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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2018-02-26 City Council Summary MinutesCITY OF PALO ALTO CITY COUNCIL FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 1 of 71 Special Meeting February 26, 2018 The City Council of the City of Palo Alto met on this date in the Council Chambers at 5:10 P.M. Present: DuBois, Filseth, Fine, Holman, 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: Going on to our next item, which is Closed Session, a conference with labor negotiators. We have City-designated representatives City Manager, his designees. I've been told I don't need to read off every name tonight. Also, we will have the employee organizations of Utilities Management and so forth, Utilities Management and Professional Association (UMPAPA), Service Employees’ International Union (SEIU), Peace Officers, Fire Chiefs' Association, International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), and Palo Alto Police Managers’ Association (PAPMA) along with Unrepresented Management, Professional Employees, and Limited Hour Employees. The authority for that is Government Code Section 54957.6(a). With that, I would entertain a Motion. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 2 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 Council Member Wolbach: So moved. Council Member Holman: Second. MOTION: Council Member Wolbach moved, seconded by Council Member Holman to go into Closed Session. Mayor Kniss: It's been moved and seconded that we go into Closed Session for labor negotiations. Would you vote on the board? That passes unanimously. We will go into Closed Session. The Closed Session is scheduled until 6:30 P.M. in case anyone is keeping track of that. We will see you out there very close to that time. Thanks. MOTION PASSED: 9-0 Council went into Closed Session at 5:10 P.M. Council returned from Closed Session at 7:04 P.M. Mayor Kniss: We have been in Closed Session for the last 2 hours. City Clerk, there is nothing to report. Special Orders of the Day 2. Palo Alto Chinese Parents' Club Presentation of a Copy of the "Welcome to Palo Alto" Video. Mayor Kniss: We'd like to start tonight with Special Orders of the Day. We would like to welcome the Palo Alto Chinese Parents' Club with presentation of a copy of the Welcome to Palo Alto video. Are we starting with you, Jackie? Welcome, welcome. It's a pleasure to have you here tonight. Debra Cen: The Honorable Mayor Liz Kniss, Vice Mayor Eric Filseth, and City Council Members, Happy Chinese New Year. My name is Debra Cen, cofounder of Palo Alto Chinese Parent Club (PACPC), abbreviate PACPC. Our mission is to promote community building and community integration. In the past 5 years, we have been working with Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) and City to host events like Palo Alto Chinese New Year Fair, Emergency Preparation Fair, parent education seminar, and software development program. We also make the book like this. It's American Culture and Basic Social Etiquette for the Chinese community. Today, we have a few of my colleagues (inaudible) join me. I would like to introduce Lily Chiu, who is the co-chair of this year's Chinese New Year Fair, and Monica Arima, who host numerous Emergency Preparation Fair and a lot of activities. With fast increase of immigrant population in Palo Alto, we felt there is a strong need to have an introduction video for newcomer to FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 3 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 understand Palo Alto history, school, resources and most importantly traditions to bring newcomers and residents together to achieve community building and integration. Therefore, we made this "Welcome to Palo Alto" video. The 15-minute video is basically a Palo Alto introduction. It touch on history of Lucie Stern Community Center, Palo Alto first public school, PAUSD, Partners in Education (PiE), Parent Teacher Association (PTA), Art Center, Library, Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), Children Museum and Zoo, Avenidas, Stanford Theatre, May Fete Parade, Chili Cook-Off, Palo Alto Festival of Art, Palo Alto Chinese New Year Fair, also Palo Alto 311, and block preparedness coordinators. Like most resident in our community, we love Palo Alto dearly, especially its culture and tradition. We want to see this great culture and tradition get pass on to newcomers so no matter how demographic change Palo Alto stay as a wonderful place where resident work together to give back to the community and keep school strong and community integrated. Therefore, we would like to present this video to you and hope you will help to make it accessible to everyone in the community so both newcomers and longtime resident can reach out to each other, and newcomer can learn more about Palo Alto from longtime residents. As you know, next Sunday is the Third Annual Palo Alto Chinese New Year Fair, a great community-building event. This year is jointly presented by Palo Alto Chinese community and Mitchell Park Library. We are looking forward to Mayor's New Year greetings and seeing all of you at the Fair. Now, back to the video project. We want to thank Councilwoman Karen Holman for her interview on Palo Alto history; former Mayor Greg Scharff for his welcome to Palo Alto message; and the City's Know Your Neighbor Grant, which funded a part of the project. Thank you, Beth, for arranging the presentation and thank you, Mayor Liz, and Councilwoman Lydia for facilitate this gift presentation. Now, let's play the 2-minute trailer of the video. [Video shown.] (Inaudible) introduce Michael Zhu, our newly elect President of PACPC, to close up with his vision on PACPC's effort moving forward, community building, and community integration. Michael Zhu, PACPC President: Thank you, Debra. Thank you, City Council Members. It is an honor to be the new President of PACPC. My day job is Vice President of Strategy and Operations of Fortune 500 Company in the Valley. I really appreciate Debra to get me serious in the wonderful world of volunteering. It is my belief that for a really healthy and vibrant community, it requires active engagement of all members from the community. That is what the PACPC is about. It's about community building and the community integration. I want to be part of that. I'll do my best leading the organization to do as best as we can. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: Thank you so much and particularly thanks to both Debra and Mike for coming here tonight and speaking. We'll certainly see you Saturday FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 4 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 at Mitchell Park at 2:00 P.M.—Sunday. Thank you for the reminder. See you Sunday at 2:00 P.M. We're really looking forward to it. Council Member Holman, did you want to say something? Council Member Holman: I do. I just wanted to thank you for the initiative to do this. It's really important for people who are newcomers here and maybe people who have lived here for a long time and really don't know that much about the community that they're living in. I think what you've provided is a really wonderful tool. Your creativity and initiative in putting this forward is really going to serve a lot of people very well and ultimately will serve the community very, very well. Thank you very much. It's a wonderful thing that you've done. Mayor Kniss: Thank you for including a copy of the show. Can you tell us …? Ms. Chen: Everyone has a copy. It's in the red envelope because it's Chinese New Year. It's good luck. Good luck for you guys and good luck for our City. Mayor Kniss: Debra, who produced the movie? Ms. Chen: I did the plan. It's Joy Tan. I want to really—the main person is the director, Joy Tan. She and her associates organized the interview. She put together the interview. For the narrative portion is (inaudible) Chan who did the narrative portion and finally the final editing. They produce 23- minute one. We afraid it a little bit long, but we actually kept this long version for maybe different kind of purpose, thinking about working with maybe real estate office. The simple version is Paly student, Sebastian (inaudible)—I'm not sure he said he can be here—to do the final editing to reduce it into 15 minutes. These people, we want to thank the City Know Your Neighbor Grant and also a nonprofit organization called (inaudible), Teresa Chen from Human Relations Commission (HRC) is also a member of the foundation, and she helped facilitate give us additional $2,000. With $3,000 shoestring budget we have basically people work under market rate to make this. We are very thankful for everybody. Mayor Kniss: Thank you so much. Thanks again for coming, Debra and Michael. We'll see you Saturday or Sunday. It's definitely Sunday. Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions Mayor Kniss: Moving on from that, I didn't see any Agenda Changes, Additions, or Deletions. Did I miss anything? If not, let's go on to City Manager Comments. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 5 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 City Manager Comments James Keene, City Manager: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Council Members. Just a reminder that the next Community Roundtable related to the challenge of grade separations along the Caltrain rail line in Palo Alto will take place focused on the trenching and tunneling alternatives. That will be held Tuesday, March 6, next week, from 6:30 to 8:30 P.M. at the Palo Alto Art Center auditorium. There will be a presentation about the Alameda corridor experience, which was earlier shared with the Rail Committee. That's from a trenching program down in the Los Angeles (LA) area as well as opportunities for our community to have group discussions. For more information, folks can visit the cityofpaloalto.org website at /connectingpaloalto. Again just a reminder and thank you to our speakers earlier that the Chinese Year of the Dog began on February 16th. As part of the lunar New Year celebration, we'll be hosting the third annual fair March 4th from 2:00 to 5:00 P.M. at the Mitchell Park Library and Community Center. Congratulations to our Staff in the Community Services Department. Last week, the Think Fund which was previously the Bryant Street Garage Fund was recognized with an award of excellence by the California Parks and Recreation society at its annual District 4 dinner that honors volunteers, outstanding staff, and programs that provide high levels of community benefit throughout San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara Counties. In 2017, Think Fund provided over 20 grants to Palo Alto students and connected with over 2,000 students in town. The 2018 Summer Camp Fair is just around the corner. On Saturday, March 3rd, from 11:00 A.M. to 1:30 P.M., the City's Community Services Department will host their 2018 Summer Camp Fair at the Mitchell Park Community Center. This free event will highlight 25 different summer camps for youth and teens in addition to providing engaging camp demos, a story time in partnership with the Mitchell Park Library, and an opportunity to interact with animals from the Palo Alto Junior Museum and Zoo. Finally, for those folks who are interested in serving our community and acquiring lifesaving skills, we have a few openings in the upcoming training session for Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT), otherwise known as CERT. After completing 20 hours of training, you would become an Emergency Services Volunteer with the ability and confidence to make Palo Alto more resilient and serve your fellow citizens. The first class is March 5th. You can register today by phoning 650-617-3197 or emailing paloaltocert@cityofpaloalto.org or learn more by going to the City's website at cityofpaloalto.org/emergencyvolunteers. That's all I have to report. Mayor Kniss: Thank you, City Manager. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 6 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 Oral Communications Mayor Kniss: It takes us to our Oral Communications. Do we have a number of cards? Thanks. Sea Reddy and then Stephen Rosenblum. Sea Reddy: Good evening, Honorable Mayor, Vice Mayor, and City Council and citizens of Palo Alto. Happy Chinese New Year. I happen to go to the Chinese New Year party at the Stevenson House. It was advertised in the local newspaper, so I got there. It's an amazing community that's taking care of seniors. I appreciate the warmth and how dedicated they are. I'm about 65-plus, and I see my future and how respectful it is. It's a great place to be in addition to all the other good things. I do want to comment one thing about China. China sits right next to India. In 1962, Chinese and Indians disagreed on the Dalai Lama. However, today 2018, China has a great leadership. We may disagree. It's a wonderful place. I think China and (inaudible) do together. Quickly, the pothole that I was describing right in front of the Jack in the Box—some of you may not go there, but many people go there—has been fixed. Congratulations. I don't know who to congratulate, maybe Joe Simitian all the way to our City Manager. Anyone who contributed to making that pothole get fixed, it saved thousands of peoples car suspension problems. The third thing is the word that was used by Mr. Israel that he's an amazing leader. He handled the Florida event. He should be ashamed of himself, and we should look at ourselves as to how we will be amazing leaders when we have a critical need for leadership. That isn't leadership. I think you need to learn that. It's just a shameful thing. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: Thank you. Stephen Rosenblum. Stephen Rosenblum: Good evening, Council Members. My name's Stephen Rosenblum. I've lived on Santa Rita Avenue in Palo Alto since 1985. I've been involved in the issue of rail crossings in the City since the arrival of High Speed Rail on the Peninsula in 2009. At that time, High Speed Rail was talking about four tracks through Palo Alto on an elevated structure. After much discussion and an intervention by Joe Simitian and Anna Eshoo, High Speed Rail agreed to a two-track blended system with Caltrain. At that point, High Speed Rail attention shifted to construction of the Merced to Palmdale section. High Speed Rail has gone quiet here. However, test borings are being done in south San Jose so construction activity is not far off. This puts added pressure on timely decision-making in Palo Alto and our Peninsula and South Bay neighbors. Unfortunately, I see the same mistakes being made here in deciding on the rail right-of-way that were made during the contentious High Speed Rail process. The so-called Context Sensitive Solutions (CSS) sessions that High Speed Rail used were of the same format FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 7 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 as the Roundtables being used in Palo Alto now where experts lectured attendees on what they saw as the advantages and disadvantages of different options and input was solicited from attendees afterward with expert responses to be offered at a later date. This sort of one-way communication with people exposed to the issue for the first time does not lead to serious public input into the process and will result in serious backlash when unpopular decisions are made. To this point, why is Hatch Mott MacDonald being removed as the consultant on this project at this late stage? What will be the marching orders for the new consultant? The Rail Committee meeting on Wednesday last week exemplified the broken process when Council Member Scharff moved right at the outset that a Citywide trenching/tunneling option should no longer be under consideration as suggested in the Staff transmittal memo for the Hatch Mott MacDonald trending/tunneling report. Mayor Kniss: If you have something in print, you can leave it with the Clerk, and she will make sure that we get it. Thank you. That is our last Oral Communication speaker, taking us to approval of the Minutes. Minutes Approval 3. Approval of Action Minutes for the February 3 and 5, 2018 Council Meetings. Mayor Kniss: Could I have a Motion? Council Member Holman: Move approval. MOTION: Council Member Holman moved, seconded by Council Member DuBois to approve the Action Minutes for the February 3 and 5, 2018 Council Meetings, including changes to the February 5, 2018 minutes as outlined in the At Place Staff Memorandum. Mayor Kniss: We have a Motion and a second for the Minutes approval. Would you vote on the board? MOTION PASSED: 9-0 Consent Calendar Mayor Kniss: That takes us to the Consent Calendar. I have two lights on this. Council Member Holman, is that your light? Then, Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Holman: It is. I will be registering a no vote on Number 9 consistent with my prior vote on that item. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 8 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 Mayor Kniss: That's a no vote on Number 9. Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Wolbach: I'll be registering a no vote on Item Number 5 also consistent with my prior vote on that item. Mayor Kniss: One on Number 9, one on Number 5. Council Member Kou. Council Member Kou: I'm sorry. I hit it by accident. Mayor Kniss: Two dissensions and with that, could I have a Motion to … Beth Minor, City Clerk: Mayor Kniss, we have two speakers. Mayor Kniss: Thank you. I'm sorry, Greg. You go first. Council Member Tanaka: A no on 6. Mayor Kniss: A no on 6. We do have speakers. Are these two listed? Michael Zhu and Bob Wenzlau. Please, come right up. I didn't do your name justice. Bob, you're first, good. I don't think I pronounced Michael's name correctly. Welcome. Bob Wenzlau, speaking regarding Agenda Item Number 10: Thank you. I think part of the … Mayor Kniss: Bob, I think I should say something before you start. You are going to be speaking longer than other people speak tonight because you have been asked by the Staff to be here tonight to talk about our new Sister City. We have said that that was totally appropriate. We're delighted to have you here. Mr. Wenzlau: Thank you very much. Council Members, Staff, and community members, my name is Bob Wenzlau. I'm President of Neighbors Abroad of Palo Alto. Neighbors Abroad of Palo Alto is the official nonprofit organization that supports the City's international relations. As background, we have seven Sister Cities now, several in the developed world, Europe, Japan, and several in the developing world, Mexico and the Philippines. One of the inspirations or wonderful coincidences tonight was listening to the previous discussion of the Palo Alto Chinese Parents' Club and the importance of engagement with our very large Chinese community in Palo Alto. This was not an insight that necessarily Neighbors Abroad had but was something that a series of Mayors had had perhaps starting with Mayor Yahweh perhaps in 2012 and continuing through Mayor Nancy Shepherd. I know Mayor Pat Burt and even our last Mayor, Mayor Scharff, in terms of the importance of international engagement and in particular the importance of engagement with China. I've come to see as President of Neighbors Abroad FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 9 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 how the role of Sister Cities is that cities essentially working with cities were queued up after World War II to be something that would always allow for peaceful interchange when the federal parties might be having some harsh words. The importance of the role of Palo Alto and our Sister Cities is ever more important. What I'd like to do is broadly give a little bit of background on Yangpu, and then we just have a video that I haven't even seen, a 3- minute introduction of just introducing Yangpu. Michael will follow up again as a Vice President for Neighbors Abroad working on our Chinese engagement. It's really tremendous to see how all-in Michael has gone in service to the City of Palo Alto as we just heard. Yangpu is a large district of Shanghai. It's one that has enormous commitment to education, enormous commitment to innovation, enormous commitment to sustainability with something the Bay Area Council recognized, brought it to the City many years ago with the help of Bing Wei, who we all know is also a Palo Alto resident and works on our Sister City committee. We had a starting point of Yangpu as our, if you will, pro forma Sister City. It was formalized in several iterations of the Smart City Agreements. In the process, I believe, in 2016 then Mayor Pat Burt wrote letters saying that the City would engage in the discover of a Sister City relationship. Neighbors Abroad took that on, developed tremendous background, which Michael will touch upon, but also held a community meeting where approximately 60 members of the community showed up to basically validate that Yangpu was a great selection. The one thing I came to recognize was that everyone has their hometown. I'm just learning how big China is. There are so many hometowns, but what was really tremendous was the commitment to have, if you will, a lily pad in Yangpu as a Sister City that we could all agree upon. That agreement was in that community meeting complete. Just before I introduce the video, I wanted to just celebrate with you that in our upcoming May Fete Neighbors Abroad, our organization, has been chosen to be the Grand Marshal. What excites me about that is it shows the role of internationalism as a symbol which is really important these days. What I've come to learn is that international friends we just don't serve them externally, but they actually help us become a better City in sustainability, grow better students. With that, you'll just be seeing more resonance on our Sister Cities. With that, if I didn't put you all to Snoozyland, let's get to know Yangpu a bit. [Video shown.] Michael's going to speak. I know this came up quickly. We have a delegation coming, and they're showing up, and we're all invited to celebrate this next week. That drove a process that I, as our City Manager would say, did not allow socializing in this initiative quite as much as I'd like to. I appreciate all of your indulgence. I can give you the confidence that we're making the best decision for a Chinese Sister City. Michael. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 10 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 Michael Zhu, speaking regarding Agenda Item Number 10: Thank you, Bob. Good evening again, City Council Members. I really appreciate the time. I have to second that because the Staff from the City were so pleasant to work with, and that really help us put this together for you tonight and making it happen next week. I just wanted to look forward a little bit. We have so many opportunities with this new Sister City. Our Sister City program has traditionally been focusing on cultural exchanges, and we have plenty of that. Music, they have international wind instrument festival. They have a list of music-related activities, and they have a list of cultural activities. There are international soccer events that they're putting together, inviting people from over 20 countries going to Yangpu. For this regards, I think we will continue to do. We have already started a student exchange program, I think, last year. We are going to continue to do that. For Yangpu, there is something special, and that is new almost to the heart of Silicon Valley because Yangpu is so big entrepreneurship and innovation. They are going to be one of the top leading cities for China to showcase how you can encourage mass innovation across from universities to the industry. As you have seen, Yangpu already have a list of Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Yangpu. They also have more than ten universities. These are all China-leading universities in Yangpu. This is the university district for City of Shanghai. Interestingly, they also have a University Avenue exactly the same as Palo Alto. I guess it's part of the destiny that we become the Sister City. I'm very looking forward for this relationship. I'm hoping we can work together and really make a great example of what the new type of Sister City look like and be an example for all the other Sister City relationships for the Sister City International organization and starts from here, from Palo Alto. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: Thank you so much for coming, Michael. We appreciate it. The same to you, Bob. We'll look forward to meeting the group from Shanghai when they come, I think, next weekend. We appreciate that very much. We now move on to—did we vote? James Keene, City Manager: You need to vote. Mayor Kniss: I think we need to vote. Ms. Minor: We need a Motion and a second and then vote. Mayor Kniss: I think I had a Motion. We'll do it again. Council Member Holman: I second. MOTION: Council Member Scharff moved, seconded by Council Member Holman to approve Agenda Item Numbers 4-10. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 11 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 4. Approval of a Memorandum of Understanding With the County of Santa Clara to Share Traffic Data and to Establish a Virtual Private Network. 5. Approval of a Final Map for a 2.46 Acre Site at 567 Maybell Avenue [17PLN-00158] to Create 16 new Parcels Ranging Between 5,000 Square Feet and 6,184 Square Feet and a new Private Street Intersecting With Clemo Avenue. The Final Map Includes Access and Utility Easements. Environmental Assessment: Exempt From the Provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) in Accordance With Guideline Section 15268(b)(3) (Ministerial Projects). 6. Approval of Amendment Number 2 to Contract Number C15155378 With Carollo Engineers for Engineering Services During Construction of the old Pumping Plant Rehabilitation Project at the Regional Water Quality Control Plant to Extend the Contract Term Through September 30, 2018 - Capital Improvement Program Project WQ-80021. 7. Ordinance 5428 Entitled, “Ordinance of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Amending Chapter 10.56 (Special Speed Zones) of Title 10 of the Palo Alto Municipal Code to Reduce the Posted Speed Limit Near Private Schools (FIRST READING: February 5, 2018 PASSED: 9-0).” 8. Ordinance 5429 Entitled, “Ordinance of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Amending Sections 4.42.190 (Taxi Meters) and 4.42.200 (Schedule of Rates, Display) of Chapter 4.42 of Title 4 (Business and License Regulations) of the Palo Alto Municipal Code to Allow Taxicab Service to be Prearranged by Mobile Device Application and Internet Online Service (FIRST READING: February 5, 2018 PASSED: 9-0).” 9. Ordinance 5430 Entitled, “Ordinance of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Amending Section 18.42.040 of Title 18 (Zoning) to Conform With new State Laws Regarding Accessory Dwelling Units (ADU) and Finding the Changes Exempt From Review Under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) Pursuant to Public Resources Code Section 21080.17 and CEQA Guidelines Sections 15061(b), 15301, 15303 and 15305. The Planning & Transportation Commission Recommended Approval of These Amendments on November 29, 2017 (FIRST READING: January 29, 2018 PASSED: 8-1, Holman no).” 10. Resolution 9740 Entitled, “Resolution of the Council of the City of Palo Alto to Establish Yangpu District, Shanghai as a Sister City to Palo Alto.” FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 12 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 Mayor Kniss: There's a Motion and a second. Would you vote on the board? That passes unanimously. Takes us to—do it once more, would you? I should read your names off. Let me read it out loud. It's up here on the board. Motion for Agenda Item Number 5 was a Wolbach no. Agenda Item 6 was a Tanaka no. Item Number 9 was a Tanaka no, and the rest of— Holman, I'm sorry. The rest of the items passed unanimously. If any of you want to speak, put your light back on. MOTION FOR AGENDA ITEM NUMBER 5 PASSED: 8-1 Wolbach no MOTION FOR AGENDA ITEM NUMBER 6 PASSED: 8-1 Tanaka no MOTION FOR AGENDA ITEM NUMBER 9 PASSED: 8-1 Holman no MOTION FOR AGENDA ITEM NUMBERS 4, 7-8, 10 PASSED: 9-0 Council Member Wolbach: I voted no on this proposal when it came forward because I thought it was a poor use of the space. There was, of course, a prior suggestion for mostly affordably senior housing development at this location. It was opposed because people said they wanted only affordable senior housing but no market rate housing. Now what we have is only 16 units of market rate housing with no bicycle connectivity, no affordable housing, no senior housing on this site. I think it was a very disappointing outcome. Mayor Kniss: Greg Tanaka. Council Member Tanaka: I voted no on 6. It's not a big item. My main point is with these Consent Items we need several basic things. We need to know how much does something cost before, how much does it cost now. This is the second amendment to this contract. There's no description of the quality of work that has been provided by Carollo Engineering, whether we should hire them again. This is a 2-month extension. It makes me wonder what's going on here. My main point is for these Consent Items, I think the reports—even though they're small, we still need to do a more thorough job in what's happening so that the Council can make a more informed decision. Mayor Kniss: Karen, did you want to speak? FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 13 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 Action Items 11. Downtown Residential Preferential Parking (RPP) Program Status Update. Mayor Kniss: We now move on to the next item, which is Item 11, the Downtown Residential Preferential Parking (RPP) Program. This is a status update. Council Member Scharff: I need to recuse myself. I just need to say I need to recuse myself because I own property in the area. I've been advised by the City Attorney to recuse myself. Council Member Scharff left the meeting at 7:45 P.M. Mayor Kniss: Let me ask you, will you be back tonight? Council Member Scharff: Depends how late you go. Mayor Kniss: Thank you for your recusal. We now welcome part of the Planning Department. Josh, are you taking the lead? Josh Mello, is going to take the lead. Joshua Mello, Chief Transportation Official: Good evening, Mayor, members of Council. I'm Josh Mello, the Chief Transportation Official for the City. Philip Kamhi is joining me to the right. He'll be giving a brief overview of the Downtown RPP Program update, and then we can follow that with some questions and answers, if appropriate. Philip Kamhi, Transportation Manager: Thank you, Josh. Good evening. The Downtown RPP is an integral part of the integrated parking strategy. That also includes a Parking Management Study and several other parking management strategies that we'll be bringing back to you at a later date. Just to provide some context of the Downtown RPP, give some background. Also, the last time we were here to present on this issue, the Council direction was to reassess the employee parking permit reduction rate and to consider ways to prioritize or better serve neighborhood-serving businesses such as medical/dental and senior care. As we've discussed recently at the Southgate and Evergreen Park/Mayfield RPP meetings, we'll be looking for a plan to bring back to you in order to do this, which will require an improved Business Registry, our new permit management system, and some additional Staff time. This is the current ten zones that make up the employee parking zones within the Downtown RPP. Currently we have permit sale priority that goes to low income, and then it becomes a first- come-first-served system under our current permit management system. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 14 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 We currently have a 1,400-employee-permit cap with 100 more permits that are held in reserve in Zones 9 and 10. The resident permits are valid throughout the Downtown RPP district. This is tracking back to a year ago, showing the four 6-month sales periods. As you can see, currently we've sold just a little bit over 1,000 permits, which represents approximately a 22 percent decrease over permits sold in the same period a year ago. This might be a little bit challenging to see on the PowerPoint, but this shows employee occupancies at the peak period, which is noon time. What you'll see on this is the red and the dark red or brown color really concentrate towards the Downtown core, towards South of Forest Avenue (SOFA) and also on the boundaries of zones nearest to those areas. This shows the employee permits, only the employee permits. If you take out the residents and the general non-permitted parking, this is the occupancy that's directly attributed to employee permits. It's quite low. There are some areas where there's some bunching and probably specific employers that are really parking in specific areas. The employee permit parking in general is quite low. Our study found that on average throughout the day approximately 271 employees are parking with employee permits in all of the zones. This shows a breakdown of the different parking occupancies by permit type in each zone. The numbers in green are a little bit hard to read on this slide. Hopefully, you can read it in the printed one. The top, lighter green number is the average, which is the general, no-permit occupancy. The middle red color is the average resident occupancy. The bottom smaller, green bar at the bottom, which is actually the smallest number in every zone, is the employees utilizing employee parking permits in each of the zones. This is the average employee show rate during business hours, 9:00 A.M.-5:00 P.M., and during the RPP hours. I just want to call your attention to Packet Page 105. There's a column in Table 1 that says the average employee show rate. Four of these numbers are actually incorrect because this is not actually the average employee rate that's shown in the table. This is actually assuming every single permit was sold in all of the zones, the show rate or the sale rate. The correct show rate in zone—in the majority of the zones, it's correct. In Zone 3, it would actually be 13 percent. It's only three of them, in fact. In Zone 8, it's 17 percent. In Zone 10, it would be 29 percent as reflected on this slide. This is not the RPP but the commercial parking occupancy just to show you in the commercial and in the Downtown and also in SOFA the parking occupancy is still much more impacted than the RPP. Here's the occupancy by color zone. This is also to give you a sense of occupancy counts and also some information about the wait list in our garages. We actually recently cleared out the wait list in several of the garages. The garages still did have primarily very high occupancy based on the study at their peaks. This slide talks a bit about the future. I did mention already that we'll return with a process for prioritizing neighborhood-serving businesses. We're also going to be returning with a FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 15 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 parking management system. Parking management in the commercial core is part of this ecosystem. We've also been working on the phased-increase of the cost of employee parking permits in the garages and lots in synergy with the RPP program. You'll probably hear more from both the residents and businesses tonight. I just wanted to provide you some of the things that we've heard quite often from stakeholders. From residents, we've heard a request to reduce the amount of employee permits. We've often heard the 1,000 permit number as a good starting point. Also, to continue to reduce employee permits over time. To eliminate employee permits in Zones 8, 9, and 10, where we have sold fewer employee permits, and also to move more of the employees to the garages and lots. The business requests are to not reduce the employee permits in contrast to residents' request, and also to reduce restrictions that make it difficult to retain employees. With that, I'm happy to take any questions. Mayor Kniss: Thanks very much. Starting with Council Member Fine. Council Member Fine: Do you want questions or do you want to go to the public or … Mayor Kniss: We're going to do a few questions with him. Here's what we're going to do. If you have any searing questions at this point, ask them. Try to make them short if you can. Then, we'll go to the public. Council Member Fine: A few searing questions. Thank you. Thank you for the report very much. Thank you, everybody, for showing up. Looking forward to all your comments. Do we have any information about new business formation, new hiring, and the travel profile of those new businesses? Mr. Mello: We do not. We did ask around today about vacancies. That was another question that came up. We talked to the Chamber of Commerce, a couple of property rental firms, and didn't get any definitive information one way or another on what the Downtown market looks like currently as far as employment and occupancy. Council Member Fine: The other question is there were a couple of allusions to changes to our parking management program. I was wondering if you could go over what those might look like over the next year or two and where is the status on our Downtown pay-for-parking proposal. Mr. Mello: As described in the Staff Report, there are a couple of items that we've been working on that are a little more immediate. The first of which is to bring forward a contract for another parking permit system. This would be a comprehensive parking permit sales and citations system. It would FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 16 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 bring all of our parking programs online in a customer-friendly format. It would enable us to do much more innovative things with permit sales like allow people to have right of first refusal if they have an existing permit, not have people fight every 6 months over the employee permits. We'd also be able to sell other variations of employee permits, weekly, shorter durations than the 6 months. As described in the Staff Report, we're also putting together a proposal to introduce low income garage and lot permits. Right now, we're basically incentivizing low income employees to park in the RPP because that's the only program that offers the low-income, reduced price permits. We think that's a disparity that needs to be rectified in order to better balance the parking between the Downtown core and the RPP. There are some longer-term items that we presented to you in the Downtown Parking Management Study that we're still working on developing an Implementation and Financing Plan for. Council Member Fine: Is that still in Finance Committee or is it coming to Council next? Mr. Mello: We went to Planning & Transportation Commission (PTC) twice, and we're still planning to go to Finance Committee. We're doing additional outreach as requested by Council. Council Member Fine: One last question. Do we capture residential show rate by zone? Mr. Kamhi: Yes. I have it but not here. Council Member Fine: It would be helpful if we're mapping that zone by zone in future reports. Those are my questions for now, Madam Mayor. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: Council Member Holman and then Council Member DuBois. Council Member Holman: I think Tom was actually ahead of me. Mayor Kniss: They're both on. Council Member DuBois: Thank you. You mentioned it a little bit here and it came up with Evergreen Park/Mayfield that we're redoing the RPP management system. I don't think we heard many details like what's wrong with the current system and what are we looking to do with this new system, what capabilities is it going to have. Mr. Mello: The current system is only used for residential preferential parking programs. If you want to buy a College Terrace permit or a FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 17 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 Crescent Park permit, you need to physically come to City Hall and wait in line at Revenue Collections. Because it's a separate online system, it's not integrated well with our customer service at City Hall. We have a separate customer service system for the RPPs. We want to bring that together into an integrated customer service system. We want to have all of our permits available online. We also want to link our citations and our permit system together. When somebody gets a citation, they can go to the same portal that they used to buy their online permit and pay their permit. When we get requests from residents for public records related to RPP permits, it can take upwards of 3 weeks to a month just to get the report generated from our current system. If somebody asks a simple question like how many permits were sold from this one—how many employee permits have been sold on this one block, that's an exercise that can take weeks with the current system. Council Member DuBois: Is there going to be any changes to types of permits or how they're tied to purchasers? Mr. Mello: The system will have more flexibility. If in the future we want to go to more of an automated enforcement system or virtual permitting, which is where the permits are tied to the license plate, that's something this system will have the operability to do in the future. It will give us a lot more flexibility as far as prioritization as well. Right now, the only way we prioritize folks is we give—for low-income applicants, for example, we give them a week head start to buy permits, and then we open the permits to everyone else. This automated system would have a better way to prioritize and allow people to also renew permits, which they can't do today. Council Member DuBois: All of that's really useful to hear. We probably would have avoided a lot of questions if we had more of that, but maybe that'll come to us. The same thing with the Business Registry. The Business Registry is not up right now for registration. What's happening with that system? Mr. Mello: We don't run the Business Registry. We have tried to use it in the past for verification and other things related to RPP. The way it's currently structured, it doesn't work very well especially if we were looking to prioritize businesses by type to focus on neighborhood-serving services and other establishments. The system is a little bit clunky to do that right now. Council Member DuBois: You've kind of answered another one of my questions. A year ago, we asked you to prioritize businesses. We're just waiting on these systems changes. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 18 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 Mr. Mello: If you remember, there was a great deal of interest in that with the discussions around the Evergreen Park/Mayfield and the Southgate RPPs. Our response at that time was that we needed to work on getting the Business Registry better aligned with that type of function and also get our new permit system rolled out, and then it'll be a little easier for us to do that. It'll still require a little additional Staff time because there will likely be appeals. If we make a call that a business is considered a certain class, but they're arguing that they're another class, we're going to have to have an appeal process set up. Council Member DuBois: Just getting ready for tonight, I went and looked back at our meeting a year ago. We essentially had the same Motion then. Looking at the parking garage occupancies, it looks like a couple of the garages are—X and High Street are below 60 percent utilized, and we don't have wait lists in several parking lots. Was there any discussion about issuing more permits in garages? Mr. Kamhi: High Street, as you'll see, there's not a wait list. Anybody could sign up to get a permit at that garage. What we're doing is going through the wait list at the other garages and trying to get people to change their garage if possible. It's a manual process, so we're actually calling each person on the wait list to go through that. Our hope is to get them to shift and maximize our occupancies at all of those. Mr. Mello: That's another thing that would be streamlined with our new permit system. People would be able to sign up for multiple wait lists and not have to pick one over the other. Right now, they have to sign up manually for each wait list. We do everything through the phone and mail and email. It's not an automated system. Council Member DuBois: Those other garages that don't have wait lists, do they have permits available as well? Mr. Kamhi: The ones that say no wait list all have permits available currently. Council Member DuBois: Was there any information on enforcement? Are you guys seeing people gaming the system in any way, like commuters using residential permits? Mr. Kamhi: I do have my contract enforcement go through and verify every now and then that the permit is actually tied to the license plate. We do spot checks on that. There hasn't been a huge number of fraud that's been … FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 19 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 Council Member DuBois: What about citations? Mr. Kamhi: I can't exactly tell you whether the number of citations has increased or decreased. I haven't heard anything from enforcement to suggest that it's changed significantly. Council Member DuBois: Thank you. Mayor Kniss: Council Member Holman. Council Member Holman: Thank you. Those of us that have been on Council even for this long—I don't recognize initials. If you could please in the future identify the parking lots. Where is CC, Q, and R locations please? Those are the ones that have the long wait lists. CC location is this building, right? Mr. Kamhi: Yes, it is here. I'm so sorry. Lot R is the High Street garage. Council Member Holman: It says High Street down below. Mr. Kamhi: It's the High Street. The High one below is the lot, not the garage. Council Member Holman: I'm confused. Mr. Mello: Lot R is the High Street North. It's between Lytton and University. The one that's labeled High is between University and Hamilton. That's the busiest garage that we operate, the one on High between University and Lytton and also the Civic Center. University and Hamilton, I apologize. Council Member Holman: Q location is … Mr. Mello: We'll get that information for you. Council Member Holman: Council Member DuBois asked some of my questions about giving people the options. A question about the future program, being able to sign up for other lots or more than one lot at a time. Will it be like trying to get tickets to a play or something or a sporting event? You can put your first, second, and third choice? You could rank your choices? Mr. Mello: The example we've actually used is the Southwest Airlines customer service interface. We're actually going to—ideally we're not even going to sell them parking permits without first promoting public transportation and other alternative modes through the interface. When FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 20 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 they decide they want to buy a parking permit, it'll be similar to that where you'll be able to pick a preference. It'll be automated so you'll—if your third choice comes open, it'll offer you the chance to buy that, and you'll be pulled off the other two lists. Right now, if somebody were to buy—somebody who's on the Civic Center wait list would buy a Cowper/Webster permit, they would still be on the Civic Center wait list unless we manually remove them from the Civic Center wait list. There would be other people waiting for them to get to the top before they would have a chance to buy a permit. Mr. Kamhi: I'm sorry. The Q location is the High/Alma North garage. R location is the High/Alma South. Council Member Holman: High/Alma? James Keene, City Manager: Why don't we get you a map (inaudible)? Council Member Holman: In future, let's please identify these. Mr. Kamhi: High is the 800 High Street garage I believe. Council Member Holman: High is 800 High. That's not City owned. Mr. Keene: Right, but there is access for the public to be able to park in that as you recall. Council Member Holman: I understand, but it says City-owned garages and lots. That's 800 High. The occupancy rates being so low, if I understood— you were thinking a different garage when you said that the High one was your busiest one. The busiest one is Q location, I guess. Whichever it is, the ones that are underutilized, what are you doing to try to get them fully occupied and get people out of neighborhoods? Mr. Kamhi: The first step to that, as Josh mentioned, is getting the low- income permit. I think that's one of the things that we believe is a barrier still. The low-income permit that exists in the RPP allows those that are on fixed incomes to purchase a permit there but not necessarily in the garage. That's something we'll be returning with. Also, this is the first time we've actually cleared out the wait list. Previously, most of the garages had wait lists. Revenue Collections recently went through and cleared that all out. As I mentioned, we're going to go through this manual process of contacting people on the wait list and trying to get them to maximize—try and help us, I guess, to maximize all of the spaces in the different garages. Council Member Holman: The charts that show the different zones and what the occupancy rates are by different types, whether they're employee or FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 21 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 resident or whatever, there was an error in the permitting. Some of the zones were oversold. Is that reflected in here? How accurate is this because of those over-sales? Mr. Kamhi: If you're referring to these charts—are you talking about this one in particular? Council Member Holman: Yes. Mr. Kamhi: This does not include any misallocation. This is not including the over-sell. If you refer to this chart on Slide 5, the second permit period or phase where you see 1,155 permits that were sold, that was the period where there was the misallocation. The charts shown here, these are all this current permit period where there's no misallocation. All the zones are within their threshold. Council Member Holman: That's helpful to know. Just a couple more questions. On Packet Page 103, the second bullet mentions in addition to low-income employees consider ways to prioritize or better serve neighborhood businesses such as medical, dental, and senior care. Is this assuming that retail employees are already swept up in the low cost or why is retail not listed there? Mr. Kamhi: This was the Council's direction to us the last time we were here. Council Member Holman: Maybe Council Member DuBois, since he looked it up—I was thinking retail was in that Motion, but perhaps not. I know it's been a topic of discussion. Just two more questions. Slide 13 talks about the updated Business Registry. I think that probably needs to come to the Council, because we haven't had a look at the Business Registry in a long time. I don't remember if this was addressed other than issues. Is Staff looking to sync the Business Registry with the permit periods? Mr. Mello: I'm sorry. We don't manage the Business Registry. I can't answer that question. Council Member Holman: I understand. I hope the departments talk to each other. Thank you, Hillary. Hillary Gitelman, Director of Planning and Community Environment: Thank you, Council Member Holman. Hillary Gitelman, the Planning Director. At this point, the Business Registry, as I understand it, is on an annual cycle. We sell the RPP permits on a 6-month cycle. They can align periodically. The real issue is we've relied on the Business Registry is just a reality check FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 22 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 on the number, is it the number of employees in each business. There hasn't been a real effort to align the two programs. Our view in the Planning Department is there would be a lot of work that we'd need to put into the Business Registry to really make it an integral part of the permit sales system in the RPP program. It's a to-do item on our plate, to work with our other departments in the City to make that happen, but it's not operable right now. Council Member Holman: Additional Staff support is another bullet on Page 13. How many positions and how many dollars? Ms. Gitelman: We don't know at this point. We just know that additional resources would be needed. We'd need to do all three of the things that we list there. Get the new permit system operational, better align and improve the Business Registry, and then we'd need the Staff resources to support a program like this because we anticipate there would be a lot of customer service needs and disputes—I am this kind of business; I'm not this kind of business—that we'd have to work through. Council Member Holman: I'll have a comment later about that. Those are my questions. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: Last on the Council is Vice Mayor Filseth. Vice Mayor Filseth: Hey, guys. Thanks for this stuff. A quick question. Could we look at Slide 8 for a second? It looks to me like that's a daytime average from this chart. Is that right? You're looking at three time periods, 9:00 A.M., noon … Mr. Kamhi: Sorry. This is the average throughout the day, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. Vice Mayor Filseth: It looks like the peak periods for employees and the 2- hour parkers is actually the noon hours, which is generally the trough period for the residents. If I look at that, essentially—if you look at, for example, Zone 1, especially the ones closer to Downtown, then the peak is actually higher, and then the off hours are a little bit lower than that bar. Is that right? Diving into the weeds of what's inside the 9:00 A.M.-5:00 P.M. Mr. Mello: Zone 1, for example, the peak occupancy is 65 percent, but the average is 60 percent, which is a little under 60 which is shown on Slide 8. Vice Mayor Filseth: If you look at the peak hour of those bars, the average resident occupancy—the average employee occupancy and the average no- permit occupancy are actually higher and the average resident occupancy is FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 23 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 lower at the peak hour. That reverses at the other hours. If you had a strategy to minimize the peak, then you'd adjust differently than if you had a strategy to minimize at the off hours. Mr. Mello: Most likely, yes. Vice Mayor Filseth: Thanks. I'm not sure I understood that. Mayor Kniss: Thanks for those questions. We now are going to go to our speakers. I'm going to wait a minute for them to flash up on the board. We have three groups of speakers. It looks as though we have ten individuals. Each group of speakers, John Guislin, Nelson Buchanan, and Simon Cintz, will each have 7 minutes to speak for their group. Carol Scott through Megan Kanne will have 2 minutes. Could we start with the groups? The first one is John Guislin. I probably messed up your name, but you can say it correctly. John Guislin speaking for Nelson Ng, Rob Levitsky, Kimberley Wong, and Anide Reed: Good evening, Mayor Kniss and Council. My name is John Guislin, and I'm a resident of Crescent Park. I'm here representing other residents of the Downtown RPP areas. I'd like to ask those residents to stand and be recognized. Thank you. I've been working on parking and traffic in Palo Alto for more than 4 years. There are people in the audience who have been at it a lot longer than I have. I'd like to start by saying that we have never had a more hard working or competent Transportation Department Staff than we have right now. In particular, Philip Kamhi and Mark Hur are doing a terrific job in managing a really dysfunctional system they inherited. When they're not able to answer questions or stumble a little bit tonight, it's because the system that they were given makes it very difficult to manage. A lot of it becomes a manual effort. Kudos to Josh Mello for establishing this very high-functioning team. In Palo Alto, we have serious traffic and parking problems. I think most of you are aware of at least a good part of them. The parking problems are really a result of the traffic problems. I want to share with you a little bit about where this came from. This chart goes back to RPP programs in Palo Alto for 20 years. It actually goes back farther than that, but that gives you the idea of how long this has been going on. You can't read the chart, but I'll highlight one red box in the center. In November 2012, the Weekly published an editorial titled "Kicking the Can Down the Road" about the RPP problems in Palo Alto. The good news is they got the statements and facts correct. The bad news is a lot of the issues are still with us today. Delay and complication. In this current Staff Report, the City is again proposing to delay advancing the RPP program in Downtown and not make the changes that would make it more functional and relieve the pressure on the residential areas. Unwieldy and FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 24 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 poorly managed permit system. You've heard that from the Staff itself. That system is really very difficult to manage, and it was difficult for people who were buying permits in the beginning too. An unfortunate choice that we're living with. The sooner we can replace it the better. Less than 100 percent utilization of our permit-only garages. I know about this because we watch the garages, we photograph them during the weekday almost every day at prime hours, from 12:00 to 3:00 P.M. Here's an example. This is what Cowper-Webster looked like last Thursday at about 2:40 P.M. in the afternoon on the fifth floor. Here's what it looked like on the sixth floor, over 100 empty spaces. It's our contention that the City should spend its time filling up the garages before they fill up the neighborhoods. What we have as a result is 1 square mile of commercial traffic and parking in prime residential neighborhoods. We don't know of any other City in the State who has solved the parking problem in this manner, by overwhelming residential neighborhoods. We need to find a better solution than what we have today. The strategy that Palo Alto developed is symbolized by this three-legged stool, and it includes RPP, Transportation Demand Management (TDM), Transportation Management Association (TMA), and a bunch of other things. Unfortunately, we haven't delivered on a lot of those promises. We said we'll reduce the nonresident permits, and the current Staff Report recommends doing the exact opposite. We said we'd have valet parking at three garages, and we have it in one consistently and one intermittently. We talked about a paid parking program, having management and quality standards, wayfinding, a fully funded TMA and TDM, and prioritization for nonresident permits for neighborhood-serving business. As you heard, that was from the Council agenda a year ago. These businesses that serve us, long-term service to Palo Alto, have to race and scramble to get permits every 6 months now. That's not a good solution. The Staff Report starts off okay. The first thing it does is quote some policies from the Comprehensive Plan. Work to protect residential areas from parking impacts of nearby businesses, and put a priority on neighborhood quality of life. What the report says is we could reduce the number of employee parking permits available without adversely affecting employee permit holders, but we're not going to. The rationale for that escapes me. Instead, what we're going to do—the report doesn't say this; these are my words—is let denser, under- parked projects use neighborhood streets to accommodate their parking deficits. We're going to use the neighborhoods as overflow parking for businesses that underestimate what their needs are. Tonight, I want you to think about several key issues, goals and actions that we need to handle. The first one, reduce the commercial traffic and parking in residential neighborhoods. The parking is a result of all the traffic coming in. If you could reduce the parking, you would also reduce the traffic. The action, lower the supply to match the actual demand. We're not asking you to throw anybody out, just lower the supply to equal the current demand, not FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 25 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 the future demand for new, under-parked projects. Manage and monitor the eligibility enforcement. This really tough with our current system. We need a new one, but we can't wait 2 years for it to come into play. We need effective management for all the RPPs and all the garages and commercial lots so they're coordinated. Citywide quality standards. This is desperately needed. Right now we're doing things one at a time, and it soaks up way too much time and Staff effort. We need to establish Citywide policies and standards. You are the folks that can do that. We must not force residential neighborhoods to accommodate all this commercial parking and traffic. The key thing to effect that is to reject under-parked development projects. Tonight I hope you will make a Motion to vote about the nonresident permit limit. I hope you're courageous enough to vote and second that Motion, and we can see where you all stand on residential permit parking. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: I know many of you have been here before. Let me remind you that either clapping or booing or whatever you might be doing is very distracting to the speaker. If you would not do that, we'd really appreciate it. Neilson Buchanan. Neilson Buchanan speaking for Christian Pease, Mary Sylvester, Tim Kuuth, Kathy Segura, Karan Machado, Paul Machado, and Mike Griffin: Let me frame my comments before I get into the slide show. This give-and-take with the Council is a very poor way to solve problems. The Staff gave their best, honest shot at where they view the situation and what they hope to do if they get the resources to do it, which is a big if. Some of us have superior knowledge by the sheer fact that we're not too smart, but we've been at it for 7 years. That means I started at a much younger man than I am now. We've really been working with the Staff, and they've been very receptive to listen to us, but there are still some gaps between reality and our perception of where it is. I don't want to get into that banter at all at a Council meeting. I'm hopeful that Philip and Mark will have enough time to sit down with us on some of the places where we see a variance and what we see is the situation out on the streets. We will be out on the streets as soon as the programs settle down, as soon as Downtown North street construction is not so disruptive. Thank God to Jim for fixing the streets. We're not complaining about that. It's impossible to know the loading and the patterns in the zones when you've got streets all upset. That'll settle down. Let me go through the slide show. Here we are again. Thanks to the Palo Alto Weekly, we have the kicking the can deal. We ask you to reject the Staff Report. It lacks the commitment to reducing the nonresident sales. The current sales are not supported by any Staff logic other than the fact that they like the cushion to get through the next couple of years of developing a system that we can tell—the rationale has just simply not been presented to us or to you. The Staff Report still does not hit the traffic impacts really FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 26 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 hard. The longer we make things complex and delay it, it's going to intensify the business and residential divide. It's something I can see building now. I don't think it's going to be out of hand, but it's not making it any easier. We spend a lot of time with the business-serving companies and professions in the area. We're beginning just to agree to disagree. We've got to go into some sort of holding action while Staff can come up with solutions. The parking intrusion and traffic are negative to all parts of Palo Alto. It's many neighborhoods that are beginning to jockey for permit parking. It's going to get much more complicated and much more complex. We don't have the Staff bandwidth to do all the pressure that's coming from different neighborhoods. Let's bridge the divide; let's get started. Fix the permit sales at the current level of demand with the smallest possible safety valve. The experiment is over. The demand is 1,000, 1,100 permits. We'll talk about that in a minute. Let's adopt a policy of commercial parking in any neighborhood must be limited and not subject to the escalating commercial zoning failures. I'd like to start with a call to Mayor Kniss. Somewhere in your regime this year please put the parking assessment district entitlements into a Study Session. I don't think you can solve anything until you understand the zoning implications that we've never been able to get our handle around. Let's develop the permit prioritization policies that have been talked about for the last 2 years. We're working hand-in-hand with the medical and dental professions. We're totally united that this must get done. It starts with the realization that the parking supply is finite in the garages, it's finite in the commercial zone, and it's finite in the neighborhoods. That's not the way we manage the permits. It's a policy shift that has to change. Designate Zones 8, 9, and 10 as buffer zones of some sort. I'd be happy to give models that work out well for the businesses that are right on that buffer zone, but not for everybody else. The permit parking district is far too big. A square mile is inappropriate. It's probably not really in alignment with the enabling legislation from Sacramento. It's time to contract out the management of the garages. For so many years, it's not been managed well. You're about to see some slides—you did see the slides from the Cowper-Webster garage. That's the way it is every day of the week. We're not picking the best day or the lowest day to manipulate the data. We go to the garages twice a day just to make sure we bracket that peak. You might see it at 11:00, 11:30 A.M., 2:00 P.M. We're confident we know what the loading is on the Cowper- Webster garage. It's the equivalent of 150 permits that could be sold in that garage and Bryant. The valet parking programs that were promised are nonexistent or barely limping along. Let's take a deep breath and demonstrate stewardship, Council, and stop kicking the can down the road. What could be more relevant today than what the Palo Alto Weekly put forward in November 2012? Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. That's what we're doing. We're going to be in a FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 27 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 holding pattern for at least 2 years, I think, while Staff comes up with a system to manage the garages, the surface lots, and the neighborhoods. Direct Staff to return to Council in June with a very rough RPP Plan with objectives, budgets, and timelines addressing the nine issues that we submitted to you earlier. Our request is exactly what John just went through. Make a Motion, vote on it, direct the Finance Committee and Staff to redirect $20-$30 million from the two garages in order to manage parking and traffic. This can be done. Ask us for advice. There's no reason the City has to fund the garages entirely. There's a lot of other sources to fund the capitalization, the construction of garages if that's what you really want. Give me a moment to go over because I want to make a comment, as John did, about City Staff. Any sort of turnover would be disastrous. We're totally confident that Philip and his team are the crew that can carry this ball forward. They can't do it without some human resource infusion and financial infusion, in my opinion. Let's remember Curtis Williams, Aaron, Jessica, Suellen; they're all gone; they all took a whack at this ball, and they're not here anymore. Thank you very much. Mayor Kniss: Thank you. The next person is Simon Cintz. Again, Mr. Cintz is speaking for a group. Then, we will go to our individual speakers. Council Member Holman: Madam Mayor? Simon Cintz speaking for Elizabeth Eastman, Brian Quo, Charlene Gibson, Benjamin Cintz, and Joel Jameson: Let me get oriented here. Thank you very much for letting me and a number of the business people, property owners in the Downtown area talk about RPP. I don't have as polished a presentation maybe as John and Neilson, but I do have some facts that are really important and I want to bring to your attention. I was on the original RPP stakeholders group with John, Neilson, and a number of other people. There were a number of business people and a number of residents, and we worked out a plan to tackle the problem that you're looking at. This is the Downtown before RPP. This was the count done in April of 2015, 12:00 P.M. noon. The red there is blocks that are parked greater than 38 percent. This is the City's map; all I did was I grayed out the commercial parking area so you wouldn't be overcome with red. I just counted the blocks. There's 131 residential block faces that were parked over 85 percent. Let's fast forward 18 months after Downtown RPP was implemented. It was implemented in April 2016. This is the most recent count from October 2017, again 12:00 P.M. noon and residential neighborhoods. What's really important about this is that the color coding changed. Before, red was over 85 percent. Now, they've made it dark brown. Unfortunately, the red still pops out at you. You count the dark brown spaces, and there's 40 of them. There are approximately 400 block faces in the Downtown RPP district. Out of 400 FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 28 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 block faces, 40 of them were parked over 85 percent. This is a 70 percent reduction in block faces parked over 85 percent with the RPP Program at 18 months. The Staff Report at the beginning says that RPP has been generally successful. I think that's a misleading understatement. RPP has been tremendously successful. In 18 months, we went from 131 residential block faces over-parked to now having 40. It's actually better than that because now let's take a look just at the impact of employee parkers with RPP permits. It's a little hard to see on the map here. Again, remember that above 85 percent is dark brown. There are zero block faces that are dark brown because of RPP employee permit parkers, zero. There are only six block faces parked from 65-85 percent; that's the red, six of them. One of them is Addison School. The City has given Addison School 40 transferable employee permits for parking. The school is surrounded by a fence; the entrance is right there. That's Addison employees. If you take a look at the other five, they're mostly just short blocks. They're also very near the core of the Downtown. That's the impact that RPP employees have on the parking in Downtown. You look at that map, and you say, "Where is the problem? I don't see it. Do you see it?" If this was what it looked like for employee parking before RPP took place, there wouldn't be an RPP. This has been very successful. I'm really proud to be part of the group that put it together. I'm sorry to see that it is being dismantled by permit cuts. I'll get into that a little bit later. Let's talk a little bit about the bottom line here. RPP has been a tremendous success. Employees who park with RPP permits are not the cause of over-parking in neighborhoods. Cutting employee permits will not improve over-parking in neighborhoods. What happens is when you cut permits, you create re-parkers. Imagine somebody that his employee wants to get a permit. They can't get a permit because they're sold out. What do they do? They don't quit their job. The store doesn't close their business. They become the re-parkers. If you look at the data, that is the impact on the Downtown. By chasing after the employee permit parkers, you're barking up the wrong tree. The Council should take the Staff's recommendation, no cuts or reallocations at this time. Any Council says it should be based on facts and data, not just some pictures and some ideas. It's important—don't confuse employee need for permits with actual permits sold. If you look at Zones 1-7, they were sold out by mid-January. If the City Council sets Zone 1 at 69 permits, lo and behold, guess how many are going to be sold, 69 permits. Also, the Downtown garages are full. The reason the SOFA permits and others have been undersubscribed is the City has done no outreach to the Downtown businesses and employees. Many of them don't know about it. One employee told me that his permit would cost him $100 a month. I said, "No. It's $100 for a year, not a month." The City has no idea of the actual need of employee RPP permits. There's no wait list for RPP. There's no tracking. RPP permits are not prorated. What happens 3 months into the RPP period? The price FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 29 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 essentially doubles. I'm really asking you not to cut permits. It's not the solution to the real problem. It's going to create more re-parkers. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: Thank you to the first three speakers who kept their comments right within the time limit. I appreciate that. We now have a list up on the board of those who are going to speak. If you can get close to the mic, that would really be helpful. You have 2 minutes. The warning light goes off, which is yellow, and then the red goes off after 2 minutes. Welcome. Carol Scott: Good evening, City Council and City Staff. My name is Carol Scott. I'm a resident of Evergreen Park. I'm here tonight to speak in support of the residents' proposal for the Downtown RPP. I strongly support their proposal in its entirety, but I'd like to speak to—I was going to speak to two issues but, given 2 minutes, I'll speak to one. In particular, I'd like to strongly urge the Council to create a cap on the amount of commercial encroachment that's allowed in any residential neighborhood in the City, no matter where that neighborhood is. This cap must be based on the quality of life standards and not simply on demand by business, which will be ever- increasing unless limits are set. Businesses can and will adapt to a limit. As proof of that, I give you the experience of the development on the west side of El Camino Real, which borders on College Terrace. College Terrace, as you know, allows no outside permits to be sold. It's resident only parking. We see plenty of development on the west side of El Camino Real with many new buildings built there. Those buildings were built. Developers decided to build them. Businesses moved into them knowing full well that there would be no ability to park in College Terrace. What did they do? They took care of their own problems and their own needs. That, I suggest, is the preferred manner in which we should operate. I would urge that that kind of cap be established. Once it is, then a number of wonderful things happen. I don't have to come back and yell at you at a Council meeting. I can go on to my regular, normal life. You don't have to listen to this again. The Staff gets freed up. Businesses know how to operate, and I think we'll all be much happier. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: The next person is—I think we're trying on your name but probably not going to make it. Followed by Norm Beamer and Michael Hodos. Stan Bjelijac: Good evening. I think we can all agree from the speakers so far that 5 years there was a big problem Downtown. I think we can all agree that there was a lot of goodwill on the end of the City, a lot of these wonderful people here. I would like to think that our medical and dental FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 30 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 group has played a small but vital part in making the system better. There was an intervention, and things got better as a lot of these results show. Now, I think the question is where do we go from here, how can we sustain these results. I think it boils down to controlling the demand and managing supply. On all ends, as you'll hear tonight, we'll have some good ideas. I'm very thankful for both Phil and Mark. They've been incredible in this cycle. It helped us a lot in Evergreen Park. Our sense is that having permits that are renewable will help a lot. Prioritization is very important. It's a topic that's been put to the side, but I think it's important. I feel that if any of you choose to reduce permits, our neighbors, residents have spoken through petitions. We are here to speak on our behalf as well. Medical and dental offices don't operate by the same rules and can't just pass on the fiscal costs from these programs to the consumer. We hope that you will honor what the people, the healthcare professionals, and the residents have said, which is they want us here. To pledge if there is ever a cut, medical and dental professionals will not be denied permits if they are sold out. I think it's fair. We see almost 100 percent of Palo Alto residents between our offices. We don't think it's too much to ask for, to (inaudible) with Josh Mello said. It's like Southwest. At some point you have to decide. I think there is reasonable ground here. It's like women and children first, then doctors and dentists. You guys have a good night. Mayor Kniss: Norm Beamer followed by Michael Hodos. Norman Beamer: Thank you. I want to underscore the position that some of the previous speakers took about reducing the total number of nonresident permits. It doesn't make any sense to keep several hundred permits in inventory to accommodate future under-parked development. In particular, I want to underscore that in the outer zones, Zone 10, Zone 9, perhaps some of the other outer zones, that's where the reduction should take place. The original Resolution specifically said that the reduction should be prioritized to the outer zones. For some reason that was taken out at the last Resolution last year. In the ensuing year, in Zone 10 there were 147 permits allocated, only 12 sold. In Zone 9, there were 72 permits allocated, only 1 was sold. My request from last year still makes sense. Make the outer zones a resident-only buffer. They should still be in the program because, if they weren't in the program, then people would take advantage of the free parking and spill over into that area. It seems to me just as a matter of common sense and fairness the reduction should take place at least in those outer zones where they're not even being used anyway. I will remind you of what we brought to your attention last year, that the State statute that authorizes permit parking limits permit parking to adjacent areas. In other words, residences and businesses who have a parking FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 31 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 problem can have permits in the areas adjacent to where they live or where they have a business. Crescent Park isn't adjacent. Mayor Kniss: Thank you. Michael Hodos and then Marian Odell. Michael Hodos: Mayor and Council Members, my name's Michael Hodos. I live in Professorville. As a matter of fact, I was one of the original, original people that began working on this problem almost 10 years ago. I'm here just to bring up two important points that the status update blithely ignores. One is spillover parking, which in many cases are 2-hour parkers, which continues to have a significant impact on the areas adjacent to the Downtown area as the report points out. The mystery is if there is a significant impact with 2-hour parkers, then why isn't it being addressed more aggressively with enforcement? When this question was posed to Staff at a recent community meeting in January, the response was that the current enforcement vendor lacked the technology to do so. Then why don't they use the good old-fashioned tire-chalking method that the City has used effectively for many, many, many years? The second one was the bunching or clustering of parking on many of the block faces nearest the Downtown commercial core continues to be a problem. This problem's already being addressed in the California Avenue and RPP areas by making the zone smaller and, thus, easier to manage. If that can be done there, then why aren't they doing it in the Downtown area where it has an even more egregious problem? All it would take would be to—a cost-effective way to do it would just be to divide the existing zones up into smaller zones. Take Zone 7 and make it Zone A, B, C, put a sticker on the sign, and then you could make the zones smaller and easier to manager. By the way, many of my Professorville neighbors feel strongly that both of these two issues clearly violate the Comprehensive Plan’s (Comp. Plan) prime directive, to encourage commercial enterprise but not at the expense of the City's residential neighborhoods. We hope you agree. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: Thank you. Marian Odell and then Reza Riahi. Marian Odell: Hello, Staff members. I live at the corner—my name is Marian Odell. I live at the corner of Cowper and Everett, which is Zone 1. I'm here to address the impact of parking in that particular zone, my neighborhood, and the traffic that it brings on. I was delighted when this parking program started a couple of years ago because I could find a place to park. My husband could find a place to park, and people who are visiting our home. What I noticed, I would say recently, not in the construction of Everett but prior to that, it's been much more impacted, which is bringing a lot of traffic to the particular Cowper/Everett corner of cars looking around for places to park at a time when kids in the neighborhood are riding their FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 32 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 bicycles and going to school. I do support the proposal. Given the number of employee-purchased permits, I support the residents' proposal to reduce the number of nonresident permits available in the Downtown area to 1,000 permits for the coming year. I appreciate your listening. I've been doing this for years. I recognize some of you; you probably recognize me. Thank you for listening again. Mayor Kniss: Thank you for speaking. Reza Riahi and then Suzanne Keehn. Reza Riahi: Good evening, Council. I am one of the past presidents of the Mid-Peninsula Dental Society, and I've been in front of you before. I do want to speak in support of the Staff Report. Based on the report, the RPP is working. It is doing what it was designed to do. As the report shows, most of the spillover parking is from the 2-hour parkers. The data that's on the screen shows that the combination of 2-hour parkers and the residents seem to be the primary source of the congestion. The actual permit holders are a very small portion of that. I don't know how much we're going to squeeze that number down. We're never going to get to the numbers that would probably satisfy everybody. Increasing the cost of the parking permit—it went up 57 percent annually. Reducing the numbers is just going to create more 2-hour parkers. People will find a way to get around it. I think that reduction from 1,300 to 1,000 or 1,100 tickets is probably people working around it. Speaking on behalf of the dental community, based on the survey we had, we have 27 offices in the area that are affected, and these offices have been here for decades. We treat between those offices 43,000 Palo Alto residents. In the survey that we conducted last year, we had over 1,100 Palo Alto residents supporting us. They were very loud and clear that they want a special designation for the healthcare providers and dentists in the area that have been here. They do not want to lose their access to local dental care. We request that there's no change to the number of permits at this point. We request the zones stay there. We all in the perimeter. Most of the dental offices are in the perimeter of the zones. In fact, Zone 10 is where we tend to go in our area. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: Suzanne Keehn, Anita Joy, and Christopher Joy. Suzanne Keehn: Good evening. I believe the residents understand this RPP issue very well. I had known it had gone on 7 years; I just learned it's been going on for 10 years. Please accept the RPP proposal, which makes our City more livable for all of us. The City has given preferential treatment to development and business. This time, I urge you to support our residents. Thank you. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 33 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 Mayor Kniss: Thank you. Anita Joy and then Christopher Joy. I think you're Christopher. Christopher Joy: Yes, thank you, Liz. I'm Christopher Joy. I'm a dentist at 668 Homer Avenue for 37 years. Most of employees have been working with me for over 20 years. Most travel 45 minutes or more to work and provide care for mostly Palo Alto residents. John and Neilson, we've met with you many times, respect what you've done to craft this. I think you've pretty much solved the problem. As Simon said, daytime occupancy varies from 21 percent to 60 percent, big decrease. Employee parking is 10 percent or less, so I think it's not really—we're not the cause of the problem. I don't think we ever were. Quickly, please follow the Staff recommendation not to reduce the employee permit sales. The new tax law is going to make it so as business owners we can't deduct this as we pay for our employees. Thank you, Mr. Trump. We'd appreciate any prioritization for community-serving businesses to help make Palo Alto a great place to live. We'd like to, if possible, purchase annual, automatic, renewable permits. It's onerous. It's challenging. We stress over whether we're going to miss the deadline or something like that. I think the RPP has been extremely successful. One last thing. The continuing sale of hanging permits would allow our part-time employees to share the permits. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: Is Anita Joy here? Mayor Kniss: Thank you. Megan Kanne. Megan Kanne: Good evening. My name is Megan Kanne, and I'm a resident of the RPP area. I'd like to speak in support of the Staff Report. I'm glad to hear that there are fewer permits being sold to employees if that is indeed reducing trips. I'm in favor of the idea of creating permits in the garages for low-income residents. I'd like the Council to consider whether there isn't more that the Council could be doing to allow low-income employees to work in the City of Palo Alto. The income limits seem fairly strenuous to me, and so I'd ask that you consider options for allowing more people to purchase those lower-priced permits. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: Beth Rosenthal followed by Peter Rosenthal. Beth Rosenthal: Good evening, Mayor Kniss and Council Members. My name is Beth Rosenthal. I've a Palo Alto resident for over 40 years. I want to register my support of the residents' proposal to reduce the number of nonresident parking permits issued. I think that was the promise Council made at the outset, that the number of permits issued would be reduced by 100 a year so that ultimately after 10 years, there would be no nonresident permits issued. The ultimate purpose of that is that people who live on FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 34 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 feeder streets like I do to Highway 101 would not be trapped in their homes to negotiate 1 block to get onto the freeway. Often the delay for that 1 block is 20 minutes. My hope is that in reducing the number of permits available to people who are commuting into Palo Alto, the traffic problem might be improved. I also support issuing nonresident permits to community-serving businesses. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: Thank you. Peter Rosenthal. Peter Rosenthal: I've also lived here 40 years. I'm a Crescent Park resident. Let me just make this really brief. I support the residents' proposal to not go along with the Staff recommendation and go ahead and reduce the number of permits, which was promised to us when we originally came to this. I also wanted to raise another issue, which some of the Council Members have raised. I urge you as a Council to give City Staff and the City Manager the resources to dramatically improve the data collection that goes with the issuance of the permits. You're going to need that information down the road when you make decisions by developers who want to reduce parking. If you don't know where these permits are being issued and for which businesses and for which buildings, you're not going to be able to make an intelligent decision when someone tells you, "My building is located adjacent to public transit; therefore, I don't need so many parking spaces." We don't know the answer to that, and we deserve to know it. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: Thank you. Richard Brand, Arthur Keller, and Stephanie Muñoz. Richard Brand: Good evening, everybody. Richard Brand, 281 Addison and an RPP stakeholder from the very get-go. I want to say that it was about 6 years ago when Manager Keene set up an RPP stakeholder program to develop this program. As some of the people have said, it's been successful. What worries me now—I wrote a letter to you, if you've seen it. This report is flawed. The problem is there's been no continuity in Staff except maybe for Director Gitelman who came in about halfway through. The problem is my predecessor talked about data. There's a lot of data that we stakeholders still have, and we spend time going out in the middle of the day counting cars. There's been no request from Staff to request input from us. What bothers me is this has been developed in a vacuum. I spent a lot of time, several of us did including the business people, and it's been for naught. What I would say is the onus is falling on you the Council to come up with a plan. I support a reduction just like we said when we were in the stakeholder process and set up a policy. Follow the policy. This Council is good on policy. the policy is manage the plan, reduce the numbers, follow FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 35 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 it. The numbers have dropped. Remember Anthropologie? There were a lot of people that worked there. They're gone. The numbers have dropped. They will come back. 190 Channing, that building was a repair shop for cars, gone, but it's going to come back with more people. What I'm saying is reduce the numbers and not follow this recommendation. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: thank you. Arthur Keller and then Stephanie Muñoz. Arthur Keller: Thank you very much. Firstly, I agree with reducing the RPP business permits from 1,400 to 1,100 with a reserve of 100, the 100 reserve permits as we have now. Secondly, I agree with prioritizing the low-income applicants and neighborhood-serving businesses located in the outside core. Remember, the neighborhood-serving businesses located in the outside core are not eligible for permits in the parking structures. They only can get permits in the neighborhoods so they should be prioritized. In fact, we should eventually eliminate all permit parking in the neighborhoods for those in the Downtown core who are eligible for permits in the structures. We should prohibit new commercial buildings that are supposedly providing their own parking from getting any RPP permits. Once the software enables that, I'd like to see that in legislation to make our intent clear. Similarly, there was talk about Accessory Dwelling Units (ADU) not being eligible for added permits. Once that is enabled by software, we should make that clear. In addition, we should allocate more 30-minutes spaces Downtown and in the surrounding areas because spaces for that keep fewer people from driving around as needed. What's interesting about this chart is it says average occupancy; it really needs to be peak occupancy in the peak hours because that's what we need to see at a glance. The idea that Downtown commercial parkers are actually only adding up to 25 or 50 or 65 percent—actually what matters is overall because a few extra cars can push even the residential permit parking and residents and 2-hour parkers that can push it over the edge. We need to look at the overall picture of the peak demand, not merely average demand when nobody's parking there at 9:00 A.M. in the morning or 4:00 P.M. in the afternoon. We really need to look at the peak numbers. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: Thank you. Our last speaker is Stephanie Muñoz. Stephanie Muñoz: Good evening, Council Members. Stephanie Muñoz here. I don't have a global plan, but I have a few little suggestions that might be some help. They're based on the idea of sharing. It seems to me that you're missing a bet by not recognizing that there are certain destinations that attract large numbers of people from all over the area, for instance Palo Alto Medical Center. If you had a van from the Palo Alto Medical Center that went out to south Palo Alto on Monday, and west Palo Alto on Tuesday and FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 36 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 other places according to the day, it would be only necessary for the people involved, the physicians and the therapists, to make their appointments on those days for the people that come from that area. They could easily enough do it, the sharing of the streets. I believe you should have a night and weekend parking permit so that people who take their cars off during the weekdays could come home, and they would have a place to put their car at night and on the weekends when the shoppers and the patients and the business people aren't using those streets. Lastly, if you do make a garage, I urge you please, please make it a double garage that has places rented out at night just like in the day. That would serve buildings that you could have with no parking. Those buildings would have a van, and they would take anybody to the parking garage where their cars would be. If the parking garage is there anyway, why shouldn't it serve these people? If you please, make those parking garages, if you have them, with bathrooms so that people who live in their cars—people have to live someplace. They have to have a job. They have to support their families, and they have to put that body someplace. Your parents, I suspect taught you to care about other people, but I don't know that for sure. What I do know for sure is they made you pick up your clothes and put away your toys and your bikes. If you don't have any excuse for leaving these bodies around untaken-care-of. You've got to provide a place where people can sleep at night. In their cars is one good place. In a parking garage, they would be out of the way and in nobody's way. They could exist, which they have to do. Thank you so much. Sharing. Bye-bye. Mayor Kniss: Thank you. That's our last speaker for tonight unless I have missed somebody. I'm looking around; I don't see anything. That takes us back. This is time for us to have our deliberations, comments, and to make any Motions if you wish. The first one is Council Member Fine, followed by Vice Mayor Filseth. Mr. Keene: Madam Mayor? Mayor Kniss: Yes, sir. Mr. Keene: Would you allow me a moment just to … Mayor Kniss: Yes, please. I forgot to ask Staff if they wanted to make comments. Excuse me. Mr. Keene: I just want to make a more general comment. I would respectfully remind the Council that this is a 1-year check-in on the program. You've heard from business community members and residents, more residents here tonight. The residents had a specific recommendation, not a vague one, as it related to permits. The business folks were generally FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 37 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 speaking in support of the Staff recommendation. Josh talked a bit about the fact that we have in process a series of other steps that we will be coming back to the Council on related to the permit system, other issues related to our garages, the wayfinding and those issues. That's later on going to be followed with how we move ahead with ultimately things like license plate readers, cameras, and those sorts of thing. Finally, off more into the future, taking up again the paid parking issue. There's a lot planned. That being said also, you have two other items on your agenda tonight. We have the Strategic Plan for Utilities. We have a bunch of Staff people here. At least one Commissioner is sitting here since 6:00 P.M. We have a Colleagues' Memo that really ultimately has some simple directives to refer the item to Finance and to anticipate the fact that we are going to have to meet and confer with labor in regard to that. That's a series of steps that are going to take some time. That argues for the Council making some decision and direction and getting that going tonight. I would ask that you think about these other items you have on the agenda tonight and implore you to be efficient, if you could, on this particular item, understanding that we will be back also talking about ancillary related parking management issues more this spring. Thanks. I would just echo the comments about the importance of keeping continuity in the existing Transportation Staff we have. I can't overestimate how much is on their plate and how much we're continually asking them to do very, very quickly. Thanks. Mayor Kniss: Thank you. Josh, do either you or your Colleague wish to speak or not? That will help expedite this process. Council Member Fine and then Filseth. Council Member Fine: Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'll take the City Manager's words about alacrity to heart. Also, thank you very much to Staff for all of your hard work on this and the other transportation programs. Thank you to everyone who came out tonight. A couple of quick comments, and then I'm going to make a Motion, which I really hope will build some consensus on this Council so we can get this item completed. As the City Manager mentioned, there's a lot of stuff in flight around parking in terms of management, in terms of information, in terms of new supply. I think we do have some work to do in terms of coordinating those items. That's something I'm going to be asking for. Two, I think it's important for us to recognize this is a residential preferential parking permit program. We often forget the second P or the third P, whichever one you want to call it. I think it is legitimate as some residents have asked, for us to establish metrics about what that looks like in terms of show rate, occupancy, other qualities they'd like to see. I'd also add I think it's fair for us to look at the residential show rates and occupancy rates in this program so we actually understand what's going on. Two graphs really inform what I'm about to propose. One FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 38 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 is employee permits sold. They have been decreasing and, yes, we might have some more businesses coming online, we might have some new business formation. The other graph that drives my thinking is this one, parking occupancy by permit type. If you look across the different zones, at the highest level the average employee occupancy is 12 percent in a single zone. One speaker of the public mentioned we should be measuring peak occupancy. That's probably a good suggestion. I think this graph really speaks to the fact that our major parking impacts are from the average general use, no permits, and from average residential occupancy. There's a little bit of eating our own spinach we need to look at. With that, I'm happy to talk further about this, but I do hope this Motion gets consensus on the Council. Beth and David, let me just email it to you. It's not that long. First, I'd like to reduce nonresident permits to 1,100 and authorize the City Manager to release 100 permits more in a shortage. That's for a total of 1,200 permits. Two, return to the Council with a proposal including a budget for a comprehensive parking management system, which will include the RPP districts, the commercial core and the parking assessment districts as Neilson alluded to. Third, return to Council with a proposal for parking quality standards. That's just speaking to the idea that we need some metrics to measure parking impacts, whether it's commercial or residential. Council Member Wolbach: Second. MOTION: Council Member Fine moved, seconded by Council Member Wolbach to: A. Continue the Downtown Residential Preferential Parking (RPP) Program with the following modification: reduce non-resident permits to 1,100, and authorize the City Manager to release 100 permits more in a shortage; and B. Direct Staff to return to Council with a proposal, including budget, for a comprehensive parking management system, including the RPP programs, the commercial core, and the Parking Assessment Districts; and C. Direct Staff to return to Council with a proposal for parking quality standards. Mayor Kniss: There's a Motion from Fine, a second from Wolbach. Do you wish to speak further, Council Member Fine? Council Member Fine: I don't. I'm open to Amendments here or suggestions. This is a fair way of being true to what we've promised residents in terms of preferring residential parking. It's also not going to FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 39 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 adversely impact our commercial parking need. We do give the City Manager some flexibility here. The second point is just so that we can begin to get a handle on what parking management systems we have Citywide. I have mentioned at the past couple of meetings that I'm somewhat frustrated that we are looking at each of these systems in isolation. It's like we're squeezing the balloon. Letter C is, I think, responding to a valid public request to begin looking at what are the goals we want to see out of each these systems. Is it 60 percent? Is it 80 percent usage? Is it this number of commercial permits? Whether that's peak occupancy, average occupancy? I think it would help us if we lay down the metrics that we want to achieve in different districts. Council Member Wolbach: First, let me say thank you to the Staff for bringing their proposal to us even if we don't accept it exactly as you proposed it. It does provide a starting point. As several members of the public have pointed out, Staff has been working very hard on this and a number of other parking and traffic initiatives given the importance of that to the Council and to the community. I also want to thank everybody from the community who came tonight, those who are so hearty they're actually sticking around even after making their comments. I know many others did have to get home to resume their normal lives. I know a lot of them are also either watching online, on TV, or listening on the radio. I really appreciate all the public comments we received tonight and the ones we received in writing as well. There's been a lot of very deep thinking in advance of this meeting in response to the Staff Report and over the last several years predating even my time on Council. Just as kind of a preface, I agree with Council Member Fine that I'll also as a seconder be very open to amendments. Going back to the City Manager's comments and thinking about how we can move efficiently tonight, I would suggest if Colleagues do have things that they would like to added or tweaked in this Motion, rather than move into Substitute Motions that we just propose amendments to this. We do have only eight members of the Council here tonight. Hopefully we can get an 8-0 vote and not 4-4 votes. It is important—I guess it's really a question for the City Manager. When it comes to data collection about the need, including the Business Registry and getting that rolling again, when it comes to outreach to businesses, to work with them—we heard about people making individual calls from Staff to permit holders. I think we also need more outreach to individual businesses to make sure they understand the options for themselves and for their employees. When it comes to getting rolling with the goal, that I know Staff has, of a unified system for electronically and flexibly managing RPP permits, garage permits, and surface lots and when it comes to wayfinding. All these things that we've been working on, I know that they are at various points in the pipeline. Let me just say I hope that Staff led by the City Manager is letting us know if FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 40 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 they need the resources to be upped to get these things done. I know we'll be hearing the City Manager's Budget proposal soon, especially the Finance Committee. It's important whether it's Staff, consultants, contracts, whatever is needed to get this done. Let me add another important potential for public-private partnerships is the people in the community who have offered, have already spent a lot of time on this, who are interested in providing more assistance. Maybe they can help with outreach to the businesses. Maybe there are other ways we can get the support we need to get more participation and more understanding not only among residents but among businesses. I would just implore the City Manager to let us know what you need to get all these things rolling. I appreciate Council Member Fine for making this Motion. It moves us in the right direction. Some people have said leave it at 1,500 permits. Some said bring it down to 1,000 permits. Bringing it down to 1,100 permits but, like we did last year, give the City Manager an extra 100 permits in reserve in case it turns out we were really wrong. He could bring that back to us; we could talk about it. This is a very fair and reasonable compromise. I know the business community won't be thrilled with it, but it's something we can all live with. One thing that's not in this Motion that I'd like to suggest as a friendly Amendment if conference would be open to it. A couple of the—let me ask Staff. Those Zones on the periphery, 9 and 10 in particular, maybe even Zone 8, where we really don't see a lot of permits sold and we really don't see a lot showing up from the employees, is it possible to say that those would be—some people refer to it as a buffer zone. Is it possible to say that they're still part of the RPP system but they would be the last to which we would sell employee permits or just say in the reduction from the current we will not plan to sell any permits to those? Is that something we can do? Mr. Mello: If you remember when we came to you with Phase II of the Downtown RPP, we created what were called eligibility zones. These were areas at the periphery of the RPP program area that could opt administratively into the program. A lot of Zones 9 and 10 were eligibility areas that subsequently opted into the program administratively, particularly along Hamilton, out near Lincoln in the Crescent Park area. We have not seen a great—with that opting in you joined the Downtown RPP program which has employee permits available. It's not a separate RPP, so all the parameters that are part of the Downtown RPP apply to these areas. That's how we ended up where we are. We've held permits in reserve for Zones 9 and 10 for later eligibility areas that will opt in. There are already some permits that are held in reserve for future street annexations into the RPP, but we're not selling those permits because the streets have not opted in yet. If you wanted to, you could charge us to make the reduction in the outer zones first and then work our way in or strictly make the reductions in the outer zones. I do think we need additional clarification under Point A as FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 41 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 to what we do with the existing permits that are held in reserve for Zones 9 and 10, because now we would have two reserves potentially unless that's inclusive of the 100 permits that are already held in reserve. Just a couple more points since I already have the mic. Point C is going to take a while for us to do. I envision we may have to go to PTC and hold some community meetings to get community input on what thresholds should look like and what occupancy levels should look like. That would take quite some time to come back to Council. I don't think it's going to be a quick turnaround item. Just another point of clarification. Any action taken tonight will have to come back to you with a Resolution on Consent similar to what we're going to do for Evergreen and Southgate, because we didn't agendize this as an item to make changes to the RPP district. Council Member Wolbach: I'm not suggesting changes to how RPPs work. I think I'm really just suggesting that start with the reduction in Zones 9 and 10 in particular. You don't start by selling those if that's something we're able to do. We'll let Staff work with the City Attorney's Office to determine if that's plausible unless the City Attorney wants to weight in now. Molly Stump, City Attorney: You can do that; you need to come back on Consent. You give the direction to Staff to prepare a Resolution. It will return to your agenda on a future night. Mr. Mello: The Resolutions we bring to you include a table that shows the number of permits by zone, so we can certainly include that. Council Member Wolbach: Council Member Fine, would you be okay with that Amendment? Maybe Staff will help me and make sure I don't mess this up. "Direct Staff to begin reduction in employee permits with Zones 9 and 10." Council Member Fine: I left that off. I did consider it. I don't want to direct Staff. I want them to have the flexibility to do that if they want. I think that's already within their purview actually. We could reword it that we're not directing them to start it here. They already can't do that is what I'm saying, and that's why I didn't include it. It does make sense that Zones 8, 9, and 10 are functioning a little bit differently. We may look at removing them in the future or Staff may look at not allocating any employee permits there right now or going forward. I don't want to direct Staff specifically to remove employee permits from any zone, though. If you can think of a way … They've heard our comments; I agree with you. AMENDMENT: Council Member Wolbach moved, seconded by Council Member XX to add to the Motion, “direct Staff to begin reductions in employee permits in Zones 9 and 10.” FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 42 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 Mr. Keene: We listen to what the Council says, but we're going to come back with a recommendation. Mr. Mello: Could I ask for a wording change in Point A that might help with this? "Reduce nonresident permits to 1,200 with 100 held in reserve with a focus on reductions in the outer zones," or something to that effect. Council Member Fine: That gets it. Council Member Wolbach: You're suggesting that we also remove the word "more." You're now taking the 100 permits, so we would reduce the word "more." Mr. Mello: The City Manager would hold 100 permits in reserve. There would be a total of 1,200 permits, but we would only release 1,100 permits. That's how the current Resolution is worded. Council Member Wolbach: We want to do an apples-to-apples transition so we're not making radical changes at this annual check-in, but we're tweaking the system, reducing the numbers. Right now, it's … AMENDMENT RESTATED AND INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to replace Part A of the Motion with, “continue the Downtown Residential Preferential Parking (RPP) Program with the following modifications: Direct Staff to return with a Resolution to reduce non-resident permits to 1,200 with a focus on reductions in the outer Zones, and authorize the City Manager to hold 100 of those permits in reserve.” Council Member Fine: Thank you, Josh. Council Member Wolbach: There are a lot of other things I could suggest to be tweaks to this. I'm sure my Colleagues will have suggestions. Ms. Stump: Could we let the Clerk catch up? There's one more technical change I need to suggest in A. Mayor Kniss: Could I make a public service announcement in the middle of it? It's been suggested that we take up the Colleagues' Memo tonight, but we let Utilities go home. I want a comment from you, Jim. Mr. Keene: That's one of the reason I tried to … Mayor Kniss: You did your best earlier. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 43 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 Mr. Keene: … 25 minutes ago say we have a bunch of Staff people here waiting. Mayor Kniss: I have a better sense of where this is going now. If we could do that. Utilities is not time sensitive. I think we do want to get started on the Colleagues' Memo. Could we convince you to release them? Mr. Keene: If your sense is that this is going to continue for a while, okay. I'll kick the can down the road on Utilities. Mayor Kniss: It's already continued a bit longer than I thought it would. Apologies to Utilities. Council Member Wolbach: I actually had a question about this. The City Attorney had a clarifying question or suggestion? Ms. Stump: Just for clarity, after the colon, it should say "direct Staff to return to Council with a Resolution to reduce nonresident permits." Council Member Wolbach: I just want to clarify, again wanting to do an apples-to-apples comparison between what we've been doing the last year and what we're proposing tonight. I want to make sure we're clear. What we've had for the last year was how many permits and how many in reserve, just for the record. Mr. Kamhi: It's 1,500 permits with 100 permits held in reserve, so 1,400 permits. The year prior to that it was 2,000 permits. Council Member Wolbach: We are talking about a 300 permit reduction if we go forward with the text that's here? Mr. Kamhi: That's correct. Council Member Wolbach: That is a reasonable suggestion. Of course, only 1,100 permits would be open right away. I also just want to say that I understand we can't do it until we get a new electronic system set up. The need for more flexibility for employees to be able to buy permits—if you get a retail job or a job working at a bar or restaurant or whatever and it's in the middle of the permit period and you have to pay the full price for the permit, that's ridiculous. I know Staff knows that. I'm just putting that on the record. If somebody comes to work only a couple of days a week, they have a tough time making the decision that that's worth them buying the permit, and they're more inclined to be the 2-hour re-parker. Staff is familiar with these problems. I look forward to us having a system in place where we can manage those. I also look forward to having the Staff, consultants or FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 44 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 volunteers in place to help do better collaboration with the business community so we can understand their needs better and reflect those. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: I have several lights to speak. I'm going to go onto Vice Mayor Filseth in just a minute, but I want to say a couple of things before we do this. I want to begin by saying I've been involved in this since 2012 when I told people that year that I promised we would take up the RPP. That's a promise that was kept. I have worked at this time and time again. The last time we did this, we actually, as I recall, had five people. Eric, does that sound correct? Vice Mayor Filseth: That sounds familiar. Mayor Kniss: If you all remember, he drew the short straw. We made our decision that night at 12:45 A.M. Since the decision that night was made with Mr. Beamer here, I don't see that he's still in the audience. That night we decided to go to district 10 for a very specific reason. The people who are on Hamilton in particular and other areas were really feeling very uncomfortable with the number of cars that were parked in that area. I came off Highway 101 one day and turned and happened to go up Hamilton. I literally thought there was a party going on there were so many cars. Several people from that district have talked to me and said, "Please don't cut our parking permits. It's working for us." I think that's important. If you ask residents and they say it's working, I think it's working. I certainly wouldn't get rid of District 10. If you want to reduce the number of permits available, fine. I think that has been a lot of protection for that particular area. Why 1,200 permits? I went back and I took an average of the last 3 years, and it comes out to just about 1,200 permits. Your reasons are equally good, but that's the number that I came up with when I averaged them together. There's very good information on Packet Page 105 that deals with the Downtown RPP occupancy data even though it's in far more detail on the following page. That page, Table 1, does a very good job of summing it up. As far as our valets, I do want to ask whether or not—I'll ask you about that in just a minute. I also wonder because Mr. Buchanan is still here, what happened to the pictures of parkers on the lawns, blocking the driveways, an circling to find a spot? When we did this the last time, there were horrific pictures. You don't have to come up Neilson. I would have liked to see those as well as seeing the others. I remember those very well. There were several times when people had literally blocked driveways. Again, the last time we made this decision, there were literally five of us sitting here. At that point, Council Member Wolbach asked Mr. Beamer if he could live with our decision, and he said he could. I'm sorry he's already left. I would have liked to ask him again, because it seems as though his FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 45 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 neighborhood has really adapted to this well. One other thing I was surprised about tonight—did I hear 27 dental offices? Is that correct, 27 dental offices and 4,200 patients? None of them have parking, none of the offices? Male: We have parking now. Before (inaudible). Mayor Kniss: That's all right. Let me finish up on this so we can continue to move along. This number is a good number. Thank you, Council Member Fine, for coming forth with the succinct suggestion. This gives both Staff something to work with and also perhaps some comfort to those who are feeling that there is some clustering going on in their neighborhood. Overall, I would have to say what somebody said earlier tonight. This is actually working. It really is. I'd hate to throw out that baby with the bathwater. We have worked hard at this. Staff, you have put hundreds of hours into it. Even if it's not the best, up-to-date plan, it is what is working at the present. Yes, it needs tweaking and some extra work done to it, more massage. Overall, I'd say thank you to Staff. Thanks for making it happen. There was a time when it didn't look 5 years ago like it ever would come to fruition. I'm done. I'm supporting this. I'm going on to Vice Mayor Filseth. Then, either Tom or Karen or Karen or Tom, either way. Vice Mayor Filseth: I generally like this Motion. It touches the right stuff. The other stuff that Staff alluded to as the elements of this, prioritizing community-serving businesses, establishing a process for renewals and so forth, makes sense. I'm going to propose an Amendment to this. I expect it's probably an unfriendly Amendment, to change the 1,200 permit number to 1,100 permit. Will you accept that as a friendly Amendment? Council Member Fine: I preferred seeing it as 1,100 permits with 100 permits extra. Are you saying just 1,100 permits flat? Vice Mayor Filseth: No, 1,100 permits including the reserve. Council Member Fine: It'd be 1,100 permits and 100 permits of those are in reserve? Vice Mayor Filseth: Correct. Council Member Fine: I think we should stick with 1,200 permits, but happy to put it to a vote. Council Member DuBois: I'll second. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 46 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to replace in the Motion Part A, “1,200” with “1,100.” Vice Mayor Filseth: Let me speak to it briefly. We've committed to the neighborhoods. We've promised the neighborhoods we're going to give them real parking relief and that we will get them out of the commercial parking business and back into the neighborhood business. Clearly, there has been real progress. The proposal as on the table basically increases the number of permits over what's been solve over the last 2 years. If we're going to keep the number flat or increase it, essentially what we're saying is the job is done. I don't think I heard from the neighborhoods tonight that the job is done. If you look at the chart, there's a lot of red left on the chart, and black in some of those cases at the peak hours. Almost half the zones have on an all-day basis an average over 50 percent. There's an implication in the coloring of the Staff implying a target of 60 percent here, but that got emphatic disagreement in the Evergreen Park and Southgate neighborhoods. It appears that there's still a modest amount of space left in the garages. It's hard for me to look at this data and say it's done. I think it's not done. That's the one issue. One issue is the neighborhood. The other issues is behind every single one of these permits there's a vehicle trip. On a statistical basis, we know that the overwhelming majority of those trips are single occupant vehicles. If we're trying to get people out of cars, then certainly increasing the number of permits is the wrong direction. At a time that we're investing in TMA, bicycle infrastructure, and other alternative transportation modes, it seems like we ought to be continuing to nudge people in those directions rather than increasing the number of parking permits available. I don't think we should throw in the towel on being finished here. We ought to give the knob another quarter turn and see if we can do some good here. That's my Motion. Mayor Kniss: We have Tom, then Karen, then Adrian, and then Cory. Council Member DuBois: I just want to speak to the Amendment. I do want to speak to some of the other parts of the Motion. I guess we'll come back to that after we vote on this. The problem we're trying to solve, commercial intrusion into the neighborhoods, we're pretty aligned on that. I agree with Council Member Fine and Wolbach about a process. I want to come back what the meaning of C is. We need to refine that a little bit. The good news is we have real data. We've been doing this for 2 1/2, 3 years if you count the pilot. We've seen declining demand. Mayor Kniss suggested we average the last 3 years. Because it's declining each year, that doesn't make sense to me. That's why I seconded the Motion. We should dial it down a little bit. We sold 1,090 permits. If we have 1,000 permits plus 100 permits in FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 47 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 reserve and we see spots still available in our garages, we want to support our TMA. Like we talked about a year ago, if we just make more permits available in the neighborhood, we're actually working at odds with ourselves on supporting our TMA. I went back and looked at our discussion a year ago. It was pretty interesting, a lot of the same issues. We'd sold 1,300 permits, and the Staff Report was suggesting we allocate 1,800 permits. We had a lot of votes that night. We talked about an 85 percent target occupancy rate in the Staff Report. I think Council wasn't comfortable with that. We are making progress, but we're also doing the same thing over and over. If you guys remember that discussion, we did compromise. We reduced the number, and things actually went well. A year ago, we talked about prioritizing locally serving businesses just we like we voted for California Avenue (Cal. Ave.) a couple of weeks ago. We really need to make that happen. The question comes down to why would we authorize more nonresident permits than we've been selling. We have data; we have the demand. We have these other factors like empty spaces in garages. We should really target the 1,000 permits with a 100 permit reserve. The 100 permit allocation, I'd like to offer an Amendment that those aren't used until the garages are filled. Vice Mayor Filseth: Do you want to propose some language? Council Member DuBois: "Authorize the City Manager to hold 100 permits of those permits in reserve to be used once the garages … Vice Mayor Filseth: We already have an Amendment. The proper procedure is that we ought to finish this Amendment and then return to yours. Council Member DuBois: Another clarification. The intent is clear in both Motions, but the wording is not great. The original Motion was 1,200 permits with 100 of those permits in reserve. The same thing with this one. Maybe the Clerk could edit A to say "100 of those permits" so it's not in addition. We haven't sold out RPP permits. We haven't sold out our garages. Trying to make the TMA work. We see occupancy in the commercial core below 85 percent in the color zones. Based on all this data, we should go down a little bit. We're not too far apart here. We're talking about 100 permits. I hope you guys will consider that. Vice Mayor Filseth: I have no lights on. The order is Council Member Holman, Council Member Fine, and Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Holman: With the one clarification, I don't need to say very much. With the move to 1,200 permits and then 100 permits, it seemed like we upped how many permits we're going to be selling. That's why I'm supporting this Amendment. It seems this goes to where we were headed to FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 48 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 begin with. The 1,100 permits rather than 1,200 permits is a good—is a bit of a compromise because the residents wanted 1,000 permits. Some of the business folks were a little concerned about going to 1,000 permits . This is actually 1,100 permits total. It's a good compromise. I agree with comments Council Member DuBois made. I don't know why we would hold or sell more permits that are being—approve more permits than are actually being sold. I'm a strong supporter of the Amendment. Mayor Kniss: Council Member Fine and then Council Member Wolbach. Council Member Fine: Thank you, Madam Mayor. You all are persuading me. A couple of comments and maybe a question, and then I might actually accept this. It's important for us to consider—although there might be 1,000 permits, 1,200, 1,400 permits whatever it is, there's also the show rate, which across the district is 25 percent. When we talk about 1,100 permits, it's not 1,100 car trips. It's 25 percent of that times 2. That's important to keep in mind. Council Member DuBois, you raise a really good point about using our data to guide where we're going. When I first thought of 1,200 permits, I was thinking we're getting close to that demand point. There may be some fluctuations from year to year, and we're narrowing the solution space. I hear you, and it's pretty persuasive that going to 1,100 permits today could be a forcing function on the garages and the TMA. With that, I'm actually open to accepting this now. I would be willing to accept this. Council Member Wolbach: I do need to address some of the comments I heard. Right now, the City Manager can sell 1,500 permits. The Motion before this proposed Amendment is to only allow the City Manager to sell 1,200 permits. Twelve hundred is less than 1,500 permits; 1,200 permits is not more than 1,500 permits. We're all pretty good at basic arithmetic. Saying 1,200 permits is an increase in the number of permits is—I'm not following the logic. Council Member DuBois: It was the demand of (crosstalk). Council Member Wolbach: I don't think you have the floor. It's a bit silly to say that 1,200 permits is more than 1,500 permits and expect anybody to take that seriously. That said, I'll accept the Amendment because it's a reasonable compromise. Mayor Kniss: Has everyone spoken now? Greg Tanaka. Council Member Tanaka: I didn't want to speak about this. I want to speak to the Amendment. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 49 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 Mayor Kniss: That's what's up now. Right now we're speaking on the Amendment. Council Member Tanaka: I'm speaking to the Motion, not the Amendment. Mayor Kniss: In case that it's been accepted. Since your light just went on, do you want to speak to the main Motion? Vice Mayor Filseth: Wait a minute. Do I still have the floor since I made the Amendment? Mayor Kniss: No, because it was accepted. Vice Mayor Filseth: I'm done actually. Mayor Kniss: The Vice Mayor is done. Greg. Council Member Tanaka: I have a question for Staff. I've heard some of the public speakers talk about the idea of having hanging tags that are transferable between cars. What's the issue with doing that? It seems to make sense, but I want to hear the objections to that. Mr. Mello: For the Downtown RPP, we offer both stickers and hangtags. The first resident permit is a sticker, and then additional resident permits are hangtags. Council Member Tanaka: I'm talking about for the employees. Mr. Mello: When individual employees purchase their one employee parking permit, whether they're full price or low income, they get a sticker. Business accounts, which can purchase of up to ten employee permits, can receive hangtags. The point of that was to allow them to share them between employees. When individual employees purchase a permit, they are assigned a sticker, not a hangtag. In Evergreen Park and Mayfield and Southgate, you directed us to sell hangtags only for employee permits. It's different in those zones. Council Member Tanaka: They're owned by the businesses, and they can move them around among the different businesses. Mr. Mello: If the business account … Council Member Tanaka: I mean the different employees. Mr. Mello: Employees, yes. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 50 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 Council Member Tanaka: Another thing I've heard about is the verification process is quite onerous. Can you talk about that? Mr. Mello: You have to sign up for an account. If you want to purchase an employee permit, you need to prove that you're an employee by submitting a letter from the employer, a pay stub, something that shows you're employed. Council Member Tanaka: Is this for the low income or just … Mr. Mello: In addition to that, if you want to buy a low income employee permit, you need to submit verification of income. Those documents are emailed to our contractor, submitted through the online permitting system. Within a couple of days, they're verified, and your account is unlocked, and you have the ability to purchase whatever permit you're eligible for. Council Member Tanaka: Why do we have a verification process for the non- low-income? It's like who else would want to park there but people that work there. Residents can get their own, and there's that verification process. Mr. Mello: Stanford employees could purchase if we didn't have a verification process. Caltrain commuters, other people who are not employed in the Downtown RPP. Council Member Tanaka: I see. Some of my fellow Council Members have touched upon it. A lot of retail employees are part-time; they may work only 1 or 2 days a week. Even $50 could be a lot because it's $50 to park for just a couple of days. It could seem like a lot of money. The minimum is 6 months? Mr. Mello: We have 6-month employee permits, and we have daily employee permits. At one point in time, we had a 5-day scratcher permit. We sold two or three the last permit cycle before we ended that program. Council Member Tanaka: What about 3-month permit parking? Mr. Mello: If we were to move forward with our comprehensive parking permit and citation system, along with license plate recognition we could actually issue instant daily permits and instant weekly permits. Somebody could pull up, buy a permit on their phone, directly tie it to their license plate. That would allow the flexibility we really need. Council Member Tanaka: It's a systems issue. Mr. Mello: Yeah, it is a systems issue. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 51 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 Council Member Tanaka: We saw photos of the empty garages, which seems not good. We should definitely fill that up. What's the barrier for filling those garages with employees? Mr. Mello: We've been struggling a little bit with the valet program. We had a valet program, and the intent of that was to double stack employee vehicles. The demand fluctuates to a degree where we had valets who weren't being utilized. We reduced the staffing at a couple of the garages. We now only have valet in operation in one of the garages. One of the things we need to do—it's a balancing act because we have the show rate. If we issue 100 employee permits, typically only 30-40 of the permits show up on a given day. That even fluctuates by garage. Without an automated system, this is all being done manually. It's a little bit of an art form, and we're trying to find that right balance where we release enough permits to fill the garage, but we don't have employees showing up without a place to park. We have a fixed number of permit spaces in the garages right now. If you're familiar with the automated parking guidance system that you directed us to move forward with last year, that would enable us to manipulate the spaces and add more permit spaces in real time, reduce the number of permit spaces. Those are the indicator lights that are over each of the spaces. Council Member Tanaka: Right now, is there any reason why you can't issue more? It looks like you guys could issue a lot more garage permits. Mr. Mello: We do. I think we get a report every month from Revenue Collections that sells the permits. Philip can talk more about it. We do that on an ongoing basis. Mr. Kamhi: Right now, anybody could buy a permit in the garage because we have available permits. It's more of a marketing issue. It's more making sure we're talking to people that might … Council Member Tanaka: Isn't the cost a lot higher too? Mr. Kamhi: The costs are the same as the RPP; however, we don't have a low-income permit in the garage. Council Member Tanaka: That's what I mean. Mr. Kamhi: For the regular price permit, the prices are the same. Council Member Tanaka: In looking at the data, it seemed like a lot of the congestion is caused not by employees who have permits. It's the 2-hour people, the people who are avoiding the program. It seems like the answer FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 52 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 is to scoop those people up somehow. I don't know why they're not doing it. I'm not sure what the issue. There's something that's keeping the people doing the 2-hour parking instead of garages or something else. What do you guys think we could do to get those 2-hour parkers off the streets? Mr. Mello: That goes to Point B of the Motion, which is to come back to you with a more comprehensive look at some of the things we can do. We've done a lot of thinking since we presented the Downtown Parking Management Study to you last year. We've visited PTC twice to talk about that study. We would like to come back to you this spring with some recommendations on how to more comprehensively manage this whole ecosystem that we have (crosstalk). Council Member Tanaka: How about low-income parking for the garage? Would that not be a logical choice? Mr. Mello: That is something we're moving forward with. You'll see that in your budget proposal for Fiscal Year (FY) '19. Council Member Tanaka: Thank you. Mayor Kniss: Council Member Tanaka, were you done speaking to the Motion? Council Member Kou. Council Member Kou: I just wanted to ask on Item Number A, are you going to include in there—where it says authorize the City Manager to hold 100 of these permits in reserve, is it necessary to put in here as direction also in terms of a not-to-exceed term for the 100 permits in reserve? Do you need direction in that or is that going to be … Mr. Kamhi: It could be a little bit challenging for us to assign a term different from the term of the other permits. Council Member Kou: What's the term of the other permits? Mr. Kamhi: Our current permits are—employee permits are 6 months. Council Member Kou: It would automatically be 6 months for those in reserve? Mr. Mello: We would not sell the 100 for the first permit sales period. If there was a shortage and we deemed it necessary to release those 100 permits, we would release them for the second 6-month period. Council Member Kou: It expires in 6 months; it's only a 6-month term? FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 53 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 Mr. Mello: Yes. Council Member Kou: Is it already included in the proposal that you're going to look at priority given to neighborhood-serving businesses and a definition of what they are? Mr. Mello: We committed to advancing this when we came to you for the Evergreen Park and Southgate RPPs. Council Member Kou: It's included already? Mr. Mello: With the three caveats that we need the new permit system; we need to improve the Business Registry; we'll need additional Staff resources. Council Member Kou: Thank you. Mayor Kniss: Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: I had a question for City Attorney, Molly. We are voting on the Ordinance tonight, which has elements about Zones 9 and 10. It seemed like earlier you were indicating we couldn't just modify the Ordinance and pass it tonight. Ms. Stump: This program is contained in a Resolution, not an Ordinance. Your program has two components. It's a broad Ordinance that covers RPPs Citywide, and then an implementing Ordinance for the specific RPP districts. The Resolution is before you tonight as an attachment, really for informational purposes. The Staff recommendation is to make no changes to it. That was what was noticed to the public. If you'd like to make changes, you certainly have the authority to do that, but we need to provide specific notice to the public of what types of changes are contemplated. Council Member DuBois: Number A captures that you're going to come back. Ms. Stump: Correct. Council Member DuBois: Is there a timing challenge here in terms of when these permits need to go on sale? Mr. Kamhi: Yes. The permits do need to go on sale; they currently expire at the end of March. Council Member DuBois: It's going to come back on Consent quickly? FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 54 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 Mr. Mello: The Southgate and the Evergreen Resolutions are coming to you next week. Our turnaround time on those was 1-2 months. We should be able to get it back to you in time to start selling permits. Council Member Dubois: It sounds pretty tight. Mr. Keene: We still have the ability to sell permits under the status quo until you change this Resolution anyway. Mr. Mello: We just won't sell more than what you ultimately direct us to come back to you with tonight. Council Member DuBois: I want to come back to C and mention this. I want to understand the intent. We need to standardize our processes, our metrics. I'm not sure the same values for those metrics make sense Citywide. I didn't want that to be misinterpreted to mean that you wanted one program Citywide. If that was not the intent, I would suggest clarifying it a little bit. We'd have "qualify standards with parameters that could be adjusted for specific neighborhoods," something like that. Council Member Fine: "With parameters that could be adjusted based on neighborhood or commercial area." Council Member DuBois: That's acceptable to both of you guys? Council Member Wolbach: I'll accept that too. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion Part C, “with parameters that can be adjusted based on neighborhood characteristics.” Council Member DuBois: I had mentioned not using the reserve until the garages were full. I'll let somebody else make that Motion if they want. It's worked pretty well holding the items in reserve. I'm going to try one more. I'm not sure how well it's going to go over. Two years ago we talked about reducing by 200 permits a year, 10 percent. Last year, we dropped the number by quite a bit. It looks like tonight we're going to drop the number. We're now getting into a regular program. My proposal would be that we update the Resolution to just reduce the number of permits 100 per year— unless Staff feels that there's a reason not to do that, and then they would bring it to Council—rather than having it come back to Council every year for this discussion. I feel like we are rehashing the same items year after year. What if we set an annual reduction, and we handle the exception to not reduce? FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 55 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 Mr. Mello: Our recommendation tonight was to not reduce the number of permits. Our reasoning for that was—there were multiple reasons we felt that to be the wisest recommendation. We have a lot of moving parts. We've talked about coming back to you with a more comprehensive Downtown Parking Management Plan, an Implementation and Finance Plan. If we reduce the permit too quickly, we have the danger of pushing employees into the 2-hour parking and hopscotching all over the 2-hour parking. We could see that go up if we don't find them an alternative place to park or another way to get Downtown. Council Member DuBois: My suggestion is that, unless Staff said they didn't want it to reduce, it would reduce. Otherwise, you would bring it back to us. It's just flipping what we're doing now. Mr. Keene: Could I jump in? I love the second part of that, which is us not having to come back. Seriously, that was something we were going to push for. Doesn't the existing directive still stand, for us to reduce this to zero over a 10-year period? Council Member DuBois: I think it got taken out over time. Mayor Kniss: Did we actually vote on that? Mr. Keene: You didn't adopt that. I take that back. Mayor Kniss: I can't find that in records anywhere. Council Member DuBois: I'll make the Motion—I thought it might be a little controversial. The intent was to pick a reasonably small number to give Staff an out if they feel like we shouldn't reduce a year from now, but not to just automatically come back and do this every year. You look like you want to speak. Council Member Fine: I have a couple of comments here. You make a good point. One, we don't want Staff coming back to us every time on this as a process issue. Two things about reducing 100 per year. We're getting to small enough numbers that 100 is not an insignificant amount. In terms of this, it's about 10 percent, a little bit less. Two, we are narrowing down on what the right area is. I would prefer to have this come back. I would have been willing to support this last year. Going forward, we're honing in around that 1,100 permits demand spot. As Josh mentioned, we have other moving parts. I'd like to see this settle in and would appreciate the opportunity to look at this again in a year. That's a long way of saying I won't accept this, but I expect it to go to a vote. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 56 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 Council Member Holman: Second. AMENDMENT: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Council Member Holman to add to the Motion, “reduce non-resident permits by 100 each year, unless Staff recommends a different number of permits.” Mayor Kniss: Karen, do you want to speak to your second? Council Member Holman: This is a prudent thing to do. It's prudent for the neighborhood. It's also prudent for Staff not to have to, as Council Member DuBois suggested. My only question for Staff is what if things are going well and you could reduce it by 200 permits. This just says unless Staff recommends a different—that captures it. I thought it was different language earlier. An Amendment to this would be "unless Staff recommends a different number of permits, in which case a recommendation should come forward to the Council." Council Member DuBois: That was the intent. INCORPORATED INTO THE AMENDMENT WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Amendment, “in which case this recommendation will be brought to Council.” Mr. Keene: (Inaudible) unless we don't think 100 permits is good, and then we have to come back to the Council and ask you for what you think would be acceptable? Council Member DuBois: It would be just like today. You would propose a number in a Staff Report. Council Member Holman: This means if we go according to the plan and reduce it to zero over a 10-year period, you wouldn't have to come to Council if 100 permits is the right number. Mr. Keene: Another alternative is you leave things the way they are; tell us we don't have to come back. If things really aren't working, either residents or businesses are going to come pounding on the Council's door and say, "You guys need to take this up again and do something." Council Member Holman: I'm done. Council Member Wolbach: Does the Mayor want to speak first? I'll defer. The Staff proposal tonight was to not reduce the number of permits at all. We're going to reduce it by 400 permit. That's a lot. From 1,500 permits, a reduction of 400 permits is almost a third. That will provide a stick to go with the carrots that we need to keep investing in with the TMA, more FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 57 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 opportunities for low-income permits in the garages and things like that. I don't feel comfortable right now saying next year we're going to be ready to go down below that almost one-third reduction. If it said we were going to reduce the permits by 100 permits each year but that was coupled with starting from 1,200 permits and we go to 1,100 permits next year or if we gave the City Manager 200 permits in reserve so that he could go back, I guess I'd be okay with that. I just don't feel comfortable making that decision for next year right now. Let's be honest. Whatever we pass, it's going to come back to Council next year. We're going to have to have this conversation next year. I know it's time consuming, but it's probably good that we have the conversation next year. We'll have the debate just like we're having it tonight. We can figure out what the right number is then based on the policy, based on the data, and based on what we think can get the votes to pass. I'll not be supporting the Amendment. We should have an open discussion next year, and we might reduce it by 400 permits next year just like we hopefully are going to do tonight. Vice Mayor Filseth: I wanted to ask Staff is this going to come back next year. Mr. Mello: We've been pretty swamped the last couple of months with bringing you three RPPs. At a minimum, I'd like to get them staggered so we're not preparing the Staff Reports in January and February. Vice Mayor Filseth: I'm not one of the people who thinks this should ratchet all the way down to zero. Some people do; I don't or I'm not yet persuaded. On the other hand, I don't really want to lock in 1,100 permits as the permanent level. My intuition is long-term we're probably going to want to be somewhat south of the 1,100 permits as we get TMA underway and other things. Maybe there's some garages and stuff like that. There are still some impacted streets out there, and I don't think we should leave that forever. If the Amendment doesn't pass, what's the mechanism by which we revisit this issue in a year or two or something like that? Is there any other mechanism? Are those my only two choices: ratchet to zero versus 1,100 permits forever? Ms. Stump: City Manager and Staff can bring it forward to you when they're hearing that there's an additional level of difficulty to be addressed or you could set a specific time or you could respond to the public at some point in the future when you're hearing that, and ask that the matter be agendized. Vice Mayor Filseth: It's a huge amount of effort for the public or the businesses to mount a campaign to come get the City's ear on this kind of stuff. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 58 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 Ms. Stump: I can think of one other mechanism, which is you could identify something that might occur in the future, such as the completion of a Downtown garage as time to bring the item back and peg a reassessment or an update to that. Vice Mayor Filseth: I think I'm done. Council Member Holman: I'm not sure it should go to zero either. The 100 permits a year to a point, which Staff identifies to come back to us, keeps us from having this and hashing this conversation every year. To answer Vice Mayor Filseth's point, I don't know that it should go to zero because there are community-serving businesses in the neighborhood that the neighborhood has said they accept and that need to park in the neighborhood. That's one of the triggers I expect would cause Staff to come back to Council. It's like we're down to the only commercial permits we're issuing are to neighborhood-serving businesses and retail that is in the neighborhood, that aren't eligible for Downtown parking permits. I would suppose that would be one of the triggers. Council Member DuBois: It covers (inaudible). Council Member Holman: It's just a clarification that I think that's one of the triggers for Staff. Vice Mayor Filseth: I have an idea. Suppose it was reduce nonresident permits by 100 next year, and then it comes back in 2 years? Mayor Kniss: This is speaking to Tom's Motion and asking him to alter it. Council Member DuBois: I think the intent is the same. Your proposal would skip 1 year. Mine would skip many years until Staff feels like it's an issue or people feel it's an issue. AMENDMENT AS AMENDED RESTATED: Council Member DuBois moved, seconded by Council Member Holman to add to the Motion, “reduce non- resident permits by 100 each year, unless Staff recommends a different number of permits, in which case this recommendation will be brought to Council.” Mayor Kniss: I don't see any other lights. We're voting on the Amendment to reduce the nonresident permits by 100 each year unless Staff recommends a different number of permits and so forth. Could you vote on the board? That fails on a 4-4. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 59 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 AMENDMENT AS AMENDED FAILED: 4-4 Fine, Kniss, Tanaka, Wolbach no, Scharff absent Mayor Kniss: I want to make a comment or two. Is there anyone else who wishes to speak? I want to ask a couple of questions of either Josh or Jim. At this point, we're talking about just 1,000 permits plus 100 permits in reserve. Do we have another reserve other than that 100 permits? Mr. Mello: The current program has 100 permits that are held in reserve specifically for new streets in Zones 9 and 10. The way I read this is that reserve would go away, and there would be a new reserve that would be for a shortage at the discretion of the City Manager. Mayor Kniss: I'm going to suggest to the maker of the Motion, because that's what I thought was the case, that we give 100 permits to the City Manager to oversee in case we suddenly discover that we have (inaudible) Downtown, they can find more people to work. Right now, there's a help wanted sign on almost every store Downtown. Maybe at some point we will get some more people coming back in. The initial issuance was headed toward 1,400 permits. Why it's gone down so dramatically I don't think we know. Adrian, I'm going to ask you if you're willing to have—there's 100 reserve plus another—that 100 permits in reserve, as I understand, is for the streets that are not yet requesting it. I would suggest another 100 permits to have just in case. If we haven't used it within a year or so, we can then eliminate it. Council Member Fine: I think what you're trying to get at is we have a documented demand of about 1,100 permits, but right now we're proposing 1,000 permits and 100 permits in reserve. You would like 1,000 permits and 200 permits in reserve. Mayor Kniss: Mm hmm. They're for two different purposes. One is for the streets that haven't requested it yet. The other is in case there's a shortage for the City Manager to deal with that—to make those decisions. Council Member Fine: I think I'll accept it. I understand that some of us up here who have helped craft this Motion may not be happy with that. Given that the main permits, the 1,000 permits, are the more valuable ones and the harder currency, giving a float of 20 percent is wise especially since we are narrowing around that spot of 1,090 permits. We're at that immediately with 1,000 permits plus 100 permits. A thousand plus 200 permits will probably still end up being around 1,100 permits, but it gives the City Manager a teeny bit of a delta there. I'll accept it, but I just wanted to explain. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 60 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 Mr. Mello: Could I jump in really quick? Based on the clause that says "with a focus on reductions in the outer zones," we're interpreting that to mean that we would eliminate the bulk of the employee permits in Zones 8, 9, and 10; thereby, rendering the reserve useless because we're not going to be issuing more permits in those zones. If you were going to have a reserve of 200 permits, they should all be together and held by the City Manager to use for a shortage not specific to those eligibility areas. Council Member Fine: Absolutely. Those are kind of separate. There are three parts we're talking about. One is the 1,000 permits. Two is the 200 reserve permits. Three is we have a preference to think about removing employee permits from those three zones. The Motion would be—it depends how we want to do our math, whether we want to say 1,200 with 200 in reserve permits or 1,000 and 200 in reserve permits. It doesn't really matter. Mayor Kniss: Adrian, with all due respect, I think you want to say 1,000 permits with 200 in reserve permits. The reserve are very different than those that are directly available. Council Member Wolbach: I was originally thinking about this as a Motion potentially. If we're going to go above 1,100 permits, it should come back to Council. Even without this Amendment, if the City Manager uses the 100 permits in reserve and finds that he needs more, he's going to bring it to Council. The reality is we could always go up. The City Manager could always bring this back to any time that he and the Mayor want to agendize it. I'm not going to support the Amendment. I do not accept it. Mayor Kniss: If you're not accepting it, then it's dying at this point. Council Member Wolbach: You could make it as an Amendment and get a second, and then we could discuss and vote on it. Mayor Kniss: At this hour, I'm going to leave it alone. Karen. AMENDMENT: Mayor Kniss moved, seconded by Council Member XX to replace in the Motion Part A, “to 1,200 with a focus on reductions in the outer Zones, and authorize the City Manager to hold 100 of those permits in reserve” with “to 1,000 with a focus on reductions in the outer Zones, and authorize the City Manager to hold an additional 200 permits in reserve.” AMENDMENT WITHDRAWN BY THE MAKER Council Member Holman: I need some clarification on B. A couple of things. Thank you for adding "including budget." Does that include staffing? FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 61 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 Council Member Fine: I think so. A parking management system is the resources, the people, the technology. Council Member Holman: Can we just clarify this with "budget for Staff to support the above" at the very end? It says in the Staff Report they don't have Staff to support these programs. Council Member Fine: Is that helpful to you? Council Member Holman: It's just clarification. Mr. Keene: It's unnecessary, but it's harmless. Council Member Fine: I'll take it. Council Member Holman, the spirit you're getting at is we as a Council may need to put more money towards the staffing for our parking management. Council Member Wolbach: I just wanted to add thanks for that. That's important. I'll accept it as well. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion Part B, “and budget for Staff to support the above.” Council Member Holman: I apologize, Council Member Wolbach. It says the commercial core and the parking assessment district. I read those as being redundant. Do I misunderstand something? Council Member Fine: I just want to make sure that, when we're thinking of a comprehensive parking management system, we're not thinking exclusively of RPP, but we're also thinking of our garages, our on-street resources, our surface lost, the parking assessment districts, all that stuff. Council Member Holman: My question is are the commercial core and the parking assessment district the same thing from Staff's perspective. Council Member Fine: No. Mr. Mello: They're not necessarily contiguous. Council Member Holman: That's clarification. Could we add one thing, the coordination and utilization of the Business Registry? Council Member Fine: Is that currently work under … Mr. Keene: I'm not sure what that means. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 62 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 Council Member Holman: Right now we have a Business Registry, which the timing doesn't work for the RPP in order to provide data information. It's not actually asking questions that are providing good information for the Staff to utilize data collected in the Business Registry to help support the parking management programs. Mr. Keene: Why don't you put something about factoring in the effectiveness of the Business Registry system? That's a side discussion. I understand the relationship to this, but we could end up peeling that off as an issue that comes earlier or separate to the Council. Council Member Holman: Your language was factoring in the Business Registry? Mr. Keene: Right. Council Member Holman: Is that acceptable to maker and seconder? Council Member Fine: It's better spoken here. I'll accept it just so we can move along. (Crosstalk.) Mr. Keene: I would say two things. The intent of this is general enough that if Staff, as we're working on this, uncovers something that hasn't been explicitly identified by the Council, you could count on us to surface it as an issue towards making things be effective. Identifying the Business Registry doesn't guarantee that we even have the perfect solution. We're going to bring it up, and then we would report back. Council Member Holman: Thank you Council Member Fine for accepting this. This is important because I want the departments to work together. Staff said twice tonight that that's not our department, that's not what we do. Mr. Keene: That's what department Staff said to you. I didn't say that to you as the City Manager. With all due respect, I don't need explicit direction to tell departments to work together. I don't mean that in an off-putting way. If that's what the intent is, that's different than us being sure that we're paying attention to the Business Registry. The Business Registry is hampered by a couple of things. One, the Council made recommendations on how to design it contrary to the Staff's recommendations about what we do that undermined its effectiveness. Two, we haven't been staffed well enough to redesign it. I want to be able to tell you what it would take for us to have a Business Registry that would work well to deliver on this. Council Member Holman: With the clarification that we've got the budget for Staff in here too, that should help support the coordination of the Business FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 63 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 Registry. Thank you, Council Member Fine, for accepting that. Hopefully Council Member Wolbach will too, and we can move along. Council Member Wolbach: I'm not going to accept it as friendly. If you can get a second, we can discuss it. Maybe you'll convince me. I'm not accepting it as friendly. Council Member Kou: I second. AMENDMENT: Council Member Holman moved, seconded by Council Member Kou to add to the Motion, “direct Staff to factor in the Business Registry.” (New Part D) Mayor Kniss: If there's no further discussion … do you want to speak to your second? Council Member Kou: Karen has said it. We need to be working together on all of this in order to have better information, data, whatever you want to call it. Right now, it's fragmented. That's it. Council Member Wolbach: I'm not going to support this Amendment. Not because I don't think it's important. There are a gajillion [sic] things we could add to this. Staff's gotten the message. Staff is clear with the Business Registry. Item B, we could extend much more. I don't think this is the time to making that Amendment. I am anxious to see the Business Registry get rolling again, but I don't think this Motion is the place for that. Mayor Kniss: Anyone else want to speak to this? Tom. Council Member DuBois: It's a little bit troubling. I knew we had some staffing challenges. I thought the Business Registry was an ongoing thing and it's operating. It sounds like it's not, which is news to me. Mr. Keene: We always identified that there were multiple stages or phases to the development of the Business Registry, which we've never gotten through. It is going to take some real focus and work for us to think about how to make it effective as far as, one, accurate reporting and, two, do we have the right process and requests to ensure we get the data we want. Council Member DuBois: Businesses are registering this year? Mr. Keene: I think so. I couldn't tell you where we were on that. Council Member DuBois: I saw some emails at the website; it's not functioning right now. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 64 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 Mr. Keene: The data is suspect enough that it has questionable utility for the reasons you want to use it. It's much more of a redesign. We don't have a Development Services Director right now on top of all the staffing problems we've had. Council Member DuBois: The way I understand the Amendment is for you to include it as part of the budget requests. We've voted twice to make sure we prioritize by business type, and we don't have a good source for that. That's why I'm supporting it. Mayor Kniss: I'm going to call for the vote. That passes on a 5-4—4-3, sorry. It passes on a 5-3 with eight of us present obviously. AMENDMENT PASSED: 5-3 Filseth, Tanaka, Wolbach no, Scharff absent Mayor Kniss: The Business Registry stays in place. I'm going to try one more Amendment. If you go back to A, I'm going to suggest—I'll speak to it first and then I'll suggest the change. This is rather dramatic that we go from a possible 1,500 permits down to basically 1,000 permits. I'd like to add as an Amendment is to have the City Manager have an additional 100 permits in reserve. This is now 1,000 permits—you've got 1,000 permits with 100 permits out there in reserve. I'm going to suggest that the City Manager have an additional 100 permits in reserve. Council Member Fine: That would be 1,000 permits and then 200 permits. Didn't we try that? I am willing to, as I indicated earlier, accept that. The reserve permits are more flexible and amenable to our residents because they're less likely to be used. They're at Jim's discretion. It is the prudent thing to do, so I'll accept that. I thought we had gone through this. Council Member Wolbach: We talked about this just a few minutes ago or maybe several minutes ago. I did accept it as a friendly Amendment. I'm open to considering it as an unfriendly Amendment if you want to find a second. I'm just not accepting it as a friendly Amendment. Mayor Kniss: Thank you for that. Let me see if I can get a second to that Amendment. AMENDMENT: Mayor Kniss moved, seconded by Council Member Tanaka to replace in the Motion Part A, “to 1,100 with a focus on reductions in the outer Zones, and authorize the City Manager to hold 100 of those permits in reserve” with “to 1,200 with a focus on reductions in the outer Zones, and authorize the City Manager to hold 200 of those permits in reserve.” FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 65 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 Mayor Kniss: There is a second to that Amendment. I want to repeat what I said. This looks as though we are really saying to businesses, "We're going to make this even harder for you to find employees to survive in the Downtown." We have seen stores that have closed. I'm concerned about where we're heading. We're an Amazon nation at this point. Amazon continues to tempt us with more ways to buy that are not in stores. I feel strongly that reducing it by that much—we're really down to 1,000 nonresident permits. This gives the flexibility to have 200 permits in reserve. I don't think the City Manager would be unwise in how those permits were used. If they're not needed at the end of a year, we're going to look at this again, and we could eliminate those. Greg. Council Member Fine: (Inaudible) has proposed a good compromise that gives us a little bit more flexibility without staking down new employee permits. I would encourage us to consider this. It provides a little bit more flexibility for our businesses over the coming year while we are still significantly reducing employee permits in the RPP districts. Ms. Stump: It's not correct the way it reads. It should increase the base number to 1,200 permits with 200 in reserve permits. Council Member Wolbach: That was actually my first question. I don't think I'm convinced it's necessary. Vice Mayor Filseth: Cory's argument earlier that it can come back to Council if we run into trouble is a compelling one. AMENDMENT FAILED: 3-5 Fine, Kniss, Tanaka yes, Scharff absent MOTION AS AMENDED RESTATED: Council Member Fine moved, seconded by Council Member Wolbach to: A. Continue the Downtown Residential Preferential Parking (RPP) Program with the following modifications: Direct Staff to return with a Resolution to reduce non-resident permits to 1,100 with a focus on reductions in the outer Zones, and authorize the City Manager to hold 100 of those permits in reserve; and B. Direct Staff to return to Council with a proposal, including budget, for a comprehensive parking management system, including the RPP programs, the commercial core, and the Parking Assessment Districts and budget for Staff to support the above; and FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 66 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 C. Direct Staff to return to Council with a proposal for parking quality standards with parameters that can be adjusted based on neighborhood characteristics; and D. Direct Staff to factor in the Business Registry. Mayor Kniss: We're ready at this point to vote on the main Motion. I am still uncomfortable with it. I am going to vote no, but I would anticipate it would pass. That passes on a 7-1 vote with the Mayor dissenting. MOTION AS AMENDED PASSED: 7-1 Kniss no, Scharff absent 12. Approval of the City of Palo Alto Utilities 2018 Strategic Plan. THIS ITEM CONTINUED TO A DATE UNCERTAIN. 13. Colleagues' Memo From Council Members DuBois, Filseth, Scharff, and Tanaka on Fiscal Transparency in Labor Negotiations. Council Member Scharff returned to the meeting at 10:33 P.M. Mayor Kniss: Let's move forward with one last item we're taking up tonight. This is a Colleagues' Memo from Council Members DuBois, Filseth, Scharff and Tanaka on fiscal transparency in labor negotiations. Whomever is going to introduce this. Vice Mayor Filseth: This is about fiscal transparency. It's a proposed policy modeled after an existing San Jose Council policy, which says that during the bargaining process formal offers and counteroffers should be posted to the City's website along with a fiscal analysis including any impact on long-term liabilities. It's not intended to change the bargaining process itself. It introduces public visibility at key checkpoints during the process. The current practice is there is no public information at all during the bargaining process until a tentative Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) is reached and presented to Council for an up or down vote. By that time, it's essentially too late for public review and comment to have any bearing on the outcome of the process. City finances and pension liabilities in particular are a major public concern. With decisions affecting pensions, we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars in public debt that will take the community many decades to pay off. Currently, those decisions are very opaque. The City is a public agency. This is a major public concern that merits public review and input and transparency. Matters of serious public concern done entirely in Closed Session are what we have today. There's no compelling reason that so much of it needs to be done out of sight. Again, this is not intended to change the bargaining process itself. It introduces FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 67 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 public visibility at key checkpoints during the process. What's proposed here is a Council policy, not an actual ordinance, with discussions from legal. Because it's not proposed as a formal Ordinance, Council would still be allowed to make exceptions if it deemed fit. Finally, this is about good governance. Beyond that, eventually cities all over the State of California are going to be asking the public to make a real sacrifice over these outstanding liabilities. Government and labor are going to have to work together to bring everybody along with this. I believe that California residents are not going to be happy as the full import of this comes home. If we're going to bring everybody along with this, then all of the State agencies are going to need to be very transparent and inclusive with the public about this top to bottom. This a tide that is coming in. Let me make a Motion as well. Mayor Kniss: Wait a second, a public speaker. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Lynn Krug. Welcome. Lynn Krug: Good evening, however late in the evening. It's Lynn Krug. I am the former Chapter Chair of Service Employees International Union (SEIU). I'm here on behalf of SEIU members this evening to take notes. I'd like to say that many of us are listening from home tonight, all those people that commute an hour or 2 hours each way to work. We want to have a respectful conversation with you in the future. Those responses will be forthcoming. I'd like to see that we maintain a relationship—this is from me personally—that is welcoming to future employees. As Jim Keene mentioned earlier, staffing issues are real. Maintaining an environment for future employees and existing employees that is welcoming, that shows respect, and honors the need for having a high level of skill for many jobs here in the City is very important given the economic and housing issues we now face. Our hiring problems are real. It makes it even difficult for existing employees to be able to work if they cannot work for Staff that have the skills that are needed for those jobs. I highly encourage you in the face of your Colleagues' Memo to also consider how you can make things more copacetic, how the City can run better for the citizens itself, and they get their money's worth for those employees that are hired. They need to be employees who are well skilled and serve the City well. I hope it goes well. In the future, SEIU will come back with a response. Thanks. Mayor Kniss: Thank you for coming at this late hour. Back to you, Vice Mayor Filseth, for a Motion. Vice Mayor Filseth: I'd like to make a three-part Motion. This is on Page 169 of the Staff Report. One, the City Council should refer this proposal to the Finance Committee for refinement and to develop the fiscal and actuarial FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 68 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 analysis and reporting template. Two, at the appropriate time, the City Manager should initiate meet and confer discussions with the City's bargaining groups regarding this proposed policy. Three, the final proposal should return to Council for full discussion and approval. Council Member Scharff: Second. Council Member Wolbach: Second. Council Member Fine: Don't steal someone else's memo. Council Member Wolbach: I'll defer to former Mayor Scharff. MOTION: Vice Mayor Filseth moved, seconded by Council Member Wolbach to: A. Refer the proposal regarding Fiscal Transparency in Labor Negotiations to the Finance Committee for refinement and to develop the fiscal and actuarial analysis template; B. Direct Staff to, at the appropriate time, initiate Meet and Confer discussions with the City’s bargaining groups regarding this proposed Policy; and C. Return the final proposal to Council. Mayor Kniss: Are you speaking to your Motion now that you have a second? Vice Mayor Filseth: I believe I've already spoken to it. Mayor Kniss: Would the seconder like to speak? Council Member Wolbach: Part C is the Amendment I was going to offer. You beat me to it. I like the Motion. Transparency is helpful. Being thoughtful as a community, as a Council about some of the big fiscal decisions we face is important. When this goes to Finance, there will be some good discussions. I look forward to seeing how it looks when it comes back to Council. I appreciate SEIU sending somebody here tonight. Mayor Kniss: Council Member Fine and then Council Member DuBois. Council Member Fine: Two quick comments. One, thank you, gentlemen, for bringing this forward. This is well thought out and balanced. In my limited experience in labor negotiations, I really do have some hope that this can help us going forward and also help our bargaining units as well. Two quick comments. One, thank you for including the City of Fullerton's labor FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 69 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 negotiations profile. This is really informative. It's super basic. If we can attain something like this, we will have made progress. The second thing is just a broad comment. In some ways Letter B is the most important. I was researching this, it came to my attention that we would only be able to move forward with this through a meet and confer process. I would put forth that Letter B may be the most important movement here. Otherwise, I'm happy to support this. Thank you all for bringing it forward. Mayor Kniss: Council Member DuBois. Council Member DuBois: This was a carefully considered memo. We really tried to model it on existing policies in other cities. We looked at many cities, but San Jose and Fullerton in particular. It's good for the public. It's good for the City. I actually think this is really good for our employees. It helps the public understand what's needed to support the level of services owe have in our City, what's needed to attract and retain employees, and what the cost of those employees are in the Bay Area. Having some transparency on this process will help bring the public along so that everyone will understand why labor agreements are made the way they are. Mayor Kniss: Council Member Holman and then Scharff. Council Member Holman: I also want to thank the Colleagues who brought this forward. I look forward to it creating a more collaborative environment. Getting some sunshine on this process is helpful and healthy for Council Members, Staff, and bargaining units. I appreciate you all bringing it forward. Thank you. Mayor Kniss: Council Member Scharff. Council Member Scharff: I figured I had to speak since I came back for this. I'm looking forward to the meet and confer process. I hope our friends in labor feel that this is a positive step. Transparency is good for everyone. It's good for the residents. They have a sense of what's going on. They see the progress and the initiation, and they're not surprised when they see an MOU finally on the calendar. There are updates. The community gets brought along in the process. It forces people to start at more reasonable positions. Who knows where people start because it's all Closed Session. You can see people giving thoughtful offers that they would put in the public eye. Hopefully all of that makes the whole process work better. We are starting labor negotiations right around now. I would say to our friends in labor that how long the meet and confer process takes is up to both parties on this. We could do this quickly and see how it goes and see if it's a real positive in the steps. I'm hoping it will be. I'm hoping we all come together on this and work together on it. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 70 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 Mayor Kniss: Thanks in particular to Vice Mayor Filseth because I know he drove this from behind even if he wouldn't take credit for it. The rest of you have agreed; I know you have. This is a very creative proposal. It's going to take some time, some energy. You've worked closely with City Council on this. I'm delighted you brought it forward. I think we're ready to vote. Actually we might go home. That passes unanimously. Thanks to the four of you who brought that forward. MOTION PASSED: 9-0 Inter-Governmental Legislative Affairs None. Council Member Questions, Comments and Announcements Mayor Kniss: We have gotten to the point where you all can say something about what you've been doing lately or intend to do in the future or whatever. Any comments at all? Karen and then Lydia. Council Member Holman: Just one brief one. Council Member Kou and I attended a really interesting and informative retail meeting on Wednesday of last week. We'll be reporting on that next week. Mayor Kniss: If there's nothing else—Lydia. Sorry. Council Member Kou: As the liaison to the Palo Alto Youth Council, yesterday they had a meet and greet with Council Members. Council Member Tanaka and I attended. The teens asked some really great questions. They really wanted to know what Council does, how we got on. One of the questions that really struck me was about the Parkland High School shooting. They seemed pretty inquisitive about that. I would be nice if we can maybe ask the Chief to have a session with them just to give them information. Just an idea. Mayor Kniss: Thank you for going to that. I had read about it and wasn't able to go. Greg, you've thought of something? Council Member Scharff: I did think of something. I remembered on Friday I went to the Parks and Rec Retreat, which was really informative. I've got to say the Parks and Rec Committee showed us all of their accomplishments for the past year. It was quite amazing. They're doing a fantastic job. We talked a lot about what we should include in a tax measure to fund the Parks Master Plan and other park improvements for this year. Mayor Kniss: I see no other lights. I know it's early, but we are adjourned. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 71 of 71 Special City Council Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/26/18 Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 10:47 P.M.