HomeMy WebLinkAbout1996-01-08 City Council Summary Minutes Regular Meeting January 8, 1996 ORAL COMMUNICATIONS ........................................ 77-450 1. Election of Mayor and Vice Mayor ...................... 77-450 2. Resolution Honoring Joe Simitian as Mayor of Palo Alto for 1995 .................................................. 77-455 ADJOURNMENT: The meeting adjourned at 8:50 p.m. to a reception. ...................................................... 77-459
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Regular Meeting January 8, 1996 The City Council of the City of Palo Alto met on this date in the Council Chambers at 7:05 p.m. City Clerk Gloria Young conducted the swearing in of City Council Members Joseph H. Huber, Dick Rosenbaum, Joe Simitian, and Lanie Wheeler. PRESENT: Andersen, Fazzino, Huber, Kniss, McCown, Rosenbaum, Schneider, Simitian, Wheeler MOTION: Mayor Simitian moved, seconded by Wheeler, to move Oral Communications forward to precede Election of the Mayor and Vice Mayor. MOTION PASSED 9-0. ORAL COMMUNICATIONS Edmund Power, 2254 Dartmouth Street, spoke regarding government by the people (letter on file in the City Clerk's Office). SPECIAL ORDERS OF THE DAY 1. Election of Mayor and Vice Mayor Council Member McCown supported Vice Mayor Wheeler as Mayor for 1996. If successfully elected, she would be the sixth woman Mayor in the history of the City of Palo Alto. Vice Mayor Wheeler started her distinguished service in the Palo Alto community as a member of the League of Women Voters and rose through the ranks to become its president. She was an influential driving force in the development of youth soccer in the Palo Alto, which was an irreplaceable part of the activities of the community today. In 1979, she and Vice Mayor Wheeler were appointed to the Planning Commission. Vice Mayor Wheeler had been elected unanimously on the first vote of the City Council which was made up of a very broad spectrum of political perspectives. She served two full terms with Vice Mayor Wheeler on the Planning Commission, and Vice Mayor Wheeler's service on the planning Commission exhibited the same attributes and skills as she depicted currently on the City Council. She was extraordinarily thorough, well prepared, and knowledgeable on all issues. Beyond that, on Planning issues Vice Mayor Wheeler never relied on the materials alone that she received in the Council packet. She, without fail, walked the site and investigated and examined issues she felt necessary to render a fair decision on each item. Those skills had been brought to bear since her election to the City Council in 1991 on a number of other issues about which she had great experience and interest. The principle among those had been finances which Vice Mayor Wheeler had made an incredible contribution with her service on the Finance Committee and finance issues in general for the City. Vice Mayor Wheeler's name was synonymous with the term Mission Driven Budgeting (MDB). She had the opportunity to speak about the new MDB in various
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sessions around the country on behalf of the City of Palo Alto. In terms of areas of interest, Vice Mayor Wheeler had become a leader among the current Council on issues of historic preservation. None of the Council would forget the doggedness with which Vice Mayor Wheeler kept reminding the Council of the importance of the loggia of the Williams property, such as what part of the Williams property was the loggia and why it was important to preserve it which the Council had succeeded in doing. Finally, she felt one of Vice Mayor Wheeler's attributes was that she was truly a team player. Good ideas that came to or from the dias so often had as many as nine fathers and/or mothers of those ideas and, similarly, the success of the Palo Alto community and the success of the current Council was largely attribut-able to the position the Council found itself in because of the work of the staff. The Mayor, in any given year, had enormous visibility on issues before the Council and the responsibility to speak on behalf of the entire Council. It was a terrific attribute to have in a Mayor, particularly in the City of Palo Alto, and the Council had that attribute in Vice Mayor Wheeler who never forgot the fact that the greatest successes the City of Palo Alto had come as a result of the collaboration that made local government successful. She looked forward to serving on "Team Wheeler" in 1996. Council Member Fazzino said in the spirit of soccer, it should be "Wheeler United." He was delighted to support the nomination of Vice Mayor Wheeler as Mayor for 1996. It represented a wonderful and appropriate confluence of experience, expertise, recognition, and opportunity. He did not know anyone in his personal or public life who was more fair. She treated everyone with respect and dignity, whether it be a colleague, a staff person, a real estate developer, an advocate, or a homeless person. No one on the Council was better prepared than Vice Mayor Wheeler on issues. She very carefully weighed the pros and cons of major arguments and of all sides of an issue before making her decisions. She often moved beyond the limitations of the Council packet to understand an issue and render her decision. She carefully weighed the consequences of her actions before acting, but once the issue was acted upon, she became a very forceful and effective advocate and made certain the resources were in place to implement whatever decision had been made by the Council. People left a meeting feeling as if they had been treated fairly by Vice Mayor Wheeler, even if she had not supported their particular position. She brought a wealth of experience to her job. She had been an outstanding president of the League of Women Voters during a very acrimonious period. It was a time in Palo Alto's history when it was the job of the League to place fair and factual information on a propriety of issues and candidacies before a very polarized public, which Vice Mayor Wheeler and the League did very fairly and effectively. Vice Mayor Wheeler served as a Planning Commissioner during a time when the Comprehensive Plan was first adopted and had to be interpreted. She had served the community as a Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) president, Greenmeadow and South Palo Alto advocate, soccer coach and official, business person, and nonprofit managing. She understood the Palo Alto community very well. More recently, Vice Mayor Wheeler had been an effective member of the City Council with distinction as chair of the Finance Committee as well as an excellent Vice Mayor. As Council Member McCown had indicated, Vice Mayor Wheeler had a strong voice on issues such as historical
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preservation, as well as budget reform, affordable housing, fiscal responsibility, neighborhood shopping center renovation, traffic safety, and environmental protection. Not only would Vice Mayor Wheeler be the sixth female Mayor in the history of Palo Alto, but the southern most Mayor. RESULTS OF THE FIRST ROUND OF VOTING FOR MAYOR VOTING FOR WHEELER: Andersen, Fazzino, Huber, Kniss, McCown, Rosenbaum, Schneider, Simitian, Wheeler City Clerk Gloria Young announced that Vice Mayor Wheeler received nine votes and was elected Mayor on the first ballot. Mayor Wheeler said people often asked her how one got to be Mayor of Palo Alto. The immediate answer was the process of selection by one's Council colleagues. She was grateful to her colleagues for expressing their trust in her to do the job. In return, she pledged to her colleagues and to the citizens that she would attempt to chair the meetings with fairness, to provide leadership in the effective and efficient conduct of the Council's business, and to treat each of her colleagues and the public with dignity and respect. Much of the substantive work of the Council was done within the standing committee structure and one of the first tasks of the Mayor was to make those Committee assignments. Mayor Wheeler announced the Committee assignments for 1996 as follows: Finance Committee: Chairperson: Kniss Members: Andersen, Huber, Schneider Policy and Services Committee: Chairperson: Rosenbaum Members: Fazzino, McCown, Simitian Mayor Wheeler said both committees had extraordinary assignments for 1996. The Finance Committee would be challenged with the first year of the real testing of the MDB. The Policy and Services (P&S) Committee would be challenged with the proposed programs and policies related to the Governance Section of the Comprehensive Plan of which there were many substantive items that could bring about changes that would take Palo Alto into the 21st Century with a form of governance that would be very different from the traditional forms of the past. There was one other prerequisite to becoming Mayor which was election to the City Council. That office was achieved by attracting sufficient voter support but was seldom achieved without the dedicated help, support, and hard work of certain individuals on a candidate's behalf. Several of the people who played such roles in her two Council campaigns were in the audience and she acknowledged their role in her successful Council campaigns: Sue Sucher, campaign chair; Ellen Christensen, honorary co-chair for both elections; John Northway, honorary co-chair second election; Larry Klein, honorary co-chair first election; Marlene Prendergast, first campaign treasurer; Joe Stafford, second campaign treasurer; and Nancy Carp and Janine Hodgeson, precinct organizers. Various paths had been taken by her
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colleagues and herself to become Council Members but the road to service on the Council and to the office of Mayor stretched back many miles. Her lengthy history and involvement in community service activities took root in the example set by her father, a long-time and active member of Kiwanis Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and her aunt, a high school civics teacher at Cambridge High School, who instilled in her not only the importance of participating in the life of one's community but the joy in doing it as well. The many hours she had devoted to organizations such as the League of Women Voters, AYSO Soccer, Bobby Sox Softball, PTA, Palo Alto Community Child Care (PACCC), the Planning Commission, and the City Council and, following in her father's footsteps, the Kiwanis Club of Palo Alto, had been variously supported, tolerated, and applauded by her husband, Dave, and her children, Terry, Vicky, and Robert. She acknowledged publicly how important her family's encouragement had been and how grateful she was to them. Over the last several years, Americans had lost civic faith in their institutions of government. While still enjoying the support of the majority of its citizens, the government of Palo Alto was not immune. Following the lead of other communities, Palo Alto had enacted term limits for Council Members. In the November election, 30 percent of those who voted had indicated dissatisfaction with some aspect of the City's public policy. The busy lives of today had led to a loss of a sense of identity and belonging to a community. Two decades of looking to government to solve all problems had led to loss of opportunities for being needed and responding to need. No level of government could or should be expected to fix all that was broken in the country. Leaders of government should not ask citizens to follow them blindly but must ask citizens to join them in forging a brighter future. During the upcoming year, she would challenge the governmental and organizational leaders as well as the citizens of Palo Alto to take the following steps toward building the spirit of community: 1. Enhancing urban environment. The Comprehensive Plan Advisory Commission (CPAC), the Planning Commission, and the Council had endorsed the concept of walkable neighbors as the vision for the City's development over the next 20 years. An important ingredient in the realization of that vision was the creation of public spaces which would enable neighbors and friends to meet, chat, and overcome isolation from one another. She had asked the Council to apply itself vigorously to the task of completing its current round of discussions by late February in order to move one step closer to translating the fine words of a conceptual planning document into actions which would promote the types of community development desired for the future. 2. Focusing on Palo Alto's history and heritage. To know what Palo Alto was and envision what it could become, there needed to be a sense of history and heritage. Through preservation of historical buildings and protection, maintenance, and enhancement of the many public facilities the City had constructed over the years of its first century of existence, a sense of continuity would be created, a key element in the community life.
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3. Promoting self help. Neighbors needed to participate in solving their problems. The City government, Council, and staff could act as a catalyst, a facilitator, a consensus builder, and not merely or even necessarily as a funding agent. 4. Expanding volunteer opportunities. Volunteering, whether it be within the local government or for one of the many fine nonprofit organizations within the City, could help develop a sense of caring and contribution to the community. In the near future, she would ask her Council colleagues to approve in concept a program to promote the active involvement of all Palo Alto residents and businesses in defining and executing projects to improve their own neighborhoods. As Wendell Berry in his work "What are People For" wrote, the revival of a spirit of community would "...have to be done not from the outside by the instruction of visiting experts, but from the inside by the ancient rule of neighborliness, by the love of precious things, and by the wish to be at home." Council Member Kniss supported Council Member Huber for Vice Mayor for 1996. People made Palo Alto a unique and special city. None of the Council Members currently seated were born in Palo Alto but all had chosen to live in Palo Alto and shared many of the same values, viewpoints, etc. What made up those values and viewpoints was what was so important to the City. Council Member Huber came to Palo Alto to attend Stanford Law School, met his wife, Nancy, settled in Palo Alto, and had two boys. It was interesting to trace back and see where people came from and where those values were originally borne. Joe was from Fort Atkinson, Iowa, with a population of 350. He did a lot of hunting and fishing, was president of his senior class, a star basketball player and captain of the team, and held the record for the most points in one game. There were only seven students in his graduating class. Joe's family still owned the Huber General Store and had for four generations. His dad still lived in the same house where Joe had been brought up and his dad described him as being a regular kind of guy, an accomplisher, and, being the only child, very responsible. The Council was very fortunate to have people of Council Member Huber's calibre serve on the Council and it was very instructive to know about a person's background. That type of good solid Midwest background brought a great deal to the Palo Alto community. If elected, she felt Council Member Huber would serve well as Vice Mayor and would bring many of the qualities that made people proud to live in America and delighted to live in Palo Alto. Council Member Simitian supported Council Member Huber for Vice Mayor for 1996. He and Council Member Huber were candidates together four years prior, had served together for four years on the Council, two of which serving together on the P&S Committee. He did not speak often but when he did it was in brevity but always with great content. When Council Member Huber spoke, he was listened to and heard by the community and staff. Council Member Huber was eminently sensible and brought good values and compassion to the work he did; as an attorney, as a family member, as an active community member, as a neighborhood association president, and as a Council Member. When
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the Council had a tendency to wander off the issue on occasion to pursue a notion or an idea, Council Member Huber was the one that brought them back to their senses. He was the sensible center of the Council but also the center of the values of the community, and he would stand the Council in good stead. He was a person that spoke little but said much, one who brought good values and sense to the Council, and one whose sense of humor really enlivened and softened the Council discussions. It was his hope and expectation that at the conclusion of the year he would stand for Mayor for 1997. RESULTS OF THE FIRST ROUND OF VOTING FOR VICE MAYOR VOTING FOR HUBER: Andersen, Fazzino, Huber, Kniss, McCown, Rosenbaum, Schneider, Simitian, Wheeler City Clerk Gloria Young announced that Council Member Huber received nine votes and was elected Vice Mayor on the first ballot. Vice Mayor Huber thanked his colleagues for honoring him by electing him Vice Mayor for 1996. He trusted he would perform the position well and do well by the Council. He also thanked the people of Palo Alto who gave him the opportunity to serve as a Council Member, it was an honor and he enjoyed it. He felt with the role of Vice Mayor there would be additional things that he would enjoy doing for the City. The Vice Mayor's job was to fill in for the Mayor. The Charter said the Mayor presided over the meetings, executed official documents, and represented the City at public and civic occasions. He expected that Mayor Wheeler would enjoy her position immensely and would be present for the entire year which left him like Edward VII waiting for Victoria to give him a chance at the throne. It had been a pleasure serving for four years as a Council Member, and he looked forward to the next four years and the new role he had been elected to. He appreciated the trust and confidence that his colleagues placed in him. Without the support of his family, particularly his wife, Nancy, his job would be impossible. She had always encouraged him over the years to participate in community affairs and to attend various events. He owed a great deal to his wife and thanked her for her support. 2. Resolution Honoring Joe Simitian as Mayor of Palo Alto for 1995 MOTION: Mayor Wheeler moved, seconded by Fazzino, to adopt the Resolution. Resolution 7564 entitled "Resolution of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Honoring Joe Simitian as Mayor of Palo Alto for 1995" Council Member Fazzino was delighted to support the Resolution. Former Mayor Simitian, along with all of the other Palo Alto mayors, had made his mark. He acknowledged some of the former Mayors of Palo Alto present in the audience that evening. He said that former Mayor Simitian was an outstanding presiding officer and had done a tremendous job moving the Council through the Comprehensive Plan which was a very difficult but most important process. As a presiding officer, former Mayor Simitian did an excellent job, treated everyone with respect, and made the citizens of Palo Alto feel they had a voice
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in City government. He would be remembered for his emphasis on infrastructure funding. He had pushed the Council to devote more time and attention to the City's infrastructure which for a 100-year old city was aging significantly, and for the first time in many years, the Council had devoted significant resources to it. Former Mayor Simitian did an excellent job in the fiscal areas and for his efforts on the Hughes, Heiss & Associates Organizational Review, forced the staff and the Council to grapple with some very difficult financial decisions to make sure that City government services be provided in the most cost-effective way possible. He thanked former Mayor Simitian for an outstanding year. Council Member Kniss said ten years prior she had served on the Palo Alto Unified School District Board with former Mayor Simitian. When she ran for the School Board she was awed at the prospect and former Mayor Simitian made it a far easier process for her, and therefore, inaugurated her into the world of politics and making policy decisions, and she was grateful. When she left the School Board four years later, she told former Mayor Simitian he should consider running for the Palo Alto City Council. During the following two years she called him periodically to encourage him and finally he relented and ran for Council. She felt all of the Council had benefitted from the time he had been on the Council. During the past year he had done a superb job, and as Council Member Fazzino mentioned, he had done a great job as a presiding officer. The Council got to know each other pretty well as colleagues and disagreed from time to time, and it was important for the presiding officer to have the ability to bring the group together, sum up what was discussed, and bring the Council to a point where a good product could be delivered to the citizens in order to serve Palo Alto well. She said the Council commended and celebrated the completion of former Mayor Simitian's four-year term on the Council and the outstanding year he had spent as Mayor. Mayor Wheeler had worked closely with former Mayor Simitian and recalled that one of his fears when he became Mayor the previous year was that he would be remembered solely as the person that followed the Centennial. That fear imbued him with a special sense of urgency and made him attack the job of Mayor with an increased energy and enthusiasm, and an abundance of ideas on what needed to be accomplished and how to go about accomplishing it. He was always solution oriented. Something most people would not know was that he was known on the Council for his love of technology. One of his greatest strengths and one of the things that she admired him most for was his ability to multi-task problems. He could take two issues that were going on simultaneously and somehow draw a very logical connection, solve two problems at once, and make the Council look good as he did it. One of the articles that was written about former Mayor Simitian recently mentioned the fact that when he was in high school and running for president of the student body, he wrote down his campaign speech in five words on an envelope. She had sat next to former Mayor Simitian for two of the four years they had been together on the Council and watched him use that same methodology, just a few words on a slip of paper. People like herself had slaved at home and carefully crafted every word and then came in and read their notes word for word. When he spoke, he was extremely thoughtful, analytical, and by far the
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most articulate of the nine Council Members. Former Mayor Simitian was not only going to be remembered for the points mentioned in the Resolution but also for the fair treatment that he accorded both his colleagues on the Council and the members of the public for the dignified way in which he conducted himself as Mayor of the City of Palo Alto and the way he represented Palo Alto to the world at large. She thanked former Mayor Simitian. MOTION PASSED 8-0-1, Simitian "abstaining." Mayor Wheeler presented former Mayor Simitian with the Resolution, thanked him, and wished him the best for the future. Former Mayor Simitian thanked his colleagues for being so gracious. It gave him an opportunity as outgoing mayor to express his thanks. Council Member McCown expressed it very well in her comment regarding whatever the Council did, it was really in the context of the good work of a great many other people. He knew it sounded cliche but it was trite and happened to be absolutely the case. He thanked the staff. The Council was the most visible part of City government, but the staff really did the work that made the City function well, and to the extent that the Council took pride in the City of Palo Alto, the staff took pride in their work. One of the great pleasures of serving as Mayor during the course of the year was the opportunity to work more closely with City staff, particularly the four Council Appointed Officers. He thanked City Auditor Bill Vinson who shared his pension for looking into other people's business and he appreciated the opportunity to work with him and his staff. He said City Attorney Ariel Calonne was everything a City Attorney could be and the person the Council looked to to stay within its legal limits. He gave the Council the flexibility to do what it wanted and understood and respected the fact that the Council had a policy making role which was different from his role. He respected and appreciated the good counsel that Mr. Calonne had given to him individually as well as the Council during the past year and thanked him and his staff. City Clerk Gloria Young brought to her job a creativity and enthusiasm that was unmatched in his observation of local and city government in other communities. The role of City Clerk in Palo Alto was unlike the role of City Clerk in any other community. She and the members of her staff had a daunting task in staffing the Mayor, which they did each year because it had been the custom of late to change mayors every year, and just when the staff got accustomed to the new mayor, another new mayor was elected. Ms. Young and all of her staff did that with great patience and good will and he thanked each staff member individually: Mary Jo Bucchino, Linda Hall, Kathi Hamilton, Beverly Kline, and Yolanda Schiller. The Mayor had a real life and darted in and out of the office asking for things at a moments notice, and the entire City Clerk's staff offered assistance with patience and good will which made the Mayor's Office function and work. Finally, he thanked City Manager June Fleming who it had been a great pleasure to work with during the past year. They had worked in a partnership on many projects and during the course of the year he had come to have an even greater regard for her and also tremendous affection for her. They had worked closely together and the highest compliment he could pay her was to say that he had learned a great deal while working with her and he thanked her and her staff. There were more
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than 1,000 people that more or less staffed the City and they were largely unnoticed and unrecognized but did very good work, and when pride was taken in the City, it was really pride in what the staff did. He hoped all four of the Council-Appointed Officers would convey to their staffs his personal appreciation which was shared by all the members of the Council. He thanked his colleagues. It was an interesting position to be Council Member in a City where the Mayor was elected by the Council. The Mayor was at best a first among equals with one's colleagues. He found that when one worked as an equal it represented the strength, the skills, and the time and talents of nine, and the good will to bring to bear any problem. It really made serving as Mayor a great pleasure in a city like Palo Alto. Each of his colleagues had contributed greatly to the success of the past year. He officially received a Resolution that evening but it really expressed the work of the staff and his colleagues. He could truthfully say that there was not one of his colleagues that he did not have both high regard and affection. Mayor Wheeler said earlier that every Mayor needed a Vice Mayor and he certainly had that in Mayor Wheeler. He said Vice Mayor Huber would have many opportunities to play a real role in the agenda of the City. Mayor Wheeler had contributed immensely during the year and he thanked her particularly for her cooperation. The Council was not here but for the support of the citizens of the community that elected the Council Members. His colleagues had tired of him saying "If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem." He believed it was just as true today as it was 25 to 30 years prior. What made Palo Alto special was that it was a community filled with people that were committed to being part of the solution. The elected officials, staff, and 58,000 members of the public in Palo Alto were part of the solution and he thanked those who had been ready with help, support, and constructive criticism and he truly believed the Council was the better for it. Finally, he thanked the many family and friends who had been helpful to him during the course of the year, in particular, Mary Hughes, who had listened to him patiently. Those were the people that made City government possible and more importantly made the good work that the Council did possible. He picked up on a theme mentioned earlier that evening with respect to how people looked at government and the way people felt about politics and government today. It was troubling the way people felt about what went on in every level of government and he mentioned what was happening at the state and national levels and the ill will of position and instability and simple bad behavior. People became very frustrated when they elected someone who did not do the job they were elected to do. Palo Alto could be a bit parochial and self-congratulatory but there was one thing it could take great pleasure and pride in and that was when there was debate and discussion and a difference of opinion, however strongly felt, both in the community and amongst the nine Council Members, it happened for the most part with great civility. Policies were argued, not personalities, and merits were debated, not the motives of the people who make a case before the Council. He believed that truly produced not only a better government but a better community for the people who lived and worked in Palo Alto. It was that spirit of civility and constructive problem solving that he thought characterized the Palo Alto community and would for a great many years, and that made him proud to have served as Mayor in 1995. There could be no greater pleasure or satisfaction than serving as Mayor of the
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hometown he grew up in. Finally, he congratulated the Youth Council for delivering a Teen Center that he was unable to accomplish 25 years prior. He hoped the teens would enjoy it well for generations to come. He thanked his colleagues and wished the new Mayor and Vice Mayor the best for 1996. Vice Mayor Wheeler presented an engraved placque, a photo album and scrapbook, and an engraved gavel to former Mayor Simitian commemorating his entire 1995 Mayoral year. Council Member Rosenbaum presented a special gift to former Mayor Simitian from the Council. Children's Theatre Assistant Director Michael Litfin announced that the children from the Children's Theatre would present a short medley of songs in honor of the special evening. City Clerk Gloria Young presented a video tape to former Mayor Simitian depicting his 1995 Mayoral year and acknowledged the contributions of Evan Platt, Tony Spitaleri, and Hal Nicholson for their role in the makeup of the video. Mayor Wheeler acknowledged elected officials, dignitaries, Council Members and officials from other cities, former Mayors and Vice Mayors, and members of organizations in attendance that evening. ADJOURNMENT: The meeting adjourned at 8:50 p.m. to a reception. ATTEST: APPROVED:
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City Clerk Mayor NOTE: Sense minutes (synopsis) are prepared in accordance with Palo Alto Municipal Code Sections 2.04.200 (a) and (b). The City Council and Standing Committee meeting tapes are made solely for the purpose of facilitating the preparation of the minutes of the meetings. City Council and Standing Committee meeting tapes are recycled 90 days from the date of the meeting. The tapes are available for members of the public to listen to during regular office hours.
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