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HomeMy WebLinkAbout1981-08-17 City Council Summary MinutesITEM Oral Communications Special Orders of the Day Resolution of Appreciation to, Outgoing Members of the Rental Housing Mediation Task Force Consent Calendar - Referral Consent Calendar Action Parking District "Ad Valorem" Assessment Rate 1981-82 - California Avenue Ordinance 3296 re Fixing an Assessment for Fiscal Year 1981-82 for California Avenue District Offstreet Parking Project No. 60-8 Ordinance 32 7 re Fixing an Assessment for Fiscal Year 1981-82 for California Avenue Offstreet Parking Project No. 55-5 Routine Gas Rate Tracking Increase. Resolution 5951 re Amending Utility Rate Schedules G-1 and G-50 Community Development Block Grant Plan Resolution 5952 re Approving the Community Development Block Grant Plan Roofing Services - Award of Contract Home Weatherization Program - Award of Contract Newsprint Recycling Program Award of Contract Final Subdivision Map.- 100-130 Ferne'_Ave. renal Subdivision Map 3700 El Camino Real Planning Commission Recommends Approval of Application of Lee and Fan. Architecture and Planning for Site and Design Revew of Single 'Family Residence.at 820 Los Trancos.Road CITY COUNCIL MINUTES' CI1Y C31f PALO ALTO Regular Meeting Monday, August 17, 1981 PAG E 1 1 6 0 1 1 6 0 1 1 6 0 1 1 6 0 1 1 6 0 1 1 6 0 1 1 6 0 1 1 6 0 1 1 6 1 1 1 6 1 1 1 6 1 1 1 6 1 1 1 6 1 1 1 6 1 1 ( 6 1 ITEM Public Hearing: Planning Commission Recommends Denial of Application of Barbara Turner for Approval of Tentative Subdivision Map for Property at 350-360 Hawthorne Ave, and 351, 357 Bryant Court (Continued from 7/27/81 meeting) Public Hearing: Weed Abatement Charges Resolution 5953 Confirming Weed Abatement Report and Ordering Cost of Abatement to be Special Assessment of Respective Properties Herein Described Finance and Public Works Committee Recommends Approval of Award of Contract for Water -Gas -Sewer Training Needs Assessment Planning Commission Recommends City Council Initiate a Change of Comprehensive Plan For Certain Single -Family Residential Properties. on College Avenue Cultural Center Pa- lo and Sidewalk Repair - Award of Contract Vice Mayor Fletcher re Turner Application, 350-360 Hawthorne Bay Conservation Development Commission Dredging Permit Request of Mayor Henderson re invitation of Request City of Oaxaca. to Attend 450th Anniversary Celebrations - April 25, 1982 Request of Vice Mayor Fletcher re East Palo Alto's Incorporation Request of Councilmembers Eyerly, Fletcher Henderson, Klein, Witherspoon re Additional Arastra Study Adjournment 1 1 8 0 1 1 8 2 1 1 8 2 1 l; 8 7 Regular Meeting Monday, August 17, 1981 1 The City Council of the City of Palo Alto met on this date in the Council Chambers at City Hall, 250 Hamilton Avenue, at 7:35 p.m. PRESENT: Bechtel, Eyerly, Fletcher.: Henderson, Renzel, Witherspoon (arrived at ;8:15 p.m.) ABSENT: Fazzino, Klein, Levy ORAL COMMUNICATIONS None SPECIAL ORDERS OF THE DAY RESOLUTION OF' APPRECIATION TO OUTGOING MEMBERS OF. THE RENTAL HOUSING Mayor Vender son said that Mr. Burk Bloom, Mr. Doug Couch, Ms. Patricia Trumble and Ms. Ruth Lacy had served and coipieted their terms. MOTION, Vice Mayor Fletcher introduced the following resolution and moved, seconded by Bechtel, its arproval. RESOLUTION 5950 entitled 'AESOLUTION OF THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PATO ALTO COMMENDING MEMBERS OF THE RENTAL HOUSING MEDIATION TASK FORCE FOR THEIR CONSCIENTIOUS AND OUTSTANDING PUBLIC SERVICE" MOTION PASSED unanimously, Levy, Fazzino, Klein, Witherspoon absent, CONSENT CALENDAR Referral None Action MOTION: -:Vice Mayor Fletcher moved, seconded by Eyerly, approval of the cdnsent calendar, PARKING DISTRICT "AD VALOREM" ASSESSMENT- RATE 1981-82 - ORDINANCE 3296 entitled ''ORDINANCE OF THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF : PALO ALTO FIXING AN ASSESSMENT' FOR FISCAL YEAR 1981-82 FOR THE: CALIFORNIA AVENUE DISTRICT OFFSTREET PARKING PROJECT. NO. 60-8" ORDINANCE 3297 entitled "ORDINANCE OF THE COUNCIL OF Thr CflY OF PALO. ALTO FIXING AN ASSESSMENT FOR FISCAL YEAR, 1991-82 FOR THE CALIFORNIA AVENUE OFFSTREET PARkINC PROJECT NO 55.5" 1 1 6 0 8/17/81 ROUTINE GAS RATE TRACKING INCREASE (CMR:390:1) RESOLUTION 5951 entitled "RESOLUTION OF THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PALO ALTO AMENDING UTILITY RATE SCHEDULES G-1 AND G-50 AS A RESULT OF TRACKING PG&E GAS RATE CHANGES" COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT BLOCK GRANT PLAN (CMR:394:1) RESOLUTION 5952 entitled "RESOLUTION OF THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PALO ALTO APPROVING THE. COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT BLOCK GRANT PLAN" ROOFING SERVICES=- AWARD OF CONTRACT (CMR:381:1) Staff recommends that Council award the contract to Casto Roofing Inc., and authorize the Mayor to execute the contract. AGREEMENT - ROOFING SERVICES Casto Roofing, Inc. HOME WEATHERIZATION PROGRAM - AWARD OF CONTRACT (CMR:379:1) Staff recommends that Council authorize the Mayor to execute the contract with Associated Roofing and Insulation for cellulose work. AGREEMENT - THERMAL INSULATION Associated Roofing and Insulation Company NEWSPRINT RECYCLING PROGRAM =AWARD OF CONTRACT (CMR:403:1) Staff recommends that Council approve the proposAd contract with the Community Association for the Retarded for the promotion of newsprint recycling and .participation in the Public Awareness Program, to be retroactive from July 1, 1981 through June 30, 1983. AGREEMENT - NEWSPRINT RECYCLING PROGRAM Community Association for the Retarded FINAL SUBDIVISION MAP 100-130 FERNS AVENUE (CMR:40?:1) Staff recommends that the City Council approve the final map. FINAL SUBDIVISION MAP - 3700 EL CAMINO REAL (CMR:401:1) Staff recommends that the City Council approve the final neap with the condition that the alley is to be improved, including land- scaping if possible, by the developer and that prior to issuance of a building permit, approvals must be obtained from the Archi- tectural Review Board for the revised landscape plan and from the City Engineer for the resurfacing plan. PLANNING COMMISSION UNANIMOUSLY RECOMMENDS APPROVAL OF = THE ►PPLICATIDN i . LEE AND -1"A MOTION PASSED to approve consent calendar unanimously, Fazzino, Klein, Levy, Witherspoon absent. PUBLIC HEARING: PLANNING- COMMISSION UNANIMOUSLY RECOMMENDS (CMR:364:1 1 .1 6 1 8/17/81 1 i Planning Commission Chairman Fred. Nichols commented that in the Planning Commission's consideration of subdivisions, they must find that the subdivision was- consistent with the zoning ordi- nance, anu consistent with the Comprehensive Plan. He said that because most subdivision applications were made for parcels already zoned for multiple -family units, consistency with the zoning ordinance was not difficult to show. Consistency with,the Comprehensive Plan was not so simply shown especially because policies in one element often conflict with policies in another, and the policies must be balanced An each instance where con- flicts exist. He said that generally great importance was given to those policies of the housing element that call for increasing housing opportunities and that most subdivisions responded to those goals. He said that when -a subdivision promised only a very modest gain in units while at the same time contradicted other important policies of the Comprehensive Plan, they had to really balance the development. That was the balance considered on the application. t The requested Planning Commission action was six modest cost rental units in a distinctive neighborhood, replace with.eight presumably high cost units of a character dif- ferent from the rest of the immediate neighborhood. He said it Contradicted at least four policies that the Commission found in the Comprehensive Plan.- Policy 2, "To preserve older, single- family houses, small apartment buildings" Policy 3, "To protect and enhance those qualities which make Palo Alto's neighborhoods especially desirable";Policy 8, "To maintain at least the pies ent'number of multiple -family rental units";.and Policy 10, "To foster the provision of some new and existing units disbursed throughout the City for ownership and rental by households of low and moderate income." The Planning Commission concluded that the modest gain of two, presumably expensive units did not offset the reduction of affordable rental units nor did it offset the change in quality of that particular neighborhood and, therefore, the Commission unanimously recommended that the Council deny the application. Mayor. Henderson declared the public hearing open. Ginny Lee, 357 Bryant Court, Palo Alto, said she was opposed to Barbara 'Turner's application. She pointed out that the Planning Commission chose to regard the social policies of the Comprehen- sive Plan as viable guidelines for determining the direction that Palo Alto should take in developing its housing. She said that paying serious attention to such social policies was a potent means of maintaining Palo Alto as the unique community that it was. She felt it was important to remember that the character of Palo Alto's neighborhoods was a major issue and that it not be lost. For example, she said that Barbara Turner had recently offered to help all of the current tenants in, the property with financial assistance it relocating although her offer seemed to miss acouple of points. 1) Help in relocating was hardly useful if the town in which one chose to live was being stripped of ren- tal units, but more importantly, Ms. Turner's offer missed the major point that the concern was not simply a question of per- sonal inconvenience, but of the future of the neighborhood and other ones .like it. in Palo Alto. Ms. Lee a believed that the Palo Alto housing policy which called for protecting and enhancing qualities which made Palo Alto's neighborhoods desirable should be supported and, that was the main reason the tenants ere at the meeting, and why `wthey were joined and supported by so many of the neighbors. She said that -`:unlike other cases, it was,not an issue they felt could be =resolved simply- by helping to relocate ten- ants. It was a question of, whether to alter seriously the char. acter of a desirable neighborhood . by destroying property for no good reason._ 2) Regarding the condition of the property, she said that Barbara Turner had a building inspection performed on 1 1 6 2 8/17/81 the property in question which found that there were some repairs which were needed to the property. She said that any property -as old as those buildings were certainly in need some kind of repair, but that did not -mean that one should tear down the prop- erties: She pointed out that the building inspection that was made did not reveal the buildings to be unsafe in any way, ten- ants were in no eminent danger from unsafe conditions in the dwellings, there was no reason to believe that the property needed to be removed as unsafe. That argument simply was not a sound one. Had that inspection made it possible to make such claims, she was sure they would have -been put forth to the Council. It simply was not the case that the buildings were a danger to the tenants. Additionally, Ms. Lee said that. Several of the Councilmembers had taken the time and interest to visit the site and walked through the units and had seen the condition of the dwellings themselves and they could. see the tenants' reasons for being so -vehemently opposed to the idea of destrcyiny such housing and thereby altering such a neighborhood for condo- minium development. As Councilmembers, they. were in a unique position of authority and responsibility to influence the direc- tion that housing development would take in Palo Alto, and she urged the Council to exercise their strength and good judgment in support of the 'policies in the Comprehensive Plan calling for a socially responsible housing position by accepting the recommen- dation of -the Planning Commission and denying the application. Mrs, Richard Smith, 468 Westridge Drive, owner of the properties at Hawthorne and Bryant Court, sa i J that over the years they. had owned the property, they were proud of the properties, and tried to keep them up as best as possible. She said selling was not a fast decision on their part. They started planning to sell ,bout three years ago when there were health problems with a member of their family and knew that their family had to change its direc- tion. At that time, she said she started to pursue what could be done. I) They had low loans on the properties which were due January and February. The reason they had been able to keep the rents low was because they had low loans. She said when she refinanced, or if .they kept the prop and refinanced it, she thought --everyone was aware o.f what the market was. The rents would have to go up, the property would not stay "low income housing." She said they were even feeling it now because if they. had a plumber out, it cost $4.00--$49 an hour plus the labor. Mrs. Smith said they looked into keeping the properties with` the leap. 2) The second alternative was to sell the buildings indi- vidually. She said that walking, through the properties would not show someone what was behind_ the walls. Unfortunately, she said she had gotten in -there with a crow bar and -took down some -of the sand and plaster walls and . had exposette beams. From termite reports, in the front of 350 Hawthorne the foundation had tracked all across the front of the porch, the dry wood termites had _gone all up the front of the house, and into the attic. The house was literally being held -together. by whatever was still standing. She indicated the chimney was pulling away from: the house, it was - not the easiest thing to replace. -:On the other 'houses one of the major pr obl erns _was: the gat, water and sewer_ lines which went through froni Hawthorne to Bryant Court. The tines were under the foundation- as much as she could tell Of the houses there. She -said that just before she bought the property-, which was a little more, than ten years ago, there was a gas leak that _ went through to .357 :Bryant Court. where Cinny Lee was. She sajdetthe previous owner got someone in there and tried to patch as best he could. - So far there had been no trouble with the gas lines there, but last year when the.)v had problems, they "replaced the .electrical system-in,that buii.ding with the idea that if, the gas went out they .could not bring it in. She said she had talked: to plumbers about water lines -because 351: Bryant Court had the water lines row showing'a little pressure, which_ most people probably knew the lines were being filled-up_,wi.th "gunk." She did not .know how 1 1 1 they could replace those lines, because they went underneath the foundations or down driveways. The garages were tandum together behind 350- Hawthorne and 351 Bryant Court and which sat .on. nothing but dirt and they were against the property line. She said at one tine they had been drilled through by someone to the other side and she_did not think they would stand very long. The foundations were cracking, and would probably not stand very much longer, as some of the other older buildings had, for a long time. They had put new roofs on, they did not have new electri- cal service, there were problems if someone with new electrical appliances came in that the service would probably have to be upgraded. With the recent problems, they did not feel they could handle it. and if she soidl the properties separately, which was the next alternative, and she would have to do sb_ if the subdivi- sion did not go through, then she was passing on the problems to someone else. Ctrs. Smith indicated she was in the real estate business, and saw young people buying older houses, but not knowing what they were getting into. She said if one were to call the Building Department to come in to one of those houses, they would "throw the book at you." It was very expensive to maintain old property. Their next choice was to contact other people, other builders, either joint venture er whatever, and they contacted several builders- who had built individual type units that were in keeping with the City's preference for indi- vidual homes. She had contacted the builder that had built on Valpariso, but he. felt the site did not have enough land. Most of the people she contacted wanted to go in for a use .permit or whatever and put as many units as pass i bi a on the property, which she felt was not plausible, She believed that character of the neighborhood was such that it should stay more families, more people lived in that area because it was close to the railroad and within walking distance of downtown, and maybe not' so many cars were needed. She said presently there was one person per unit and there was not enough parking available for _ two people in a unit. e If you figure, one person per unit, that was not really as many people as they had in the town, and if you went into a larger unit, you coefd furnish some rooms for families and per person it might be less money than if' you kept one in a unit like that or they had to pay what the going r:.nt was. Mrs. Smith • _wanted to see something_ there that was like a house, and the closest to that would be condominiums —something ng that would have par k:i ng -that would get the cars off the streets, which was one of the problems, with preserving light and air, and not allowing a very high structure, and still being able to accommodate families because 'those were the —kinds of developments lost., When her family had lived -.in Palo Alto, and she was retired from the School District after teaching, she regretted greatly that the children were leaving, and that they were not here. - Perhaps if there were sore units cl-oser to town, where children could walk, to school, walk teethe park, walk to downtown, it -Might help. She asked the Council to review again the ideas-, and if,.they did, she would shtiow the Counci,htiembers the problems with the present e_ .structures. There wer several problems.,' i.e.- old fans, -plaster --holes in the ceilings, termites cracking, shifting foundations, and problems with the plumbing. Ceunc i lme:nber Eyer ly said that the zoning on :.the property had been pM-2 for ;.the last five -er six years, and asked Ms. Smith what the zonirej was the five years previous to that, and what the zoning was when she purchased the property. Ms. Smith responded that. ,it erty. when she bought . the prop - 1 1 b. 4 8/_17,81 Counci lmember Eyer ly asked if 350 and 351 was all one lot or had it been subdivided. Ms. Smith responded that 350 was one lot, and 351 behind it was a separate lot which was that way when she purchased the property. The other side was all one lot. Vice Mayor Fletcher asked Ms. Smith if she had any restrictions against renting to children. Ms. Smith said that she had never had restrictions. She said that when she bought the property, there was a lady living there who lived there until she was 91. Jon Parsons, 356 Hawthorne, said he was opposed to the applica- tion for a permit to tear down the residences and construct con- dominiums at the site. - He appreciated that the City Council might be hesitant to impose restrictions 'on the use of land on. private property, but felt that the City, by its very being, and the Council, restricted the use of , what was basically private personal property. He thought everyone would agree that when they were talking about the' use of increasingly scarce resources, they must control the use of the resources for the benefit of the greater community. In fact, he had noticed in the Palo Alto Weekly, that the applicant had used the same type of argument as those who were speaking in opposition were putting forth. In other words, there was something to be said for the nature of a -community —something more important than development per see -that you must look to the community before it was decided what ought to be built. He said the applicant's arguments were directed against the construction of a convalescent facility. Even though it was a separate topic, he pointed out that viable considera- tions were being argued tonight which should be brought to bear. The Planning Colmission decision was unanimous. In an effort to get a feel for the community, a few citizens took a couple of weekends and walked around the neighborhood with a petition, and in a couple of afternoons of foot work, they were able to get over 160 signatures ofe people in the community who agreed with the Planning Commission's denial of the permit, and the neighbors felt that they did ;not want condominiums built in that area. They felt that the Planning Commission had made a correct deci- sion. The citizens felt, as they signed, that the City Council - should affir t the Panning Commission's decision. A concern of the citizens .who had been tenants there for many years were also the concerns of Ms. Smith. Mr. Parsons felt that Ms. Smith was an exerrp i ary landlady, and he felt her concerns meant something. He was confident that Ms. Smith could solve the personal problems by selling the properties. He pointed out that the condition of the property, did not warrant, in and of_ itself, the granting of a permit. He felt the parking problem was nonexistent. He was the .only_ per son who -did not have offstreet parking. He was the only 'person who had to park in. that area, =and in the past five ar six years, he only had 'to park once about 35 feet from the lot. M. ?arsons said he .alw`ays parked right —in front. He requested that Council address_ the immediate- definite issues of the permit a5 opposed to- being side- tracked oyewhat may or may not happen ain the future dependent upon, this, that or the other thing hap- pening. John Hanna; Attorney at Law, 525 University ,Avenue' representing Barbara. Turner, the developer of the project, said the project would have ;an underground garage. There would be individual: stairs from the garage up to each unit. Each unit would have a private yard and a private patio. There would be sixteen parking, spaces in the garage. The staff -.report stated that the proposal 1 1 6 5 8/17/81 1 1 1 was consistent with the Comprehensive Plan, the environmental impact study resulted in a negative declaration, it complied with the zoning,,, it had ARS approval, and the Subdivision Map Act findings had been recommended by the staff. Although he was not present at the Planning Commission meeting, he had seen the transcript of that portion of .,the hearing where the Planning Commissioners made their remarks about the project. He struggled with what each of the Commissioners had to say and could make very little sense out of it. He said that the transcript he had seen indicated that the Planning Commission felt that there were three policies that were not complied with, and a fourth one had been mentioned tonight. He said that Policy No. 2 had dealt with the preservation of sin+.le-family residential and particularly older homes in Palo Alto. None of the homes were on the Histori- cal -Preservation list. Old homes eventually had to be replaced, they wore out. He said that these homes were undistinguished, architecturally. He said he did not think that anyone could make .an argument that it added anything to the City to retain deterio- rating housing. If one were to accept the -argument that What was built in the past .should always be with us, we would all be living in log cabins today. He thought that Ms. Smith had indi- cated that a condominium presented probably the best.alternative to meeting Policy 2 which was to preserve old homes and small apartment buildings in the downtown area. A condominium develop- ment bridged that gap in the best way that could possibly be done to meet what .he perceived to be a reasonable interpretation of the spirit .-and intent of Policy No.' 2. The condition of the housing had already been referred to in some detail by Ms. Smith, and he presumed that the Council had seen in their packet the report of George S. Sarno, who inspected the property. The sum- mary of Mr. Sarno's findings included that repairs would require major expenditures, i.e. the deteriorated foundations, defective floor supports, floor supports of insufficient size to carry imposed loads of a safety, retaining walls buckling, fireplaces and chimneys defective and deteriorating and pulling away from walls, girders overspanned and sagging, roof rafters overspanned, roof sagging, etc. Obviously, if those properties twere to be aetained as viable rental units for sometime to come, there would have to be major repairs to them. He said that in brief, the houses were tired, old and sagging and it was time for them to be replaced with something more in keeping with the times. Mr, Hanna said that Policy No. 3 had to do with protecting and enhan ing the qualities, which made Palo Alto desirable. He thought that was what was being proposed --attractive, welt -designed housing, . adequate parking, space -to live privacy. All of that i n place o some rather tired old -homes he thought was in -accordance with Policy No. 3. He did not think it wouti. be reasonably argued otherwise. Mr. Hanna said that Policy No. 8 was to rnai ntai n at least the present rentals. He- said that there were currently six -rental units, but a choice _between six and, eight was not really being offered because. as was indicated by the -owner,, if the proposal was not accepted, -the would sell. -What .that meant was that she would end up with probably =one rental. unit. Someone would buy the house A i ve i r:.that, someone ."would buy the Small house, 1 i ve in that, and someone might buy the other small': house,,_and rent the cottage,- and the City would end up with ,one rental unit and the, rest of them :owned. e If..the eight co-rdominium_ un_tis were developed, there was a study that -.showed that 30%- of new condo- miniums ended up as. rentasl s -. wh ct was a conservative figure. That meant that the City, would get- at :least two, possibly three rentals on the aver -age out of_. the. eight, so' the. City would no_t be losing six rental unit$, . probably two- would be picked"..up. -He said these were reaji'stt alternatives, not imaginary. 1 1 6 6 8/17/81 Mr. Hanna said that Policy 10, regarding low and moderate income housing, was taken out of the hands of Ms. Smith and: anyone that mijht acquire her property when the property .was down -zoned, which was a decision made by the City to limit the number of units that could be built on the project. He said down -zoning increased the cost of the land which increased the expense of the units which could be built and sold. Certainly, any one of a number of developers would love to have had - the property when thirty _units could have been built on it and would find that the cost of the housing would be considerably less than what was now being proposed In summary, he said there were now six units totalling approximately': 5,000 square feet, housing six single adults, which would be replaced with eight units totaling 15,000 square feet housing sixteen adults and assorted children. There was an exchange -of six existing parking spaces for sixteen new spaces. Based at today's realistic market rates, the rental on those houses, if they were fixed up and brought to today's rate would be approximately 80 cents per square foot. One single adult at approximately 80 cents per square foot could be housed if one were to apply market rates to that housing. He suggested comparing that with a rate of 83 cents per square foot for two adults, plus one or more children; what- -was being proposed made good sense from the standpoint of furnishing housing on an econo- mic_ -basis where it was badly needed. The truth was that if the Council wanted to find something in the Comprehensive Plan to knock. or oppose a project, they could find anything in there if they looked hard enough. He said it was sort of like the Bibl e , you could find anything you want on almost any issue, but he thoEight that a reasonable interpretation of those policies would indicate that this project complied and met all of those poi ides as well as anyone could possibly expect it to. He said Ms. Smith did not add that there were no elderly being displaced, her ten- ants were all relatively young, professional people like Mr. Parsons, an attorney. Finally, he said that right now citizens in -the Bay Area were facing the worst housing crunch they had ever seen. He did not think this was any time to deny the pro- posal to construct housing which met, as far as he could see, all the relevant criteria. He said that the way the system was sup- posed to work was that this -place would get built, and there were eight families that Would move in, which left eight vacancies somewhere else for others to occupy. WI THERSPOON ARRIVED A1' 8:15 .m. Mr. Hanna :aid that what had really happened was that instead of allowing the process 4o occur naturally, artificial controls had been placed. "e had stood in the Council Chambers when, for exarnple, someone came in and asked to build 24 homes out on Manuel a, and the Council turned it down because of the same kind of public pressure that was happening tonight, and what happened was that now there were two churches there. He said he was also there the night Mr. Medear i s asked to build 12 units on Hawthorne. when,'because of the same kind of public pressure, the Council turned hire' down, and he was now building six. He , said ` i t was this same type of thing being 'repeated over and over again that was the major cause -of the shortage and the scarcity of housing in the area and the reason why Palo Alto came out on a recent list as one of the most costly places in the country on a square foot basis to own housing. The Council had an opportunity to do something tonight to help reverse that trend because approving eight units was a step in the .: right direction, and he _ hoped Council See see that .and approve the project. 1 1 6 7 8/17/81 Iry Brenner, 250 Byron, said he thought there were two issues: 1) the impact of the project on the neighborhood; and 2) the depletion of rental units in Palo Alto. He said that the factors relating to_the project's negative impact on the neighborhood and total inconsistency with the Comprehensive Plan were convincingly presented to the Planning Commission. He pointed out that were the project to proceed, it was likely that many other homes in the area would eventually be destroyed since the character of the neighborhood as defined by the Comprehensive Plan will have been irrevocably changed. Further demolition of the homes would literally be a "push over" for developers. Mr. Hanna had spoken about the housing shortage in Palo Alto, and Mr. Brenner said he had done some research and discovered that with regard to the rental stock depletion issue,_ in -Palo Alto there was hardly a dire shortage of condominiums for sale. Referring to the corrent realtors ,multiple listing, 74 units were for sale, 27 of which were in the immediate neighborhood of the proposed development, and not counting other condo construction in the area. In addi- tion, the California Avenue project and ,Oak Creek conversion shed a new light on the City's housing needs, and should keep the mar- ket saturated for a long tiMe to come. Buyers were not exactly beating down doors to purchase the available units,.many of which had been on the .market for months, and according to some real estate people, would be on the market for many more months. He said that the project was insignificant -in terms of adding housing units to the market, that is, it would provide a net gain of two. ' On the other hand, one observed the number of people frantically buying newspapers hot off the presses in a desperate rush to find an available rental room in Palo Alto. He said a true rental crisis did exist. Por every rental house torn down, people who work and study in Palo Alto were literally being driven out of town, that is, where they once walked or biked to work, they nowmust drive. This was especially true in the down- town area. If the homes on the property were to remain in tact and they were ultimately sold, it was possible that, they, would leave the rental marketplace, but at least the neighborhood~ char- acter would be retained. and no net change would take place. How- ever, Mr `. 'irenner said they were ideally configured for rental and would most likely remain as rentals. He said that the two houses were split into convenient rental units. Comparing rental units to condo units did not make sense in terms of available units, the real issue was that a person looking for rentals was doing so not because he could not afford high rents, but because he could not not come up with the large downpayment to purchase. Mr. Brenner thought there were plenty of -people around that were willing to pay :4700 - $500 for -a rental unit, but could not come up with $30,000 or $50,000 Cash. Certainly low rent housing was needed, but there was a °larger issue involved. He asked Ms. Smith and Mr. Hanna what condition an older .home must -be in to merit preservation. eOid,termite damage, cracked foundations, or settled chimneys mandate destruction because it was the most cost effective; option? Virtually eery olden house including Mr. Brenner' s, was thus so afflicted, and it and most others' in Palo Alto would be' leveled according to that criterion. Was the only .criterion for preservation in Palo Alto that the house have the ni star i cal qualities of- .the_ Downing Molise?: He hoped not because in that event Palo: Alto would someday -consist' of a hand fu1 l- of Downing Houses and the rest 'condominiums He pointed out that the tenants hired rbuilding inspector- of their own, who inspected - the- homes. and confirmed that .there were cr ack5 in the foundat.i on,- that there was -termi.te damage, and that the ch t tney was settling, and he said they were completely- safe and would probably --be standing -50 year s from now. 1 1 6 8 8/17/81 Katherine Abu-Romia, 525 Hawthorne, said that she moved in a few years ago to what was once an old sagging house, and they worked very hard to make it livable. She said her house was so sagging that all the toys rolled to one corner of the house, but they picked it up, and worked on it, and it is a beautiful place. She said they chose the neighborhood because of .the way-it Was, the little ladies who still spoke Russian, students, and all the dif- ferent kinds of people, if all the old houses were torn down, everyone was going to be the same, and it wouldn't he the place that they chose to live in. She hoped the neighborhood stayed the way it was. Mayor Henderson declared the public hearing closed. Vice Mayor Fletcher responded to some of the arguments made on behalf of the applicant that there would•.be more rentals if the application were granted because of: the average of the rentals produced by condominiums, by saying_that it was stretching things a little far to say that if the prese-pt units were to remain, they would not be rentals any longer . As far as the costs, tif there were an equal number of rentals in the condominiums, there was no comparison with the cost of the present units even if they were sold and refinanced and the rents increased substantially, it would not compare at all with 'the rentals in condominiums. She knew because she lived in a condominium development, which was not of the high priced nature that the one in question was. She said she thought the rents started from $625 per month. Any- thing built new would be substantially more than that in rent She said there was concern that if there were condom ni urns, that there would be housing for children. . She said that to her horror, :she had discovered that many condominium CC&fit' s had pro visions against children, So she thought there was at least an equal chance that children would be housed in the present -units, than there would be in a condominium development. Vice Mayor Fletcher said there was also the argument that there would be more rental housing for low and moderate income families in the proposed condominiums. She said that was the first she had heard that this particular applicant had any concern for housing low and moderate income families. Vice Mayor Fletcher said Ms. Turner had gone to such great lengths to divide her pro- ject into two phases so. as to avoid the requirement for one below market unit for developments of ten or more' units, so those con- cerns were not genuine. There were some repairs to be made, but she did not hear that each of the six units had termite damage, or that all the foundations were sagging, and she thought that the houses, from her layman's point of view, had a good many more years before they reached the stage where they might not be use- ful anymore. At this particular point, she felt there was much more of a need for rectal housing. They were about to lose ten percent of the rental units in the City, which was a substantial amount. She did not feel that chipping away rental units in this instance : was justified because they were not gaining a substan- tial number of new units plus the fact that the units would be considerably more expensive to line in. She felt that these par- ticular units served a very great need at this point, and they were not in a condition that they did not serve a useful pur- pose. MOTION: Vice Mayor Fletcher, moved, seconded by Renzel , to uphold the Planning Commission recommendation to deny the application, - 1 1 1 1 6 9 8/17/81 Mayor Henderson asked the City Attorney if it would take four votes to uphold the recommendation. City Attorney Don Maynor said the Council would need four votes (a majority of those present) for an approval or a denial. 1 1 Councilmember Witherspoon said she felt that this was one of those seemingly ordinary Planning Commission items that came to the Council from time to time with some controversies from the neighbors, and she thought that this one was a watershed for a landmark case. She sympathized entirely with wanting to keep the old buildings and the old homes in the downtown area, she thought it was one eof the charms of that neighborhood, and she sympa- thized with those who felt that they could be fixed up because everyone knew -of houses in town that had been in a lot worse shape and then fixed up, but she did not think that was the issue. She said that as she saw this, what they had was a prop- erty owner who has the zoning to do what she wished to do, and was not asking the Council for any favors or .variances. Essen- tially, it should be a eery routine kind of a thing. What hap- pened was that they were denied, not on the basis of the fact that they did not conform with the zoning, Or that they were asking for favors and did not agree t� any conditions the Planning Commission Wished to impose on them, but the fact was that the Planning Commission, as far as she was concerned, for the first time .ever, denied the application on the basis only of its nonconformance to certain policies and programs in the text of the Comnprehens i ve Plan. She thought that was the landmark part of the situation, and she was very uncomfortable with that. She said she had always assumed that the zoning on her property was i t , and if she wanted to do something else and wanted a vari- ance, she would go in and the programs and policies in the Comprehensive Plan were not only there to explain the land .use policies that were in the zoning ordinance and map, but they were also to set the philisophical direction of the City, but they would not come into play unless she was trying to get a ' rezon i ng on,. get something extraordinary done to her land that affected the zoning, and she was in effect -asking for a favor., She said this was the first time she was aware of that the policies and pro- grams had been put ahead of the zoning map. While she sensed it was a popular cause tonight, she was very uncomfortable because on another night are: another occasion and another issue, a prece- dent would be set. She could not go along with it because she felt the property owner had her rights in this case and that as long as they were not asking for any favor, the Council could only go alOng with what the zoning on the property was. She said there was not really a case that could -be be made very strongly in either direction. Councilmember Witherspoon said it could not be said that they were adding a lot of units, because, there were only two net gain units, it could not be said that the properties would be kept as rental- because the property owner saki that they would like to see them and if they could not see them as a parcel to Mr,s? Turner, they would sell them separately,: -etionones would pay that kind of price for rental proper,t-ies so they would hope- fully be bought, and fixed up into, single-famnily homes, Again, they would not, be rental units. She felt chapter and verse throughout . the Comprehensi ve -Plan .could be -quoted, any program or policy, cquld be argued- on either side of the case, and she. found them very shakey - reas.ons for turning the proposal -down, and she would- vote against the motion-. Councilmember Bechtel said at first she agreed with Councilmember Witherspoon, but as she read threugh.the Comprehensive Plan, and as she analyzed the Planning Commission minutes, she concluded that there were not too many policies that this was in opposition to. She said she believed that the o1dr-r homes must be pre- served. She said these were called "older," they were 50-5.5 years old. She said she lived in a so-called "older" home and she did not :think they. were ready to throw away the "older" homes. She felt they should get away from the "through away'' society concept. She questioned the number of people per unit that were suggested as might be living in the proposed condo- miniums. She doubted that there would be 2, 3, 4 families in those condominiums, and she felt that the Planning staff could probably give a better idea that' there were . frequently one, or at most two, people that purchased a lot of the condominiums. ,She did not believe there were sufficient mitigating measures to War- rant .granting the tentative subdivision map and she would support and uphold the Planning Commission recommendation. Councilmember Eyeriy said that the staff report talked about the State Map Act and listed four conditions upon which a City shall deny approval of a tentative or final subdivision. map and none of the conditions were with the request for na condorniniurn and a sub- division map. He asked what the legality was of the State Map Act? City Attorney Don Maynor said that the denial was based upon con- sistency with the Comprehensive Plan, which was stated in the Subdivision Map Act. He said that was clearly permitted under State law, so that the policies as stated in the City's Compre- hensive Plan could be used as a basis for denial if the proposed project was inconsistent with those policies. Councilmember Eyerly said that the property rights of the owner also needed to be considered.. If the Council upheld the Planning Commission's recommendation, they would strip away the right which the property owner presumably had under the zoning and Com- prehensive Plan to build condominiums so it would leave therm with two options: I) sell the property, subdivide it for people to live in or to rent; or 2) to sell it or build on it themselves for new rental units. He said he did not know if the Planning Commission had thought about that, there had not been any rental units built in Palo Alto for sometime, and it did not seem to be a healthy market, but he wondered about what the feelings of the Planning Commission would be if the developer were to request building permits -to build for rental units. He said that if the Comprehensive Plan policies that were chosen to stand on were to be upheld, that two of them would be destroyed immediately -- preservation of older homes for rentals, (the new homes would have to be for higher priced renter s,) and preserve the lower income housing. Those two policies would go down the drain. It seemed to him that they were at cross issues as to what was trying to be done. If the Planning Commission recommendation were upheld, they would actually be stripping everything from the owner and the developer, and there would be really nothing they could do except sell the property, and maybe the next person could figure out some way to make a return on the investment. He thought it was a weak condition for the Council to put themselves in. He did not think there had been very many test cases on. Comprehensive Plan'_ law or challenges to Comprehensive Plans yet within the State, buts it made him very nervous -to see the limited options that a property' owner" hadz when they were not asking for - any variances, or any changes The comments that had been made by Councilmember Witherspoon were substantial, and he could not vote for this type of recommendation. Councilmember Eyerly said 1 1 7 .l 8/17/81 they were debating the issue with six councilmembers present, and three absent. He was not interested in having a continuation of a public hearing, but wondered whether it was fair to all parties involved to make a decision tonight with such a limited number of councilmembers. Mayor Henderson said he had a problem with the Council going' until the point where the votes were about to be taken- and then deciding to continue. He felt that if.that had been the issue, they should have continued it at the beginning. He said a motion could be made to continue before the vote was taken. He was not sure about, the timing requirements. Mr. Hanna said that on behalf of the applicant, -he agreed with 'Councilmember Eyerly's assessment of the attendance, and -in view of what the City Attorney said, they asked that -the matter be continued until is could be heard by a full Council. He added that if this were a . court of law, he would ask that the remark 'concerning some other project be stricken from the .record because he thought it was unfair .and uncalled for . He was talking about the remark of a councilmember about some other project that was not before the Council tonight.. Mr. Maynor said he felt that was a correct warning, that the fact that the developer had submitted another project should be dis- regarded. He did not believe there was anything on the record that would suggest what her motives were for having two pro- jects. MOTION: Councilmember Eyerly moved to continue in view of the request of Mr. Hanna and his own statements, Mr. Maynor said that he wanted to make it clear that it was not necessary that it be continued as a matter of law, that the Council had the ability to take action. MOTION TO CONTINUE FAILED for lack of a second. Councilmember Renzel said that her way of looking at this was that it was a subdivision application and when an applicant came to the Council looking for a subdivision, the Council did indeed have criterion on which they were to evaluate subdivisions. One of those criteria was its conformance with the Comprehensive Plan and admittedly, the Comprehensive Plan had a wide variety of policies and programs in it, including the land use map, which governs the City's zoning, but she did not think that automa- tically made it the only and sole criteria on which the Council would evaluate a subdivision. She thought what had to be done then was to balance what the results were in the overall view of the Comprehensive Plan in terms of granting a subdivision. She said that in this instance there already was a subdivision on the land, it was a subdivision that was a standard City block sub- division, the owner could sell the properties jointly or sev- erally, the owner could develop them jointly or severally. She said the owner was asked for a dlfferent subdivision on the land which did suggest that the property would be developed in a way that she felt was inconsistent with a number of other programs and policies in the Comprehensive, Plan beyond ,just the zoning ordinance, but the'.'e was often site and design review and other kinds of cr i ter i o;i that governed developments . beyond= just the straight zoning. She thought that in this instance, it should be. recognized that there was a decision to be made, it was not some- thing that was automatic, or a vested right, it was something that had to be decided was in conformance with the Comprehensive Plan. or at least on balance, conformed with the Comprehensive Plan and she did. not feel this did. She would support the Planning Commission recommendation to deny the application. Mayor Henderson commented that if the Council was to approve the appl icatior; because the structures had deteriorated and should be replaced, then nearly all of the single-family homes north of downtown should be torn down, and hundreds of structures else- where in town. He did not believe that was a valid reason. Secondly, he said that the true shortage and need for -housing in Palo Alto was the very type that was being jeopardized here. People who could afford $250,000 condominiums and $400,000 homes had a pretty substantial market in Palo Alto at the moment. He thought Councilmember Witherspoon raised good points, but the Council had a different and difficult situation north of down- town.. He said they wanted to retain a mix of multiple unit dwellings and single-family dwellings. He said it was not possible to zone each lot in the area individually, that they had to go with a basic concept of mixed zoning in the area -- basically high density near the -commercial area, and then decreasing density as .you move closer to the Creek, but because of the existing mix, they had to turn to the Comprehensive Plan when they looked at individual situations. That had been done before in that area. In doing so in this case, he relied . upon the following two policies: "Maintain at least the present number of multiple -family rental unit." He said the City would lose six rental units and gain eight condominium units of which, according tte statistics, three might be rented. He did not think it was likely that the four buildings --on the site would be sold individually for ownership housing. Having looked at those units, he did not expect to see that, but he could not guess. Possibly the entire property would be sold, and the rents then would be increased, but certainly they would not ae increased to the point that condominium rents would be if any of the condo- minium units would be rented. He believed that a decision against the development and in favor of the Planning Commission recommendation did speak to the Comprehensive Plan policy of "Maintaining at least the present number of multiple -family rental units." The other policy, "To protect and enhance those qualities which make Palo Alto's neighborhoods especially desirable," Mayor Henderson thought the project would cause a drastic change in the character of the neighborhood. He said there were no condominiums or apartments in that immediate area, and he thought that it would quite likely be a first step for further condominium development on that particular block. For Wise reasons, he supported .the motion to uphold- the planning Co"mmission recommendation. oo Counc i lmember Witherspoon :wanted to reiterate that she was very:., uncomfortable with doing that. She said that the Comprehensive P 1 an eras big enough and complex enough that on any project, at least two Comprehensive Plan programs or policies could be found that a project would violate. She thought it was very shay ey grounds ..on which to deny something that would nornally be approved. She. felt that if the Council felt that they wanted two keep that neighborhood in the condition it was in now with the wonderful mix of old hones and some ' aiar tments and small condo= miniurn units, then the `property should be downzoned again. She did not, think they could -go -along piecemeal turning_ people down because there were one or two -- Comprehensive Plan p"ol ivies that were `Violated.: In her opi ni.on, it had never been done --before,,. and she hated- to see the Council --start doing it now. 1 1 1 1 7 3 8/17/81 MOTION TO DENY THE APPLICATION PASSED by a vote of 4-2, Eyerly and Witherspoon voting'"no," Fazzino, Klein, Levy absent. PUBLIC HEARING: WEED ABATEMENT CHARGES (CMR:391:1) Mayor Henderson read the following: "This is the time and place set for a public hearing on the resolution for charges levied for weed abatement on private property under the agreement with Santa Clara County. "Let the record show that notice for this hearing has been given in the time, manner, and form provided in Chapter 8.08 of the Pali) Alto.Municipal Code. Tanner have you received any written objections`" City Clerk Ann Tanner said she had not. Mayor Henderson asked if anyone wished to be heard on this matter, and opened the public hearing. Clifford M. Johnson, Santa Clara County Fire Marshall .thanked the City Council for their cooperation during the past year . He said there were 170 notices sent out within the City of Palo Alto, the Fire Marshall's office cleared 106 of those, the remainder were cleared by the property owner. He said they had received no written communications from any of the constituents regarding problems. - Mayor Henderson declared the public hearing closed. He said:. "Let the record show that no persons appeared or filed written objections against these charges for weed abatement performed in accordance with the Municipal Code, and under the agreement for administration of weed abatement entered into between the City of Palo Alto and Santa Clara County, and that any resolution passed by the Council on this matter will reflect this finding." MOTION: Councilmember Witherspoon' introduced the, following resolution and moved, seconded by Renzel its approval.` RESOLUTION 5953 entitled "RESOLUTION OF THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PALO ALTO CONFIRMING WEED ABATEMENT REPORT AND ORDERING COST OF ABATEMENT TO BE A SPECIAL ASSESSMENT OF THE RESPECTIVE_. PROPERTIES HEREIN DESCRIBED" MOTION PASSED unanimously, Fazzino, Klein, Levy absent. Fire Marshall Johnson said- his- secretary had brought to his attention that the problem of raising the administrative fee from 35% to 45% might be taken up this evening. Mayor Henderson said it had to be handled through staff, and would not be an item for -the -Council to discuss tonight. FINANCE AND PUBLIC WORKS COMMITTEE UNANIMOUSLY- RECOMMENDS APPROV U Ii . 7TH€ .AWA' D b CUNTRACT - FIB WATER-GAs- srwrR ITA1 t1Nt I) Councilmember Bechtel for the Finance and Public Works Committee said that the matter was originally" on the Consent. Calendar, Councilmember Eyerly had asked that it be continued, and it was brought to the Committee. The Committee discussed the 1 1 7 4 8/17/81 possibility of continuing it to another Committee meeting since Councilmember Eyerly could not attend the Committee meeting, but when they were assured that it would be coming back, to the full Council, it was felt that if Councilmember Eyerly still --had ques- tions, he might be able to raise them. She said essentially the matter was budgeted in the 1980-81 budget, it was now being implemented, and she thought the total figure was in the range of $19,000 and it was for some evaluation of training procedures in the Water -Gas -Sewer utility. MOTION: Councilmember Bechtel for the Finance and Public Works Committee moved approval of the following contract. AGREEMENT - WATER -GAS -SEWER TRAINING NEEDS ASSESSMENT Gilbert Associates, Inc. Councilmember Eyer l y said -he was sorry he was not at the Finance and Public Works Committee meeting, but he was away as City laision to NCPA. He would have much preferred to have discussed the items he wanted to talk about at the Committee level rather than at the Council level, but he thought it was just as well that the full Council heard his concerns. He said that the trend he had seen in the last year and one-half was to increase bud- geting for outside consultants, and he was not happy with some of the reguests.from staff for outside consultants, which he thought the staff knew. He said it was easy for this type of philosophy to be developed within the staff because he knew they were all busy, and the outside.-consultahts gladly handled some of the extra work. This was not a large contract, the City had had a couple of large ones, and he mentioned one that was for $100,000 for counting trees in the City. The Finance Committee talked it out with the staff, and came down with a recommendation for an added staff member and a little bit slower inventory, and he thought that was a good approach. The other big contract he was thinking of was the study on the Arastra property, he did not think the context of what the consultant was asked to-do do really got to the problems that the Council wanted to face, and he thought a lot of motley had been wasted on that. He did not like to see that. The particular request was only around $15.,O00, which had been mentioned, but when one looked at what they were asking the consultant to do, i:t was really hard._ for him to believe that the department could not handle it.' He Wished Ed Aghjayan were at the Council meeting because he was the one to delegate the responsibilities. He said there was never a staff -member that ever said there was time to do extra, work because they had full time as-si gnments, but the policy of g'etti ng a con- sultant to do the work instead of easing up something el -se or becoming more efficient, was something that was very hard for him to accept. The work plan on page 2 of the staff report. indicated to hire that --current staff members should .be able to do the work. He wanted more 'input than what came out at the '.Committee meeting: Fred Looper, Water -Gas -Sewer, said that what they were looking for was an audit of the water -gas -sewer operations, some training assessments and other needs at the same time. He said they were looking for someone from outside to come in and take a look at the City's full operation in an objective manner in a way that possibly staff could not do Counci lrnember Eyerly said it seemed to him that on a small con- sultant's contract, such as this, it would take a lo_ t of staff time to, get information to hirri No matter howfamiliar the con- sultant was with utility work, he would have to .learn about this particular department. He said they were talking -about $15,000, and how much staff time would be allocated to the consultant to get him up to where he could to it. 1 1 7 5 8/17/81 Mr. Looper said the staff time allocated would be for probably no more than one work week or 40 person hours for about six people. Councilmember Eyerly said he was not convinced as to why they had to go outside. He had been told it was because they did not have the expertise on the staff, but he did not think it was very com- plicated.. 1 1 1 Mr. Looper said that as he had mentioned , before, they were looking for any objective audit of their operation as it was run now, and to see what they would have to do in the future for their full utility operation. Councilmember Eyerly said he was not convinced and would vote against it. He could not believe that the department was not capable -of running this type of study and assessment in an audit. City Manager Bill laner said that first, there was little ques- tion that the need -was there to do this type of an audit. He thought everyone agreed that they needed to look at all of their operations, and water -gas -sewer was no exception. The question as, to whether or not they could do it internally was a matter 'of time and expertise. If City personnel were assigned to the task, they would have to take people off of already assigned responsi- bilities. Second, there were some portions of the study they wanted the consultant to look at that they did not have the full capability of.doing ourselves, consequently, they would prefer to use a consultant-. He said the cost was not tremendously high --in order to use City staff, they would probably consume that much time and effort internally trying to put the study together. Mr. Zaner felt that the consultant was the quickest way to go to give staff the objective data they were looking for. Councilmember Bechtel said that in earlier Finance Committee meetings, they had. discussed the value and importance of indepen- dent and outside audits, and she felt that was all the more reason to vote for the consultant. It was not very expensive and would give an objective opinion and bring in someone new to. look at how the operation was being run. Mayor Henderson commented that there were times when an ou>'t de objective person should be brought in to look at ar' internal operation especially if there were problems with that operation. He recollected .some years ago when the Council established -a regular program for outside audits in terms of looking at differ- ent --departments and different operations within departments.' He said a number of them were done and they were quite beneficial, he especially remembered the ones done in the Police Department and the Public -Works Department. It had been kind of drifted away from. He felt that where- there was -a recognized need, it would be beneficial to ,.bring in someone with ,an objective look who could perhaps straighten out something that had been a pr"ob- lem for a while. MOTION FARED:by a lack of 4-2, Eyerly and Renzel voting "no," Fazzino, Klein, Levy absent. Mayor Henderson asked if after the vote was taken, could the item be continued, or could it be reconsidered-. Mr. Raynor said someone from the prevailing side could bring it up at the next meeting with a majority of the Council's approval 1 1 7 6 8/17/81 PLANNING COMMISSION UNANIMOUSLY RECOMMENDS THAT CITY COUNCIL TNI T I ATE- A CHARM -E OF CL M P R't ATN S TVE FLAN FUR OE RTA I N S I NU E -F A lT1 PE S O ,......_�.. The request of the Planning Commission is that the City Council initiate a study of this area to determine whether a change in land use designation should be made to preserve existing single family homes on parcels now designated as Multiple -Family. If the Council believes that such a study is in order, the Council should adopt a motion directing the Planning Commission to set a public hearing to recommend appropriate land uses for single family parcels along College Avenue. The staff recommendation is that the land use designations for the area be maintained as they are. It is the opinion of staff that the 1976 Comprehensive Plan :considered the area in detail and that the existing land use designations accomplish the dual objectives of making a smooth transition between commercial and residential uses and also of preserving single family uses where appropriate. Chairman of the Planning Commission Fred Nichols said that the Planning Commission had reviewed the request for a change of the Comprehensive Plan Land Use Map for 350 College Avenue for a por- tion of the R-2 that protrudes out into the RM--4. What struck ,cabers of the Commission was the ragged border between the single and multiple family zones. The property at 350 College Avenue that was under consideration by the Commission, shared common boundaries on both sides with multiple family as well as fr ,rued :on properties zoned multiple family. The present R-2 zoning for that property seemed to most Commissioners appropriate only if the single family use properties across the street remained in that same family use. He said it then occurred to the Commission that whereas several of the policies of the Comprehensive Plan required that single family use be maintained where possible, they should look to the possibility of.main- taining those existing single-family units on College Avenue. The Commission continued the plan ni p change request for 350 College Avenue until such time as the Council could direct the Commission about the possibility of preservation of the remaining single family units along College Avenue, which was why it was before the Council. Chief Planning Official Bruce Freeland clarified the issues involved. He said that when the Comprehensive Plan Land Use Map was set out in 1976, there were several objectives that were being played in the area. One was to preserve the single-family homes and another was to make a transition between the commercial uses in the Cambridge/California Avenue area, and the single- family uses from Oxford over to the west. At that .time, there was an attempt made to preserve single-family homes whenever they were contiguous to a large block of- single-family homes. The reason that the single-family homes across from 350 College were not designated as single-fami`.y in the land use map was because they immediately abutted the commercial uses that came off of Cambridge and most of them did not have single-family uses directly across the street from them on College as, well. The thought was that they were essentially cut off from the bulk of the single-family neighborhood by the multiple-family residences and they did make a _ transition to the commercial uses along Cambridge. He said that was -the logic behind the designation, and that the point the Planning Commission was raising was a question of whether that was entirely consistent logic, and whether that was a large enough grouping of single-family homes in and of itself to warrant preservation of those single-family homes 1 1 7 7 8/17/81 Councilmember Witherspoon said she thought that was the way the problem should be .approached, and should have been approached in the earlier project. She said that since staff now seemed to be involving all of the Comprehensive Plan programs and policies, and the zoning map when reviewing neighborhoods, if, in staff's opin;:ion,_ it would' be - appropriate to go back to the Hawthorne Avenue area and look again at the single family uses there, and if it was in fact the City's intention to keep both single family use -s, that it also be put in the zoning as well as in the pro- grams and policies? Mr. Freeland responded that if Councilmember Witherspoon thought there were many situations like the one that came up on the pre- vious application, then_ it might be worth having another look at it. He thought there was a considerable difference because in that case, the existing land use and the land use in the zoning and the Comprehensive Plan were all the same, they were all mule t i pl e family at about the highest density allowed both under the zoning and the Comprehensive Plan. In this case, he said there was a difference between individual single family homes on separ- ate lots and the multiple family designation of the area, so that he felt the issue was somewhat different.. Councilmember Witherspoon said she was not quite clear, as a policy of the Planning Commission and/or the Council as to whether they were more interested in keeping the character of the neighborhood, which meant keeping the building, or in keeping the single-family use. She suspected that in most cases, when people said keep the _character of the neighborhood, they meant keep the building, but_ that they were not fussy about how many units as long as they were legal, in which case, she did not know whether either plan would preserve the old ._bui?dings. She asked if the tiny cottages were typical of that neighborhood. Mr. hFreeland said they were fair y small older dwellings and appeared to be in very fine condition. Councilmember Renzel said that having dealt .with thee Comprehen- sive Plan some years back, she did not recall that this particu- lar neighborhood had been looked at in depth. She knew the Commission had looked at the Land Use Map, and changes on the map where there were significant changes from the previous land use. She said that while staff attempted very closely to follow the criterion of looking at existing land use -and also following the general criterion of moving from high density near commercial dam t� lower density away from commercial, that that particular street appeared to: present a special circumstance that had some significant number of R-1 or. single-family dwellings immediately over the back fence from a commercial zoning._ Also, over the back fence.of the opposite side -of the street were more single- family dwellings and she was not sure that they had thought it through_ or hach a sense = of the neighborhood, It seemed to her that perhaps both sides of the street provided a more ,consistent zoning envelope than whole blocks because -when you r e - i n a neigh- borhood, you would perceive both sides of the, street and not what is over the back -fence.. Co'u,nci lmember Renzel said in that par ticular neighborhood, they had h.ao'significant=-traffic questions raised in recent tinres,- and -very difficult. -and thorny ones to Solve. She thought there might be some merit ii? looking at the area with the thought of determining what was appropriate there. She supported the Planning Commi s5i on acrd their desire -to look at ,t're' :area ,because she knew that:. when the entire Lano- Use Map ;was redone, coup l ed with a. br and `new zoning or d i nancethat would-. be applied, there were marry' things- to look at and they were unable to put equite the detailed review onto every single little 1 1 7 8 8/17/81 parcel, so there were situations like this that may have been done differently had they been able to go through the entire town --parcel by parcel and look at them. MOTION: Councilmember Renzel moved, seconded by Bechtel-, to adopt the Planning Commission recommendation. Mr. Freeland said that from the point of view of .the Comprehen- sive Plan, R-2 was considered single-family. He thought it was possible that at least one of -those single-family structures did have a second unit within it. Counci lmernber Renzel said it would be sufficient in her mind for the City Council to initiate a study of that area to consider a change in land use designation and then leave it open to see what carne out of the study. Plana" -,n Commissioner Pat Cullen, 409 Melville Avenue, said she was ab, ;ant at the Planning Commmission meeting when this item _.was considered, but she did do the field work acid she urged the Council to support the Planning Commission recommendation that the area be looked at again. She thought that when the zoning went in in 1976, a lot went in at the end on a kind of blanket "whateve-r---was there and worked was what it should be" and when this particular item came up, they started to look at that area and it was a nice residential area and that had a lot of single family and she thought that what was there should not be destroyed by allowing high --density multiple family zoning to con- tinue. Councilmernber Bechtel said she would support the motion with the understanding that Council was not adopting the more specific Planning Commission recommendation, but was in fact adopting a more general motion which would ask the Planning Commission to look at the area again. She thought that had real value, Mayor Henderson said the zoning along the south side of College Avenue responded very accurately to the Council's policy to place higher density residential zoning adjacent to commercial areas, and then reduce the density as you move away from the commercial area. He agreed with staff that the RM-4 should be retained on the south side of College Avenue He said that area did not have the mix that the area north of downtown► had where they ran into the problem with higher density deve'apments scattered all through the area. This one went down uniformly except that there were some tingle family hones in the RM-4 zoning. He said that the feeling along the street as one drove down it was basically multiple unit dwellings. The feeling on - ewthorne, as a con- trast, as one went .- :down that block wa1, the single-family dwellings. fie thought. There was a distinct difference and that this one followed the i nte,nti on of the Planning Commission and the Council at the time .the —Comprehensive Plan was developed, He would vote no, and would then feel that the property at 350 College Avenue should be looked at on its own as to €rer it of rezoniftg that. parcel to RM-4 Or whatever. Vice Mayor Fletcher said she was having difficulty. -with the deci- sion because- ,as she went by- and looked at 350 -College, it looked out:of mace being a single-family home, -So-basing the study on -that one particular parcel bothered ,het. She -said it gave the indication that the Council intended to keep that particular par- cel single family residential and -she dia not feel that alias justified in thiseinttOcet On the other hand, —she had had no problem with looking -tat the -specific neighborhood. She intended to support the motion, 1 1 7 9 8/17/81 Councilmember Eyerly supported Mayor Henderson's statement that the zoning as it was now, with the higher density for .the lots back up against Cambridge was proper, but he was willing to., vote so that the Planning Commission could reanalyze it and at the same time, it would give him a chance to take a little closer scrutiny of it. He did not expect that anything would surface so that he would vote favorably for rezoning when that came up, but he would go along with the study. MOTION PASSED by a vote of 5-1, Henderson voting "no," Fazzino, Klein and Levy absent. CULTURAL CENTER PATIO AND SIDEWALK REPAIR AWARD OF CONTRACT Trgrnrrli It is recommended that: 1) Council approve the budget amendment ordinance in the amount of. $22,500 for CIP. 80-03. 2) The Mayor be . authorized to execute a contract for the Cultural Center Patio Repairs with Ambo Concrete, Inc. for a base bid of $42,935. 3) Staff be- authorized to execute change orders to the construc- tion contract -of up to $4,555. Councilmerber Witherspoon asked staff if ,it was essential to have concrete since the heating of the- roots would conti nue as the plants continue to grow and they would have -the problem con- tinuously. She asked if there was perhaps another. paving surface that would not be so vulnerable. Director of Public Works Dave Adams said staff had considered several things. One was the idea of putting a gravel surface in there - and because it would get tracked into the building because of- the type of use it had, that was rejected as not being practical. - He said they would be putting In a surface than• was not exactly as it currently was constructed. It ►could be indi- vidual stones. Councilmember Witherspoon said it did not look like there was any hope of reducing the price. Mr. Adams said that was correct. When the project was first looked at for budgetary purposes a couple of years ago, it was felt that the patio could simply be reconstructed in its present configuration and when all of the restrictions -involved were looked at,:including the significant drainage problem which was the current problem, it proved to be impossible, and with all of the restrictions, staff ended up with that :type of detail con- struction that was not envisioned with the budget. Courcilmernber Witherspoon clarified that what they were left with was to be kept within $47,500, they were just going . to do the patio and not the outside sidewalk. Mr. Adams said the outside sidewalk would be done in 'a different manner, and it would be done solely for correction of safety problems. It would, be done as part, of the sidewalk maintenance program. 1 1 8:0 8117/81 Councilmember Bechtel asked if it was possible to put wood decking over the existing concrete so that the tree roots would be able to continue to do their bulging underneath and not be damaged by the potential work? Mr. Adams said, that was examined as one of the possible alterna- tives that was rejected. He said the maintenance involved in that would be quite a bit, and the cost of the redwood decking was not priced completely out, but it was felt that that was not acceptable for the use of the patio area Councilmember Bechtel said that what concerned her the most was that there were a number of very unique and valuable plants in that area, and she knew the type of work they were describing could do extensive damage to those plants if it was not done very careful ly-. Mr. Adams said that was correct and was precisely why the cost was so high. He said that another item in the budget estimate, was that some of those plants could not be simply removed end replaced, and, therefore, the costs were up quite a bit. MOTION: Mayor Henderson moved, . seconded by Fletcher, that the Council approve the budget amendment i.n the amount of $22,500, and that the Mayor be authorized to execute the contract with Arnbo Concrete, Inc. and that the staff be authorized to execute change orders to the construction concrete of up to $4,465. MOTION PASSED to approve the contract by a vote of 5-1, Witherspoon voting "no," Fazzino, Klein and Levy absent. Mr. Maynor said he iook-ed back at the Administrative Code and it did indicate that in tie situations there could be a motion to continue. He said a motion to continue would be appropriate in his opinion. . Mayor Henderson asked . i.f the City Manager could put the item back on the agenda, since six votes were needed for the budget ordi- nance, MOTIONI:. Mayor Henderson moved, seconded by Bechtel , to continue the entire matter for one week. Councilmember Witherspoon said that if the item was to be con- tinued, she would be interested to know, if it would not.be -too time-consuming, to have staff pursee. briefly Councilmember Bechtel's suggestion. She thought that could be the solution to the problem. She could not understand why the decking would be an inappropriate use for a patio, she thought it would be very pleasant. AMENDMENT: Councilmember Eyerly moved, seconded by Witherspoon, that the staff cost out and include a wood - decking option for next week; Mayor Henderson asked staff if that would be possible. Mr. Adams said that it may be possible. but that there were other considerations concerning desirability, For example, the gravel would probably be the cheapest solution, but that was rejected because it was not desirable. He hoped that Council would want staff to report back on the desirability as well as cost. AMENDMENT PASSED by a vote of 6-0, Klein, Fazzino, Levy absent. 1 1-1 8 T 8/17/81 MOTION TO CONTINUE AS AMENDED PASSED by a vote of 6-0, Fazzino, Klein, Levy absent. VICE MAYOR FLETCHER RE TURNER APPLICATION 350-360 HAWTHORNE Vice Mayor Fletcher said that regarding Agenda Item 11, the Public Hearing for the application of Barbara Turner for. approval of a tentative subdivision map for property at 350-360 Hawthorne Avenue, she wanted to make it clear that she did not base her vote on the comment regarding another application by the same applicant. She was merely responding to comments made by a member of the public. Her decision was based on the need for moderate priced .rental housing and that in turn was based on policies in the Comprehensive Plan. City Attorney Don Maynor added that staff would prepare findings with regard to the Turner condominium application for Council's approval in the neap future. RLCESS FROM 9:30 .m. to 9:45 p.m. BAY CONSERVATION DEVELOPMENT COMMISSION Ii (:a09 : 1 ) DREDGING PERMIT- MOTIONe Councilmember Witherspoon roved, seconded by Eye.r.ly, -to -authorize staff to apply .to BCDC -for co -applicant status on the two permit provisions outlined in CMR:409:1. Councilmember Renzel said she was concerned that within the Baylands Master Plan there were . a number. of amendments rrrade and changes at the Council level which were not reflected in the printed document which Council had, and rather than to have a record ox what was in the Baylands Master Plan that consisted of minutes of the Master Plane and a variety, of documents, she said that in the Master Plan there was h nguage on Page 67 that spoke , to restoring approximately four ac es of va?ht Harbor Point to marsh and map 3-15 depicted that and- al so had an ambiguous center blob that also looked like marsh. She. thought clarification should be made that the Master Plan-- improvements had spoke of including a picnic area and a minimum of four acre;: of marsh restoration. AMENDMENT: Councilmember Renzel moved, seconded. by Bechtel, under #2, 1st Paragraph, Staff Report (CMR:409:1) add: "The improvements to Yacht Harbor Point called for in the adopted Baylands Master Plan, including but not limited to public access, and a minimum of 4 acres of marsh restoration will be accom- plished,..".. and mention date of adoption of .plan "plan as of today - 8/17/81." City Manager Bill Zaner commented that in talking with BCDC they discussed what portions of what parts of the Kaster Plan they would want to see completed and not completed. Their position was that they did not want to include i.n their conditions any specifics athout what the City of Paio Alto City Council might want to do with its Master`. Plan. They were only concerned with including language that said "City of Palo Alta is responsible for doing the improvements in accordance with its Master Plan,". and they preferred not to list out whether that included, lagoons: or mer sh area or picnic area ;or whatever for fear that they might omit some or put some : in that the Co`unci 1- had not agreed to. 1 1 8 2 8/17/81 Councilmember Renzel explained that her amendment said, "including but not limited to" a picnic area and a minimum of four acres of marsh restoration, and that would leave the flexi- bility for any other aspects of. the Master Plan that may not be encompassed by a picnic area and marsh restoration, but would make it clear that at least those two were. fairly clearly depicted in the plan. She thought it would be appropriate to include them as part of the City's agreement. Mayor__ Henderson asked Councilmember Renzel why she felt the need to specify exactly what it would be as long as it was a require- ment that the City would have to develop it in accordance with the Master Plan as the City wanted. Why did BCDC need to be told specifically so many acres of this, etc. Councilmember Renzel said it was not that the picnic tables had to be in a specific area, but the Master Plan was wide-ranging and the major focus of it was dump cover And a variety of other things, and there were a number of meetings held at which various amendments and attempts at amendments were made and all of the actions had not been consolidated into a single document or map. It would require :considerable effort for anyone to pin down entirely what the schedule for anything in the Baylands was with- out going through a significant number of documents, and she was concerned about the Marsh Restoration on Yacht Habor Point. She said that the entire 11 acres was formerly marsh and it seemed to her it was an appropriate plan to try and restore some of that ultimately. She wanted it clear that that was what was in the plan now, and sometime down the road, whenever it took place, it would be very clear that that was what the intent was and what the condition was. Mr. Zaner said condition 2E was the wording that the BCDC staff recommended, and it indicated that "within ten years the City of Palo Alto shall complete the improvements of approximately 11 acres known as Yacht Harbor Point as called for in the adopted Palo Alto Baylands Master P1an." .:,\ He thought that was a pretty all encompassing statement and included the four acres, any picnic areas-, and any other improvements that might be done to the Yacht Harbor and indicated that the City would .be expected to complete all the improvements on the, 11 acre piece. Councilmember Renzel said she agreed with the idea that the developments for Yacht Harbor Point be completed, but thought that it was entirely possible that the plan could be amended between now and then, and it was possible that some of the -docu raents which clarified exactly what the Council's action was with respect to the document could be lost by five years from now, :and it would be ten years since the adoption of the Plan and she thought it was important for the Council to be specific. Mr. Zaner said ,that was precisely BCDC's point, that what they wanted to -- do was not impose upon the City the requirement to do -any specific improvement at the Yacht Harbor Point. What they wanted to do was assure that whatever the Council decided with regard to Yacht Harbor Point would be done within ten years. They wanted to give the ;ouncil the flexibility to do whatever it was the Master Plan said, with regard to Yacht Harbor -Point with - .out being specific. and nailing the Council down _.to individual items. Mayor Henderson said he had a hard time tying it into a specific existing plan which could never be amended. 1 1 8 3 8/17/81 Councilmember Bechtel said that when you think that the 11 acres was at one point all marsh, to :set aside a minimum of four acres for marsh restoration was not that much. She thought it was reasonable to vote for the amendment. John F. Walker-, 19375 Greenwood Circle, Cupertino, said he was in favor of the recommendation and thought it was important to recognize that the agreement between the BCDC and the City of Palo Alto enhanced a move made by the City of Palo Alto some time ago. He said that the City and the Council had said they would have a harbor that was being dredged for five years. He thought it was interesting to find that the Master Plan was still so ambiguous, he thought it was a fairly firm and cast in concrete document. He urged the Council to vote to go along with what the BCDC wanted.. He said they had spent a great deal of time in dealing with BCOC and that it was the sort of thing that needed to be done. He pointed out that the harbor as it once existed was a sea port. He had a read document recently that showed the history of the area and he said it was interesting to find that that land, referred to as'former marsh, was once a deep water port, there was 15 feet of water at low tide -in that harbor. He did not know that the Master Plan was so loose in its construc- tion, but he did know that when you tied anything in to a defi- nite number, you generally washed yourself up well. Herb Borock, 3401 Ross Road, said he was the coordinator of the Baylands Conservation Committee. He distributed to the Council a copy of BCDC's staff memo dated August 14, which was on file in the City Clerk's Office, showing the language that the BCDC staff proposed to recommend to the Commission for the next meeting. He said that on the second condition, there was a difference between the wording in that condition and the way it was summarized in the City's staff memo of August 13. He said the City staff memo noted that the berth, docks, and pilings must be removed -within 30 months after the expiration of the lease. The condition that first went to BCDC said six months after the expiration of the lease, `instead of 30 months. He asked Council to note on the BCC memo that it was 30 months from the termination of the last dredging. He thought it should be clear that if the City was going to agree to make the City a co -applicant that it would be with the conditions .that the BCDC staff had drafted unless Council wished to amend them. Mr. Borock recommended an amend- ment to. solve some of the concerns which had been expressed that on Condition #2E add, wording, "as of this da _k ." so that there would be a fixed date to which specific wordine in the Baylands Master Plan refereed so that the Council would not have to be concerned about changes to the Plan after that date. He had attended both of the BCDC meetir'gs at , which the permit app_l ica- tion was discussed, and the .Commissioners were concerned about r estor i ng the marsh and Yacht Harbor Point. He thought the BCDC would be receptive to any kinds of suggestions such as specific area. Mr. Borock said there were Commissioners who did not want to Assue the permit at all. _He said there.. was an attempt to delete both conditions which were before the Council now giving the -County the responsibility to implement them. The County had said that they could not go ahead with the permit with .those con- ditions in them becakse they felt it was the ,City's responsi- bility. He indicated that a mot.ion_to restore the two -conditions passed on= a 13-4 vote, and that 13 votes were needed to -issue a: permit. He thought that ` BCDC. was very strong about having hose_ conditions included. 8y. making the City:a co -applicant for -the permit, it would bind the City to do those' things. it did not mean that a future City :Council could somehow change its mind, He felt it should be clear that that was what was happening, _and if the City had any concerns about that, then the -Council should 1 1 8 4 8/17/81 find out from staff just what obligations the City had once it signed off a permit application with those conditions attached. Florence LaRiviere, 453 Tennessee Lane, Palo Alto, on behalf of the Board of Directors of the Santa Clara Valley Audobon Society, said there was' only one certain .way to prevent further title marsh destruction in the Baylands, and that was to vote no on any further dredging right now. At the Bay Conservation and Development Commission meeting on August 6, one experienced Commissioner -had recommended that the life of the harbor be limited to the time considered reasonable for boat relocation which he stated was probably six to nine months. She said they were unanimously dedicated to the restoration of marsh that was lost because of spoiled dumping during the last 20 years when there was no excuse for it i.e., the Yacht Harbor Point, Monday Marsh and the 11 acres of unused fill at the airport. Since opportunities for salt marsh restoration around the Bay were limited, they recommended that the Council explore with BCDC the designation of the projects as mitigation for loss of marsh else- where ire the Bay. Mrs. LaRiviere said that the benefits which might be derived therefrom included both technical expertise and financial assistance which would materially reduce the cost to the City. Vice Mayor. Fletcher said she was not quite ready to go as far as the picnic tables, but she thought that Mr. Sorock's suggestion might address the problem in a more comprehensive way. She sug- gested amending wherever there was reference to the Baylands Master Plan by adding a date, such as the Baylands Master Plan adopted whenever it was adopted, Councilme€nber Renzel read from Page 67 of the Master Plan as pro- posed. Under the category of mitigation measures proposed to minimize adverse impacts, "Restoration to salt marsh of parts of Yacht Harbor Point. The 11 acre Yacht Harbor Point, now used for temporary disposal and drying of dredged spoils. from the Harbor was once a salt marsh. The Master Play! proe e that approxi- mately four acres of the dried spoils be removed for use as cover material in the disposal area. This would restore about one- third of Yacht Harbor Point to salt marsh. Restorati-un should be fairly rapid due to direct contact with the Bay. It is proposed that this n+arsh restoration begin immediately whether or not the Harbor continues to be dredged." She said that was the language from the Plan and obviously by agreeing to this condition as part of the BCDC permit -application, they would be postponing what the Master Plan suggested as immediate _pursuit of the goal. She pointed out that the hydraulogist in some of -the earlier Master Plan studies made a very good case for the improved channel scouring if there were some marsh restoration on .Yacht Harbor Point, so if there were some marsh restoration there, the marsh itself would trap a l,ot of the filth that now went into the channel and she thought that if the ultimate goal was to continue to provide for small boats to sail, it would be a_worthwhile cause - to go forward with marsh restoration .as soon as. 'possible. She thought the , l anguage was there,. _,and felt that it pointed out that the councilnembers were concerned that that -particular aspect of the Master Plan for Yacht Harbor Point be implemented. Mayor Henderson -said he wa.s comfortable wi-th the amendment. Councilrnernber Witherspoon asked where d nuary 1, 1992 fit in? 1 1.8 5 8/17/81 1 1 Councilmember Fenzel said that was what BCDC had in their condi- tion for completion. She said that if they were going to use the material on the dump, it would have to be used by the► also. AMENDMENT PASSED by a vote of 5-1, Eyerly voting "no," Fazzino, Klein, Levy absent. Councilmember Bechtel said that she wanted to be sure that what they were voting on was the actual two conditions as presented to them tonight noting that condition 2G was slightly different in tinning from that which staff outlined, rather than it being within 30 months of the last dredging performed as opposed to 30 months after the expiration of - the lease. Mr. Zaner said there was that difference, and asked the Council to consider using the condition contained in the staff report, that is, make it 30 months from the end of the lease. That way, the City would not get tied in the timing of dredging and when the dredging was complete. Councilmember Renzel said she thought the real concern would be if somehow the dredging ceased earlier, if the operation with the Santa Cruz dredge turned out to -have problems or whatever and the dredging ended in two years, the City would not be responsible for doing anything about the docks unti 1 some years after the lease expired whereas if they followed the BCDC condition, it would then make it 30 months after the dredging. Mr. Zaner said the dredging was not under the City control. They did not know when the last dredging would be and they would have to depend upon another party to tell them when the last dredging would be. If that dredging did not take place for some reason, and the lease expired, then the thirty months would have run from the previous dredging, and the City would be under a great deal of pressure to move the pilings and the docks out of the harbor. He said that was why, when• they originally talked to BCDC, staff suggested that the County tie it down to a very specific date, at the conclusion of the lease when the County was required to turn over the entire Harbor to the City in good condition, the City had thirty months from then after which they must have the material removed. Councilmember Witherspoon pointed out that they were not talking about some remote developer they were talking about themselves, and- she thought they could start taking the pilings out ear lier , but even though the dredging may not' proceed exactly as sched- uled, . the Yacht harbor basin would still be being hised for sailing after the last dredging and up to the expiration of the lease. She preferred -having it thirty months after the expira tion of the lease. Vice Mayor_._ Fletcher suggested the wording. "that the Yacht Harbor piers be removed within thirty months of termination of the last dredging was performed or within thirty months. , of expiration of the lease, whichever comes first." Mayor Henderson thought that they should stay with a time cer- tain. He thought that thirty months from expiration of lease would-be proper. MOTION PASSED,- AS AMENDED, and incorporating Renzel ' s language► re "30 months from City's receipt of notice that last dredging has occurred," or "30 months after end of contract period," unani- mously Fazzino, Klein, Levy absent. 1 1 8 6 8/17/81 REQUEST OF MAYOR HENDERSON RE INVITATION OF CITY OF OAXACA TO ATTEN6 TbOth AtTRTT1RSARY CELEBRATIONS - APRIL 25, 1 2 Mayor Henderson said that'at the recent meeting when the Council presented resolutions to the students of Oaxaca, Or. Mario Perez Ramirez gave him a letter from the Mayor of Oaxaco inviting him to the City's 450th anniversary celebration in April, 1982. He said he would not be the Mayor on thet date, so the invitation would be transferred to someone else. He was concerned about the lack of policy on .such travel. He thought the Council needed to set policy immediately before responding to the invitation. He said that the last invitation of the nature from Oaxaco was for dedication of the new observatory about eight years. He said that for that event, the City paid the expenses for the Mayor and for the Councilmember who was i i asion for the Sister City Program. He confessed to a personal reluctance to commit City funds for such purposes. He said they valued their participation in the Sister City Program, but expending tax funds on it was questionable. Councilmember Witherspoon said she thought that although it seemed to the Council to be -an extravagance, it would be almost an insult for the City not to at least make sure that the Mayor attended. She did not know that it was necessary to send two people and she thought that if any spouses want to go, they ought to pay their own way, but if Palo Alto wanted to participate in the Sister City Program, the other point of view must be looked at. She thought that Oaxaca's point -of view would be that the Palo Alto Council would . be almost insulting them by not going. MOTION: Councilmember Witherspoon moved, seconded by Eyerly, to authorize Council budget expenditure to send Mayor or his/her designee to Oaxaca in 1982, and add as a. caveat that this not be an extravagant trip. Mayor Henderson said the reason he was concerned was because of the many areas that the Council was cutting back. He said they were not members of a number of national organizations that they used to be members of, they did not participate in the California League of Cities to the extent previously, or the Mayor's Conference, they were cutting back in various areas of service within the City, and he found that as a taxpayer, he was uncom- fortable with expending tax moneys for people to go to a social type of program in Mexico as much as they wanted to keep the relations. He thought it was a voluntary type of thing and if people wanted to do it, they should pay for it themselves. Counciimember Eyerly said he did not quite agree that they were cutting back on services, the budget next year was larger than it had ever been and: there was -increased staff. He thought that the thing the Council had to come to grips : with was whether there was value in the Neighbors Abroad Program, and if so, on an occasion such as this, they should certainly put up the ;coney to have representation. He felt there" was, value, and thought that Palo Alto with the Neighbors Abroad Program, the contacts they had from the overseas cities that were twin cities with Palo Alto were valuable, and he thought it_ behooved the Council to continue the program. It had been with the City for a long time, it was viable, and he saw; -no reason to cut it, off. He said they were not building up something on an annual =:expense, they were looking at \this on this ._one occasion and he presumed . that in view of Proposition 13 and the other financial worries that would be the way it was handled in theefuture.. 1 Councilmember Renzel a the Neighbors Abroad P but did not think it thought. it was an o citizens of communit social contacts abr it was on a volunta the City to partici nating funds for given the current County and State their budgets, it public funds for that if anyone w would be approp visiting was do Councilmember Counci lmernber D.C. for thre ference, and several year thought a on reason. Vice Mayor trip to Wa that the C trips were from coun results f tr ati on not thin thought Mayor Neighb feel in forth and f to t that so wha of he to greed with Mayor Henderson and thought that rogram was a pleasant program for the City, was bordering on any kind of necessity. She ppor tuni ty for Palo Alto citizens and the ies elsewhere to have exchanges and to have oad, and she thought that to the extent that y basis, it was appropriate and all right for pate. She shared some concerns about desig- official visits, etc., and she thought that austere state of things, locally and at the. levels, where they had to look at tightening seemed to her to be frivolous ' to be spending this particular type of .activity. She thought ished to participate in it voluntarily, then that riate. She thought that was how much of the e to Palo Alto --on a volunteer basis. Witherspoon believed it would cost no more than a going back and staying in a hotel in Washington, e or four days at a National League of Cities con - she believed, that the City had not, for the last s, as a Council, spent their travel budget. She e shot deal to the Sister City in Mexico was within Fletcher said she did not think it compared with a shi ngton and which worked towards promoting programs ity was interested in. She found that the conference extremely educational and she had learned a great deal ci lmember s all over the country, and had tried to obtain rom meeting with people in government, in the adminis- and some of the elected people in Washington. She did k it could be compared. This was a social thing, and she it should be voluntary. Henderson said, he realized he was getting in trouble -With ors Abroad Sister Cities Program, but he always had a y in his stomach on the program when he saw travel back and , heavy entertaining, and living it up pretty well occurring e l t those funds should be going.-_ to develop sewer systems and ake care of the really poor people ilk that area. He hoped the officials who came to Palo Alto from Oaxaca were doing on their own and on their own expenditures. He did not know t their situation was, but it made him uncomfortable to think it in either direction when there was such a crying need for 1p in those areas, and those -programs did not seem that impor- nt to him to be coming out of taxpayers' funds. MOTION FAILED by a vote of 4-2, Eyerly and Witherspoon voting "aye," Fazzino, Klein, Levy absent. Councilmember Fenzel said that because the language included to accept the invitation, she did not want the Council's action to be construed as failing to allow someone to accept if they wished to voluntarily do so. She thought that should be clear. Mayor Henderson said he would Palo Alto would have another could hold off until January, and who was going. write to Oaxaca and explain that Mayor by that time, and if they Palo Alto would let them know if 1 1 8 8 8/17/81 RE UEST OF VICE MAYOR FLETCHER RE EAST PALO ALTO'S INCORPORATION Vice Mayor Fletcher said that in December of 1980, the East Palo Alto Municipal Council took action to apply for incorporation and .on April 10, 1981 made a formal application to LAFCO for incor- poration of East Palo Alto..` She said there would be a LAFCO hearing on August 19 where those in the sphere of influence were invited to appear. She said Palo Alto 'had received the sphere of influence report Which was the subject of the discussion on April 19, and had been given the opportunity to respond. - She asked that the City Council support East Palo Alto's application before LAFCO on August 19. She said that ,Palo Alto took:home rule for granted, but she was trying to imagine how it would be for the Palo Alto City Council to sit as a body and deliberate and study, and make decisions, and that decision could be easily overturned in San Jose, because they would not have final say. .She thought that East Palo Alto must be yearning for self-determination because it had happened on numerous occasions where they had wanted to act in some manner and they were overruled. She said that economic development in East Palo Alto had been very slow to get off the ground, and the sphere of influence report said that in the opinion of the consultant -a-, the status quo was a Signifi- cant impediment to achieving the development potential of East Palo Alto. The relationship between East Palo Alto Municipal Council and County government had been an impediment to economic development so they recommended incorporation as their _first alternative. She said that aside from the economic development and the other benefits, she felt that incorporation would result in a sense of pride for the people' -in East Palo Alto and their community and would stimulate inc-reared efforts on their part to act to improve their community. MOTION: Vice Mayor Fletcher moved, seconded by Eyerly, that Palo Alto support East Palo Alto's -incorporation and forward that sup- port to LAFCO. A. Berkley Dr iessel , Vice Chairman, East Palo Alto Municipal Council, said his Council was in session and had excused him because of the importance for him to join the Palo Alto City Council. He said that the application for incorporation was made by the East Palo Alto Incorporation Committee not the Council itself although the Council itself set in motion the organization of that committee, but legally they are a separate entity and the municipal council could not get involved in political actions: like the incorporation. He pointed out that Palo Alto was _i n the report and there were four alternatives covered: 1) status quo; with East Palo Alto remaining unincorporated as a part of San Mateo County; 2) annexation to the City of Menlo Park; 3) incor- poration; and 4) annexation to the City of Palo Alto was also studied. He said the first choice was incorporation and the second choice was annexation to the ,_City of Menlo Park. He said annexation to Pale Alto was not a, -.strong option. He said it was important that LAFCO wanted both Palo Alto and Menlo Park to mace known the will of their bodies at the upcoming hearing. He said it was going to be the sphere of influence hearing, not incor- poration hearing, at which the decision would be made of primary sphere of influence, and would lead to. further .action for incor- poration. He said that the new President of the Peninsula D1.visinn of .the Le gue of Cities had written a letter saying that if East Palo' Alto w -es incorporated by July of 1982, they would 1 ike East Palo Alto to be the host city for, the annual meeting- of the Peninsula Division. Mayor Henderson said the only hesitation he would have would be if he felt the City of Palo Alto was urging something that the overall citizenry of East Palo Alto had not supported. He asked if they had had a vote of the citizens. Mr. Driessel said that the hearings would lead to a recommenda- tion by LAFCO to the Board of Supervisors. He, said the Board would put it on the ballot, only after the hearings, and then there would be a vote of the electorate and it would involve the principle of incorporating into a general law city, and secondly a tax per residence which was necessary for the fiscal basis. required. It would go to a vote, but only after the orderly pro- cedures of LAFCO and then the County Board of _Superv`isors of the County of San Mateo. Mayor Henderson asked Mr. Driessel if they could say technically that the City of Palo Alto's support would be, in effect, to urge LAFCO to take those steps to get it on the ballot and leave it to East Palo Alto to make the decision. Mr. Driessel said that basically what LAFCD.wanted to know was whether Palo Alto would support the recommendations of the con- sultant. He said they were not in the broader question of incor- poration at this point, they were at the question of the report submitted to LAFCO by the consultant for their staff. - The broader of question of incorporation would come up at later hearings and go before the Board. 1 1 Councilmember Witherspoon asked it was an official request for Palo Alto's opinion because she said her experience was that when they -had given their opinion an .what Palo Alto thought East Palo Alto should do, East Palo Alta seemed to resent it. Mr_. .Driessel said that at the first hearing which occurred two weeks ago, there were about t3.5.Q people in the audience and only two opposed the i ncor por ati on, which he thought reflected the sentiments of the population. He said`.,it was specifically a request by L AFCD as set up in State -law for advice from sur- rounding jurisdictions in the sphere of influence, so in that sense it was an official, but it did not mean that the County - Board would listen to it. He assured the Council that the vast majority of people in East Palo Alto would welcome -their neigh- boring jurisdiction's positive action. Councilmember Renzel said it appeared that the Council was being asked to say that they were not cl ammer i ng to say that East Palo Alto should be in their sphere of influence, that Palo: Alto agreed with the consultants' report that it should either incor- porate or stay under the County or go with Menlo Park. Addi- tionally, she thought it might be helpful for the City' of Palo_: Alto to support the desires the people of East Palo Alto to incorporate as their own community, which would not be getting into the pros and cons of what the impacts of incorporation might be, but simply that Palo Alto supported the desire of that com- munity to incorporate. Mayor Henderson said his only hesitation was that they did not have the officially voted desire of East Palo Alto. Bice Mayor Fletcher clarified that its was her belief that the East Palo Alto Municipal Council had come out unanimously for incorporation and they represented the people. 1 •l 9 0 8/17/81 Mr. Driessel said that they would never get a chance to vote on the matter if they S.id not get through the processes. He said the vote would always speak for itself and he would be the last to say that he could read the mind of the public. MOTION PASSED unanimously, Fazzino, Klein, Leey absent. Vice Mayor Fletcher said she would be pleased to take the letter to the public hearing; on Wednesday if it could be prepared on time. UEST OF eCOUNCILMEMBERS EYERLY FLETCHER HENDERSON-I KLEIN, W k Councilmember Eyerly, said there was a definite shortage of, counciimembers attending the meeting and their proposal would be a budget amendment needing six votes. Mayor Henderson commented that there had been charges made that, some of- the eeunci lmember s had become turncoats concerning the_ preservation of open space in the Foothills. First, he said that none of the, councilmembers had indicated that they intended to - develop any of the Arastra property. Secondly, he said that if any tdevelopment were to take place, it would be within the requirements of the open space zoning which exists for all of the Foothills, with one dwelling per ten acres and clustered. He said his reasons for looking at the Arastra property was quite clear, i f Palo Alto expected to go to the -voters in the near future to seek new tax revenues for such as purchase of surplus school sites, they had better be in a position to say that they had: studied other alternatives for raising fiends. He knew the City bade a wise decision in buying the Arastra property for -$7.5 million; however, it was money out of existing City reserves. He thought they owed it to the citizens to look at the Arastra prop- erty with the following questions in mind: . i. .Is there a buildable site which fails within the zoning restrictions and that would have a minimum negative impact on the environment? 2.- Would development of that site provide -sufficient income to the City to balance off whatever environmental impact it would have? Mayor Henderson said personally he thought the odds were pretty high against development, but felt they should find out. Following last week, he commented that he thought the Council did a halfway job on it. Instead of authorizing $100,000 for a study of -the entire Arastra property, it knocked off $1.0,000 and then authorized $90,000 to look at a specific 77 acre portion. He did not want to make a final judgment on the material the Council heard last week, but admitted that he found little . to persuade, him to c nsider developing the 77 acres. He said that the income to the City was far less than he had been lead to expect, not to mention the environmental impacts. He .said he kept hearing that land on the southwest corner of the Arastra rpr oiler ty or land across Arastradero from the :_7 acres would produce more revenue with less negative impact from development. He said he would like to know if that was true and he ,.thought: the voters should be ,told if it was true. Unfortunately,. in the °bumbling„__' -of the project, it would now cost the City auout $05,000 to $40,000 more for the consultants to pursue the additional assignment. He said he agreed to join Councilmember,Eyerly and others in placing this item on the agenda based. upon Councilmember Eyerly's hope that the additional information could be obtained without additional most by reducing other aspects of the City. It did_ not appear too clear that it would be possible, but he hoped that Council - member Eyerly could pursue it further so that when the Council started tal-king about money next week, they were_ not talking' about another $35,000 or $40,000. He thought they would have a hard time justifying it. MOTION: Mayor Henderson moved, seconded by Eyerly, that the matter be continued to- 8/24/81, and ask staff to obtain some figures on recent land sales in Palo Alto and nearby Foothills areas by that date, plus information re utilities. Mayor Henderson hoped staff could obtain that information by next Monday and then the Council could see whether the economics were such that the study should be pursued further . 'He said some of the figures he had heard were inviting, but the figures they heard last -Monday for the 77 acres were far below that. Counci member Eyerly said he would ,1 i ke staff to give their own comments regarding the -acreage that was suggested for Council to ,look at, the southwest corner of 70 acres, He said that last week he talked to the' consultants and nd the individual handling the. economic presentationt said that as long as lot sires were approximately the same size as what was talked about on the 77 acres, Jre would not have any trouble plugging that .in to :get economic corirnents to the Council as far as what the lot values were. He said that, coupled with the staff report, would be of help. The iead consultant, was not quite as cooperative as to what he would be able to do for a minimum ainourit of money in view of the fact that it was cut from $100,000 to $90,000. He said he talked to the staff about the wisdom of getting the consultants to slow down so that they did nota keep grinding out more material that they might not be wanting to use, but staff felt that the consultants, with what was talked about. last week with the Planning Commission, would need all week to get that into some type of format to add to their current. presentation. He thought that next week the Council was really looking for an overview and not the type of detail they had last week. Counc i lmember Eyerly felt that Council wonted some serious observations from staff as well as the consultants as to the environmental impact on the acreage they were talking about, and some observations on the economics. He wondered' whether they might not get comments frorn the staff as. to whether, from the environmentale impacts, the Southwest corner would not be a good building siX4 -.to protect the Ar astr a property. Mr. Zaner said staff was having trouble figuring out how.. to get Council's first, request back to Council within a week. He said it was almost impossible, and they also noticed that some of the councilmembers had vacations scheduled in the next weeks, and there was no time for staff to get back to. Council , when there would be a whole Council present, until October. Mayor Henderson said he was concerned about that because he did not want to delay dedicating the 515 acres. He wanted -:that to be doe before November 1, and he was hoping they could get at least some concept of sales in the area. Principal Planner, George Zimmerman said he did not specifically know what date the, economic consultant had that staff could put together. The other constraint was staff time during the interim when they had about five other studies that had various deadlines this week. He said that with regard to the second part of 1 1 9 2 8/1,7/81 Counc i lmember Eyer ly ` s comments namely to make some sort of cur- sory environmental assessment, and then to judge what economic return the southwest portion could generate, he had discussed that with the Lee consultant, Seaway/Cook and Richard Warren Smith, and the one consideration that had to be made when looking at economic return, was not only the revenues, but what would the cost be. Then, if you were looking at the cost, some form of eeologic analysis, soils analysis would have to be made because in order to determine what the development costs would be, some civil engineering work would have to be done, in terms of the examination of the area, what it would cost to grade, and only then, could a thorough economic analysis be done. He said the level of detail would be dependent upon how much Council wanted, but the point was that to get other than just what recent land values had gone for, to get any other type of economic or environmental impact .analysis, the other types of studies must be done. Mayor Henderson said his request was only to get the market values. He would not expect staff to beyond with any analysis or any evaluation or any guess work or anything else. Mr. Zimmerman asked if. they Were just talking about. raw land sales. Mayor Henderson said that was correct. Rose Gray, 1235 Hamilton Avenue, Chairperson of the Loma Pieta Chapter of the Sierra Club, said the continuance scunded great, the later the better. She said she believed the Council would protect the Foothi l l s, and she believed they would be left in the natural splendor. Ruttier, she urged the Council t`o designate 515 acres of Arastra Land as open space parklands. She believed that the Council would not incur further expense to the Palo Alto taxpayers, they would recognize that further study of development of land on the 550 acres of Arastra land by the consultant: would be throwing money-. away. She believed the study would be alerted to the potential investment in conserving land instead of providing high cost residences for a small portion of the., population: :She said there was a continuing increase, in population in Palo Alto, and with that growth was crowding. She said they needed more than ever places like the Arastra lands as quiet areas to relax. She said the Council could take a positive step by touring the exceptional area before any, more decisions were made, Larry Faber, 3127 David Avenue, President of Palo Alto. Horsemen for Trails Preservation, said that .i f the 77 acres were developed there would be a bridge or gap right in the middle of the _open space. He urged that the Council not block the open- space corridor. Mildred Scranton, 747 Josina Avenue, Secretary' of the Mid - Peninsula Trail Council and a member of the Palo Alto Horsemen for Trails Preservation said they were working on a walk/ride through the Arastra property in order to acquaint peop1t - with that property, and r.ould appreciate the Council joining them. William R. Smith, 1873 Edgewood Drive, member of the Palo Alto Horsemen for Trails Preservation,; said that in the connection of an -.access of clear area someone might think that 280 would make a Mock.- He said 280 was not a block to horse trails or any others because when it was put in, there were two underpasses put in to allow -Mr. Peers to run his cattle 6n _ both sides of the highway. 1 i 1 Jr u Anderson, 3084 Stel li ng Drive, member of the Palo Alto Horsemen for Trails Preservation, supported the continuance and supported whatever opportunity Council had to take a look at the Arastra property in person: She said that one of the things she had noticed in the various reports was that Stanford was wpiting in the wings to see what the City did with that property. She cautioned the Council about setting a precedent for that.77 acres and what Stanford might do since Palo Alto had gone ahead. Vice Mayor Fletcher reassured the people that she was just as dedicated as ever to dedicating at least 400 acres and hopefully more at the earliest possible opportunity. She said she wanted to explore, if possible, not so much for the purpose, of building expensive homes, but in order to generate funds so that there could be some open space in some of the neighborhoods, specifi- cally school sites, where the City was faced with having to pay enormous sums to keep some open space around the school sites. She said she did wander over the property and said she had been there several times. She said that when she was there one week- end, she felt there was another site that they might consider, which was directly across Arastradero_:Road from the 77 acres. She said that area seemed to be a possible area to look at. She said that from Arastra1ero Road it was screened heavily from some large Eucalyptus trees. She did not know if it was a suitable site or not, but felt it was worth considering. Mr. Zimmerman said that if the item did receive favorable action at a subsequent Council meeting, he wished to point out that in terms of additional costs which would be incurred by the City for the necessary consultant work, unless the Council specifically defined one site, then the consultant costs would be at the higher range of their estimate rather than the lower range because then they would be in effect going back to the 'original assignment and looking at alternate sites that would be suitable for development. Mr. Zimmerman said that the difference was that originally the consultant was going to look at the 515 acres in a more or less cursory fashion, from a visual standpoint, with no soils or geological analysis, and based upon that they would go back to Council with their findings, and where they thought would be most appropriate to develop. Councilmembea Renzel said she was concerned that they might he_. sending good money after bad and at some point, they would feel that they had so much invested in looking at all the development alternatives that they would feel compelled to select one. of them. She felt that preservation of the entire Arastra site: was in the best interests, and she thought that if there was some passing interest as to what the lanai would be worth on the open market. in terms of discussing purchase of :school sites with some form of tax revenue, she-, felt the citizens would end up having to evauate the school sites arid. -their value on a different basis. She felt that the citizens of Palo Alto would not want to trade off the open space in the Foothi l l s, and she thought that was where_ the studies were leading. She was in favor of the continu- ance, but did not want that to suggest that she .favored. the con- cepts which had been suggested or development in general. Mayor Henderson asked what would happen if the Council decided. stop the study= Mr. Zimmerman said he thought there was a certain cancellation clause and he thought they would have to go back over the con tract to see where the City would stand in that regard. Cauncilmember. 'Wither-spoon said that along with the continuance she thought they were asking for comparables for raw land in that area, and the only other_ thing that might give the. City some handle on the costs would be where would the utilities be pro- vided because she thought that once over the ridge or hill towards Los Trancos Woods, they, would run into the problem of the City's own utility lines. She thought it was a reasonable request and would support the continuance. Councilmember Bechtel was concerned that the City had already spent $75,000 on a study that was three -fourths of the way along, and she knew that some of the people involved with the Horsemen's group were concerned that the 77 acres would, if developed, block access. She said she was opposed to development on any of the land, but if the majority of the Council allowed any development, she assumed that every square inch would not be developed so that there would still be substantial access through on the 77 acres. She thought the point made by Councilmernber Witherspoon regarding utilities was a valid one, that if the previous argument had been to develop over there because it was close :o some areas of Ladera or Portola: Valley or whatever, she did not think that would fly because the other section was equally close to those portions which were already developed in Los Altos ill s. She would vote against the continuance, and did not think it was appropriate for the Council to expand the study now. MOTION TO CONTINUE PASSED by a vote of 4-2, Renzel, Bechtel voting "no, Klein, Fazzino, Levy -absent. ADJOURNMENT Meeting adjourned at 11:10 p.m. ATTEST: APPROVED: