HomeMy WebLinkAbout1990-07-12 City Council Summary Minutes JOINT TRI-COUNCIL MEETING CITIES OF EAST PALO ALTO, MENLO PARK, AND PALO ALTO THURSDAY, JULY 12, 1990, 7:30 P.M. EAST PALO ALTO CITY HALL 2415 UNIVERSITY AVENUE, EAST PALO ALTO INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW Mayor William Vines of East Palo Alto called the meeting to order at 7:30 p.m. The intent of the meeting was to engage in serious dialogue about mutual problems over the past few years. Gathering with good and righteous people in a world which was wrought with serious problems, the concentration should be on things which could be worked on together with friends and neighbors; it was important to pray and to rise and take action on those prayers. Many members of the public had asked the joint Councils to find ways to work together; so on behalf of the City of East Palo Alto, its staff and its citizens, he welcomed the neighboring Council Members from the Cities of Menlo Park and Palo Alto. Mayor Gerald Grant of the City of Menlo Park spoke on behalf of the Menlo Park Councilmembers and expressed their positive outlook towards sensible solutions to the problems of the region. Mayor Mike Cobb of the City of Palo Alto thanked Mayor Vines and the City Council of East Palo Alto for hosting the historic meeting. He relayed the regrets of Council Members Fazzino and Renzel who were out of town; Council Member Sutorius was at a regional meeting in Santa Clara County and planned to arrive later. He looked forward to positive results from the meeting. The problems and issues were regional, and he hoped the meeting signaled the beginning of a process towards working together to find solutions in a positive manner to benefit all of the communities. Mayor Vines introduced Senator Rebecca Morgan, the facilitator for the meeting, and commended her because her concern for the people of the district and her willingness to assist. He also introduced San Mateo County Supervisor Tom Nolan. Senator Morgan said the three Councils had talked about getting together over the past few months. She shared the motivations and specific events which prompted the joint effort; listening to President Gorbachev's speech at Stanford; sharing thoughts with Mayors Cobb, Grant, and Vines during the reception following the speech; and expressing the need for the three cities joining together. When the joint meeting was planned, she responded to the offer to facilitate the meeting because she was looking for ways in which she could be helpful in getting more money for the schools in East Palo Alto and to facilitate legislation on request. The hot talk of legislators now was regional planning; however, she was not sure telling cities how to plan regionally was as effective as the local effort which came from the grassroots and had cities working together to solve regional
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problems. She was participating in an effort to see if the three cities could start the dialogue which would go a long way in solving the regional problems. The Golden Triangle was formed to look at transportation problems and other interrelated transportation problems. At the agenda planning process, the desire was to call the meeting "Tri-City '91" and start the process. She outlined the agenda which called for reports from staff members of the three cities showing success stories and evidence that cities could and had worked together successfully, and secondly, reports from staff members sharing some of the problems and challenges which they faced. The Council Members would then talk about how to change the challenges into opportunities and turn them into successes like the ones reported at the beginning. There was a need for economic development and solving the transportation problems on the streets and in the transit services between and among the three cities; there was a need for cooperation in the area of human services which included law enforcement. After deliberation and dialogue among the Council Members, a half hour would be reserved for comments from the audience. No action was planned on specific items, but comments and questions were welcome and staff members would respond. She urged members of the public to give oral communication slips to East Palo Alto City Manager Stan Hall. Her sincere hope was for an agreement or buy-in from members of the three city councils that the meeting would be the first tri-city planning effort on how to solve regional problems and turn them into opportunities, and that an agreement would follow on what the next steps would be. People would want to see significant, substantial results; talking was great, but action was better. She read letters from Congressmen Tom Lantos and Tom Campbell congratulating the cities on the joint city council meeting, announcing an effort to bring Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Jack Kemp to East Palo Alto on July 28, 1990, and inviting the Council Members to join them for the opportunity to speak directly with HUD Secretary Kemp regarding housing issues in the area. The purpose of the event would be to provide focus on East Palo Alto and to underscore commitments from surrounding communities to face the common challenges together. A press conference would provide a visible, united commitment among elected officials and citizens to provide a positive quality of life and an opportunity for all Peninsula residents. ROLL CALL East Palo Alto: Present: Mouton, Bostic, Vines Absent: Coats, Johnson Menlo Park: Present: Grant, Jones, La Fetra, Morris, Sorensen
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Absent: None Palo Alto: Present: Andersen, Cobb, Kniss, Levy, McCown, Woolley Absent: Fazzino, Renzel, Sutorius REPORTS OF OFFICIALS Menlo Park Police Chief Bruce Cumming said the mid-Peninsula cities had a ten-year history of cooperation in terms of law enforcement. He touched briefly on three items which had been very important to the City of Menlo Park as well as the neighboring cities; the drug education, Red Ribbon Day which dealt with the important topic of substance abuse, and recent success in limiting gunfire on the Fourth of July. In 1985, East Palo Alto, Atherton, and Menlo Park became involved a crisis drug grant program and worked together using state funds to provide drug education in the schools. Over the past five years, the drug education program in Menlo Park reached 7,000 elementary aged students per year. The school districts involved were Ravenswood, Los Lomitas, and Menlo Park. While East Palo Alto was not involved in the effort, there was a positive side benefit in that Menlo Park had four schools in the Ravenswood School District in Menlo Park. He would like to see the effort expanded to include not only the drug education but also self-esteem, peer pressures, and decision-making; and, although the topics were complicated, some improvement should be seen over the decade. Educating youngsters about drugs would help alleviate the drug abuse problem for kids on the fringe but not for hard-core kids who saw drugs as a livelihood. Red Ribbon Week had been held for the past two years during October in Atherton, East Palo Alto, Palo Alto, and Menlo Park for the purpose of getting the message out to the people in the communities. People in Menlo Park asked the drug education teacher for drug information material and showed a great deal of interest in learning about the drug abuse program. Another success story which occurred over the Fourth of July in East Palo Alto and the eastern part of Menlo Park concerned the use of guns. A regional educational program involving the use of flyers was developed in Spanish and English which asked the citizens not to use guns to celebrate the occasion, and the citizens cooperated responsibly. The effort would be continued on the Fourth of July and New Year's Eve. Palo Alto Police Chief Chris Durkin said the Criminal Apprehension Team (CAT) had been formed two years ago and involved the hypothesis that only a few people caused a disproportionate amount of crime; the Police Department had a good idea of who the criminals were and if they were wanted for violation of state parole or by some other police department for some other offense. The CAT team was successful by bringing law enforcement agencies together and set aside traditional roles or geographical boundaries to pull together for the single purpose of locating
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wanted criminals. In 1283 days, the CAT team arrested 1,002 people. The arrests involved crimes ranging from robberies and burglaries to narcotic sales. The CAT team's cooperating agencies included the State Bureau of Tobacco and Firearms, the Santa Clara County Sheriffs' Association, and other local agencies. Virtually every community saw a reduction of crime during the time the CAT team was in operation. East Palo Alto Director of Human Services said everything the City of East Palo Alto did in the area of Human Services was in cooperation with its neighboring cities and needed to be expanded. Approximately 1,500 people between the ages of six and eighteen. According to most recent statistics, a significant number of existing programs were not reaching the number of people in need of those services. The Palo Alto Recreation Department and the Police Athletic League (PAL) provided programs for the youngsters from East Palo Alto. East Palo Alto consolidated resources with the Palo Alto Recreation Department to provide and expand recreational programs for youngsters and adults. Decisions had been made to work on team sports such as basketball, develop a sports clinic, and a baseball and football league. At some point in the future, a joint festival was projected, as was the sharing of resources. Palo Alto Council Member Kniss said the Cities of East Palo Alto and Palo Alto had been working together since May in a grassroots project to reopen the swimming pools. Senator Morgan said the reports indicated ways the cities were working together towards the drug education for the young people, Red Ribbon Day, the law enforcement people coming together in an effort to keep the streets safer, and the recreation departments working to help young people and their recreational needs. Such successes took money, volunteers, and planning. Palo Alto Director of Planning and Community Environment Ken Schreiber commented on efforts which the City of Palo Alto had undertaken in the area of economic development and transportation. Historically, the City of Palo Alto had not seen a need to develop an extensive understanding of what the economic situation was in the private sector of Palo Alto and how it had changed. During the past few years, the City realized not having the information was a problem, so it had undertaken active efforts to learn more about what drove the private economy for the region, developed outreach programs for cooperative efforts with employers and Stanford University, and the Finance Department initiated an Economic Outlook Committee to build understanding between the public and private sectors. The City of Palo Alto had recently tried to reduce traffic in cooperation with the Golden Triangle Task Force and Santa Clara County, as well as the cities of Mountain View, Sunnyvale, San Jose, and Milpitas by encouraging van and car pooling with the focus on longer distance commuters. East Palo Alto Director of Redevelopment David Miller said the
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major redevelopment activities of the City of East Palo Alto in the Ravenswood and University Circle projects were an opportunity to bring new factories for employment and regional opportunities to the community. Efforts were culminating in bringing major employment and economic opportunities. He believed a real reformation in terms of community planning, future housing, and employment was taking place and that a situation was being created in which the community could apply financial resources to problem areas which were obvious to the community and a real challenge for the City of East Palo Alto. The major critical challenges were transportation, traffic, and fiscal constraints. He hoped the physical presence of new development in the community would benefit everyone. Menlo Park City Manager Janet Dolan said the traditional emphasis in Menlo Park had been on preserving the neighborhoods, but with the advent of Proposition 13 and the inability to raise money, the City found itself needing to provide sound economic development within the community to provide money for services. With the two goals in mind, the City had a redevelopment agency to provide improved housing and services. One area of economic development which was projected within the next few years was the development of the former Raychem International Headquarters site on the Bayfront Expressway which Microsystems announced it intended to buy and develop as one of its campuses and which the City believed would provide economic development for the redevelopment agency to provide for improved housing. Menlo Park was also concerned about traffic generated by economic development, had the first ordinance in San Mateo County and had endorsed the countywide ordinance, and was working with employers to provide various means of transporting workers to and from work through mass transportation and shuttle buses. Menlo Park looked forward through its economic development toward providing financial resources for its services and would conduct a thorough financial analysis as to the true costs and true revenues new businesses would bring to the community. Senator Morgan summarized the need for economic development which existed in each of the three cities; Menlo Park and Palo Alto were more built-out, but there were still some opportunities for economic development which would bring new people into the cities and would cause traffic problems, much of which would come from East Palo Alto. Justifiably, the City of East Palo Alto desired to develop its economic base. The three cities were impacted by new employees, the degree of economic development which would bring financial resources into the community and which would make a major difference in what could be provided in the way of police and human service activities. The questions which needed to be addressed by the three city councils was how to allow the City of East Palo Alto to become economically stronger and how to get people into the three cities to work. CITY COUNCIL COMMENTS
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Mayor Cobb believed the formation of a series of subcommittees should be formed to discuss problems and return to individual councils with specific ideas to solve specific problems. The University Circle project had negative impacts on Menlo Park and Palo Alto which he did not want to see discussed and resolved in the courts; they should be discussed among themselves, and he hoped the dialogue would start a process which would find clear answers so the project could proceed. The purpose of the agenda was to talk about economic development, transportation, and human services because they were all linked. The University Circle project created traffic which impacted all three communities, generated dollars to provide for human services and other programs for East Palo Alto, and all were tied together. Solutions needed to be found so that when the process was completed, all three cities would be winners. Senator Morgan queried if Mayor Cobb intended the subcommittees to be separated into the areas of transportation, human services, and economic development. Mayor Cobb did not care how the subcommittees were characterized but hoped the subcommittees would bring in all Council Members from the three cities so they could all be part of the dialogue. Councilmember Jan La Fetra believed talking together had already achieved progress but believed reality had to be dealt with. The cities could not deal with what used to be or what they would like the situation to be but with what existed; there would be more people and the world was changing. The first step was to truly define the problems; all sides had a different picture of the problems. Regionalism was the coming way and would need to start at home by thinking in a regional way, and she believed Tri-Cities was a good way to go if discussions started with those thoughts in mind. There would be sacrifices, but there should be gains for all three cities. Mayor Grant said the business part of the University Circle project was set for 1,000,000 square feet but would probably go in three stages; 400,000 square feet in each of the first two stages and 200,000 in the last addition which translated into 3,200 more people coming to work in that area. A subcommittee could begin to deal with potential solutions to bring back to the councils, and he would recommend to his council that one subcommittee would deal with Palo Alto's developments at Stanford University which could run into substance in terms of traffic. In 1988, there were 54,000 cars per day travelled both ways across the Dumbarton Bridge and split up in three different ways; 22,000 went into University Avenue, 20,000 went down Willow Road, and the other 12,000 went towards Marsh Road. For further development, most workers would be coming from the East Bay because there was not enough room to house them in the area where the jobs would be and there would be a lot more use of the highway system. He would like a subcommittee look at the situation and return with suggestions. Some suggestions presented in previous meetings had
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not been agreed upon and should be thrown aside to search for new suggestions which could provide satisfactory solutions for all. East Palo Alto wanted 156 acres for redevelopment projects which would be further impact traffic. The Tri-Cities needed too work together to find the most expeditious way of getting to and from the major developments. To that end, he challenged the group which would be studying the transportation issues and come back with the best recommendations instead of getting into a ramble and accomplishing nothing. Mayor Vines was pleased with the candid discussion; however, the City of East Palo Alto could not afford to wait on the redevelopment issues. He proposed putting Marsh Road, Willow Road, University Avenue, and Highway 101 on the table and look at all four options in the very congested areas with the proposed developments in Menlo Park, the ongoing developments in Palo Alto, and the University Circle project in East Palo Alto. He would ask San Mateo County to help with the situation and believed the Tri-Cities should commit themselves to the task so that one or two projects would not be singled out and asked to mitigate all the traffic solutions for the region because it was not possible; however, together, they should be able to mitigate the traffic concerns. Senator Morgan said traffic was a major challenge for the Tri-Cities. She had helped sponsor legislation to save the trains on the Peninsula which she hoped would help work out some of the problems. She would be happy to sponsor legislation to try to solve the Dumbarton Bridge problem, but it would not be successful unless an agreement was reached among the cities involved; for her to introduce legislation while each of the three cities hired lobbyists to fight for separate solutions would be counterproductive, but if they agreed to work together, she would do everything in her power to do everything necessary to back them up. East Palo Alto Councilmember Barbara Mouton supported the concept of having committees work on the projects and stated that one of East Palo Alto's economic development objectives was to create employment for its citizens; so from that prospective, the negative traffic impact would effect East Palo Alto more than the other cities. Menlo Park Councilmember Jack Morris said traffic was so bad now that even large, incremental increases would be a small percentage and technically not significant in terms of what might be legal and reasonable. Over the years in which he had been on the Council, he had participated on various committees to promote regionalism within the structures available; however, it was difficult to get formal working arrangements between the cities across county lines, and he believed perhaps Senator Morgan could help facilitate the process. Senator Morgan said if the cities would buy into the follow up,
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she would be happy to be part of the solution. Menlo Park Councilmember Ted Sorensen was concerned about the specter of regional government taking control and encroaching upon local governments at some point. He suggested a Joint Powers Agency (JPA), but did not know whether having two counties involved would require state legislation. The Tri-Cities could proceed with committees after things settled a bit. ** Side 5 Palo Alto Mayor Mike Cobb agreed the program should be speeded up. He suggested the group move forward with the subcommittees and have the individual mayors and their colleagues to work out the details in order to get as many people as possible around the table. Senator Morgan asked whether any Council Member at the table wished to voice an objection or concern about the directions for the three mayors to entitle the effort as "Tri-City 91" and form subgroups of human services, transportation, and economic development, taking into consideration some of the issues brought before the group such as whether or not a public member would serve on the subgroups, whether Stanford would be included to deal with transportation and land use issues and economic impacts which were part of the agenda dealing with the real human issues. Menlo Park Councilmember Jack Morris hoped the effort would not get in the way of any possible communications between the cities. Menlo Park was in the process of getting a grocery store which would be close to East Palo Alto and studying the traffic impact might be something East Palo Alto might want to participate in solving. Senator Morgan suggested it might be feasible to do something regarding a pedestrian overpass between Menlo Park and East Palo Alto, and other issues such as Highway 109, the Dumbarton Bridge, jobs, and traffic impacts could only be resolved if all three cities participated. Mayor Vines believed some ground work needed to be set, particularly with the City of Palo Alto and Menlo Park in the area of human services, to look at facilities and some way to not allow East Palo Alto citizens to feel illegitimate about using them. Anyone should be able to use Foothill Park, for a fee, but Palo Alto made it just for Palo Alto residents. If Palo Alto really wanted to be involved in the projects, tradeoffs about the use of Foothill Park or the baseball field should be included. The tradeoffs in terms of the economic value just was not there; if the group would put together a general package and talk about them together, then there could be economic information to even up what people were asking for. He suggested an economic task force consisting of the public and elected officials from the three cities to talk about economic evenness. Just to talk about a
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regional approach to economic well being was not possible; however, it could be done on the human services side and use of facilities would be a real tradeoff and a place to start. Senator Morgan clarified that in identifying the subgroups, it might be necessary to go back to the councils to identify the right needs and purposes for the Tri-City 91 group. Councilmember Barbara Mouton was concerned about opportunities for the citizens of East Palo Alto and referred to its diverse community. She saw Tri-City 91 as an opportunity to bring the attention of the needs of East Palo to the rest of the world and to communicate with other people what was going on in its community. She would be concerned if the cities continued to proceed with the attitude that they could not talk with other people in other cities. She looked forward to working on a task force and hoped for an equal opportunity to serve and represent the region. Mayor Gerald Grant recommended the representatives leave the meeting and go back to their respective councils and discuss the subcommittee concept and the objectives from each council. When the objectives were written up, the representatives should then proceed to work on them. Setting up joint subcommittees with representatives from each of the three cities would keep all parties updated on economic development and what the wishes were. East Palo Alto wanted and desperately needed an economic base to fund its city services, and the three cities might be able to work to put economic opportunities together by creating a positive climate for private businesses, and if the task forces were properly put together with as many councilmembers and members of the public as possible to work and not just talk, something might get done in 1991 if work started now. August 15, 1990 should be set for the mayors to come together and exchange lists of wants and needs of their respective councils. Senator Morgan suggested setting the date of August 15, 1990, for the meeting of mayors with directions from their councils to come back together with the expectations that possible goals could be established and the participation level set. Menlo Park Councilmember Jan La Fetra said it was important that as the subcommittees worked that they take a minute to make sure that terms are defined. She had heard at least six definitions for one term used during the meeting, and would have perhaps used even a different term if she had not listened to the audience and received their feelings before she left with what was in her mind regarding the item. If the communities did not cooperate to get some of the things done which they could not accomplish alone, nothing would be accomplished. She would endeavor to achieve real communication which would be helpful. Senator Morgan clarified that August 15, 1990, was the date set as the time for the mayors to get together with proposals for 1991.
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She complimented the audience for its participation and willingness of the councils to work together. She was hopeful positive results would come out of the effort. She heard many positive attitudes expressed about how to work together so the citizens in all three cities could be winners. She expressed to each of the cities and its citizens that she was available to help their efforts in Sacramento.
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