study. On that study, you're going to basically come up with what is the right parking for a project. That's what I saw you say you're going to do. What I also read into this—I wanted to make sure it's not—are we looking at building less than the needed amount of parking to facilitate housing. If so, I'm not okay with that being on the Work Plan. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 20 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Ms. Gitelman: We're proposing several things in the Work Plan with regard to parking. One, you're correct we're going to do a study of different housing types and locations to try and get a better handle on what parking demand is associated with different housing types and locations. The other is really a series of suggestions from the Colleagues' Memo with regards to parking. The Colleagues' Memo talks about allowing residential projects to consolidate parking and TDM efforts with other projects or the Palo Alto Transportation Management Association (TMA), exploring bringing under- utilized parking spaces into a public market, car-lite housing meaning explore car-lite housing with reduced or eliminated off-street parking requirements, and explore reducing residential parking requirements for projects which provide effective TDM measures. That last one is really what we've pulled up and put in this section of the Work Plan. Council Member Scharff: I'm okay with all of that as long as it's the right amount of housing. What confuses me is sometimes what gets translated from that Colleagues' Memo to this. Car-lite housing, for instance, means you'll have a strong TDM program and people won't have cars and, therefore, they won't need parking. You'll have the right amount of parking. What it can't mean, because that's the end of car-lite housing, is that we build a project where we say people aren't going to have cars. They have tons of cars, and we under-park it. I'm concerned in here—I didn't get a direct answer to my question—that we will be looking at things which will not have the right amount of parking for the number of cars there, and they will spill out. I want to make sure that we don't do that. I want to put it in the Motion, that we have the correct amount of parking for the number of cars that will be in the project. Mayor Kniss: With all due respect, exactly how do you intend to control exactly the right amount and put it in a Motion? Council Member Scharff: They're doing the right thing. Staff is looking at different housing types. Take low-income senior housing, very little parking; market rate housing, a lot more parking. What I don't want to read into this project is that we just do away with parking requirements without a rational justification as to why parking will not be needed. If you tie it to a TDM plan and if you say a TDM and we're going to reduce cars by 30 percent, that's fine. If you say suddenly people won't have cars here without a process to make sure they don't, then we have a problem. Mayor Kniss: I understand what you're saying, but you may want to make this a little less precise and exact amount of parking. If you can … FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 21 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Council Member Scharff: I'm looking to Staff. You've heard what I said. How would you like the Amendment to be? How would you capture that? I want to limit your efforts where we actually have the right number of parking spots. What I don't want to say is the biggest impediment to housing is building parking. I agree with that. Therefore, we're going to do away with the parking. That's not okay. Ms. Gitelman: I definitely appreciate that sentiment. That was the spirit in which this was drafted based on the Colleagues' Memo. We didn't say eliminate parking. We said do a study of parking and allow reductions in the parking requirement where it's warranted. There's a long way to go between these conceptual goals and actual ordinance language. We're going to have to respond to questions and concerns like the ones you just raised in draft ordinance language, which the Planning Commission, the public, and the Council will ultimately get a shot at fine-tuning when we bring that forward. You're objective is compatible with the Work Plan, and you'll have to stay with this and stay on it as we bring you ordinance language to accomplish that end. Council Member DuBois: I would second it with a suggestion if it might make it a little more clear. Part of what you're saying is, particularly where there are RPPs, the car-lite project not impact the RPP or the neighborhoods. Maybe that would add a way that this could have a little meat to it, which would be for Staff to evaluate car-lite projects that would not impact an RPP, basically not look to park in the neighborhood. Council Member Scharff: I don't even want it to cause an RPP. I'm trying to think if we don't have one here. Council Member DuBois: If there is, it wouldn't impact the neighborhood. If there was, the RPP might have to be 24 hours because they would park there at night. Staff should consider that as part of this. Council Member Scharff: I'm fine with that. Mayor Kniss: Let's go back to Adrian because this is Adrian's Motion. Council Member Fine: It's your Amendment. I don't see a (inaudible). Mayor Kniss: Are you supporting it or not? Council Member Scharff: He doesn't know what it is yet. Council Member Scharff: I think the Amendment should read "Staff to evaluate the correct amount of parking for the number of cars anticipated FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 22 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 for a project and to not go lower than the number of cars anticipated for a particular project given mitigations and studies." Council Member Fine: As I understood it in working with Staff over the past few months, this is what they intended to do through a process of looking at our different zones and what housing production we see, what TDMs are in place, what RPP control we may have, and then proposing but first going to the Planning & Transportation Commission (PTC) and then Council to come back to us and say, "Maybe we can right-size the parking requirement in certain development zones here and there." Your language of the number of cars anticipated is a little dangerous and a bit antithetical to that process of looking at the zones and figuring out where we could—I think right-sizing is the term. Council Member Scharff: I'd be happy to use the term right-sizing. Council Member Fine: I would say to evaluate—when you say the correct amount of parking, I just don't think … Council Member Scharff: Why did you say the right-sized parking? Council Member Fine: We're asking Staff to right size the amount of parking. Council Member Scharff: I'm happy to say appropriate parking. Council Member Fine: I'd like to hear from Staff. If we put something in here that says Staff to evaluate right sizing the amount of parking for given zones, is that useful or you're already going to do that? Ms. Gitelman: I think that's what the Code already provides for and what we were trying to reference in this provision about TDM plans. We have the ability to reduce the amount of parking required based on certain factors, type of housing, TDM plans being among them. I'm happy if you want to clarify it, but it seems to me that's already the road we were heading down. Council Member Fine: I'm satisfied with Staff's answers there. We could be handicapping some of the initiatives we're looking at by talking about things like the correct amount of parking or the number of cars anticipated. That's a little bit prejudging some of the spirit here. I expect it's going to become unfriendly. Mayor Kniss: Can we move on? Council Member Scharff: No, no. I'm going to make that Motion. Do I have a second? FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 23 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Council Member Wolbach: Second. AMENDMENT: Council Member Scharff moved, seconded by Council Member Wolbach to add to the Motion, “Staff to evaluate the correct amount of parking for the number of cars anticipated for a project and not require less parking than needed taking into account parking mitigations.” Council Member Scharff: I'm not sure I got the language exactly correct. What I'd really like to say is don't bring us an under-parked project after looking at everything. I hope that captures it and Staff remembers that's why I'm putting the Amendment in. I open to—if Staff has any concerns about anything they're planning on doing, that they think would prohibit them from doing this in this Motion because that's not my intention if it's just basically looking at studies and looking at plans with TDM. I'll give you an example where I think you would be under-parking. This Motion prohibits—I will say that—allowing you to pay an in-lieu fee to park because there is not parking being built for that. We're about to build two parking garages. That would actually prohibit an in-lieu fee. That's the only thing I think you're planning on doing that prohibits it. If there's something else, because I can't see where you get the parking on an in-lieu fee. We're about to build two parking garages, and I don't see us building other ones shortly after that. I don't see how that would work. Mayor Kniss: I'm going to call on Cory, who seconded the Motion. Council Member Wolbach: This needs a little bit of work. I am concerned about—I was supportive of the direction you were going until I heard the comments you just made. The fact that we allow a commercial development, an office building … Mayor Kniss: Let's hold this. Are you seconding it or not? Council Member Wolbach: I'm deciding. It depends on how Council Member Scharff responds to this. We allow in-lieu fees to be paid by commercial buildings when they can't park onsite. Sometimes a particular site—as we know, it's difficult to actually fit the parking right there onsite. Maybe you could put it across the street. Maybe you could put it nearby. Council Member Scharff: I'd be okay with that. Council Member Wolbach: One of the ways we do that is through in-lieu fees. One of the ways that we're trying to explore through this Colleagues' Memo, through this Work Plan—hopefully PTC will run with this—is if you have two properties that can share parking, one needs it during the daytime; one needs it during the nighttime, but they need to bring it to the FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 24 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 City and show they can make it work for that project. If there is a future parking garage Downtown, maybe they do pay an in-lieu fee for that. To say that we're not going to allow in-lieu fees, I know it's not in the Motion, but you said that's your meaning here and that'll be in the Minutes. If that's your intention here, that was actually one of the main things we wanted to explore when we wrote this Colleagues' Memo. Why do we allow in-lieu parking for offices, but we don't allow it for apartment buildings? That seems kind of crazy if we say we want housing more than we want new office buildings. If you're able to say for the record that you'll take back your comments saying this prohibits in-lieu fees, then we can talk about the Motion itself. Otherwise, I'll … Council Member Scharff: First of all, we don't have in-lieu fees on California Avenue at all. Council Member Wolbach: Currently. Council Member Scharff: We don't, not for commercial and not for (inaudible). We do in Downtown obviously. The reason for that is because, I believe the parking district, when it was formed, that people had paid into that, and that was basically how that came about. Mayor Kniss: Let me get a sense of where we're going. Are you still speaking to your Motion or are you answering Cory? Council Member Scharff: I'm responding to Council Member Wolbach's question. Mayor Kniss: At this point, we're going to go to other people's comments. Council Member Scharff: I have a Motion. You can't go to other people's comments. Let's be clear about that. Mayor Kniss: You don't have a Motion that's been seconded. Council Member Scharff: Yes, we do. Council Member Wolbach: I have seconded it. I'm considering withdrawing my second, but I haven't yet. Council Member Scharff: He's considering it, and that's why he's asking for clarification. To clarify it, you could possibly have what you talked about. What you can't have is just paying an in-lieu fee and not having parking. If you say—if Staff comes forward and says parking garages are not used at night … FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 25 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Mayor Kniss: Can you get it into your Motion? Council Member Scharff: … you could go ahead and pay that. I have the Motion. Mayor Kniss: You don't have a second that I'm hearing. Council Member Wolbach: I have seconded it. Council Member Scharff: I do have a second. He said I have a second. Mayor Kniss: You are clarifying the second. Are you changing the Motion or not? Council Member Wolbach: He's trying to keep his second. I want to give him a chance to keep his second. Council Member Scharff: To answer your question, I probably overstated the answer. The answer … Council Member Wolbach: I want to make sure Staff hears this too. Council Member Scharff: If, for instance, Staff comes forward with a plan that says this is providing real parking because, for instance, there are empty parking garages at night and, therefore, we can sell permits and you can park your car there, I would be totally fine with that. Council Member Wolbach: If a new parking garage or a new parking assessment district is contemplated, an in-lieu fee would be associated with that. Council Member Scharff: Correct. James Keene, City Manager: Wouldn't any of those things be appropriate parking mitigations? Council Member Wolbach: I would say those would be appropriate parking mitigations. With that, I'd suggest that it's clear we're not trying to prohibit in-lieu fees. We want to make sure that the parking—what we're looking for is in the future our parking requirements are appropriate for particular housing types. Council Member Scharff: That's exactly right. I want to avoid magical thinking. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 26 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Council Member Wolbach: Without having magical thinking, I think it was clear to Staff. I appreciate that you want to make this clear in the Motion. That's why I'm seconding it. I hope you'll entertain an Amendment to this Motion. It would say that—it would actually be Staff and the PTC—they're going to be looking at this too, right, before it comes back to us? Staff and PTC emphasize the appropriate amount of parking for various housing types and locations. Council Member Scharff: I'm good with that. AMENDMENT RESTATED AND INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “direct Staff and the Planning and Transportation Commission to identify the appropriate amount of parking for various housing types and locations, taking into account parking mitigations.” (New Part D) Mayor Kniss: (Inaudible) Motion and a second? Mr. Keene: Can I ask a clarifying question? Is your intention here to provide direction to how we craft the actual ordinance or is your intention to establish the behaviors you expect to see when we are reviewing individual projects? Council Member Scharff: It's crafting the Ordinance and it's for Staff's work plan so Staff has a sense of direction and where we are as a Council on— what I'm trying to avoid—what I see in a lot of cities and I see a rush to build housing, which is a great thing. We all want to build housing. I want to avoid the magical thinking that if we can't park it, that's something we're just going to have to live with. Mr. Keene: Why couldn't you more simply just say Staff will identify—forget the PTC part for just a second—the required amount of parking for a project factoring in any appropriate parking mitigations? Council Member Wolbach: How about we just … Why don't we just add that in and at the end add "factoring in appropriate mitigations"? Council Member Scharff: What happened to my original Motion? Where'd that go? Mr. Keene: I don't think you need to say for the number of cars anticipated for the project. Council Member Wolbach: That's why we're amending it. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 27 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Mr. Keene: The appropriate amount of parking is obviously going to be based upon the amount of cars that you expect. They key is you want to insist that we require the adequate amount of parking for a project. Council Member Scharff: Correct. Mr. Keene: Netted out, if there are any appropriate parking mitigations as opposed to magical thinking. Council Member Scharff: You got it. Council Member Wolbach: Are you okay with that language? Council Member Scharff: Yes, and we'll (crosstalk). Council Member Wolbach: Staff, do you think this is reasonable in providing clarification guidance for Staff and PTC as you're tackling all these parking issues? We're not trying to hamstring you; we're just trying to emphasize that maybe what we do with senior housing is different than what we do with market rate and what we do in Midtown is different than Downtown. Ms. Gitelman: What you just said is exactly what our intention was. Council Member Wolbach: That was my understanding that Staff was already going that direction. My hope here is that this language provides clarity to Staff, PTC, and to the public and colleagues here that that was our intention and we're not trying to do anything different than that. Mr. Keene: Would you change "identify" for "emphasis"? "Emphasis" isn't the right word up there. Emphasize the appropriate amount versus identify? Council Member Wolbach: Identify. Mayor Kniss: You want identify. Ms. Gitelman: I just want to for full disclosure make sure the Council's aware that the State Density Bonus Law in a lot of cases will supersede our parking requirements for housing that has inclusionary affordable units. Council Member Wolbach: Right. Maybe that's a mitigation or part of the appropriate amount. I'm happy to second this Amendment. Hopefully everybody can get behind it. It's a good compromise. Mayor Kniss: Let's move on to any other comments. I see Greg Tanaka first and then Karen Holman. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 28 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Council Member Scharff: Adrian, that was acceptable to you or not? We have to vote on it if it's not acceptable to you. Council Member Fine: This is roughly just saying direct Staff to look at things that may affect parking and consider how they may affect parking. Yes, I'm happy to accept this. Mayor Kniss: In that case, it's been incorporated into the actual Motion. Am I correct? Are you comfortable with that, Adrian? Council Member Fine: Yes. Mayor Kniss: It's been incorporated into the Motion, which only took us about a half hour. Let's go on to talking about the rest of the Motion that was made by Adrian last week. I saw Greg Tanaka's light and then Karen Holman. Council Member Tanaka: First, let me thank my colleagues and Staff for putting this together. I appreciate it. We're definitely trying to deal with a very challenging problem. I was just thinking about the point that Council Member Scharff was trying to make. One of the big challenges around housing is that parking is generally required. It's important that we do—as we saw with last week's items, the RPP programs, getting the cars off the street is actually very important to our constituents. It's something that we want to make sure is done right. One of the things that kind of limits housing, especially with the advent of Accessory Dwelling Units (ADU), is the parking requirement. I was actually just talking to a resident this weekend about this topic. Right now, to have underground parking in R-1, it actually counts towards your Floor Area Ratio (FAR), but it doesn't count towards FAR for any other type of development. What I'd like to do is propose hopefully a friendly Amendment to "B." At the end it would say "include exploring harmonizing the R-1 underground parking to not count towards FAR." The reason for that is one of the big things that limits ADUs in R-1 neighborhoods is actually the parking requirement. Mayor Kniss: Greg, let's pause and see if you get a second. That's an Amendment. Council Member Scharff: What was his Amendment? Council Member Tanaka: It's a friendly. Mayor Kniss: This is an Amendment which would be another Amendment to talk about altering the FAR. Am I correct? FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 29 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Council Member Tanaka: Basically excluding underground parking in R-1 towards FAR, yes. Mayor Kniss: Let's see if there's a second. Council Member Tanaka: It's a friendly Amendment hopefully. Mayor Kniss: What you mean is will Adrian accept it as part of the overall Motion? Council Member Tanaka: Yes. Council Member Fine: Your purpose here is—is it for ADUs specifically or is this for parking at a house in general? Council Member Tanaka: It's basically towards ADUs. The main point is for all the uses underground parking doesn't count. Council Member Fine: For R-1, it does. Council Member Tanaka: Except for R-1. A car underground doesn't have any visual impacts. With the advent of mechanical lifts, you don't have the ramps. Basements don't count for people. Why do they count for cars? We saw from last week the big concerns about RPP programs. Parking in R-1 neighborhoods is actually really important. When I was talking to one resident this weekend, it limits the ability to do an ADU because of the parking requirements. If we are really interested in increasing the production of housing without having impacts that Council Member Scharff was talking about, which was in terms of parking—we don't want to over- park our neighborhoods—we should allow our residents to take the cars off the streets, put them underground so that it has the least amount of impact to everyone. That way everyone wins. Council Member Fine: I think that's reasonable. I will say I think it's most applicable to ADUs actually. I just wanted to ask Staff quickly does this make sense to you here and why do we currently count parking underground for cars against the FAR? What's the purpose there? Ms. Gitelman: I want a minute to look that up. I'd just make a couple of observations while we're looking in the Code. One, I know the Council's aware we have a lot of community concern about basements and underground construction generally. Two, we have a lot of concern about the cost of developing an ADU. When we're thinking about changes to the ADU Ordinance—I know you're aware that we are working with the Planning FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 30 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Commission on some ideas—we tend to be thinking of ways to reduce the cost rather than add cost. Let me get back to you on the Code issue. Council Member Fine: I think I'm tentatively willing to—I think I can accept this. It's one way to help the ADU situation as you described. It's exploring. Council Member Scharff: It is actually. We're incorporating it into the friendly Amendment. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion Part Ai, “include exploring excluding underground Floor Area Ratio (FAR) from parking requirements.” Ms. Gitelman: Council Member Fine, I'm sorry, if I can interject. We just found the section in the Code. Underground parking in a single-family residential district is only permitted by variance. It has to be a hardship that you're trying to overcome. Council Member Fine: You'd still have to get a variance. Council Member Scharff: You would do away with the variance. That's really what you'd be doing. Ms. Gitelman: Yeah. Council Member Scharff: I would be fine if this goes to Policy and Services as opposed to just coming back with an Ordinance. It says explore. If it went to Policy and Services and there was a long discussion about it, I'd be fine. Or to PTC. Ms. Gitelman: Can I respond? The idea of all these zoning issues is that they would be gathered together in one Ordinance that we'd work on with the PTC and bring back to Council. Council Member Fine: I'll accept that. Thank you, Greg. Ms. Gitelman: Is the suggestion that you're not going to require a variance any longer for single-family? Council Member Fine: That seems to solve Council Member Tanaka's issue that he's raised here. It's the variance and the FAR piece of it. Council Member Scharff: It needs to be baked. You shouldn't gather this up in one ordinance and come forward. This should go to PTC. Maybe this should be … FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 31 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Council Member Fine: On its own? Council Member Scharff: It should be discussed. This shouldn't just get into the Ordinance and move forward. Ms. Gitelman: Madam Mayor, if I can? The idea of the Work Plan is that we were going to try and craft a single Zoning Ordinance with as many pieces as we can fit in it this year and another one next year. If we start talking about multiple ordinances, I'm going to have to reevaluate the resources available and the time needed to develop this. I'm not saying we're going to just put something in an ordinance, and it's going to come to you without discussion. Obviously, anything that's in that ordinance will be discussed. Council Member Scharff: You clearly could put it in Work Plan 3.4 (Not sure about this Measure Word) since you can explore implementing a no net loss policy when housing is redeveloped, which goes to Policy & Services Committee (P&S). You could clearly have Work Plan 3.4, which would be this, including exploring that, which would then deal with the issue of that. It goes to P&S; people talk about it, and then you could put it in an ordinance. Ms. Gitelman: I don't want to argue about it. I'm trying to explain the assumptions we made in crafting the Work Plan based on the amount of resources we had. We thought in Section 2 we would develop one Ordinance in 2018, another one in 2019. We thought in Section 3 we would work with P&S and the result being another Ordinance. If it got done this year, great. If it slopped over into 2019, that would be great too. The no net loss is not related to parking; it's related to units. Council Member Scharff: I understand that it's related to units. The issue was I said it should go to P&S first and not be put in the ordinance this year. It should be put in the ordinance in 2019 after having gone to P&S. Council Member Fine: I would to some degree defer those decisions to Staff. We've got the Work Plan, which says which is 2018 and which is 2019. I expect we will add a few more things tonight. I'm sorry, Hillary. I would expect to defer to Staff's judgment. I appreciate Council Member Tanaka's addition here. Mayor Kniss: It's now been accepted into the main Motion. Correct? Greg, you had the floor. Were you done? Going now to—actually Karen was next and then Eric. Council Member Holman: I'll just comment on the last one. I think we just considerably added to Staff workload because that's going to create an awful FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 32 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 lot of concern. We have no visuals to look at currently about what that would look like. Council Member Tanaka has said that it would not involve a ramp. What does it look like? I think it's going to generate an awful lot of community discussion. Speaking of community discussion, one of the things that I would like to—let me ask a question of Staff first. This has not been taken out into the community. For most everything, we go out and we do community outreach. This has not happened with this Housing Plan. What is Staff's plan for that? The only thing I see is Policy and Services and Planning Commission. Ms. Gitelman: Thank you, Council Member Holman, for that question. I tried to address this in my presentation last week. Our assumption is both the Housing Element and the Comprehensive Plan were subject of extensive community engagement and input. This Housing Work Plan is largely constructed based on implementation programs included in both those venues. We don't anticipate another Citizen Committee, extended workshops, and other things. We were hoping that we could use targeted outreach to interested stakeholders and the public process, public noticing, working with our Planning and Transportation Commission, our Policy and Services Committee, and working with this Council on these items. We would get sufficient and in-depth neighborhood and other stakeholder input in that way. Council Member Holman: I don't know what you mean by targeted stakeholders. Ms. Gitelman: Again, as we discussed last week, when it comes to zoning adjustments to try and stimulate housing, we really want to talk to people who use our Zoning Ordinance, who understand what doesn't work about it, and what could work better. I expect that we'll have any number of suggestions from people who use the Code and who are experienced living next to or experiencing development in our community about things that might work and things that might not. Mayor Kniss: Karen, just to intercept. Because this is directly out of the Comp. Plan, knowing the Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) numbers, and also having identified it as our Priority two Saturdays ago, that was the outreach into the community. This is a Plan that's going on for 2 years. There will be many opportunities both at PTC and at Policy to comment on this. I think it'll come back time after time. Mr. Keene: And then the Council before you adopt the changes. Council Member Holman: I hear that, and I can appreciate this is a result of the Comprehensive Plan. It's like saying you're going to remodel a house, FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 33 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 and then you see what the tile selection is. It's like, "Oh, my God." That's kind of what this is when it comes to the community and potentially the response. I know there's going to be "Oh, my God" one way or the other, but it could be just "Oh, my God" because the Comprehensive Plan discussion was huge and broad. This we're focusing in. I think there's going to be a lot of community dialog. I would prefer there be at least one outreach to the community for a non-Council, time-limited public input session, at least one time where the community has a couple of hours just to focus on this and the community gets to speak to this and ask questions and such. I'm going to add an Amendment—propose an Amendment that Staff hold a community meeting to allow the community to discuss and ask questions about the draft Housing Element. Council Member Fine: I'm not going to accept this for a few reasons. Council Member Holman: I offered an Amendment. If you're not going to accept it, that's fine. I'm looking for somebody else to second it. Council Member DuBois: Could we see the full text? The Housing Element or the Housing Plan? Council Member Holman: The draft Housing Plan, what's before us tonight. Council Member DuBois: I will second that if it's not accepted. AMENDMENT: Council Member Holman moved, seconded by Council Member DuBois to add to the Motion, “direct Staff to hold a community meeting to allow the public to discuss and ask questions regarding the draft Housing Work Plan.” Council Member Holman: Just briefly, the reason is as I stated. This is getting down to we're boiling the potatoes here. This is why people really want to have their input. Coming to a Council meeting where they have 3 minutes to make comments or 2 minutes to make comments is not the same as holding a community meeting where the public can understand, delve into, ask questions, and make comments. It's not the same as going to a Planning Commission meeting, a Council meeting, or a Policy and Services Committee meeting. This is really—it's critically important that we do that step. I'm only asking for one meeting. Council Member DuBois: Can I clarify in terms of timing? When I seconded this, I was thinking it would be once the ordinance was drafted so that there'd be something concrete rather than sooner. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 34 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Council Member Holman: Why then as opposed to—help me understand why then as opposed to upfront now. Council Member DuBois: If we're going to have a community meeting, it would be useful to have the 2018 Ordinance drafted to be able to describe it and get some feedback from the community on that. I think Staff is nodding their heads and Council Members (crosstalk). Mr. Keene: If I can jump in. That was the very question I was just asking Hillary. I'm at a little bit of a loss as to how the public would know how to react to what we're talking about, which are a lot of concepts coming out of the Plan that aren't actually operationalized well enough yet. Council Member Holman: I would accept that. INCORPORATED INTO THE AMENDMENT WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to replace in the Amendment, “Draft Housing Work Plan” with “2018 Housing Ordinance.” Council Member DuBois: If I could speak to that. Karen's right that there's a lot here. It's an omnibus bill if you will. Once it goes through our process, it'd be really useful to have a community session to have people really get comfortable with it. What I was hearing from Council Member Scharff earlier was we're trying to avoid controversial things that are going to cause a lot of pushback prematurely. Communication is a key part of that. We're mainly sticking to the Comp. Plan, which is good. We're taking this Work Plan and turning it into a very specific ordinance, so let's just have a community meeting to talk about that. Council Member Fine: I perceive this probably will pass. I do remind everybody this Work Plan and the Colleagues' Memo was borne out of the work that the Citizens Advisory Committee (CAC) did that the Comprehensive Plan Update went through at the PTC and at Council multiple times. We are discussing this Work Plan last week, tonight, and it will come to us again. Each and every one of these changes will go to PTC, where there are extensive public meetings. There's something to be said if we really do want to see some of these housing changes enacted and if we are genuine about our goal of reaching around 300 units per year, does the typical Palo Alto process serve that? I would put forth maybe not. Mayor Kniss: Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: Actually I'll disagree with Council Member Fine a little bit in that the appropriate Palo Alto process is what we're using. It is appropriate. That's what we're going to do. We're discussing it in public FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 35 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 right now. We discussed it in public last week twice, on Saturday and on Monday at our Retreat and our last Council meeting here. All the meetings for those components, which are going to PTC, will be discussed in publicly noticed meetings, where the public can weigh in. Those components when go to Policy and Services, again, will be publicly noticed meetings. A question for Staff. Remind me how many Town Halls are we planning for this coming year? Since we weren't able to get to our general Town Halls last year, do we know when they're going to happen this year? Mr. Keene: No, we're just in the process of trying to design that right now. If you remember, the Council's original goal was to have three or four. That would be the guide. Since there's been some discussion about how do we reformat in some way to be more effective—I don't know if we're due back at P&S or what. We're working on it. Council Member Wolbach: I would suggest that rather than holding additional meetings just about this issue, we allow this to be part and emphasize that we would like to see Staff raise this at the community meetings that we're already planning to hold, that we're already overdue for because we didn't end up getting to them in the last calendar year. I would suggest a friendly Amendment to this Amendment, which would be to direct Staff to include the Housing Work Plan on the agendas for our community Town Halls for the next year. Mayor Kniss: Can you somehow incorporate that into the Amendment? Mr. Keene: Can I just … Council Member Wolbach: That was a suggested Amendment to the Amendment if Karen or Tom are okay with that. Mr. Keene: If you want to do that, we need a clarification. Council Member Wolbach: Rather than holding an additional meeting to … Council Member Holman: I appreciate, and I've always appreciated your signing onto the memo about Town Hall meetings. We worked together on that. I appreciate your ongoing support for the Town Hall meetings. I won't accept that as an Amendment to this, and here's why. We don't know when they're going to be. Those Town Hall meetings usually incorporate two, maybe three neighborhoods. We don't know when that's going to be and if it's going to work in concert with the timing of this. That's why. Council Member Wolbach: Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. I'm sorry. To that point about not knowing when the Town Halls are going to be, we know FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 36 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 we're going to have two or three this year. Your Amendment doesn't actually identify a time. I'm not offering it as a Substitute Amendment. AMENDMENT TO THE AMENDMENT: Council Member Wolbach moved, seconded by Council Member XX to replace in the Amendment, “community meeting” with “town hall.” AMENDMENT TO THE AMENDMENT WITHDRAWN BY THE MAKER Mr. Keene: Can I just interject for a second? We don't know the time yet. We don't have an ordinance. This is a (crosstalk). Council Member Wolbach: This is actually my next question for Council Members Holman and DuBois. When in this process would you anticipate this Town Hall being held? Since it's about the draft 2018 Housing Ordinance, I presume you'd want to do that after the draft 2018 Housing Ordinance has been drafted. You can't talk about a draft until it's been drafted. I just want to get a sense of when you're envisioning that happening. I might be comfortable with it if I have a better understanding of the timing of the (crosstalk). Council Member Holman: I don't think we can say that. It's whenever Staff gets it done. Mr. Keene: The goal here was, if this even passes—the Amendment was to say as part of the pathway to adoption by the Council, once we have a draft ordinance, we would have a community meeting, one community meeting. Council Member Holman: Thank you, Jim. That's it. Mr. Keene: I don't necessarily want us to stretch it out over a year to go to multiple meetings if we're—I'll just make it up—ready to go in April or May or whatever. You can trust us with figuring out how to schedule one community meeting at the right time. Council Member Wolbach: If Staff thinks this isn't a huge burden on Staff and it won't delay the effort, I'm happy to support this Amendment then. Mayor Kniss: Is the intent to have one community meeting after you have the draft 2018 Housing Ordinance in place? Council Member Holman: Yes, the normal, logical kind of course. Mayor Kniss: I could support that. Adrian, could you support that, having one after … FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 37 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Council Member Fine: I would leave it up to Staff, but I don't think it's before PTC. We're directing Staff tonight to do Program 2.1 through 2.X. Staff will write an Ordinance, as Hillary mentioned, hopefully one Ordinance, which can go to PTC. I expect the PTC to take a few meetings to go over that. At that point, they would send it on to Council. Somewhere around there would probably be a good point for a community meeting. As the City Manager mentioned, some of these are pretty "in the weeds" changes. I don't want us getting tripped up by them. It's going to come right back to Council, which is effectively a community meeting. Many of those folks who show up at the community meeting will come to the Council meeting. Mayor Kniss: It would seem, if I could ask you, Karen, as though asking questions regarding the draft or after the Draft Housing Ordinance is completed. You're going to have a community meeting after the draft is completed? Council Member Holman: To discuss, ask questions regarding the Draft Housing Ordinance. It's after the Housing Ordinance is drafted. Mr. Keene: I would imagine we're going to get through the Staff work and the PTC before we come to the Council in some way and have a draft. You want to have it as complete as possible to stick with the tile analogy with the Plan, which is to suddenly see what it is before the Council finally enacts it. Honestly, if you guys are going to do this—you do notice we actually managed to get a lot of stuff on your Agenda every week. We know how to get this back to the Council if you end up adding this particular step. I really don't think you need to try to figure out when it's going to be. That is an unbearable burden on the Staff to have that discussion. Mayor Kniss: At this point, Adrian, you were comfortable with that or not? Council Member Fine: I don't think it's necessary, but I assume we're probably going to vote for it. Mayor Kniss: We could incorporate it now. Council Member Fine: Let's put it to the vote quickly. Mayor Kniss: Other people want to speak to it. Council Member Scharff: It's Lydia's turn to speak. Council Member Fine: I'll accept it, and we can skip the comments. Mayor Kniss: You are the seconder of the main Motion. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 38 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Council Member Scharff: I'm not going to accept it without some small, minor changes, which I think you'll accept. If I could, I would like to add to the Motion "direct Staff to hold a community meeting where the public may discuss and ask questions regarding … ." The word "to allow the public" sounds … Council Member Holman: That's fine. Council Member Scharff: Now I accept it. AMENDMENT RESTATED AND INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “hold a community meeting where the public may discuss and ask questions regarding the draft 2018 Housing Ordinance.” (New Part A.vii.) Mayor Kniss: Now it becomes part of the main Motion for those of you tracking us. It is not an Amendment; it becomes part of the main Motion. Council Member Holman: Hopefully some of these others will go more quickly. What we have At-Places is Ai, Aii, Aiii. On the screen we have A, B, C. I'll go from what is on the screen so it's easier for other people to follow. Mayor Kniss: You're back to the Motion? Council Member Holman: I am back to the Motion. I don't need any discussion, just a question for Staff. Table 5 on Page 22 of the Plan gives the City's contribution for the Treehouse, which is at least 10 years old, and 801 Alma, which was in 2014. It's a question. You don't even need to respond to it tonight. Those construction costs and the City's contribution— the equivalent amount that would be needed now would be considerably different given the time that has elapsed. Maybe that should be considered in a revised Table 5. The other thing was at 801 Alma; the City purchased the land. I'm not sure if the cost that's attributed to 801 Alma here is only money that was taken from our Affordable Housing Fund. Those are just comments; no need to do anything. Workforce housing needs a definition. I understand—I think I heard maybe at a Planning Commission meeting when I was watching that, there was a definition applied. We need to apply a definition to workforce housing. That's probably understandable and clear. This is an Amendment for the maker and seconder of the Motion to add to "B" "with consideration of maximum average unit size." We did that in South of Forest Avenue (SOFA), and it worked really well. We get a lot of comments in the community about we're getting four units that are 2,400 square feet, and that's not a diversity of ranges. Council Member Scharff: I won't accept it. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 39 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Council Member Fine: Are you trying to address the penthouse problem here? Council Member Holman: I am. Not precluding it but at least giving a maximum average unit size. Council Member Fine: How does Staff read this? Ms. Gitelman: We actually have that in Item 2.4.2. It doesn't say maximum average size, but it says average unit sizes. The items is consider eliminating dwelling unit densities and relying on FAR and average unit sizes. This was based on the Colleagues' Memo. Council Member Holman: You feel like that's already incorporated here? Ms. Gitelman: Yeah. Council Member Holman: Thank you for the clarification. AMENDMENT: Council Member Holman moved, seconded by Council Member XX to add to the Motion Part A.ii., “with consideration of maximum average unit sizes” after “diversity of housing types.” AMENDMENT WITHDRAWN BY THE MAKER Council Member Holman: On "1c," the Amendment is to "conduct economic analysis on 15-30 percent inclusionary housing." It's just looking at it. Council Member Fine: I'm not willing to just because we've studied it here in Palo Alto, that going up to 20 percent would be hard. Other cities that are doing it at 25 percent are finding it's actually stopping all development in those areas. 20 percent is something I tested by speaking to a number of nonprofit affordable housing developers in the market. They felt that number was perhaps supportable, but even pushing up to that could be dangerous for getting our affordable housing production overall. No, thank you. AMENDMENT: Council Member Holman moved, seconded by Council Member XX to replace in the Motion Part A.iii., “20 percent” with “30 percent.” Council Member Holman: I will change that 15 percent to 25 percent then because we haven't seen that. I'm trying to work with you. Council Member Fine: Twenty was a figure that seemed about right to me just from talking to our Planning Staff, from talking to Palo Alto Housing and FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 40 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 other groups in the area, Eden Housing and some others. Twenty was a number that wasn't just picked out of thin air. I've had a number of folks reach out to me and say please don't increase this at all. We understand why. I think 20 percent is an appropriate figure. Council Member Holman: The Amendment is to conduct economic analysis for an additional 5 percent, 25 percent. I understand you have talked to people. Some of us have talked to people. Let's make this transparent and public and get the information out here on the table where we can all look at it. The Amendment is 15 to 25 percent. I'm looking for a second. Council Member DuBois: I would second that. AMENDMENT RESTATED: Council Member Holman moved, seconded by Council Member DuBois to replace in the Motion Part A.iii., “20 percent” with “25 percent.” Council Member Holman: I don't need to speak to it anymore. Council Member DuBois: Like the underground cars in R-1, the key word here is explore. We want to explore a range. While we're doing this study, why not go 15 to 25 percent? I have certainly talked to affordable housing people who think 25 percent is reasonable. Mayor Liccardo just announced 40 percent in San Jose. It's a good time to consider it. It's just we're exploring a range. Mayor Kniss: Council Member Wolbach. This is an Amendment with a second by Council Member DuBois. Council Member Wolbach: The idea of what we put in our Colleagues' Memo and what was brought to us by Staff reflecting that was to explore an increase in how much below market rate housing is required in a market rate development. Currently we require 15 percent. We said let's study if we could go up to 20 percent. If we study going up to 25 percent, I want to make sure this study also includes looking at 20 percent. If we find that 25 percent does become infeasible or does prevent development, so we don't end up getting any money for below market rate housing, we could ramp it back. Council Member DuBois: Just to be clear, that's certainly the intent. However Staff does it, it doesn't have to be discrete. It could be 18.5 percent comes out to be the right number. Council Member Wolbach: If I could continue. I wanted to ask Staff, just so we're all clear, if we were to accept this and include this Amendment, when FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 41 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 this study happens, would it provide information for various points between 15 and 25 percent or would it just look at 25 percent? I think I know the answer, but I want to be very clear and make sure we're on the same page. Ms. Gitelman: I think the study would allow us to look anywhere within the range. I'll just note that we didn't come up with 20 percent; it came from the Colleagues' Memo, which this Council acted on back in November. This would be a modification of your direction to us. Happy to take that modification if that's where you want to go. Mr. Keene: We would anticipate, if we had any answer that said no at a level, we would then try to identify where the yes point might be. Council Member Wolbach: Depending on the project, depending on the location, whether it's a coordinated area plan or its an urban village, maybe in one spot 40 percent will be the right number. Maybe in one spot 18 percent will be the right number. This is about changing our standard Citywide. That's why I want to be careful that we don't overdo it and end up preventing any market rate development, which means we don't get any money for below market rate development. I'm probably okay with the study at 25 percent, even if that's not where we end up landing. Mayor Kniss: Council Member Scharff and then Council Member Kou. Council Member Scharff: Council Member Wolbach said we're looking at changing it Citywide. I have concerns about how accurate these economic studies really are. Caution makes some sense. If you go to 25 percent, a lot of developers tell me that it doesn't work. The people that do this economic analysis aren't necessarily that good. They may not know. Are you going to run two economic analyses, Director Gitelman? I assume you're going to run two economic analyses, one for condominiums, one for other types because we apply this to for-sale housing. We actually don't apply it to rental housing just yet, but we're about to. The economic analysis is actually fairly complicated because you're going to have to do different housing types. There's probably six different housing types that we apply it to, or more, with for-sale. Depending on the type of apartments you build, depending at what density, you're going to have different outcomes for it. It's not just simply—it's naive to think that you can simply say let's run an economic analysis on 15 to 25 percent and come up with the right number given all the permutations and the different product types and the for-sale and the non-for-sale. I voted for the Colleagues' Memo because people don't necessarily like it, but they can probably afford 20 percent. Whereas, 25 percent probably pushes it over the edge. If we guess wrong FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 42 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 on that, we just won't get that particular housing type with that. I think it's a mistake. Mayor Kniss: Council Member Kou. Council Member Kou: I was actually really hoping to stay with the 30 percent, but I'm accepting the 25 percent if we're truly about affordable housing. This is the only way to ensure that for the below market rates we do get that. I know that for certain folks there are different definitions for affordable. For me, affordable is BMR units. We need to prioritize on that. I do support the 25 percent. One more thing, you also need to amend Number 3.1 on your Housing Plan to ensure that it says 25 percent there. Mayor Kniss: So it's consistent throughout? Council Member Kou: Yes. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: Council Member Fine, I think you're the last one. Council Member Fine: Just one comment. The 40 percent BMR rate in San Jose has zero parking requirements. They can get 40 percent BMR, but there's no parking required. The other thing to consider here is we probably could do 25 percent. Then, we would have to throw our height limit out the window. I'm just putting it to my colleagues. The BMR is below market rate. This is a cross-subsidized housing product, so we're essentially saying 25 percent of the building has to be below market rate, which means the other units have to be above market rate. They provide the subsidy to the below market rate units. The only way this works is with density. We could declare that we wanted 100 percent BMR buildings, and nothing is going to happen. As Council Member Scharff mentioned, 25 percent is really reaching that tipping point. It will signal that we may not be the most housing-friendly City in a way. Although it is on the surface is politically salient and sounds nice, we have to be really careful about this. These are big numbers we're talking about here. Density is the only way to support your BMR. Council Member Holman: Can I remind us that we're just looking at conducting an economic analysis? We're not saying what we're going to enact. Mayor Kniss: Let me just comment on this. I think it's time for us to vote. Thank you. I'm not going to support it unless the maker and the seconder are willing to say we will look at exceeding the current height limit. Unless we're willing to make some other inclusionary kinds of requirements such as greater density, we're going to have to eliminate the 50-foot height limit if FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 43 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 we go to 20 percent. Unless we're willing to move in some other direction, Council Member Fine has put it very succinctly how you get—if you can get to 40 percent and give up parking, I don't think we're ready to go through the 50-foot height limit yet. I don't think we're ready to give up parking. Council Member Holman: Can I just speak just briefly. The reason … Mayor Kniss: One sentence. Council Member Holman: The reason that I see us doing the economic analysis is it will tell us. We should not decide now. The economic analysis will tell us if we would need to increase densities or increase the height limit. Council Member DuBois: I would support that, Liz. Again, we're talking about doing an analysis. If you'll vote for it, I would support that as part of the analysis. Council Member Scharff: You want to add it to your Motion? Council Member DuBois: There's a lot of variables that Staff should look at when they look at it. We shouldn't pick one. They should do the analysis to see what it would take to make it work. Mayor Kniss: You're willing to say we could address height limit and density and no parking? Council Member DuBois: Again, you're specifying very specific conditions. Mayor Kniss: I don't know how you analyze without … Council Member DuBois: If you say 20 percent, we don't have to do any of that but with 25 percent we do, that would be interesting to know. Mayor Kniss: I'm not sure I'm hearing that you're willing to put it in the Motion. Council Member DuBois: I'm saying we would explore a variety of alternatives. I'm not sure you've got the right set of variables that would apply to 25 percent and not 20 percent, but let's find out. Let's do the analysis. Mayor Kniss: It's Council Member Holman's Motion, if she's willing to add to it. Council Member Holman: If the language is … FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 44 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Mayor Kniss: We can only vary the height and the density and the parking. Council Member Holman: If the language is to help inform what it would take to get to 25 percent, that's fine. As Tom said, it's getting pretty prescriptive to say it's height. That's what I'm saying. The analysis will tell us what we need to do. Mayor Kniss: I don't know any other way to analyze it without varying what the expectations are. Council Member Holman: I said I would add—Hillary, maybe you have good words for this. Mr. Keene: What Tom was saying is we would be unconstrained by any variables. What does it take to make it work? It could say it has to be 15 stories to make it work or there may be some other combination. That being said, if that's going to be absolutely out of the question, do you really want us to spend a lot of time on that? INCORPORATED INTO THE AMENDMENT WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Amendment after 25 percent, “which will identify the variables, such as height, density, and parking that will allow the higher percentages.” Council Member Holman: I don't think we need to spend more time on it. What's it going to take to get your vote? Mr. Keene: (Crosstalk) variables actually. Council Member Holman: What's that? Mr. Keene: There aren't that many variables. There's land cost. It's the unit cost, the type that they are, any subsidies, and how do you buy down the subsidy. It's pretty proven what you have to do. You need to either let us be free … Council Member Holman: Tom's language was unconstrained by … I would say "which will identify means to achieve the higher percentages." Mayor Kniss: If we include that, Director Gitelman, is that specific enough so that you know what the variables are that we can mess with at 25 percent? Ms. Gitelman: I can certainly ask the consultant to rescope the study to do a what-if analysis. It's going to add to their scope of work, but we can certainly do that. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 45 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Council Member Scharff: If we're changing, we all get to speak again. Now, we're changing it again. Mayor Kniss: I haven't heard that you're willing to add the specifics of density, parking, and height. If we get to that, then you probably can get support. Otherwise, I don't think so. Council Member Holman: I said something like "which will identify the variables such as height and density that would need to be adjusted to achieve the higher percentages." Are we really going to go through every one of these? Mayor Kniss: Height, density, and no parking. Council Member Holman: We're going to be here 'til 2:00 A.M. in the morning. Mayor Kniss: I think that's probably true. If it's that, I can actually work with that one. That is actually a Motion seconded by Council Member DuBois, that reads exactly what it says on your screen. Is that too different for you now, Council Member Scharff? AMENDMENT AS AMENDED RESTATED: Council Member Holman moved, seconded by Council Member DuBois to replace in the Motion Part A.iii., “20 percent” with “25 percent, which will identify the variables, such as height, density, and parking that will allow the higher percentages.” Council Member Scharff: I want to speak to it. Mayor Kniss: You want to speak to the Amendment, correct? Council Member Scharff: The part that was just amended now. Mayor Kniss: Go right ahead. No other lights are on. Council Member Scharff: I appreciate the Mayor's sentiments in this in that we would like to look at breaking the 50-foot height limit on this. I understand the sentiments for low income housing to do that. I would ask Council Member Holman—you don't have to answer it. It's rhetorical. Why would we send Staff down the rabbit hole to look at all of these things, to make a huge community decision about "we all know we can get more affordable housing if we go higher"? That doesn't take an economic analysis. If anyone at this table doesn't believe that, that's crazy. We could clearly get more housing if we build up. The question is does the community want to go there. It's not an economic analysis issue. Why are we putting all these variables? Why are we going to send Staff—this will take a really FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 46 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 long time. Given that we have all these different housing product types that you have to look at, you're going to do that. If you're going to 25 now, you're going to go above 50 feet. You're just increasing the product types. Are we going to go to 65 feet? Are we going to allow them to go—I hear that 85 feet is actually the sweet spot from developers on where they want to be right now. There are new building materials which will allow them to go higher than that. To me, this just seems like a complete waste of time. Mayor Kniss: That was a rhetorical question. Am I correct? Council Member Scharff: It was. I don't expect an answer. Mayor Kniss: It looks like that passes. It passes with Council Members Tanaka, Kou, Kniss, Wolbach, Holman, and DuBois. Am I missing anybody? Three dissenters. AMENDMENT AS AMENDED PASSED: 6-3 Filseth, Fine, Scharff no Mayor Kniss: We're actually back to the main Motion. Council Member Holman: "E," clarification please. Partner with other agencies and organizations to meet the needs of underserved members of our community. I'm sorry to be a nit on this. I don't know exactly what underserved means. It could mean a lot of things. It could mean people who can't afford to live here. It could mean we need more BMR housing units. Where do the unhoused and people living in vehicles—are those included in this? What's the intention and how do we know what's included in underserved? A little clarification would be really helpful. Ms. Gitelman: Thank you, Council Member Holman. We were intending draw a wide net when describing the opportunity for partnerships, but there are some specific items outlined on Page 27 of the Work Plan. For example, Item 5.5 is from the Housing Element. It talks about working with the San Andreas Regional Center to implement an outreach program that informs families about housing and services available to people with developmental disabilities. The idea is partnering with existing and established nonprofits to support them in their work. I'm sure we can all think of other opportunities, and others will come up in the course of our work on this Work Plan over the next year or two. Council Member Holman: The broad net answers my question. I appreciate that. It sounds like it then includes the unhoused and people living in cars. I'm understanding that correctly, right? FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 47 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Ms. Gitelman: It can if there are partnerships focused on those populations. Definitely. Council Member Holman: Thank you. "F" is a part of the Motion, add an item to the 2018 Ordinance to increase housing floor area ratios or FAR in the Downtown, California Avenue, El Camino Real areas. I'm going to move that we delete that for the reason that Director Gitelman said at the Retreat. That is it wasn't analyzed in the Comp. Plan Environmental Impact Report (EIR). It wasn't contemplated in the EIR. We just talked about it earlier in arguing about whether we were going to have a community outreach meeting or not. We discussed all of this when we did the Comp. Plan Update. We did the CAC and all of that. This was not in there. I'm going to ask that this be removed, that we delete "F." Council Member Fine: I'm not going to accept that for a few reasons. One, it was actually discussed in the Comprehensive Plan. We had a policy in there to look at increasing housing densities in multifamily units near transit. Also, the very first bullet point in the Colleagues' Memo from November looks at housing floor area ratio, increase housing FAR where appropriate. This gets back to the density question, if we want to see more housing in our community, we have to zone for that housing. If we want to see more affordable housing in our community, it's linked to the market rate development. Like in Mountain View, we're not looking at 10,000 units. The way that Mountain View is getting 2,000 affordable units is by planning 10,000 units in total. I won't accept this. Council Member Holman: Just a clarification here. Density and FAR are not the same thing. Mayor Kniss: This now has gone to an Amendment. Is there a second to Council Member Holman's Amendment? I do not hear a second, so that gets eliminated. AMENDMENT: Council Member Holman moved, seconded by Council Member XX to remove Part A.vi. from the Motion. AMENDMENT FAILED DUE TO THE LACK OF A SECOND Council Member Holman: I'm going to bring up—it's hard to track here. I'm not finding where it is if Staff or somebody will help me with this. Plan 1.7 is preparation and consideration of an Ordinance to allow for pilot projects aimed at providing workforce housing on Public Facility or (PF) zoned parcels. I would like to remove the PF zoned parcels from consideration. The reason is because our community facilities, which is what PF zoned properties are, are few and far between. They are used for things such as FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 48 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 parkland and community services and facilities. To put those in jeopardy is really a road we do not want to go down, the community does not want to go down. I've heard a lot about this. I'm proposing that we eliminate the PF zoned properties referenced in the Plan 1.7. Council Member Fine: This is just a consideration of an ordinance to allow for it. I put forth 2 weeks ago we allowed ourselves to spend $40 million to build a bunch of home spaces for cars on a PF property in the City. I think it's fair that we consider the same for housing. Mayor Kniss: Karen, are you going to make that into an Amendment? Council Member Holman: Yes, I am offering it as an Amendment please. Council Member Kou: Second. AMENDMENT: Council Member Holman moved, seconded by Council Member Kou to add to the Motion, “remove from Work Plan Item 1.7, ‘on Public Facility (PF) zoned parcels.’” Mayor Kniss: Are you done speaking to that? Council Member Holman: I would say there's a great difference, and we can argue about what the benefit is between building a parking garage that the general public uses and putting housing on a PF zoned that a few people use. Mayor Kniss: Council Member Wolbach and then—wait a minute. Council Member Kou, you seconded it. Excuse me. Council Member Kou: The parking garage is something that is long in coming. It's something that is needed. We've built enough office space that doesn't have sufficient parking in the past. This is something in order to make good. Comparing that to having public facility, which is not many—we don't have many of those, and we should protect those in order to ensure that with all the building that we're going to be doing and this proposal comes with, we're going to need those areas for parks or community centers. As it is, we do not have enough community centers, and we're at a deficit for parkland. I really think it's something that is in the interest as trustees of the City that we do preserve these PF zones. Mayor Kniss: Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: Could Staff provide us with just a quick update on where we're at and where you're at and PTC is at with Work Plan 1.7? FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 49 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Ms. Gitelman: Thank you, Council Member Wolbach. I was just speaking to the City Attorney, Molly Stump, about this. I'm afraid we're getting a little too close to an actual proposal that's making it's way to this Council for a decision. I'm sure some or all of you are aware that the Planning Commission considered an ordinance and a project associated with it that fits the description of this item. This is why this item is in the Work Plan as an ongoing initiative. It would be appropriate for the Council to hold their thoughts and weigh in at the time the ordinance gets to you for action. Council Member Wolbach: Without weighing in on the validity of this, because we're not making decisions about any of these, I just want to be clear. This is already moving ahead with consideration by the PTC, Staff. Things associated with this will be coming to Council already. Ms. Gitelman: That's right. Council Member Wolbach: It would be a little bit premature for us to, and untimely, say we can't do that. Staff's already working on it. PTC just discussed it. This will be coming to us. Council Member Holman: I'll accept that and move on. Mayor Kniss: You will accept their advice and remove it? Council Member Wolbach: You're withdrawing the Amendment? Council Member Holman: I will withdraw the Amendment based on Staff's input. City Attorney is nodding her head as well. AMENDMENT WITHDRAWN BY THE MAKER Mayor Kniss: Appreciate your comments, both of you. Council Member Holman: Just a couple more things. It's a long proposal here. There are some inconsistencies between the text portion of the Plan and the timeline portion of the Plan. One of them has to the with the Palmer Fix, which in one place seems to be in the 2019 ordinance. I'd like that to be in the 2018 Ordinance. Can Staff clarify which you intend? Ms. Gitelman: The Palmer Fix is one of the things we'll have the economic analysis cover. If we can get that analysis done this year in time to draft an ordinance, we'll bring it to Council this year. If the analysis takes a bit of time, then that ordinance will have to follow in 2019. Council Member Holman: Appreciate the clarification. Again, difference between the text portion and the timeline portion. There is reference, as FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 50 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 there is in the Comp. Plan and here, language about retention of existing units. I think Work Plan 2.9 and 3.3 may refer to those. A couple of things. One is it talks about cottage clusters. It only mentions R-1 and R-2, but I think RM-15 also has a number of cottage clusters. Why do we not include RM-15? Ms. Gitelman: I can look at that. Council Member Holman: Do Council Members have any objections if the Staff includes RM-15? Staff will add RM-15. Thank you for making that. Staff will add RM-15 to that. To speak to the purpose of that, the most affordable units that we have are the ones that we currently have, the ones that are on the ground now. There were comments made last time if we don't allow the removal of existing ADUs, it would serve as a disincentive to building ADUs. I actually disagree with that. Just so that you have the point/counterpoint up here, Staff. Since ADUs—it's a flaw in ADU law. We can't even require them to be used for housing. I don't know why it would be a disincentive not to be able to remove them because they could be used for home offices or workout room or an entertainment room, which I've seen several. I just don't find it to be a disincentive. I don't know how it would be. I just want you to have the point/counterpoint on that if you would please. This is different places. It's on the 2018 and then on the 2019 as well. I would like to prioritize retention of existing units to 2018. Can Staff respond to what the intention is? It's inconsistent in the time. Ms. Gitelman: If you're referring to Item 2.9 in the Work Plan, we definitely thought of that as a 2019 element just because it involves looking under the hood for the R-1 district. We know that we'll need to do quite a bit more community outreach and thought about how to approach changes in that zone. Council Member Holman: And Work Plan 3.3, the no net loss policy? Ms. Gitelman: That's something we're going to have to look at with the economic analysis and with our legal counsel. They're really not sure we can even do that, but we're going to take a look at it. It is from the Colleagues' Memo, and we will give it a try. Council Member Holman: You'll try to get to it in 2018, but it's pending when you have the analysis returned. Along with Council Member Scharff who mentioned earlier in the Plan 2.4, removing constraints. It's not just a no-holds-barred consideration. I think that's consistent with the comments that Council Member Scharff made. Work Plan 2.4.6, this I believe is my last one you will all be glad to hear. Convert some nonresidential FAR to residential FAR, is that intended to be that Staff will come back with a FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 51 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 variety of proposals? We have talked about—I think it was in the Comp. Plan—that we would convert some of the nonretail, in other words above the ground floor, commercial space to housing. Is Staff going to come back with what percentage of that or all of that or a variety? What's your intention on that? Ms. Gitelman: Our intention is to build on that program that you're speaking of from the Comprehensive Plan. Our thought was that we would work with the Planning Commission to craft a proposal to shift some of the non-retail commercial FAR to residential FAR in transit-served areas of the City where it makes sense. I don't know exactly what that's going to look like, but we'll work with the Commission to craft an ordinance that will ultimately come to Council with that as a component. Council Member Holman: The nonretail would be second floor and above in most occasions. Ms. Gitelman: Correct. Council Member Holman: I think that—I really would appreciate also, which is referenced in the Ventura, when we look at underserved we also talk about artists as an underserved population here. Thank you all for your time. Mayor Kniss: I don't see any other lights on. We're now … Vice Mayor Filseth: I haven't spoken yet. Mayor Kniss: No, no. We're now speaking to the main Motion. I see Vice Mayor Filseth's light on and Council Member Kou. Vice Mayor Filseth: Thank you very much. The Comp. Plan gives us a top- level target. Our mission now is to figure out how to parse that target down to different types of housing and locations and stuff like that. Staff's going to do the heavy lifting on this. I want to urge weight on the below market and other specialty kinds of housing, senior housing, special services housing. As somebody pointed out earlier, if you want a two-bedroom unit in this town, you can go rent one on Park Street right now for $3,800. The challenge is if you want a $2,500 or a $2,000 one; that's where the gap is. That's our gravity as much as possible ought to be. We talked about that a bunch already. For example, I'd like to see the Palmer Fix this year as well. More generally, there's a lot of energy behind this, and it covers a great deal of territory. Some of it's—we earlier used the words magical thinking. I might say aspirational instead. The point is we're sort of getting out of the "throw out ideas" phase and into the phase where we really have to do it. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 52 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 That means a couple of things. First of all, I can't imagine how Staff is going to do a thorough job of all this, of all this stuff. That's going to be a challenge. Second, some of this reads like it really needs a scrub. Staff's generally going to need to do that, and that's part of the stuff that Staff needs to do. A couple of examples. One that came up as a couple of people have said is, for example, Work Plan 2.4.7, remove any constraints to special needs housing in particular. Got the idea, but something more actionable needs to be there. On that particular one, I don't know if you want suggestions for language. The test earlier says explore flexible development standards for special service housing. Something like that's much better. I don't know if you want that as a Motion or that's good enough direction. Ms. Gitelman: We understand we inartfully paraphrased the earlier program. Vice Mayor Filseth: The other one I want to bring up—Karen talked about the PF Zone. We need to be pretty careful with public land here. It's not like we're making more. It's really valuable stuff. Work Plan 5.1 says explore housing over City parking lots. When we sit down and think about that, we're going to think maybe that's actually not a good idea. If it's an open parking lot and its public land, it can potentially be used for other things in the future. Once you build a building on top of it, it's pretty much going to be that for 100 years or something like that. We ought to be really careful about that kind of stuff. Let's see. I don't think we ought to do Work Plan 5.1. Do you want a Motion to take that out? Ms. Gitelman: It would be useful for us. We think it's an opportunity to get some focus on this issue and what it would mean for us to get parking and housing on some of these City-owned properties. If you're not interested, that would be nice for us to know. Vice Mayor Filseth: I move that we excise Work Plan 5.1. Mayor Kniss: I don't hear a second unless it (crosstalk). Council Member Scharff: I was waiting for Adrian (crosstalk). Council Member Fine: I'm just wondering why. It's a challenge for business school students, and its about real estate development and affordable housing production. I was a little surprised to see it in here as well, but I don't want to tell Staff don't do this. Vice Mayor Filseth: I don't think we ought to give away public land. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 53 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Council Member Holman: I'll second then. Were you were going to second? AMENDMENT: Vice Mayor Filseth moved, seconded by Council Member Scharff to add to the Motion, “remove Work Plan Item 5.1.” (New Part A.viii.) Council Member Fine: Are you against the challenge or are you against potentially building housing over parking? Council Member Scharff: Why don't you let us speak to the Motion? Council Member Fine: Okay. Vice Mayor Filseth: I think I've already spoken to it. I don't think we ought to give away public land. Council Member Scharff: I'm actually not against the challenge. I'm familiar with the challenges they do every year. I'm fine to have them do it. This is on our Housing Work Plan as if it means something. If Staff said, "Go ahead, take it," you look at it. That's what I think you're really saying in this. I would never stop them from doing it if Staff wanted to coordinate with kids doing this. That's totally fine. I don't want them to think we're going to do this if there's not support on Council to do it. I don't support it. Mayor Kniss: What do you not support? Council Member Scharff: I support building housing on our public parking lots. Mayor Kniss: This is over. Vice Mayor Filseth: What this means, if I understand it right, is you've got an open parking lot somewhere. We say we're going to build a housing building on top of it. Mayor Kniss: You keep the parking. Mountain View just actually voted to do this. Council Member Fine: They flipped a surface lot into underground plus affordable housing on top. Council Member Scharff: I wanted to speak to the second. I was just speaking to his issue. I'm going to speak to the second. These public parking lots are something that we really need in the City. We may need them—we use them for the Public Safety Building; we used one of them. These are the ability to basically—we can't buy land. We can't afford it. I FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 54 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 watched people try and do the Public Safety Building for 20 years, and it didn't happen until we actually decided to use one of our parking lots. I don't see building housing on those parking lots. It's giving away the future too much. Self-driving cars may be coming, and we may turn a lot of those into parks. Frankly, I'd rather have a park at a lot of those public parking lots than I would … I don't know what we want there, but I don't want to put housing on top of those. Mayor Kniss: I've just turned out all the lights because I don't know who wants to speak to the Amendment and who doesn't. Who does? Cory? Karen? Cory and Karen, I have down. If you're brief, it would not be a bad thing. Council Member Wolbach: I was waiting to make sure I had the Vice Mayor's attention because I want to address his Amendment. Work Plan 5.1 says that we will explore the opportunity for developing housing over parking on City-owned, Downtown parking lots. That's again explore an opportunity. That's pretty tentative language. It's explore doing housing over parking. Not eliminating parking, but doing housing above it. I just want to make sure we're reading the same language here. What I heard being described by the maker of this Amendment doesn't reflect what I'm reading in the black-and-white text here. The idea that we're not going to need housing in 50 years, seriously? This is a multi-generational problem that we're trying to finally address that we didn't address for the last several decades. It's not going to disappear in 50 years. The need for the parking might be reduced, but the need for the housing isn't. I think we all know that. I can't really think of a better use for a parking lot than keeping it a parking lot and adding housing to it, especially if its affordable housing. I also heard the maker of the Motion say that he doesn't support giving away public land. In no way does this say that we would give it away. We could still maintain ownership of it; we could lease it out. I just want to address that claim that was made. That's just not relevant to the text of Work Plan 5.1 I'll be happily voting against this Amendment. Mayor Kniss: Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: I'll be happily voting for this Amendment. We will lose the use of it. Once there's housing built over a parking lot, we lose the use of it for however many years, certainly decades. Cities just like any other property owner own the property directly below and directly above. It is the City and the public's property. It isn't even affordable housing; it's just housing. It's doesn't matter whether it's affordable or not. I'm just saying this doesn't even mention affordable housing. I'm not supportive of this program and appreciate the Amendment. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 55 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Mayor Kniss: Council Member Kou. Council Member Kou: I too appreciate the Amendment. It's a wise way to look at what our future is going to be. As it is, we need the parking. We already have so many issues and have worked with so many places where they need the parking. As Council Member Scharff said, in the future should we not require or need the parking space anymore, parks are going to be better. As a public space, community centers are going to be needed. I hope that as we move along we don't forget about the community benefits that are needed in our community as we go along building. Mitchell Park is constantly filled. Art Center constantly in use. I just think it's a wise Amendment looking into the future. Mayor Kniss: Council Member Fine. Council Member Fine: Thank you, Mayor. A few things. If we imagine one of the garages Downtown—not a garage, a surface lot, and you think about our role as trustees in the City, in the next 50 years do you think our City is better served by that being a concrete parking garage where people will drive to? As we talked about in our last garage project, it'll increase trips and increase traffic. Is there perhaps an opportunity where it could be housing, whether it's affordable housing, whether it's market rate, whether it's housing and parking? Program 5.1 is just looking at the opportunity. You mentioned the community benefit of a parking garage. I get that. There's also a community benefit to having housing, having affordable housing. It means having perhaps teachers live here. It means having an inclusive growing community. I expect this to be removed now. Every time we make these tradeoffs between cars and people, we've got to think about Palo Alto and do we want a great City to raise a car or a great City to raise a family. Mayor Kniss: The whole reason for this Housing Work Plan is the result of Comp. Plan, RHNA numbers, and our avowed Priority a couple of weeks ago. This is one of the most innocuous things in here. It explores an opportunity for developing housing over parking. It never mentions getting rid of the parking lot. You can always go down. I couldn't agree with Council Member Fine more. We're looking at the future, not looking at the past. Beyond that, for us to not even be willing to explore an opportunity, especially for a competition between business school students from Stanford and Cal, come on you guys, truly. We need to be able to move forward, to look ahead, and to hear what some group might say about, as they had a challenge to look at this possibility. I'm certainly voting against it. I see no more lights, so would you all …. This vote passes to eliminate any possibility of family- FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 56 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 oriented development on a core parking lot Downtown. Kniss, Wolbach, and Fine voted against this. AMENDMENT PASSED: 6-3 Fine, Kniss, Wolbach no Mayor Kniss: I'm looking … this takes us back to our main Motion, I think. Has anyone not spoken to the main Motion? Tom? Council Member DuBois: I think Lydia. You said she had her light on. Mayor Kniss: Lydia, did you speak to the main Motion? Council Member Kou: Not yet. Mayor Kniss: Please, go right ahead. Council Member Kou: In the Housing Work Plan, I see there's a small mention at Work Plan 2.4.5 regarding TDM plans. It says allow parking reductions based on TDM plans and on payment of parking in-lieu fees for housing. There's no mention about how you're going to incorporate TDMs and what is going to be in the agreements. Can we have language in here about the guidelines or standards of what TDMs are going to be and then a way to measure whether it works including metrics of accomplishments and enforcement mechanisms? Ms. Gitelman: Thank you, Council Member Kou. We would certainly need to put a lot of that in the ordinance. I don't know that we need to specify right now. We'll have to work with the PTC on the ordinance provisions, and then you'll have an opportunity to review what we come up with to make sure it's actionable. Council Member Kou: It's just that there's nowhere in the instructions to PTC to be working through to prepare the guidelines and standards for the TDMs. At what point is the building permit or entitlement going to be provided if they don't have that TDM? I want to make sure that we have a TDM with teeth before we even have any of this permitting, the allowance of building anything. I'd like to find out … Ms. Gitelman: I understand. The Planning Commission shares your interest in making sure, if we let someone reduce parking because of a TDM plan, there's a quantitative standard and it's enforceable. Council Member Kou: I would like language in here. Can you help me work out the language or else I can. "Provide detailed TDM agreements, measurement methods, and recourse prior to the approval of entitlement, demolition, and building permitting." If it can be included, would you accept FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 57 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 it under Work Plan 2.4.5(i)? I don't know. I'd like it somewhere in there so that it can be considered by the PTC. Mayor Kniss: I'm looking at the maker of the Motion. Is it clear what … Lydia, could you repeat what you said? Council Member Kou: I want to add to the 2018 proposed Ordinance language which would direct Staff and PTC to draft an TDM agreement that would provide guidelines and standards that would include measurements and accomplishments and enforcement mechanisms. Council Member Fine: A quick question for Staff. What is our policy when somebody comes to us with a TDM and there's Director's discretion to alter parking and stuff like that? What kind of systems do we have in place in terms of requiring metrics, accomplishments, and enforcement for them? Ms. Gitelman: This Council amended a portion of our Zoning Ordinance early in 2017 to require certain elements in a TDM plan, including regular monitoring and an enforcement mechanism. I don't have the language in front of me. I know you did talk about this early last year. We also in the Comp. Plan included quantitative standards for different geographic areas of the City. Council Member Fine: Thank you. That's helpful. Council Member Kou, I actually get the drive of where you're going here. There is some public consternation that TDMs aren't equal across different projects. They're not enforced. The metrics might be pulled out from nowhere. I'm encouraged by what the Director has just mentioned to us, that we have recently updated our TDM standards, measuring, and enforcement. I hope the PTC will continue to consider those. With regards to these changes here in— which number was it again you were looking to alter? Council Member Kou: I wasn't altering; I was adding. Council Member Fine: Work Plan 2.4.5 was the one you brought up at the beginning. I hope the—I encourage the PTC to consider these changes that you're suggesting, but I don't think I'll accept this given that we've just updated our TDM standards in 2017. Council Member Kou: In that case, I'm going to have to look for a second. It's not sufficient. I've been asking to look at and review TDMs for—ever since I came on Council. I haven't seen any for any of the properties that have been given building permits. I can name one, which is 1050 Page Mill. I still don't see it. I would like—if we're going to go through with this Housing Plan that is going to be bringing, I think, according to what Council FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 58 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Member Scharff has said, it's going to be planning for about 300 units per year to a total of about 5,000 units in the next 15 years. We're going to need to start working on a TDM plan. I don't think this is—it's not sufficient if there's no timeline in this. If we're moving forward with the Housing Work Plan, we need to move forward with a Transportation Demand Management plan as well. I want to see the guidelines and standards. I want to see the metrics. I want to see the enforcement also. Council Member Holman: I'll second it. AMENDMENT: Council Member Kou moved, seconded by Council Member Holman to add to the Motion, “as part of the 2018 Draft Housing Ordinance, direct Staff and the Planning and Transportation Commission to draft a Transportation Demand Management agreement that includes metrics of measurements, accomplishments, and enforcement.” Council Member Holman: I have a question for Staff. Would this be created in parallel with this or is it part of this Housing Plan? Ms. Gitelman: Maybe I don't understand the Motion. I thought the concept was when we're drafting Ordinance language to allow parking reductions for housing based on TDM plans. Council Member Kou is asking that those plans have quantitative targets and be enforceable and the like. That would just be part of drafting an ordinance and something we would do anyway. Make sure that if a TDM plan is relied upon, that it's a real one. Council Member Holman: I think what's being asked for, if I understand the Motion, is—we have TDM Ordinances and have had them in the past and have been approved as part of projects and such. I think what's being asked for is more specificity that we can rely on than has been provided in the past, far preceding your time here. I think that's what's being asked for. Do I understand the Amendment correctly? Council Member Kou: Yes. Thank you. So far I haven't seen a TDM that has anything that will actually reduce any car use or parking. We're moving forward with high-density building. It's going to impact this City. I just want to make sure that we have some of these things in place unless you're saying these—on one hand, Council Member Fine talks about trying to reduce cars. If we don't have these TDMs in place, there's no reducing it. I would like to see a draft of one come back after PTC looks through it. Mayor Kniss: Just a point of clarification for you, Hillary. I don't know if any of the TDMs we have required so far for building have actually been completed. Have they? We fairly recently included a TDM as part of—I can FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 59 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 think of one on El Camino, but I can't think of a lot where we've included a TDM as part of the plan where that's now been built. Ms. Gitelman: There are probably examples that I can find. This is coming up in the context of this ordinance that we're drafting. What Council Member Kou is asking—please correct me if I'm mistaken—is that the ordinance be specifically drafted to include quantitative standards and thresholds and enforcement mechanisms for any TDM plan that's going to be adopted to allow a reduction in parking. That's the context in which it appears in this Work Plan. Offline as a separate matter, we can talk about plans that have been adopted and how they've been implemented and the (crosstalk). Mayor Kniss: Maybe I misunderstood what Council Member Kou was asking for. Council Member Kou: Correct. Ms. Gitelman: Thank you. Mayor Kniss: Hillary restated it correctly? Was there a second on that? Karen, you want to speak to your second? Council Member Holman: I think I did earlier sufficiently. Mayor Kniss: In that case, in some order I have Tom and Cory and then Greg Scharff. Council Member DuBois: This is a reasonable thing. I understand Staff is saying they're going to do it anyway. The reason it's important is the benefits of this will help the community during the community workshop to be able to point to this part of the Ordinance. To me, that's the reason to call this out and to include it. Mayor Kniss: Cory. Council Member Wolbach: There's a lot of stuff in our Colleagues' Memo, and there's a lot of stuff in this Work Plan, and there's a lot of stuff that will be in the 2018 Draft Housing Ordinance. It's not a mini Comp. Plan. It's about housing. We've spent the last 3 years that I've been on Council focusing on reducing job growth and dealing with our transportation problems. I've been supportive of those efforts. Now, the part that goes with that in the jobs/housing/transportation nexus is to focus on the housing side finally. The Colleagues' Memo and the Work Plan are about housing. We already did update our TDM rules just last year, as we've just heard from FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 60 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Staff. This Ordinance doesn't need to repeat the work that we just did last year. Mayor Kniss: Council Member Scharff. Council Member Scharff: What I've heard is that all these items are already existing in our Ordinance. Why don't we just—I can support this if you just change the language and said "to the extent already not included in our ordinance." Why would you draft another one if it's already in there? "Direct Staff to amend the current Ordinance to include metrics of measurements, accomplishment, and enforcement." The argument I've heard against this is it's already there. If it's already there, we shouldn't do this. That's silly. If any of those are missing—none of us have the ordinance in front of us—why don't we just say to amend the Ordinance? Is that acceptable to the maker and the seconder? Council Member Kou: Yes. Council Member Holman: Yes. AMENDMENT RESTATED: Council Member Kou moved, seconded by Council Member Holman to add to the Motion, “as part of the 2018 Draft Housing Ordinance, direct Staff and the Planning and Transportation Commission to update the Transportation Demand Management Ordinance to the extent that it does not already include metrics of measurements, accomplishments, and enforcement, to include these metrics.” (New Part E) Mayor Kniss: Eric, do you want to talk to it? It's your turn. Vice Mayor Filseth: I just want to thank the Planning Director for a very clear and crisp explanation, which I understand. Thanks. Mayor Kniss: Council Member Fine. Council Member Fine: Just really quickly, to play off what Council Member Wolbach said, I'm a little worried here. We're directing Staff to go look at the Transportation Demand Management Ordinance, which we reviewed last year. We're doing through the vehicle of a Housing Work Plan. If we're comfortable with that, okay. It's really important to prioritize your Priorities, and the priority with this Work Plan really was housing production in a way that's equitable, economically viable, environmental sustainable, and for the good of our community. The purpose of this Housing Work Plan was not to update the Transportation Demand Management Ordinance. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 61 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Mayor Kniss: No other lights that I see on this. I'm not voting for this because this Christmas tree has one too many ornaments at this point. I really think it's time for us to try to move on. We're really becoming very prescriptive. With that, would you vote on the board. Voting no are Council Member Tanaka, Kniss, Wolbach, and Fine. This passes with the other four voting for it. AMENDMENT AS AMENDED PASSED: 5-4 Fine, Kniss, Tanaka, Wolbach no Mayor Kniss: That now can be incorporated into the Motion because it's now an Amendment that we have voted on. This can be added as Number 5. We now have … Council Member Kou: Mayor, I have one more. Mayor Kniss: One more? Okay. Council Member Kou: At the Retreat, I did mention to explore addressing the Recreation Vehicle (RV) dwellers. I'd like to add that. I'd like to explore the RV park for the RV dwellers at the Los Altos Water Treatment site, if that might be somewhere that we could put in an RV park with a bathroom and also figure out a plan of how to implement and how to charge for it. Mayor Kniss: At which parking lot did you suggest? Council Member Kou: The Los Altos Water Treatment Plant. Mr. Keene: It's a property we own down on the Baylands just south of the Animal Shelter. It's a little bit of land and some wetlands there. Council Member Kou: If I'm not mistaken, there's … Mayor Kniss: Was there a second on it? Council Member DuBois: I will second it if it wasn't accepted. Did you guys turn it down? Council Member Fine: I'm going to turn it down, but this is actually more of a policy choice, if we want to use the Water Treatment Plant for this purpose. I don't think this Council has yet decided on how we would like to treat and address—I don't think we've even scoped the problems with RV dwelling in our community. We all know it may be one, but this is a policy choice. I don't support putting that in the Work Plan right now. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 62 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 AMENDMENT: Council Member Kou moved, seconded by Council Member DuBois to add to the Motion, “explore a Recreational Vehicle Park at the Los Altos Water Treatment Plant, including an implementation plan.” Mayor Kniss: Council Member Kou, do you want to speak further? Council Member Kou: If we're exploring housing, we should be exploring housing for everybody that is here. Just looking at one set, and we're looking at affordable. We should be also looking at the RV folks who are parked all over the place and explore it. I'm just asking for exploration. I'm not saying to do it. Mayor Kniss: Lydia, on this one would you be willing to explore places for them to park other than the Water Treatment Plant? Council Member DuBois: I was going to ask the same thing. Would you consider softening it to say "explore potential sites including the Treatment Plant," but not just specifying that single place? Mayor Kniss: This is so specific, it's hard to … Council Member Kou: I will. I just wanted to come up with a place just as a thought. I can accept that language. I don't want to leave that population out either. Mayor Kniss: I think Council Member DuBois has slightly different language. Council Member DuBois: Just "direct Staff to explore recreational vehicle parking at various sites including the Los Altos Water Treatment Plant." If I could speak to that. INCORPORATED INTO THE AMENDMENT WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Amendment, “at various sites including” after “Recreational Vehicle Park.” Mayor Kniss: Let me ask Adrian first if he would be willing to incorporate it or not. Council Member Fine: I still think this is actually a policy choice that we haven't debated at a Council level about how we want to approach these RV dwellers and the impact they may have. We as a Council may say that we're totally okay with it, and we want them to stay there. This is saying we want to move these people somewhere else. That's a policy choice we haven't discussed. It's inappropriate to insert it into a Work Plan that is primarily focused at producing a greater quantity and variety of affordable and market rate housing. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 63 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Mayor Kniss: Tom, did you … Council Member DuBois: I've been waiting a long time to speak. I was getting my … Mayor Kniss: Wait just a second. This is an Amendment; we need to vote on it. Council Member DuBois: I'm speaking to this Amendment. I'm giving pieces of what I was planning to say as reactions to other people's Motions. We talk about a housing crisis. People without homes are probably one of the biggest ones. The Plan was very weak in that area. I hadn't thought about the Treatment Plant; that was a great idea. We've seen examples. We've talked about Santa Monica. In the past we've tried. I think it's time to try again. There's a large amount of vehicle dwellers. This definitely should be in our Housing Plan, some more beef around what we're going to do with the homeless community. Mayor Kniss: I think we're ready to vote on the Amendment. I don't see— sorry, Cory, go ahead. Council Member Wolbach: Out of sight, out of mind. Us having to see the effects of not providing housing for the last several decades is important. I don't think we should be able to hide away from it. Forcing somebody who has nowhere else to sleep but in their car into one nice secluded place far away from where we have to see them enables us to think a little bit less about it. I might support "explore additional services we can provide for people who are living in their vehicles on Palo Alto streets." Would you accept that as an Amendment to the Amendment? Lydia's not agreeing to it. I suggested that instead of creating a place, a ghetto, for these people, that we provide additional services for them. Lydia said that she's not willing to support that. Council Member DuBois: I'm deeply offended by how you're characterizing this. When you look at the Santa Monica program, it's very well managed. It's much safer. That's the intent. Council Member Kou: To say a ghetto, I'm sorry. You're just providing a service. It stops. There's a certain place where it stops at. You're not really addressing the problem. You're pushing it out. Council Member Wolbach: My concern here is that we're not addressing the problem. We're just trying to push it out of the way. Mayor Kniss: Where are we at this point? FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 64 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 AMENDMENT TO THE AMENDMENT: Council Member Wolbach moved, seconded by Council Member XX to replace in the Amendment, “a Recreational Vehicle Park at various sites including at the Los Altos Water Treatment Plant, including an implementation plan” with “additional services for vehicle dwellers.” AMENDMENT TO THE AMENDMENT WITHDRAWN BY THE MAKER Mr. Keene: Can I make a suggestion? You're going to have a vote? I appreciate the intent. The issue of saying have we added every dimension of the housing issue to this Housing Plan. Answer: no. Are there other aspects of this? Probably, yes. What you're mostly focused on is directing the Staff to come back with an ordinance that would, in a sense, implement a plan that the Staff spent several months trying to translate the Colleagues' Memo, prior decisions, and looking at our capacity into what we thought would be a workable plan. Respectfully, the Council is—I understand the intent. If the intent is for us to reproduce for the Council that materials that we developed 5 or 6 years ago on this topic, we can do that. If you want us to launch a new initiative on the fly without any conversation about what it takes, I would ask you how does that process really work. The Colleagues' Memo process is better than this. That at least gets a signal of a number of Council Members. You put the item on. We get to identify maybe the resource impact and requirements, and it often then gets referred to committee for a more in-depth discussion. Then, it comes back to Council. Respectfully, you guys are adding an almost insoluble problem with suggesting a way to alleviate it and then pointing out some other places we should go study without any understanding of what it really takes or what it could detract from the stuff that you've already been discussing for the past couple of hours. I'd prefer that—the other thing I would say is you've set housing as a policy for the year. We don't have to do everything related to housing tonight. You could pass this. You could bring this issue up separately. You could ask the Housing Committee to have a way to talk about it a little bit more before you decide. I would encourage you to think about it. Right now, I don't have a clue to tell you how we would approach this problem in-depth. It's going to need some depth if we want to do something meaningful about it, particularly since we worked almost 2 years on the living in vehicles issue. We identified all possible sites. We worked with churches to try to set some stuff up. We looked at other things that had worked. I just don't think it's going to be easy. I appreciate the intention because it is obviously a large part of our population that has been reduced to that sort of housing. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 65 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Mayor Kniss: I want to in particular thank the City Manager for that reminder. We took that up in 2013, as I recall. I recall the end of it very well. Council Member Scharff. Council Member Scharff: I was pretty much going to say what you just said. I do remember this. We took it up. People talked about Santa Barbara, how wonderful it was. People flew down to Santa Barbara. It didn't seem appropriate for Palo Alto. I actually flew to Eugene because people told me how wonderful the Eugene program was. We don't want to implement the Eugene program here. After visiting Eugene, I'm convinced of that. For the same reason that this is a huge topic, and it took huge amounts of Staff time last time. I don't think we should do this on the fly. Definitely not. Mayor Kniss: I'm not going to end up supporting this because it probably is best coming with a Colleagues' Memo if we want to open it up again. It probably would be really good for newer Council Members to read the entire background on what we did in 2013 and the reversal we had to do in 2014 after the California court reversed that. It was a long and painful exploration. With that, unless somebody absolutely hasn't spoken to this Amendment—Karen. I think everyone else has spoken. Can you be brief? Council Member Holman: I have a question for Staff. I can be pretty brief. I also really appreciate the intention of this. I have a question for City Staff. I'm going to ask a question that I hope will be taken in the right spirit. If Council Members were to write a Colleagues' Memo after reviewing the materials that were in 2013—I was one of two Council Members only that voted against that ordinance, to shoo people out. If Council Members were to review that material from 2013 and then write a Colleagues' Memo, when could we expect it to come back? The reason I ask, which is what I'm hoping you'll understand the purpose of the question and the spirit in which it's asked, is because the Anti-Idling Memo was presented, I think, in June, and it still hasn't come to Council. When could we anticipate it coming forward? Mr. Keene: The City Attorney asked are you talking about coming back with an Ordinance to prohibit living in vehicles or to facilitate … Council Member Holman: When would the Colleagues' Memo get on the Agenda and when could we anticipate some result from that, meaning a proposed Ordinance or whatever? Mr. Keene: I think we have to take it step by step. We'd have to see what the Colleagues' Memo is. We try to develop a Staff response. There's discussion at the Council, and that's the time we could best be able to answer that. I would think you're making the very point that I would make, FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 66 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 which is why do these things take so long. Because there's a lot that we're already working on, and there's stuff that we need to do. If it's frustrating going through the Colleagues' Memo process, it's even worse doing it on the fly here at the Council meeting. We talk about transparency and due process all the time. This isn't very—I'll be honest with you. This is just happening. This ought to be something actually even the public might know we were really going to discuss tonight. We ought to be able to talk about it. The Colleagues' Memo is at least a way to say—if that's where you are, you symbolize that this is a matter of importance to the community, that you want it to be taken up in some way in the Staff, and then we can have a thoughtful discussion. I don't think we could tell you when we could come back with a product until we know what the direction on the product is. I think that would be a legitimate question, how fast could you get that back. Council Member Holman: I am going to vote for this, and here's why. This is important to understand. I'm going to vote for this because it's important to put it out there and be forthcoming, stating what—I'm not going to presume that people who vote against this are going to be opposed to supporting our homeless population. It's important for at least some of us to vote for this to get the word out there that there is concern and consideration about this homeless population. The whole draft Plan is—even in response to my questions earlier, I did hear Director Gitelman say if we can find partnerships who will work towards this. It's important to get the word out there that we do care about this population and these populations. For that reason, I will be supporting the Amendment. Mr. Keene: Madam Mayor, may I just say one other thing? Could I make a general statement just as a matter of practice? The Motion includes developing an implementation plan. I would say that—I go back to what Council Member Fine was saying. We don't have a clear definition of the problem yet, and we're already jumping to solutions. What is the scale of the problem? How much of the problem are we attempting to resolve? What does that say about the stuff we leave unresolved if we just do something at the Los Altos Treatment site? It seems to me that some of those things are precursors to asking us to do a specific task. Council Member Holman: You're looking at me, and I … Mr. Keene: I didn't mean to be. It's just you had said … Council Member Holman: I'm anticipating this isn't going to pass. The reason I said I'm going to support it is because I do think it's important that we do make some statement. I'm not anticipating it's going to pass. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 67 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Mr. Keene: That's the same reason I was trying to make it clear. We need a definition of the problem too and the scale of it. Council Member Kou: The purpose of this Amendment was in order for the City to be looking into this and not to put it on the shelf. There are people out there who are living on the vehicles, and we need to address that. I don't want it to be out of sight, out of mind as Council Member Wolbach said. I want it to be addressed. I know that you're looking for the scope. Without addressing it, we'll never know the scope. Mayor Kniss: We have one final speaker, Vice Mayor Filseth. Vice Mayor Filseth: As everybody can tell, it means well, but it's half a loaf. These things where we wring our hands and go, "This is a big problem. We know this isn't going to work. We've got to do something, so let's do it." That's the road that we're going down. Mayor Kniss: It's time for us to vote. I'm not going to support it, but I urge those of you who do to put a Colleagues' Memo together and bring it to Council. AMENDMENT AS AMENDED RESTATED: Council Member Kou moved, seconded by Council Member DuBois to add to the Motion, “explore a Recreational Vehicle Park at various sites including at the Los Altos Water Treatment Plant, including an implementation plan.” Mayor Kniss: Would you all vote on the board? This fails with Council Members Kou, Holman, and DuBois voting yes. It is getting a little later. The Motion fails. AMENDMENT AS AMENDED FAILED: 3-6 DuBois, Holman, Kou yes Mayor Kniss: We're now back to the main Motion. Has anyone—Tom, I realize you have not really spoken to it yet. Council Member DuBois: Given the time and we've got more on the Agenda, do we want to continue to next week or do you want me to go through this? There's a lot here. I will try to be quick and succinct. It is a 2-year Housing Plan. I do think we need to take the time to go through this tonight. I had a couple of quick questions on the presentation from the Staff since we didn't do questions. The slide on the monthly rental rates, I'd really like to see us start to show housing rental rates as well as apartments. Are those averaged in already? Ms. Gitelman: Single-family home rental rates? FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 68 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Council Member DuBois: Yeah. We talk about two, three-bedroom, but there's a lot of three-bedroom houses that are rented. Ms. Gitelman: We can see if we have some data on that. Council Member DuBois: I just think it'd be useful. If I understood correctly, the amount of housing you're talking about producing is some kind of catch-up formula. Is that correct? Ms. Gitelman: We talked about the amount that would be needed per year to meet our Comp. Plan projection. We've already fallen behind for 2 years or 3 years, 2015, '16, and '17. We need to do a little more than what we said we would need to do for the Comp. Plan. It worked out to just over 300 units a year at the mid-range. Council Member DuBois: I'm not sure I buy into that idea. We just zone; we don't build. At some point, we can't be responsible if the market doesn't build it. You've rolled over a couple of years. If we fall further and further behind, at some point we have this unrealistic goal that becomes meaningless. That's my concern. I don't want us to have an impractical goal. In terms of the programs that you marked off as completed, I have several versions, but it's Page 2 of the table, the appendix. It's L-3.2.1. We marked it as completed, but it included short-term vacation rentals. I just wanted to make sure that we really completed that or is that part not completed and should it be on a list? Ms. Gitelman: I'm sorry. That was included in error. We haven't done that. Is there another component of the program? Council Member DuBois: It's 3.2.1; it says we evaluated and implemented strategies to prevent conversion of residential and retail space to office or short-term vacation rentals. Did we do that? Ms. Gitelman: I'll have to talk to Staff. Maybe they thought we had done the part to prevent conversions to other uses. As you know, the Retail Ordinance would have prevented conversion of retail space. Council Member DuBois: I just thought that was odd. I wasn't sure we did that second part. I did want to talk about homelessness. We have a couple of programs here, H-3.6, 3.5.1. They really seem minimal to me. This isn't 2013 anymore. We need to get serious about vehicle dwellers. I think it was Santa Monica, not Santa Barbara. I think it's a pretty large group and some kind of managed program. I will take our vote and look at a Colleagues' Memo. For our Housing Plan to be so lite on homelessness is just really not proper. As we move forward, we should be really clear about FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 69 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 definitions. Elaine last week spoke and said the missing middle usually refers to quadplexes, cottages, and that's my understanding as well. It's the transition zone from single-family housing to multifamily housing. We actually have a fair amount of that stock. When we talk about encouraging the missing middle, we should refer to that kind of housing stock. When we talk about workforce housing for middle income, let's use—that's seems to be the term, workforce housing. It just gets all confusing to mix it together. Council Member Scharff alluded to part of this when he was referring to some of the ABAG meetings. Palo Alto is one of the few if not the only City that hit its RHNA goals in the '98-2006 time period. We have a history of leading on affordable housing. It's misleading and erroneous to just let the story continue out there that Palo Alto isn't doing its share. It's up to us up here to defend our City, that we have been. Historically, Palo Alto—it was a countywide effort that Palo Alto was a job center and San Jose was a housing center. Proposition 13 (Prop.) really changed the economics, which has led to the situation it's in. I don't think it's Palo Alto deciding not to do its share. I think the history is important. We have for several years now been ramping up housing and limiting office growth. I think we're going to see the results of those efforts. As Vice Mayor Filseth said, we should have an emphasis on low-income BMR housing. That's really important when we consider that in the regional context. It's the piece that we're falling short on on our current RHNA goals. I am watching what cities around us are doing. It was reported last week or the week before that Mountain View is approving projects that will move them to a density greater than Oakland. I'm not sure that's what Palo Altans want. I don't think we should just blindly follow the lead of Mountain View. We need to be clear on our goals. We haven't spent much time talking about the goals in the Housing Plan or our targets. The goals you put out there were pretty good. I would like to see more discussion around that. We have five pages of policies that we passed in the Comp. Plan, and we're making good progress. I think that is the right focus. We should focus on what we just spent a long time discussing. I do want to bring back the idea—you have it on Slide 4 in your presentation. Currently, out of our entire housing stock, about 8.25 percent of that is affordable housing. I would like to put forward that Staff spend some time thinking about what a goal would be. I think it's a very measurable thing that will tell us if we're making progress. We can build more and more very expensive housing. If we're not increasing the percent of affordable housing, we're not really moving the needle. I'm going to make a Motion that I guess would be Number 6. The goals really aren't in the current Motion I don't think. "Have Staff consider a quantifiable goal for increasing our percentage of affordable housing as a percentage of our housing stock." FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 70 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Council Member Fine: I'm a little worried about using a proportion here. That's a policy choice, and it's pitting market rate against affordable rate housing, which is not appealing to me. If we had a quantifiable goal to increase the proportion of affordable housing, who here wouldn't want to pay less? The goal should be 100 percent. Obviously that's an ad absurdum. I worry that this pits two housing products. We want to see both. It's pitting them against each other which is not helpful. I won't accept it. Council Member DuBois: Do I have a second? Council Member Kou: Second. AMENDMENT: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Council Member Kou to add to the Motion, “direct Staff to consider a quantifiable goal of increasing the proportion of affordable housing in our housing stock.” Council Member DuBois: I think Council Member Fine is exactly right. It's about priorities. At some point, we have to make a choice between affordable housing or market housing. A metric as a percentage is getting exactly to that point. We're doing fairly well at 8.25 percent. I did not set a target; I'm just suggesting that Staff think about a target. It helps us as we talk about housing when we talk about projects to understand what are we really trying to accomplish and who are we trying to build housing for, and are we making progress. If we just add a bunch of market rate housing with no affordable housing, everybody that we talk about as workforce housing is going to continue to commute from further and further away. I argued a month or two ago about having some kind of goals. I'll give it another shot. Mayor Kniss: Council Member Kou, you're the second. Council Member Kou: I don't have much to say except that Tom is right. If we don't identify our needs for this town and the priorities, then it's skewed the other way. It's a very reasonable Amendment. Too bad it's not accepted. Mayor Kniss: I have lights from Fine, Wolbach, and Scharff. Council Member Fine: Just a few more comments, Council Member DuBois. In terms of do we have a target, we actually do have targets; it's called Regional Housing Needs Allocation. We just don't meet it. It is pretty much a shell game; that's okay. That's the world we live in. Also, just to correct one thing. Between 1998 and 2006, we actually only hit 47 percent of our RHNA affordable targets. I just looked up the table. It was not 100 percent. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 71 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Council Member Wolbach: To paraphrase a line from the new Star Wars movie, Council Member DuBois, I think everything you just said was wrong. First, we aren't blindly following Mountain View. Mountain View is building like 20,000 housing units. Our target in our Comp. Plan, which is a debate we've already had and we've settled, is 3,500 to 4,500 units over 15 years. You want to have a realistic goal; we picked it; we picked a realistic goal, and it was very modest compared to what our neighbors are doing. It's about 3,500 to 4,500 units over 15 years. It's about 300 units a year. That's our realistic goal. If you want to say that we're going to have to revisit that and be more quote/unquote realistic, that means we'd have to reopen our Comprehensive Plan and lower our numbers, which would make us more likely to be targeted by State legislation, which will take away even more of our local control. We'll have less options about how we build it. The whole point of this Memo that led to this Housing Plan was to say where are we standing in the way of housing production, of market rate and below market rate housing. You also said that we need to pick between market rate and affordable housing. That's totally incorrect. I think you know that. That's not how it works. Our whole discussion about what percentage of market rate housing should be dedicated to affordable recognizes that. That entire debate we had on that, the BMR percentage, was predicated on the fact that you need the market rate to get the affordable. Further, the way you get more reasonably priced—one of the ways you get more reasonably priced housing stock is by having new market rate housing stock. Then the older market rate housing stock becomes naturally more reasonably priced. I could keep going, but everything that you said was wrong. This Amendment I'll be voting against because this would be an—this idea of a quantifiable goal, a proportion of affordable housing, is not necessary if your goal is to have more affordable housing. We already have our goal. It's in our RHNA numbers; it's in our Comprehensive Plan. We've worked that out. Let's not be confused. The purpose of this—whether it's the purpose or not, one way this could be used would be to justify reducing our market rate housing rather than adding affordable housing. If all you care about is the percentage, you could just reduce the market rate housing. If we want to have a more affordable community, we have to increase the market rate housing and the affordable housing. As far as what our community wants, we saw in our Citizen Survey huge, overwhelming, supermajorities of Palo Altans want more market rate housing and more affordable housing. It's not one or the other. Council Member Scharff: I agree that this Amendment is really anti-housing. It seems that—there seems to be a theme that runs through this Council once in a while, that we're all pro housing but let's just build affordable housing. Affordable housing will get built if there's money to build affordable housing because it's subsidized. The limit for building affordable housing is FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 72 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 money. That's basically what it is. It's not setting a quantifiable target or goal. Council Member Fine is right. We have our RHNA numbers, and RHNA numbers set forth how much affordable housing (inaudible). It's really hard to meet. When I started this conversation, I pointed out that we built 80 units in 2015-2016, and we were—what did I say—eighth in the entire Bay Area in the number of affordable housing units. I agree with Council Member DuBois in that we are doing our part. It's not amazing, but we are trying. On the other hand, by saying we have to put affordable housing versus market rate housing, what you're really saying is let's build less market rate housing. That's the message you're sending. I think we need to build more, and this Amendment does the opposite of what we as a Council on this Housing Plan are trying to articulate to do. I'm not saying that was your intent. We all think we need affordable housing, but that would be the effect of this. I do hear from people in the community who I don't think want more housing say let's just build more affordable housing. We need both, and we need to keep our eye on the ball of building both. I'm also not going to support the Amendment. Mayor Kniss: Karen. Council Member Holman: A couple of things. There have been times on this Council where I've felt like I'm the hall monitor. I don't like that role. I think of how we conduct ourselves on this dais often. I think of it in terms of there were people who are here, there are a lot of people at home watching, there are kids watching at times, there are adults that watch and talk about the meeting with their kids. How we treat each other and how we characterize each other is really important. You're nodding yes, Council Member Wolbach. I have not appreciated several of the comments that have been made this evening in calling other Council Members wrong as opposed to saying "I disagree" or "I have other information." I just don't appreciate that language. I don't think it's the best way to be collegial with each other. Mayor Kniss: We're getting late. It would be helpful if we concentrate on the Motion. Council Member Holman: I'm getting to that. I just needed to say that first. The comments that have been made in regard to this Motion are different than how I understand it. I think this Amendment is not anti-housing in any way, shape or form. It is, as I understand it, what would a healthy community be, what percentage of our community should be affordable housing. Affordable housing is a fair amount of where our workforce lives. For our community services, a lot of these residents live in affordable housing projects. That's how I interpret this. What would a healthy FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 73 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 community strive for? Where should we be in terms of percentage of our total housing stock as affordable housing? That's how I read this. It's hardly anti-housing. It's hardly intended to pit affordable versus market rate housing. It's is there a standard out there that exists, that we should be looking at, that provides for a healthy housing stock in proportion affordable to market rate to missing middle or whatever. That's how I read this Amendment. I hope we can change our dialog just a little bit. Thank you. I'll be supporting it. Mayor Kniss: That takes us to the Motion because Council Member DuBois moved it and Council Member Kou seconded it. Unless somebody else who hasn't spoken wishes to speak to it, we are ready to vote. Council Member Scharff: I think Vice Mayor Filseth is flipping it over and over. Vice Mayor Filseth: I didn't see it as an assault on the housing thing. I looked at it kind of like Council Member Holman's take on it. You can't really fix what you can't measure. The first thing I thought of when we passed the Comp. Plan was, "We're going to do 300 units a year or maybe it's 250 units. How do we parse it up?" This many is going to be affordable, and that many is going to be workforce, and that many is going to be in north Palo Alto, and that is going to be south Palo Alto. That's the only thing I read into this. If we decided the goal was 8.5 percent, we're already there. I don't see any harm in measuring it. Mayor Kniss: Would you vote on the board. The Amendment failed on a 5- 4. Vice Mayor Filseth: DuBois, Holman, Filseth, and Kou in favor. AMENDMENT FAILED: 4-5 DuBois, Filseth, Holman, Kou yes Council Member DuBois: I'd like to continue. Mayor Kniss: Yes, go ahead. Council Member DuBois: I would like to challenge my colleagues to come up with a better metric for affordability. This is a metric other cities use. We don't have one. It's a good idea; I wasn't just making it up. Just quick fact checking, the RHNA goal was not a percentage of affordable housing. I was talking about a measure for how affordable our community is. We did hit 123 percent of our RHNA numbers in 2006. We did fall short on the affordable piece, which was correct. We were, I think, the only City to hit our RHNA goal, which was correct. I also did not say we were following FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 74 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Mountain View. I said we should not follow Mountain View, and I'll stick with that. The workforce housing concept is going to be coming to Council. Is that right? These metrics are critical in how we define the income levels. It's going to be really important if the goal is to hit this middle income that's being priced out. I'd really like when that comes to see the metrics for where we're trying to hit in terms of salaries. I had a question about Program H-2.1.3, which talks about a minimum density in all RM districts. In the Comp. Plan we talked about a minimum density in RM-15. I was curious why the switch. Ms. Gitelman: I'm sorry. You were talking about a Housing Element program? Council Member DuBois: Yeah, Program H-2.1.3. It's Page 12 of the workbook. On Page 12, it says amend the zoning to have a minimum density for RM-15 districts. In the Work Plan, it says all RM zones. Ms. Gitelman: I think that was also in the Colleagues' Memo, but I can check. That idea has come up a number of times, the idea of putting minimum densities. Council Member DuBois: What other zones would that include? Ms. Gitelman: The Colleagues' Memo says explore housing unit minimums rather than maximums, e.g., require building at least 80 percent of the units allowed under applicable zoning or land use designation. It didn't specify. We thought we would look at the RM districts. Council Member DuBois: Which ones? Ms. Gitelman: Rm-15, RM-30, all the RM districts. Council Member DuBois: RM-2? Ms. Gitelman: There is no RM-2. Council Member DuBois: There's just an R-2? Ms. Gitelman: R-2. All the R-2. Council Member DuBois: It would be eight and higher basically? Ms. Gitelman: Yeah. RM-15, 30, and 35. Council Member DuBois: I was just curious why we were changing it from the Comp. Plan. Thank you on that. I am a little bit concerned about the FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 75 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 timeline. A lot of the protection things seem to be pushed out to 2019. I think you answered some questions earlier tonight. If there are some of the easier things that we could get into 2018, displacing people. If all the ordinances that help protect existing housing get pushed out to 2019, that would be a shame. I also just wanted to ask—the presentation about why affordable housing costs are actually more expensive than market. I understand part of what we're going to be doing is waiving fees for affordable housing. Are there other things we can do that would make building affordable housing cheaper or on par with market rate housing? Ms. Gitelman: Some of the development standards that we'll look at are a way to reduce housing if we reduce some of the requirements. We spent a long time earlier this evening talking about parking. Parking is one of the things that increases the cost of housing. If there is an opportunity that can be justified for reducing parking, that can lower the cost. Council Member DuBois: It just seemed like some of the things we've already passed would actually lower the cost, that would be different than what was in the presentation that was shown to us. Things like waiving permit fees and things are fairly substantial. Ms. Gitelman: There's no getting around the fact that it costs a lot of money to build an affordable unit. Usually the nonprofits are paying prevailing wage; they're using a variety of funds to come up with a subsidy per unit that is significant. Council Member DuBois: I do want to say that we need a senior housing project. I think you worded it as special communities or communities of interest. I would like to see us perhaps pilot some of the more—I don't want to use radical, but the larger changes. There were quite a few things in there that we could do immediately, that people would be quite comfortable with. We were talking about some pilots; I think that's a good way to do some of these things that could have unintended consequences. One of those is early on we had a couple of motions related to parking and car lite things. That's probably the one that people are most uncomfortable with. I don't know if you saw there was a big survey of five counties by the Silicon Valley Leadership Group about people's willingness to get out of cars. It wasn't very positive. I think that's an area where we should really pilot and test some things. It's been very stubborn. I think only 8 percent of people are using public transportation. MTC and others are basically saying it's something we can't count on happening. I was going to make some motions, but I'm going to change them to comments. There are several places where we talk El Camino. I just don't think El Camino is an area in Palo Alto. I think it's a lot of different areas. When you come back with the FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 76 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 ordinances, I'd really like to see very specific portions of El Camino, if El Camino is included. There was some discussion about adding FAR for housing instead of shifting it from commercial to residential. What is your thinking there? If we continue to add office but then we also add FAR for housing, are we making the problem better or worse? Ms. Gitelman: As it stands right now, the direction is to do both things, potentially add FAR for housing and shift some commercial FAR to residential FAR. Council Member DuBois: When it comes back to the ordinance, particularly Downtown and Cal. Ave. and portions of El Camino are going to be very different. I hope the ordinance doesn't just lump them altogether into one thing. The Work Plan being sent to the PTC, there was something about the landscaping requirements. I think that's one area that we can afford in Palo Alto and we should look at really hard. Again, landscaping is something that really helps in terms of accepting more building and more density. I'm a little skeptical about that one. We need to think about the impacts on the RPP. When we're talking about housing, it's really 24-hour parking. If we build all this housing and there's no RPP protection at night, it's going to be very hard to enforce. We've got to think about how those things interact. The last one is the part of the Plan being referred to Policy and Services included housing at Cubberley. I had mentioned considering housing on the Cubberley site. What's the timing on that one? What's the thought? Ms. Gitelman: That is actually in the V category, partnership activities. We weren't suggesting that go to Policy and Services. I think that Master Plan is underway and scheduled for a draft by the end of the year. Maybe someone else knows. Mr. Keene: A lot more to come on that. Council Member DuBois: We will be seeing some things this year? Mr. Keene: I don't know where we are in the process. We've got an Request for Proposal (RFP) out looking for how we would bring somebody on board. As you know, it's a big initiative. It's a partnership, and that just makes everything a little bit more complicated. Things are in flux at the School District right now. We've set in Motion the process to start planning. I think as the year goes on, we'll be able to give you a better update on that, certainly when we get to award of the contract. Council Member DuBois: It's a big one. I'm sorry this has taken a long time, but it's been time well spent. I actually think the Motion is improved. I'm supporting what we have on the board. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 77 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Council Member Wolbach: Speaking now to the main Motion, a couple of things. In the back of the—it was Page 33 of the pamphlet. It says other parking and lists one of the items from the Colleagues' Memo, which is explore bringing underutilized parking spaces into a public market to support new housing. At the end it says implementation tool, additional information needed. Staff was unclear on what we intended by this in the Colleagues' Memo. I will use this opportunity to provide that additional information. Going back to this idea of making sure—hopefully former Mayor Scharff will appreciate this too—we have the right amount of parking for new housing but also making sure that we're flexible about how it's provided. A lot of us for a long time have talked about how there's a lot of parking spaces in places like Downtown that are not very well utilized. They're on private property and not used during certain times of the day or never used very much. The publicly available parking is very limited. There's a lot of private parking that's not very well utilized. If there is a way to get some of those private spot—it's in somebody's private garage or their private parking lot behind their building. If we can get them to, whether it's listed in an app or a spreadsheet through the City or through some other enterprise to say I've got a space I'd love to make it available. Somebody nearby says, "I'm building an apartment building or adding some more housing to a mixed-use building, but I'm a little tight on parking. Can I lease that from you?" If there's a way we could help encourage that, facilitate that in any way, the question of whether the City's the one doing the long-term facilitation or we just facilitate the creation of a marketplace to do that, that's what we were getting at. I don't know if that's more clear or less clear. I'm less articulate than I was a couple of hours ago probably. Does that help Staff understand what we were trying to get at with that? Ms. Gitelman: Thank you. That is helpful. Council Member Wolbach: I want to emphasize that there (inaudible) we can't tackle every aspect of the housing crisis. We can't tackle it all in Palo Alto. We can't tackle every part of Palo Alto's piece of it in this and tonight. When we wrote the Colleagues' Memo we didn't try to do that. There was a primary goal. As I said earlier, our goal was to say where is Palo Alto's zoning not zoning for what we want. Where does our zoning actually encourage commercial instead of residential, office instead of residential? Where does our zoning encourage big luxury condos instead of more moderately priced condos or apartments or a townhome even within the market rate. Where does it discourage truly affordable housing? Those were the questions that guided us when we wrote the Colleagues' Memo. That's really the thrust, to say where are we getting in the way and where can we stop getting in the way. I appreciate that this Plan does a little further, drawing especially from the Comprehensive Plan, saying where can FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 78 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 we actually be proactive as well. There are other areas of the housing crisis that Palo Alto should tackle. Homelessness obviously is one of them. That we have people homeless, that we have more and more people who had housing and who are now forced to live in RVs or live in their cars or couch surf comes back to a fundamental question of what are we going to do to provide more housing. It's going to take a while to build it. We should provide better services and opportunities for people who are currently unhoused. We're not trying to tackle that right now because the point of this is to update our zoning to reduce the impediments to new housing construction. The issues of making sure that the housing supply we have is utilized and not just sitting empty is another important question that's been raised in the past. We should take it up. The question of whether our tenant protections are the best they could be and are totally appropriate is an open question that we should tackle. We're not going to tackle it all right now. Over the next year to the next couple of years, I hope we do take up these issues. They are important pieces of the whole housing crisis. This is merely intended to be a chunk, not comprehensive. It is not our Comprehensive Plan. I do appreciate all the work that Staff has done. I appreciate colleagues offering amendments even though I didn't support every word here. Council Member DuBois is right; the Motion has been improved. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: Looking once again, I think everyone has spoken. I will speak very briefly. I was one of the signers on the Memo that went out in April primarily done by Adrian Fine, supported by Cory and me. Most of you know this is an issue that I've been very concerned about. I mentioned it from the night that you kindly elected me Mayor. I would like to at least remind us of three things. I'm hoping regardless of whether we track it or not that we do more affordable housing this year. That's just absolutely important. We have not added an affordable housing project that we have led as a City now for several years. In that area regardless of what it says we're falling behind. Secondly, I hope we'll look at senior housing. Whether it's market rate, affordable, whatever it may be, we need more housing specifically for seniors, especially in the Downtown area. People have spoken to me about it any number of times. Also, we have a number of people in our community that are special needs. As they're children, it's somewhat easier. As they get older, it becomes more difficult for those families. I am clearly voting for this tonight. This starts us on a good path. I hope we can work through it relatively quickly; although, I thought we would work through the Motion tonight relatively quickly. I was certainly wrong, wasn't I? This is very important. This is our Priority this year. Important that we reach some of our numbers. I would remind us, though, that RHNA numbers mean identifying a site. They don't mean that you build the house. It's really important that we note that. Lastly, we made it a Priority, a big Priority just FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 79 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 2 weeks ago. Underscoring those things that I feel the most strongly about, as I said, I'm certainly supporting this. Can we all vote on the board? Did you want to speak again? Council Member Fine: I was just going to encourage the PTC to work on this quickly. MOTION AS AMENDED RESTATED: Council Member Fine moved, seconded by Council Member Scharff to: A. Direct Staff to: i. Complete ongoing projects and initiatives designed to stimulate the production of affordable and workforce housing; ii. Develop and adopt one or more zoning amendment Ordinances with provisions designed to encourage production of a diversity of housing types in appropriate locations, include exploring excluding underground Floor Area Ratio (FAR) from parking requirements; iii. Prepare the economic analyses necessary to prepare and consider Ordinances increasing inclusionary requirements from 15 percent to 25 percent, which will identify the variables, such as height, density, and parking that will allow the higher percentages for new development, applying inclusionary requirements to new rental housing, and requiring payment of in-lieu fees or off-site replacement if existing units are removed from the housing stock resulting in a net loss of units; iv. Use the City’s affordable housing funds to stimulate the rehabilitation and development of new affordable housing; v. Partner with other agencies and organizations to meet the needs of underserved members of our community and to engage in community conversations about the use of publicly-owned land for affordable housing; vi. Add an item to the 2018 Ordinance to increase housing Floor Area Ratio (FAR) in the Downtown, California Avenue, and El Camino Real areas; vii. Hold a community meeting where the public may discuss and ask questions regarding the draft 2018 Housing Ordinance; viii. Remove Work Plan Item 5.1; FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 80 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 B. Refer Work Plan Items 2.1 through 2.6 to the Planning and Transportation Commission for input on the preparation of a 2018 Housing Ordinance and a recommendation for consideration by the City Council; C. Refer Work Plan Items 3.1 through 4.2 to the Policy and Services Committee for input on possible policy changes and on the use of City housing funds; D. Direct Staff and the Planning and Transportation Commission to identify the appropriate amount of parking for various housing types and locations, taking into account parking mitigations; and E. As part of the 2018 Draft Housing Ordinance, direct Staff and the Planning and Transportation Commission to update the Transportation Demand Management Ordinance to the extent that it does not already include metrics of measurements, accomplishments, and enforcement, to include these metrics. Mayor Kniss: A unanimous vote on the finale. With that, thank you so much. I'm sure what you'd really like to do is go home, but not yet. MOTION AS AMENDED PASSED: 9-0 11. Adoption of Preliminary Goals and Objectives, Schedule, and Boundaries for the North Ventura Coordinated Area Plan Project; Authorization for the City Manager to Negotiate and Execute a Related Grant Agreement With Caltrans; Direction to Staff Regarding Recruitment of Community Working Group Members; and Approval of a Budget Amendment in the General Fund Reflecting $638,000 in Grant Funding, $250,000 in Matching/Supplemental Private Funding, and Equivalent Expenditures. Mayor Kniss: We have the Ventura plan on our Agenda for tonight. I'm going to suggest that we maybe do just a brief introduction to it, just brief, just brief, and then we're going to ask the public to speak to it. James Keene, City Manager: How about an abbreviated introduction to it, just enough prior to the public? Mayor Kniss: That's brief. We're going to continue it after we hear from the public. Mr. Keene: We would expect we could have it on a schedule before the end of March, so that's within the next month. We had an accident on the FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 81 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Caltrain tracks today, no fatalities. It was around 7:30-ish. A car got stuck on the tracks at Charleston. People got out of the car. The train hit the car. Car caught on fire. Everything's been shut down for a couple of hours. I haven't had the chance to interrupt you. This went longer than we thought. Just wanted you to be aware of that. No fatalities on the train or in the cars. Mayor Kniss: The most important thing is there were no fatalities. I see a bunch of lights on. I'm not sure what that's about. We are going to start just having Hillary briefly introduce the North Ventura Coordinated Area Plan. As I understand it, we've only done one other plan such as this, which was the South of Forest Avenue (SOFA) plan going on 20 years ago. Hillary Gitelman, Planning and Community Environment Director: Thank you, Mayor Kniss and Council Members. I'm here with Elena Lee, who's going to manage this project for us. We will not go through our PowerPoint. We did want to say how happy we are to be here to initiate what we hope will be a very productive process. This is a great opportunity we think. It's an area of the City that some of us have long wanted to give some attention to and focus on. We're at the beginning of a process, always the best part. We're filled with optimism that we can all achieve our goals. We look forward to hearing from the public this evening and then from you when we bring this back to go through the goals, objectives and other things we need to do to get started, get a task force established and get started on this in earnest. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: I need to ask you one thing before we go to the public. This morning we talked about the borders because several people have mentioned extending the borders out to El Camino or other areas. You explained to me why that would be problematic. Am I correct? Ms. Gitelman: This came up the last time the Council discussed this issue. That is a choice you could make. We did some exploration with the funding agencies about expanding the borders. They were open to any expansions as long as it wasn't longer than a block. They said if we went more than a block we have to redefine the boundaries of the Priority Development Area (PDA). We did not recommend as Staff going to El Camino because we think of El Camino as such an entity unto itself. It has its own identity. We're trying to work on a plan here that builds an identity and a place around the Sobrato site and the North Ventura area. I'm not saying that Council can't elect to put some of El Camino in there, but our professional recommendation is try and keep it a little bit distinct so we can focus on North Ventura. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 82 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Mayor Kniss: I am hearing you clearly that if we really go out more than a block or so, we will have to renegotiate with the funding agencies. Is that correct? Ms. Gitelman: The funding agencies will ask us to amend the PDA, which is more than a notion. We'll have to go through a process. Mayor Kniss: I would encourage us not to do that; although, that won't happen tonight just in case people are here to speak to us about it. The Vice Mayor is reminding me we have four speakers. If anyone else wants to speak on this, would they put a card in? Suzanne Keehn, Terry Holzemer, Angela Dellaporta, and Arthur Keller. You can come in any order you get to the mic. I know who you are. Terry Holzemer: I'll just try to be as brief as I can be because I know the hour is late and it's hard to concentrate. Again, this is an issue which is very critically important. However, it seems like we're at the end of the Agenda once again, which I think you know from previous times I've been here this is an issue. I really want to think that we need to think about adding something to this site that really benefits the entire community, not just a few residents but everyone. The City needs to consider building these items that can accomplish that goal. Some examples might be a new aquatics center that is like Rinconada or a new large park that includes certain amenities that are unavailable in our neighborhood. Our nearest park is the Sarah Wallis Park, which you probably know is the size of a postage stamp. It's a nice park, but it's unusable for most people because there's nothing there. Some other ideas that could be proposed would be a new animal shelter on this site or maybe even something dramatically new and different, a community center which is also desperately needed in this area. The second point I'll make very quickly is about the citizens advisory or working group and what is being planned. I'm very concerned about how this advisory group will be put together. To ensure the highest form of transparency to the citizens, to the neighbors, and the integrity of this Council, I would like to ask the Council to have a formal application process, interviews of those people, and being appointed not just by the City Manager but by the Council itself. These are very important elements that are important to the neighbors because the neighbors should have a large say in what happens there. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: Thank you. Suzanne, are you close by? Then Angela. Suzanne Keehn: I would totally agree with how the committee is chosen. It should really be way weighted toward citizens that live near there in those communities and not developers. It should be very transparent about how FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 83 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 they're chosen. It definitely should be chosen by the Council. I was also going to say we have done so much building, so much talking about housing, so much talking about office space. It's time to invest in the community, our community, is what I really do believe. Terry mentioned a whole bunch of things. A park there, a 10-acre park—apparently I didn't know this but Menlo Park has a community center with a gymnasium. We could certainly do this. It's time to invest here for all. That wouldn't just be for our area but south Palo Alto does need some community enterprises there. It would really be for the whole City. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: Thank you. Angela Dellaporta. Angela Dellaporta: Hi. As a member of the Ventura Neighborhood Association, I just wanted to let you know how eager we are to partner with the City on this development. We really want to make it into a pleasant and thriving place for the entire neighborhood, just as the previous speakers have said. We have already begun reaching out to our neighbors to share information and to generate a lot of ideas that will lead to a community vision of what's needed there. We're really looking forward to coordinating our efforts with the City Planning Department. Rather than working in parallel, we'd like to work together. We want to participate in the educating of our neighbors, and we want to contribute to all the surveying, the data collection, the analysis, etc. We're hoping that Venturan voices might have perhaps some weighted influence since this project is in our neighborhood and will affect our neighborhood the most. I'll be applying to be on the working group. Several other members of the Ventura Neighborhood Association will also be applying. We look forward very much to contributing a variety of different voices and to working in tandem with the City Staff on this very exciting project. We're looking forward to it. Thanks. Mayor Kniss: Good. Thank you for coming. Arthur Keller. Arthur Keller: Thank you. I'm very pleased that we're finally starting to work on this North Ventura, Fry's site plan. I've been advocating this for years. It's a little late for this process, but I guess better late than never. Having been Co-Chair of the Citizens Advisory Committee (CAC) on the Comprehensive Plan (Comp. Plan), there are some lessons learned from that. There needs to be a formal application process. We need to have formal, noticed public meetings. We need to have public comment at the beginning of a meeting, not at the end, videotaped meetings, and some sort of minutes at least of the actions taken and a synopsis of the discussion. I note that parkland in the Ventura neighborhood is quite limited. There's a shortage of parkland there especially. Up-zoning increases the price of land, which makes it harder to build affordable housing. That's one of the things FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 84 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 to think about in terms of what you propose there. With more housing near Cal. Ave. and El Camino, there may be a need for a school. In particular when we exceeded the Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) allocation overall between 1998 and 2005, it caused overcrowding in our schools. That need certainly will exist. Bike-friendly is important because workers who live in Palo Alto—the main alternative to driving is bicycles. Therefore, that's important. Finally, autonomous vehicles still park somewhere. If they're not for rideshare, then they add to traffic just like Uber and Lyft have dramatically added to traffic in San Francisco. We need to think of these issues holistically. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: Thank you. Is there anyone else who is going to speak on this? Is that it for the cards? Thanks. Jim, you said this item would come back sometime within the next 4-6 weeks. Am I correct? Mr. Keene: We'll have to look at the schedule. It looks like we had a little bit of flexibility in the next couple of meetings, but certainly by the end of March at least. We've got four meetings between tonight and the end of March. Mayor Kniss: That takes us to our very last item, which is the …. Do I need a Motion to continue? Council Member Holman: Liz. Mayor Kniss: She said not. I looked down at the counsel who shook her head. Do you want to speak to this? Council Member Holman: Yes, please. Mayor Kniss: To Ventura? Council Member Holman: Yes, just to the schedule. I don't want to counter the City Manager, but I'm also going to see if we can't please get this on the February 26th Agenda. The reason I say that is because when we look at the schedule that's on Packet Page 147, it really impels us to have this on the February 26 Agenda. It says the first working group meeting is in June. If we don't get to this 'til March and we have to get through the application process and appointment process and a project kickoff and a first working group meeting, it ain't going to happen. We're not going to meet this schedule at all. That's why I'm promoting February 26. Mr. Keene: We'll take a look at that the best we can. Council Member Holman: I thought we did meet … FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 85 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Mr. Keene: It's only the other stuff you guys also want to do that's the problem. Council Member Holman: I understand. I thought we did need Motions to continue things to a date uncertain and a date certain. Molly Stump, City Attorney: Why don't you do a Motion? Everyone seems to want a Motion. Council Member Holman: I would move that we continue this item to a date uncertain with a preferred date of February 26. Council Member Wolbach: Second. MOTION: Council Member Holman moved, seconded by Council Member Wolbach to continue this item to a date uncertain, with a preference for the February 26, 2018 meeting. Mayor Kniss: We should say the preferred date we will try to do. Looking at the City Manager, I think he's going to say there are also a number of other things that we've put right at the beginning of that. The housing item took longer than we might have anticipated tonight. Council Member Holman: It's only a preferred date. Looking at this schedule, we're not going to make it. Mayor Kniss: I hear you. Any comments on this? If not, would you vote on the board? That passes. We have continued this item. MOTION PASSED: 9-0 12. Resolution 9736 Entitled, “Resolution of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Scheduling the City Council Summer Break and Winter Closure for 2018.” Mayor Kniss: Would you turn to Packet Page 171, where this is a Resolution scheduling the City Council summer break. I would recommend—okay, second. MOTION: Council Member Scharff moved, seconded by Vice Mayor Filseth to adopt a Resolution scheduling the City Council 2018 Summer Break from Tuesday, June 26, 2018 to Friday, August 10, 2018, and Winter Closure from Tuesday, December 18, 2018 to Friday, January 4, 2019. Mayor Kniss: If there's no discussion on the vacation, would you vote on the board? Also passing unanimously, which creates our summer break from FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 86 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 June 26 to Friday, August 10, and a winter closure from the 18th until Friday, January 4. Thanks very much. MOTION PASSED: 9-0 Inter-Governmental Legislative Affairs None. Council Member Questions, Comments and Announcements Mayor Kniss: Does anyone want to add something at this point? This is your opportunity for Council Questions, Comments, and Announcements. Anything anyone has done recently that is memorable or worth talking about? Lydia says she has one that is worth putting on tape. Council Member Kou: Last week, I attended the San Francisco Community Roundtable. I just wanted to provide an update. Basically, the committee had come and spoken about an offer to add to their table two members from Santa Clara County and Santa Cruz County. When it was brought before the entire committee members, there seems to be some objections. It seems like there's—while we're all supposed to work together in order to make airplane noise something that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will look at and understand it's an effort by the entire region, there is some misunderstandings on their committee themselves where there is an arrival group and a departure group. It's not looking too good that we might get a seat up there representing Santa Clara County. Mayor Kniss: It's not looking too good? Council Member Kou: No, it's not looking too good. Mayor Kniss: I think it has followed a pattern, to be quite honest. Greg. Council Member Scharff: I missed a little bit of what you said, Lydia. I just wanted to announce that I believe the San Francisco Airport (SFO) Roundtable has agreed to give Santa Clara and Santa Cruz each one seat on it. It'll be chosen by the city Selection Committee after they go through— every city on the Roundtable has to amend their bylaws. That's going to be a process of a few months. I just wanted you to know that's coming. Through the hard work of our City Attorney and City Manager and lots of other people, they're opening up the Friendship Bridge Trail today. They opened it up today. The Bay Trail that goes over the Friendship Bridge. Mayor Kniss: That's very exciting. Two more, Cory and then Karen. Tom. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 87 of 87 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/12/18 Council Member DuBois: I just want to say several Council Members went to the Gunn choir and staff musical last week. It's a great event. If you get a chance, it was at the Paly Performing Arts Center. I encourage you to go next year. Mayor Kniss: Cory. Council Member Wolbach: Last year on March 14 several of us when we were in Washington DC along with Staff and our lobbyists from Van Scoyoc met with the FAA. I would just suggest to the City Manager you can help us who are going back to DC again this year for the National Conference of Cities, if possible, meet with the FAA again (crosstalk). James Keene, City Manager: Already working on it. Council Member Wolbach: I also want to mention I had a very good meeting earlier today with Lenny Siegel from Mountain View and Gustav Larsson from Sunnyvale along with some of the folks from the Mountain View Transportation Management Association (TMA) to talk about opportunities and challenges of better collaboration. Sunnyvale has, I think, two TMAs now. Mountain View has one. Palo Alto has one. As the liaison from the City Council to our TMA, I just wanted to take the initiative to reach out to them. We started talking about how we can collaborate better. Mayor Kniss: Tom, did you have your light on or was it about Gunn? Thank you all. I think we're adjourned, and it's not quite 11:00 P.M. Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 10:57 P.M.