HomeMy WebLinkAbout2016-06-28 Parks & Recreation Agenda PacketADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to
access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with
Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org This agenda is posted in accordance with
government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting.
AGENDA IS POSTED IN ACCORDANCE
WITH GOVERNMENT CODE SECTION
54954.2(a) OR SECTION 54956
PARKS AND RECREATION COMMISSION
SPECIAL MEETING
June 28, 2016
AGENDA
City Hall
Community Meeting Room
250 Hamilton
7pm
*In accordance with SB 343 materials related to an item on this Agenda submitted to the Commission after distribution of the
agenda packet are available for public inspection in the Open Space and Parks Office at 3201 East Bayshore Road during
normal business hours. Please call 650-496-6962.
Attention Speakers: If you wish to address the Commission during oral communications or on an item on the agenda,
please complete a speaker’s card and give it to City staff. By submitting the speaker’s card, the Chair will recognize you at
the appropriate time.
I.ROLL CALL
II.AGENDA CHANGES, REQUESTS, DELETIONS
III.ORAL COMMUNICATIONS
Members of the public may address the Commission on any subject not on the agenda. A
reasonable time restriction may be imposed at the discretion of the Chair. The Commission
reserves the right to limit oral communications period to 3 minutes.
IV. BUSINESS
1. Approval of Draft Minutes from May 31, 2016 Parks and Recreation Commission Special
Meeting – Chair Lauing – Action – (5 min) ATTACHMENT
2. Approval of Lucy Evans Baylands Nature Interpretive Center Park Improvement Ordinance -
Hung Nguyen – Action – (35 min) ATTACHMENT
3. Parks, Open Space, Trails and Recreation Facilities Master Plan - Peter Jensen – Discussion
ATTACHMENT
-Revisions to policies and programs from 5/31 Commission meeting (10 min)
-Ad hoc committee report (15 min)
-Master Plan Outline (15 min)
-Site Concept Plans (30 min)
4. Other Ad Hoc Committee and Liaison Updates – Chair Lauing - Discussion (15 min)
V.DIRECTOR’S REPORT
VI. COMMENTS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS
VI. TENTATIVE AGENDA FOR JULY 26, 2016 MEETING
VII. ADJOURNMENT
DRAFT
Draft Minutes 1
1
2
3
4
DRAFT MINUTES 5
PARKS & RECREATION COMMISSION 6
SPECIAL MEETING 7
May 31, 2016 8
CITY HALL 9 250 Hamilton Avenue 10 Palo Alto, California 11 12 Commissioners Present: Anne Cribbs, Jennifer Hetterly, Ed Lauing, David Moss, Keith 13
Reckdahl 14
Commissioners Absent: Jim Cowie, Abbie Knopper 15
Others Present: 16
Staff Present: Daren Anderson, Catherine Bourquin, Amanda Deng, Rob de Geus, Peter 17
Jensen, Kristen O'Kane 18
I. ROLL CALL CONDUCTED BY: Catherine Bourquin 19
20
II. AGENDA CHANGES, REQUESTS, and DELETIONS: 21
22
None. 23
24
Commissioner Reckdahl: (inaudible) 25
26
Kristen O'Kane: I don't know when he'll be able to get out of the Council meeting. We'll 27
just go as planned. 28
29
Chair Lauing: That's probably the best batting order for that contingency anyway. 30
31 III. ORAL COMMUNICATIONS: 32
33
None. 34
35
DRAFT
Draft Minutes 2
IV. BUSINESS: 1
2
1. Approval of Draft Minutes from April 26, 2016 Parks and Recreation 3
Commission Regular Meeting. 4
5
Approval of the draft April 26, 2016 Minutes as presented was moved by Commissioner 6
Reckdahl and seconded by Commissioner Hetterly. Passed 5-0 7
8
2. Update on Teen Programs. 9
10
Chair Lauing: The next item on the agenda is an update on teen programs. Do you want 11
to do the introductions? 12
13
Ms. O'Kane: Sure. I'd like to introduce you all to Amal Aziz. She is with our Recreation 14
Division in CSD. She is responsible for all our teen programs and services. We have 15
some really great programs that we offer. I invited Amal to come and just share those 16
programs with you. I'll turn it over to Amal. 17
18
Amal Aziz: Thank you, Kristen. Good evening. Thank you, everyone, for having me. 19
Again, my name is Amal Aziz; I'm the Recreation Coordinator here with the City. I 20
oversee our teen programs. They run the gamut; there's a lot of different programs that 21
we run. I'm really excited to be able to talk to you all about a few of those. The 22
background of our teen programs is—the objective of them really is to provide a fun and 23
engaging and safe space for our teens, where they can really be themselves and express 24
themselves, to really provide that space in an array of different ways. As we go through 25
the presentation, you'll see that there's a number of different ways in which we hope to be 26
able to do that with our teens. Here's just some numbers. These were drafted out a 27
[video malfunction]. 28
29
Chair Lauing: It's a little bit tougher tonight because there's a glare on that screen, so we 30
can't really bend over and see it. While that's worked on, I think we should proceed. If 31
you can just go slowly because we can't read all that and ask (crosstalk). 32
33
Ms. Aziz: No problem. Let me know if I need to slow down more than ... 34
35
Chair Lauing: You don't have to be quite as close to the microphone. 36
37
Ms. Aziz: We run an array of programs. I left off with The Drop teen center which is 38
located in Mitchell Park in the Teen Center over there. The Drop is the high school facet. 39
It's a free program. I'll go into more detail on that as well. LEAP is our middle school 40
program. This is also free, also located at Mitchell Park. It's a little bit more structured, 41
so there's homework help. We have students that participate in that as well. We also 42
DRAFT
Draft Minutes 3
have our teen leadership groups, and we also partner with Youth Community Services to 1
support their SWAG, Students With a Gateway, as well as their youth fellowship 2
programs, and we house them over at Mitchell Park as well. I'm going to go ahead and 3
go forward. First, I'm going to get into our teen leadership programs. We have a core 4
four that we serve here in the City and that work with the rest of the teen community here 5
in the City. The first one I'm going to talk about is Palo Alto Youth Council or PAYC. 6
Palo Alto Youth Council focuses on issues and concerns of the teen community. We 7
have a group of approximately 25 teens from Palo Alto High, Gunn and Castilleja, that 8
work to address those. They've hosted teen forums here in the City. They've also worked 9
to put together, which they hope to post soon, the state of the youth. That should be 10
going up soon. They're very, very focused on youth policy issues and just really working 11
on the creative and teen (inaudible) to address them. The Teen Advisory Board focuses 12
on really teen-led events for the teen community. They range from trivia nights to 13
cupcake decorating to decompress from finals. They do a number of different things, 14
movie nights, just fun, engaging breakaways from the regular teen day to really just be 15
themselves that the Teen Advisory Board focuses on. The Teen Arts Council is, of 16
course, our arts-focused component. This is housed over at the theatre, over at Lucie 17
Stern. This is one of our larger groups; it's about 50 students also from Gunn, Paly and 18
Castilleja. They are very, again, arts and creative focused [video malfunction] slam, so 19
providing extended hours and a safe space, breakaways for finals because those can get 20
hectic, as we know, for our teens. They do creative events, all focused on books and 21
reading over at Mitchell Park and over at Rinconada as well. [video malfunction] your 22
normal teen hectic to just really enjoy yourself and express yourself. We also provide a 23
Counselor in Training program. We bring in teens 13 and 14, approximately 50, each 24
summer to be placed into our summer camps and take on leadership roles. They're 25
actually starting the training next week and then start the program immediately the week 26
after. They're able to learn really important leadership skills and work with youth. It's a 27
really, really fun program that we are kicking off again in just a week. Those are the 28
programs in summary. Thank you. Any questions? 29
30
Chair Lauing: Let's just see if Commissioners have questions about it. Either direction. 31
Go ahead, Commissioner Hetterly. 32
33
Commissioner Hetterly: I have a question about the youth groups. I know later on 34
tonight we're talking about the Master Plan. There's a program in there to start a teen 35
advisory group for Community Services and Recreation. I'm wondering are there any 36
joint efforts or collaborative efforts across the multiple teens or are they pretty much just 37
standalone, doing their own thing? 38
39
Ms. Aziz: Are you saying do the teen groups collaborate? 40
41
Commissioner Hetterly: Yeah. 42
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Draft Minutes 4
1
Ms. Aziz: Yes. There's definitely ways of collaboration. TAB is collaborated with the 2
Arts Council. The Youth Council is also collaborated as well. We're always seeking 3
opportunities to collaborate with other groups. For example, Project Anybody was able 4
to work with the climate conference not too long ago. We're always seeking 5
opportunities to do so. That's definitely something—I believe that there was someone 6
that did come to speak to the Youth Council with regard to what you were just 7
mentioning. 8
9
Commissioner Hetterly: About the Master Plan? 10
11
Ms. Aziz: Yeah. I believe somebody did come and speak to the Youth Council earlier 12
this year, but we're definitely always willing to come in and collaborate further. 13
14
Commissioner Hetterly: Do they do any kind of joint activities where you get all the teen 15
boards together? 16
17
Ms. Aziz: We've done open mikes collaboratively with the Arts Council. We have done 18
TAB, and the Youth Council has worked together on forums. There is definitely some 19
collaboration. We're able to bring in the really policy-focused teens with the more 20
artistic, creative teens with the Arts Council and so on and so forth. 21
22
Commissioner Hetterly: That's great. Thank you. 23
24
Chair Lauing: A related question on that that I had was PAYC and TAB and all those 25
things, are there overlap teen members on those as well? 26
27
Ms. Aziz: Yes, definitely. 28
29
Chair Lauing: It's part of a broader question of do you have a very small group of super-30
enthusiastic teens that are kind of running everything or how many folks are belonging to 31
these various leadership groups? 32
33
Ms. Aziz: We definitely do have a few that may participate in both Youth Council and 34
Arts Council or Teen Advisory Board and TLAB. There's definitely overlap but not so 35
much. The majority of the groups, as far as our leadership groups go, are those core 36
students. We have approximately 50 in the Arts Council. I believe TLAB is at about 15. 37
TAB is 20, and then Youth Council is 25. As far as overlap, I advise three of those 38
groups. Those are maybe two to three in each group that are overlap. 39
40
Chair Lauing: Maybe in the age of social media this is a silly question. How do you 41
make people aware of the various groups that they can join? 42
DRAFT
Draft Minutes 5
1
Ms. Aziz: Social media is definitely the main thing that we try to utilize. We know that 2
our teens are constantly on their social media accounts, so we're using that often. We 3
also try to promote with parents as well. We work closely with the PTA, with our 4
schools. We also promote heavily in Enjoy! and in all of our promotional items there. A 5
lot of our recruitment and pull is social media. 6
7
Chair Lauing: Does it come across as cool that way? 8
9
Ms. Aziz: I would hope so. 10
11
Chair Lauing: Commissioner Moss. 12
13
Commissioner Moss: Following up on what he said, is there an outreach for at-risk kids? 14
Do the counselors in the high schools recommend kids to come and it's not just the cool 15
kids? 16
17
Ms. Aziz: Yes. That's most heavily focused in our afterschool programming, so Drop 18
and LEAP. We wanted to make sure that it was very, very accessible and something that 19
any kid could come to, which is why the program is free. We work closely with the 20
counselors. We let them know if they have anyone that they would like to recommend 21
that they can just bring them to us. We make sure that they're in the program regardless 22
of whether we're at capacity or not. We always make accommodations for students if 23
they are recommended by either a counselor or a parent as at-risk. 24
25
Commissioner Moss: That's great. Do you some olders helping youngers, for instance, 26
tutoring or is that a separate program? 27
28
Ms. Aziz: Yeah. In LEAP, our staff work to support our homework component for the 29
afterschool program. A lot of our staff are high schoolers that have maybe been in the 30
programs and have come on as staff. Our current shift lead is an old Gunn alum. We try 31
to make sure that we keep them involved at that capacity. We also have programs that 32
come in, that provide mentorship and learning to those groups as well. We have a 33
program called FLY which is Financial Literacy for Youth, as just an example. It's high 34
school students that are providing financial literacy learning to middle school students. 35
They're coming in and they're doing these games and activities that are all focused on 36
financial literacy. They close out each semester with a fun carnival that the students are 37
able to lead themselves. We try to make sure that we keep them engaged with the older 38
and younger, because they are interacting at the Teen Center. We definitely try empower 39
the older groups to be in more leadership roles while they are there. 40
41
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Commissioner Moss: One last question. Does yours feed other groups? For instance, is 1
there a drama component or do you feed people into the Children's Theatre or things like 2
that? In other words, so it's not just you in a vacuum but as a stepping stone to other 3
programs. 4
5
Ms. Aziz: Yeah, definitely. We make sure to cross-promote and constantly keep 6
students aware of things. Oftentimes, especially now at the end of the year where we're 7
closing up and preparing for the new year, there's always teens asking, "What if I'm 8
interested in this" or "What if I'm interested in that?" We might pick up an interest in 9
working closely with our teens, that you might have a knack for really focusing on 10
decisions for teens and making those important choices. Maybe you'd be a great fit for 11
Youth Council or you're just an awesome event planner, you might be fantastic for Teen 12
Advisory Board. Keeping close to that as well. We definitely try to place teens, because 13
there's just so many different programs. Making sure there's a good fit. 14
15
Commissioner Moss: Thank you. 16
17
Chair Lauing: Commissioner Cribbs. 18
19
Commissioner Cribbs: I'd just like to, first of all, say it's a great group of programs. I'm 20
so happy to see that you could say to kids, "Find your passion." There are some things in 21
there that almost anybody would love to do. I'm curious about how many youth do you 22
think that you touch in a year? 23
24
Ms. Aziz: That's a heavy number, because we have so many different programs that we 25
do if we talk directly about the programs that we provide the more direct numbers. For 26
example, for our afterschool programs, we have together with both The Drop and LEAP, 27
we have more than 200 enrolled every semester. When we talk about our Bryant Street 28
Garage Fund programs, those are directly granted about 35. When we talk about the 29
direct grants, those are the applicants. The applicants either develop groups or they 30
create events. Those events range anywhere from about 50 students to 200-300 people 31
from families. We're actually currently re-hashing our numbers, because the numbers in 32
that presentation are low. They're from January/February. I can get those updated 33
numbers to you in a couple of weeks; we're just finalizing those right now. 34
35
Commissioner Cribbs: I think it'd be very interesting to see that. How late does the 36
Friday night teen program go? 37
38
Ms. Aziz: We go until 9:00 p.m. 39
40
Commissioner Cribbs: 9:00? 41
42
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Ms. Aziz: Yeah, depending on the event, but it's typically 'til 9:00 p.m. 1
2
Commissioner Cribbs: If it needed to go later, it's a matter of staff time and budget and 3
that kind of thing? 4
5
Ms. Aziz: Yes. 6
7
Commissioner Cribbs: Thank you. 8
9
Chair Lauing: Commissioner Reckdahl. 10
11
Commissioner Reckdahl: If it would go later than 9:00, would you have the kids? Are 12
you kicking the kids out at 9:00 or do they move elsewhere by that time? 13
14
Ms. Aziz: They're usually trickling out around that time. We do want to keep cognizant 15
of just safety and walking in the dark. A lot of our students walk or bike. We don't want 16
to keep them out too late, which is why we said at 9:00. Sometimes in the winter if kids 17
are walking home, we'll kind of suggest an earlier release, let them leave a little earlier 18
just for safety purposes. 19
20
Commissioner Reckdahl: Is the shuttle running at that time? 21
22
Ms. Aziz: Is what? I'm sorry. 23
24
Commissioner Reckdahl: The shuttle, the Palo Alto shuttle. 25
26
Ms. Aziz: I'm not sure if the shuttle runs. Not a lot of our students take the shuttle. I'm 27
not sure. 28
29
Commissioner Reckdahl: What locations do you have for events? You mentioned 30
Mitchell Park. Is that the park itself or the library? 31
32
Ms. Aziz: It's the community center. The majority of the programs are housed out of 33
Mitchell Park. We utilize the Teen Center; we utilize the various rooms there. It's been 34
just a really fantastic and convenient place to do it. We've also hosted events at Lucie 35
Stern. We've hosted in the park, in Mitchell Park Library, Rinconada Library, at the 36
theater. Definitely the core of our programs are at Mitchell Park in the community 37
center. 38
39
Commissioner Reckdahl: How is Mitchell Park Teen Center working out? 40
41
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Ms. Aziz: It's working out well. It's definitely grown. It's definitely grown. We started 1
off and just kind of tried to work with exactly what the teens wanted. We were like do 2
we need this to be very demanding as far as structure or should it be more lax and still 3
have opportunities for really intentional programming, but kind of at the students' 4
discretion. Working those things out, down to what games they want to play and when 5
do they want to have their three-point shootout. What kind of homework support do they 6
need? It's grown significantly. We're getting numbers of approximately 30, 40 students 7
per day. 8
9
Commissioner Reckdahl: Is there anything about the facility that you would like to 10
change? 11
12
Ms. Aziz: Anything about the facility. Nothing that I can think of. Maybe we could 13
have like a fence that goes over, so the kids don't kick the balls over on the roof every 14
week. That could save us some time and money. 15
16
Commissioner Reckdahl: Is that when they're in the courtyard or in the basketball court? 17
18
Ms. Aziz: They're in the basketball court. Really I can't think of any—the facility has 19
really been very good to us. 20
21
Commissioner Reckdahl: When the kids hang, are they hanging in the Teen Center or 22
out in that courtyard? 23
24
Ms. Aziz: As it's grown, they're bleeding out into the courtyard. They're definitely 25
hanging out in the basketball courts as well. They do love the Teen Center. Again, I 26
can't think of a real gripe about the Teen Center. We have awesome games and activities. 27
It's just a really—it's structured in a very well way where students can just come and 28
relax. It's very low demand. They can enjoy themselves. I can't think of a single gripe 29
as far as the space goes. 30
31
Commissioner Reckdahl: That's very good. You mentioned the Teen Week Out. What 32
ages is that for? 33
34
Ms. Aziz: Teen Week Out is 13-17. 35
36
Commissioner Reckdahl: That's very good, because as my kids aged out of the summer 37
camps up there, it would have been still nice to have the activities. You can go CIT, but 38
that takes your whole summer. This week by week Teen Week Out sounds like a very 39
good option. 40
41
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Ms. Aziz: CIT has some flexibility. We have CIT folks that are registered only for one 1
session, which is a 2-week session. We have some that wanted to be CITs throughout the 2
summer. There's some flexibility in that too. We wanted to do Teen Week Out because 3
we wanted to provide another option. If you didn't want to be outdoors at Foothills 4
Adventure, you didn't want to take on that leadership role, just wanted to kind of hang out 5
and enjoy yourself with your peers and do something new and get out, that's what Teen 6
Week Out was structured around. 7
8
Commissioner Reckdahl: The last thing is I would like to use these teens for another 9
purpose, and that's for getting input for recreation offerings. Not teen events, but just 10
general recreation. What is cool for the teens is going to be cool for the 20-somethings. 11
It'd be good to get input from them, what kind of new programs would they like to see 12
just in our general recreation offerings. That would be very good input for our programs. 13
That's it. Thank you. 14
15
Ms. Aziz: Thank you. 16
17
Chair Lauing: Don't tell a 20-something it's cool just because the teens like it. 18
Commissioner Moss. 19
20
Commissioner Moss: One more thing. If you had a guaranteed shuttle at 9:00, would 21
that get you more kids? 22
23
Ms. Aziz: This is something that we've discussed at length. Our location can be kind of 24
difficult for some of the—we do still get students from Palo Alto High, from Terman, 25
from Jordan, but it's far more difficult for them to get there as opposed to someone from 26
JLS or Gunn. There's also that concern of being later in the evening. One of the things 27
that we would love to have is a shuttle that comes directly from those schools to the 28
Center and also to those Friday night teen nights. We want to make it as easy and as safe 29
as possible for these teens. That would definitely be a way to do so. 30
31
Commissioner Cribbs: For the programs that are fee-based, is there a scholarship 32
component at all? 33
34
Ms. Aziz: We do have a fee reduction program for all the fee-based programs. 35
36
Chair Lauing: Thank you for the presentation. Thank you for your enthusiasm around 37
our teen segment. Very important. 38
39
Ms. Aziz: Thank you for having me. 40
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3. Proposed Conceptual Design on Quarry Road Improvements and Transit 1
Center Access Project Update. 2
3
Chair Lauing: The next agenda item is the proposed conceptual design on Quarry Road 4
improvements and the Transit Center access. Who's going to lead that? 5
6
Ms. O'Kane: That will be Paul Schneider with Siegfried. He presented last time. He is 7
with the consulting firm, Siegfried. Also Shahla Yazdy is here from the Transportation 8
Department. 9
10
Chair Lauing: We do now have our monitors working, so we can see. 11
12
Shahla Yazdy: Good evening, Commissioners. I'm Shahla Yazdy with Transportation, 13
here to discuss the Quarry Road improvements project. We came to you last month and 14
presented an alternative. We heard your comments, and they were very good. Thank 15
you. We've come back, and we've modified the alternative. Basically we're sticking to 16
the original alignment with the enhancements. Paul will go over those, the changes that 17
we've made. They're pretty much based on comments that we received from all of you in 18
addition to Stanford and some ARB comments as well. I will turn it over to Paul, and he 19
can go over the revisions to the alignment. Thank you. 20
21
Paul Schneider: As you said last time, I think the loud and clear message was why are 22
we deviating from the existing alignment. I talked a little bit about the need to try to put 23
in some smoother curves and a few other things. In general, not knowing the future of 24
the rest of this piece and discussing it with the rest of the folks at the City, we came back 25
to what—you said you can now see on your monitors? 26
27
Chair Lauing: Yes. 28
29
Mr. Schneider: We came to back to an alignment that's very, very close to what was 30
there before. You can actually see that. There's sort of a hatching pattern behind the blue 31
that is very faint, but you can see that's the old alignment. It was a little more scattered 32
and random, but this one's a little smoother and covers a larger width. In putting back the 33
original alignment, there are just a couple of very, very minor modifications. You can 34
see the "Y" intersection where the lower path comes into the middle of the path. It's still 35
largely the same. There's infrastructure vault there that we just can't avoid. Right next to 36
that are two football uprights and power poles that we're trying to split with this path. 37
We're very, very constrained with this. The two major improvements that have been 38
made to the alignment is the intersection at Quarry Road. You can see the pathway. It 39
pushes a little bit further away. You can see an ever so slight hump in the path in the 40
long direction. All we did was push it away about 8-10 feet from its current alignment, 41
which gives us better stacking as someone comes off of El Camino. Our biggest concern 42
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last time is if you have a couple of bikes and a stroller and five walkers; there really 1
wasn't enough room to maybe let the last biker or the last person or the stroller just get 2
out of the road. That was a big concern of ours as designers. We pulled that back. The 3
other final piece is the curve as you sort of neck around, as you imagine you're going 4
along El Camino and coming up to the Transit Center. We put as generous a curve on 5
that as we could to take that little right angle or that almost right angle kink out of it. 6
Again, it's not—this is a little bit of a conundrum of a bike path, because it depends on if 7
you ask a biker or a walker, you're going to get a different reaction on what they want out 8
of the path. This is a really "right down the middle" type design. It softens it up so that 9
you get a decent radius for a bicyclist. We've taken down—there's a small pistache tree. 10
We've met with Dave Dockter in the field. We've talked with Daren and his group as 11
well about that one on the corner. There's also a SFPUC vault right on that corner. We're 12
just barely sort of skimming that to get this alignment in there. That's kind of it for the 13
alignment. In terms of what this is, we have—the documents we had last time were a bit 14
misleading on the fact that we only had a lot of bike information on them. We had 15
completely missed on making sure that the right pedestrian signage was in the 16
information you guys were looking at. This is a 12-foot wide path. It's a multiuse path; 17
it's not signed or designated as a bike path. It's not intended to be a bike raceway. It is 18
similar to what's out in El Camino Park now, that it's 12 feet in total width which in 19
essence gives you room for walkers, strollers, bicyclists going in each direction. That is 20
the continuity that you see sort of from start to finish. The signage. There was a number 21
of comments on the signage, why are we adding this kind of signage, how come it's 22
pointing these different directions. We have toned back all of that signage. Again, 23
reminding myself and in talking with Shahla as well the purpose of the project, that it's a 24
temporary path, it's funded by an outside source. It was, if I'm not mistaken, an 25
environmental document mandate as part of the hospital environmental document. 26
Again, it wasn't something that was intended to be necessarily permanent, because the 27
future's a little bit unknown here. It did need to be improved. All of the signage was cut 28
way back. We really only have one directional sign. See if I can flip to that sheet here. 29
It's here, bear with me. There's the one sign that's out there right now. That's located up 30
at Location C. There is a Location A which is an existing sign that's located right now as 31
you come off of El Camino. Those two signs are basically going to move anywhere from 32
3-4 feet to a different location, but exactly right where they are. We're not going to 33
change the information. They don't need restoration. Again, why change what's 34
working? The only sign we did add was "B" which doesn't exist right now as you come 35
in from that lower path. Whether you're again a walker or a biker, a very short sign, you 36
can see it in the exhibit there, nothing that is out of the ordinary or in your face or loud. 37
We did add the one sign. I think the last thing in response to the comments last time that 38
I wanted to bring to your attention is you can see on this exhibit the amount of green 39
that's in there. The description of the project talks about sort of greening and beautifying 40
this particular corridor, and that's exactly what we've reacted to and done. We have also 41
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met—we had a great discussion with Dave Dockter, frankly, in the field. Daren, I think 1
he's ... 2
3
Daren Anderson: (inaudible) 4
5
Mr. Schneider: Exactly. I wasn't sure if he was a landscape architect. His knowledge of 6
plant material and what works and doesn't work in the City has always been a resource 7
for us. He and our in-house landscape architects met, talked in the field. I was there 8
myself looking at some of the signage and the grading as we were developing the plans. 9
Just a great system of layered in color, natural planting, low water use, really what you'd 10
expect out of something like this. I think that was in large part the bulk of the comments. 11
A couple of comments might have sort of gone away in essence because we're back on 12
the existing alignment. There were comments about cost and why and those kinds of 13
things, but I think we've addressed everything. I would welcome any new comments or 14
questions. 15
16
Chair Lauing: Is this 100 percent funded by Stanford? 17
18
Mr. Schneider: Yes. 19
20
Chair Lauing: Comments from Commissioners? Commissioner Reckdahl. 21
22
Commissioner Reckdahl: It looks nice; I like the design. I still look at the price tag of 23
$300,000 and say that's a lot of money. What would happen if we didn't build it? What 24
would happen to the money? 25
26
Ms. Yazdy: It's part of the mitigation for the Stanford Hospital. This was identified as 27
one of the mitigation requirements. We are required to do this project, make it safer, add 28
lighting, just basically make it a safer path for both pedestrians and bicyclists. 29
30
Commissioner Reckdahl: What timeline are we required to build this on? 31
32
Ms. Yazdy: It's a pretty fast track. As soon as we get the ball rolling, we're going to have 33
to submit final plans and go out to bid this summer. Project completion needs to be prior 34
to issuance of the permit, which is scheduled for spring of 2017. 35
36
Commissioner Reckdahl: I have one other question about the decomposed gravel on the 37
outside. Is the plan that the center part will be reserved for bicycles and we expect 38
pedestrians will be using the side? Will it be marked at all? 39
40
Mr. Schneider: No. The cross-section is a typical cross-section for a Class 1 multiuse 41
path. Realistically, the only thing that is striped or designated is the center. Half of it, 6 42
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feet on one side and 6 feet on the other side, is designated for traffic in either direction. It 1
does not designate the middle for pedestrians or the outside for bicyclists. The only 2
reason why we just don't do 12—you can do 12 feet of asphalt, you can do 12 feet of 3
concrete. We try to do a more reasonable section of asphalt to control costs and the 4
decomposed granite on the outside to even reduce the cost further and also to basically 5
reduce some of the runoff that this type of project would create for storm water. It's a 6
little bit of a sustainability trick as well as an aesthetic trick. It is not designated for one 7
versus the other. 8
9
Commissioner Reckdahl: There's no signage telling people how to use it (crosstalk). 10
11
Mr. Schneider: No. You can see the striping on the ground basically tells you it's a 12
shared use. Being out there for the past few years working on the other side of the park 13
and watching how people use the trails, it's pretty well known that you stay on your left 14
and a walker will typically come off to the right and a bicyclist will go down the middle. 15
16
Commissioner Reckdahl: Finally, the plantings. They're mostly native plants? 17
18
Mr. Schneider: They are almost all native plants. Everything is going to fall, number 19
one, in accordance with AB 1881 and the Model Water Efficiency Ordinance for 20
landscaping, so everything has to be low water use. 21
22
Commissioner Reckdahl: With native plants, is there any chance that once they're 23
established we can not water at all or are we stuck watering? 24
25
Mr. Anderson: I'll just chime in. In a lot of areas where we're doing these things, we will 26
try it out. We will turn off the water and see what sustains. That becomes the dominant 27
plant species, especially in time of drought where we've got to make these tough choices. 28
A lot of times on the plan you put it in, it's hard to say, and you're going to irrigate it all 29
until it's all established, which can be up to a year or more depending on the species, and 30
then we'll trickle it down and see what does well and kind of go from there and do a little 31
balancing act. The native species do pretty darn well without irrigation. 32
33
Commissioner Reckdahl: I just have a comment about the curve. This is a much sharper 34
curve than before, but I think that's okay. This is a very short segment; it only takes 35
about a minute to walk from one end to the other. On a bike, it's a matter of seconds. I 36
don't think we need a raceway to maximize the speed of the bicycles, and they'll just slow 37
down for the corner, but that's not going to be a significant amount of time. This is a 38
better design than the previous one. Thank you. 39
40
Chair Lauing: Commissioner Hetterly. 41
42
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Commissioner Hetterly: I want to say thanks for giving it another look. I like this 1
alignment a lot better. I really appreciate that you all took to heart all of our comments. I 2
think most of them are very well addressed. I just have one question about the pavement. 3
I think it's just asphalt. The other side of El Camino Park—I may remember this 4
wrong—I thought we had a permeable pavement on that path. Is that something that was 5
considered for this path as well and rejected? If so, why? 6
7
Mr. Schneider: You're 100 percent correct. We have porous concrete over a pervious 8
gravel section over along the tulip trees on the piece that goes from Alma over to almost 9
all the way to the entrance to this historic oak that's out there. It was because we were in 10
the drip line of the trees. It's definitely more costly. As we're developing the 11
improvement plans right now and as a result of our meeting with Dave Dockter, there is 12
an oak tree—I don't know if you can see my cursor—right here to the bottom part of the 13
"Y," that does have quite a bit of an overhang into the path. There is a small section of 14
that same material that we're considering right there as mitigation for the roots. It's more 15
of a construction document kind of thing, but we are considering that. We do currently 16
have a line item in the project budget to take care of that, so it will not drive the price up 17
from where it is now. We just hadn't gotten to the point where we knew exactly where 18
and how much of it. 19
20
Commissioner Hetterly: Thank you. 21
22
Chair Lauing: Down this way. Commissioner Moss? 23
24
Commissioner Moss: Two questions. When we brought this up last time, we were 25
worried that maybe the big plan for the Transit Center would take part of this and it 26
would be a waste of money. Do we have any more idea since last month about when 27
they're going to start looking at that transit plan and whether or not they would extend 28
into this area at all? 29
30
Ms. Yazdy: I'm afraid I don't have any more information as far as when. I think right 31
now the drive is to get this completed before the hospital opens. I was told this will be 32
temporary, 5-7 years. I'm sure within that timeframe they're going to start the design or 33
at least looking into options. 34
35
Commissioner Moss: The second question is on the right of it and the left of it, what's 36
there now? Is that undeveloped fields or is that—what is on the sides of that project? 37
38
Mr. Schneider: On the upper left corner of your screen, sort of between the curve of the 39
transit, the fence of the park, the Olympic grove, it's almost a little triangle, the largest 40
mass there. Right now that is just completely empty. It's recycled bark mulch. It's not in 41
piles; it's just spread out there as more of a weed mitigation. There's really nothing out 42
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there. On the right-hand side of it between the parking lot of the Red Cross and the path, 1
again it's a lot of bark mulch. It's a pretty barren area. In fact, there's one dead cedar tree 2
that's been requested to take out as part of this project; it's becoming a bit of a safety 3
hazard. It will come out, and some of that area will get a little bit restored with the 4
planting that we have in here. The area along El Camino Real, there's a nice split-rail 5
fence there with some pretty mature Manzanita that seem to be growing pretty well. 6
We'll probably add a little bit of water to them, and they'll fill out as well. It's a little bit 7
more developed there. As you come down to the bottom part of the path that runs across 8
your screen, it too is just a fairly open area. There's a lot of oak trees in there. It looks 9
very sort of untouched. We're going to blend—you can see the shape that follows this, 10
the gray pattern in there. There's the green, and then there's a shape of where some of our 11
improvements are going to go to spruce up that bark and create a little bit more of a 12
natural transition into that. 13
14
Commissioner Moss: That leads to my last question which is what to do with those 15
areas. I think the plan is that when the Transit Center is done and you know what's left, 16
then we develop it fully as a parkland with lawns or picnic tables or more parking or 17
whatever. 18
19
Mr. Anderson: I think that's right. There's likely to be some interim measure. I'd hate to 20
just have that land sitting idle for 5 years or some nebulous amount of time. I think the 21
Parks Master Plan will help identify whether it's a butterfly garden and we seed it with 22
natives. That way it's not a huge investment. There's lots of different things we could 23
look at. The Master Plan will, I think, address the short term or intermediate term. After 24
the 5-7 years, once the plan's identified for exactly what's going to happen for the transit 25
improvements, then we come in and use the parkland to the best of our abilities with 26
what's remaining. 27
28
Chair Lauing: You have comments? Commissioner Cribbs. 29
30
Commissioner Cribbs: I just think that I'm kind of wrestling with spending all this 31
money for something that's temporary. 32
33
Chair Lauing: All of Stanford's money. 34
35
Commissioner Cribbs: I don't think it matters whose money it is. I just think it's the 36
spending of the money. I understand it's a mitigation and all of that. If there were some 37
way to push it off so it could be used as part of whatever gets spent for the next phase, I 38
would feel much better about it. That's all. 39
40
Chair Lauing: It doesn't feel like that's an option, though. 41
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Commissioner Cribbs: No. 1
2
Chair Lauing: Any other comments? Thanks for listening last time and constructively 3
redesigning a little bit. Looks like it's good to go. 4
5
4. Parks, Open Space, Trails and Recreation Facilities Master Plan 6
7
Chair Lauing: The next agenda item is the Master Plan review of these next pieces of 8
that puzzle. I think it's both Kristen and Peter Jensen. What kind of format would you 9
like to start with on going over all the materials that were in the packet and the handout 10
that you just gave us? 11
12
Ms. O'Kane: I'll go ahead and start. Kristen O'Kane, Assistant Director with Community 13
Services. I'll be presenting along with Peter Jensen, Landscape Architect with our Public 14
Works Department, on the latest on the Parks, Trails, Open Space and Recreation Master 15
Plan. We have a short presentation, and then I'll do the first portion of the presentation 16
related to our policies and programs. I'll turn it over to Peter to talk about the site concept 17
plans in front of you. In your packet, we included what will become Chapter 5 of the 18
Master Plan document. This document includes the goals, policies and the programs that 19
staff have developed to date. I did want to point out that since the latest version, we did 20
make some changes to the policies. Most of them were very minor, and these changes 21
came out of the process as we were developing the programs. It gave us the opportunity 22
to look at the policies a little bit deeper and to see how the programs fit in. That resulted 23
in some changes. There were three changes to the policies that I think were more 24
significant, that I just wanted to bring to your attention, which I did in the staff report. 25
The first of those is Policy 1B. We did talk about this at our last meeting in April. 26
Commissioner Hetterly gave a bit of a summary on why we made this change. Policy 27
1.B is the policy related to the National Recreation and Park Association standard that's 28
currently referenced in the Comprehensive Plan. In looking into that a little bit deeper, 29
we realized that the NRPA's standard differentiates between neighborhood parks and 30
district parks. That didn't really correlate to what Palo Alto has. We revised the policy to 31
recognize that standard and to use it as a guide, but we removed the distinction between 32
the neighborhood parks and the district parks. That also allows us to count some of our 33
parks that we have that are very small in size, but yet provide a benefit to the community, 34
into our calculation of how much parkland we have. We added additional language about 35
how we feel the parkland should be distributed across the community and that it should 36
be sufficient size to meet the needs of the neighborhoods. Included at the end, a 37
maximum service area of one-half mile. We'll still include the NRPA standard as a 38
sidebar in the Master Plan, but this will be the policy that we'll use. The next one is 39
Policy 4.C. This is a development of the Comprehensive Conservation Plans for the 40
Baylands, Foothills Park, Esther Clark and the Arastradero Preserve. While we do feel 41
this is very important and it will still be in the Master Plan, we thought it was more of a 42
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program as opposed to a policy. Instead of it being a policy—it was Policy 4.C—we've 1
now moved it to a program under Policy 4.G. It's still in there, and we still feel it's 2
important. We just felt it was more of a program. The last one, Policy 5.E. This policy 3
we deleted altogether. We felt that the process for identifying new parks is part of the 4
development agreement process. It's already an established process within the Planning 5
Department, and that's run by the Planning Department. We decided to pull it out of this 6
document, because it's already addressed through the Planning Department. We also felt 7
like the word "encourage" at the beginning of the policy didn't make it very strong as far 8
as it wouldn't be very implementable with just the term "encourage" at the front. That's 9
why we went with delete for that one. Before I move on to a discussion on programs, is 10
there any comments on the policy changes? One other quick thing. In Attachment A, we 11
did include a summary of all of the changes we made to the policies. There's two 12
columns, what we had before and then the revised policy is in the second column. The 13
other changes were pretty minor, we felt. I just wanted to focus on these three that were a 14
bit more significant. 15
16
Commissioner Moss: With the change in the 1.B, how much of a deficit do we now 17
have? In the past we had like 88 acres or something deficit in neighborhood parks. With 18
the new definition, how much of a deficit do we have now? 19
20
Ms. O'Kane: I'll need to look at that again, now that we're not differentiating between 21
neighborhood and district. Commissioner Hetterly, I think you went through that. 22
23
Commissioner Hetterly: It's still an 88-acre deficit, maybe an acre less if we add in all 24
the mini parks that were under the threshold before. It's not a significant change. We 25
didn't magically create new parks. A change in the way we talked about them. 26
27
Ms. O'Kane: The goal was not to sort of pad our numbers, I guess. It was just to be more 28
indicative of what we have in Palo Alto, to make it more transferrable to Palo Alto's 29
scenario. 30
31
Commissioner Moss: It makes a big difference because if you treat the Baylands and you 32
treat Arastradero as something like a neighborhood park or a neighborhood park to some 33
people, then you do reduce the 88 acres. I thought that was the reason for the change, but 34
I guess not. 35
36
Commissioner Hetterly: The reason for the change was really to eliminate confusion 37
over what's a district park and what's a neighborhood park. In all of them, including the 38
National Park standards, they're referring to the urban parks, not big regional parks. The 39
open space has never been part of the conversation around this standard. 40
41
Chair Lauing: Was that it? David? Was that all your comments? 42
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1
Commissioner Moss: That's it. 2
3
Chair Lauing: Just a quick comment. I think there was some good wordsmithing on 4
these revises here. When you put in to collect and evaluate data on changing interests of 5
the community as opposed to needs, that's very different, and I think it captures it better 6
now in terms of what we're actually going after. There were a couple more like that. My 7
only question was I understand that the Planning Department is kind of in charge of 8
development agreements and so on. There's sort of a visibility issue that's of slight 9
concern of how are we going to know about these things as well as kind of a built-in—10
maybe being too formal—a little bit of a checks and balance between the two semi-11
legislative groups. Some of the other things that you've talked about in these policies of 12
proactive discussions with other departments and other Commissions and so on is going 13
to have to have some emphasis there, so that Parks knows what's going on and what's 14
coming up. Generally we wouldn't know about new developments that are happening. 15
16
Ms. O'Kane: That's a good point. I think maybe we can look back at the programs and 17
see if we can add additional language that sort of keeps CSD and the Planning 18
Department have regular communication. We could even report back to the Commission 19
on that. We could include that, just to get a bit more in-depth as far as collaborating with 20
other departments. We could include that as well. 21
22
Chair Lauing: I think that'd be good, because we're not generally reading the minutes of 23
those meetings. Did you have another comment? That's what I thought. Go ahead. 24
25
Commissioner Hetterly: I agree with Commissioner Lauing on that last point. It made 26
me a little nervous getting rid of that policy mostly because I think what we're looking for 27
is more than just following the parkland dedication rules. We're really looking for some 28
collaboration across the departments to figure out the best way to incorporate parkland 29
into these private developments, if and when it's possible to do that. I was really looking 30
for something that would be more proactive, rather than just saying that's their job, 31
they're going to do it. I think that Community Services Department has a lot of expertise 32
in that area that may help facilitate that process. I would like to see something in there 33
that builds that relationship between the two departments. I do think that there was a 34
similar program that kind of gets at that. I don't want to jump too far ahead, but I will for 35
this. On page 3 of the next document, Program 1.C.2 says establish a review step in the 36
Planning and Community Environment Department for any major redevelopment or 37
repurchase of (inaudible) land in park search areas and maybe something similar to that 38
could be associated with the development agreement process. Thanks. 39
40
Chair Lauing: Was that all of your comments? 41
42
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Commissioner Hetterly: I have a lot of comments on the next document. 1
2
Ms. O'Kane: Ready to move on? 3
4
Chair Lauing: Back to you, Kristen. 5
6
Ms. O'Kane: That's a really good transition into the next topic which is our programs. I 7
just wanted to point out a few things. We originally differentiated between a project and 8
a program. We're calling them all programs, whether it's a project or a program. The 9
reason for this is, one, it got very complicated. Two, it now mirrors the Comprehensive 10
Plan. The Comp Plan structure is goal, policy, then program, as well as the Urban Forest 11
Master Plan. We wanted to keep that same framework for this Master Plan as well. The 12
programs represent potential new and enhanced amenities as well as recreation 13
programming. The programs were developed from the physical inventory that we did at 14
the beginning of our Master Planning process, community and stakeholder feedback, the 15
areas of focus that came out of that community and stakeholder engagement process, as 16
well as input from the Parks and Rec Commission as well as staff. We did vet these 17
programs with our Recreation staff and Park staff. That's how we have the programs in 18
place. We are also going to have a lot of our programs reviewed by some of our other 19
departments like the police, fire, the public safety department, to make sure that anything 20
that we're proposing doesn't raise a concern with any of those departments. That's all I 21
have for a presentation on the programs, but I did want to hear comments. All the 22
programs that we have in place so far are in Attachment B in your packet. I will also 23
point out that there are some policies that do not have programs associated with them. 24
There's two where there is a placeholder for programs, where we felt that there probably 25
do need to be programs under those policies, but those have not been developed as of yet. 26
There's other policies that do not have the placeholder for programs. I think that's okay. 27
I think it's okay to have some policies without programs, because those policies are very 28
descriptive. If any of you have a difference of opinion on that, I'd be happy to hear it. At 29
this time, we can take any comments or feedback you have on the programs. 30
31
Chair Lauing: Let's just talk for a minute about how to structure this and organize it, just 32
to make sure we're productive. Just kind of overview. I wanted this whole area of 33
program prioritization and implementation, because that still all needs to be done. We've 34
been talking about that for a few months and correctly postponed it. If you're saying that 35
the programs in the draft document here kind of are doing that, then we still need to put a 36
timeline on that. I guess the question for tonight's discussion and for the future is where 37
does that come in, where are we putting those on the 5, 10, 15-year timeline to prioritize 38
them and so on. Is that next month's meeting? 39
40
Ms. O'Kane: That is the next step, and we are going through that phase internally right 41
now. We're looking at what could be done in the 5, 10, 20 years and also what the cost 42
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would be associated with that. When we add the cost to it, that's going to be a big 1
component as to what actually goes in the Master Plan. Did you have anything to add to 2
that? 3
4
Chair Lauing: There might be some comments tonight about the section that you got for 5
program prioritization and implementation. It looked like at one point you're saying we're 6
not going to actually score it as we were talking before. In another point, it looked like 7
you were. That's one section that I think we might want to give a little bit of time to. 8
Everybody join in here if you agree or disagree with some of the things that I'm saying. 9
You guys have done a lot of work on these specific programs, but it's 17 pages of 10
programs that we haven't seen before, nor has the ad hoc. What's the best way to go 11
through that is another question. A third overall question is there's a lot of discussion 12
here that's been added about maintaining cultural diversity. When you get to the 13
demographics, however, the only two demographics that I saw referenced in all these 14
programs was low income and teens. Where we had started the plan, I thought, was 15
looking at what are the needs of all the various segments from Hispanics to seniors to 16
teens to kids to adults and so on. I just don't see that aligning with the program. I'm 17
wondering if that's a different document or that needs to be in this. I'm looking for help 18
here, but it looks to me like those are three areas that we should discuss tonight, and 19
they're not overlapping at all. Is that okay, folks? Is that the right kind of batting order to 20
talk about prioritization first or last? Why don't I just try to get it on the table, if it's 21
okay? 22
23
Ms. O'Kane: I think last. 24
25
Chair Lauing: Just to see where we're going with that. On page 3 of your overview 26
document, you referenced it first on page 1 as Phase 2 prioritization of projects into an 27
implementation timeline. You comment that these criteria—I'm in the middle of page 28
3—would not provide an overall score to a program, but will be used to be informed to 29
staff, PRC and Council and how it would serve the needs of the community. It seems 30
like you're now saying, "Let's use this more as an indicator rather than a raw score." 31
That's going to be applied. Then it says new programs that are proposed will be scored. 32
It seemed like you were making a difference there or maybe that wasn't intentional. That 33
was a typo? You all see where I'm reading there? 34
35
Ms. O'Kane: I do see that scored in there. It's confusing. We have been struggling with 36
this. Honestly, we did go through the process internally of staff scoring all of the 37
programs. There wasn't a big difference in a lot of the programs. We've just sort of 38
brainstormed on how we could rate all of these programs so that something does rise to 39
the top. We thought of this idea of ranking things in an initial vetting process of does it 40
meet these certain criteria, low, medium and high. For those that are high, then we would 41
bring in this additional ranking system. It's not even really a ranking system, but it's a 42
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system that will say is there issues logistically with—do Park staff see there's going to be 1
issues logistically? Are there concerns with, I think, some of our health and safety 2
departments? Is the budget implications extremely high? There's all these different 3
factors that we may not know at this very moment, especially in 10 years. The needs of 4
the community or the desires of the community may be different in 10 years than they are 5
now. What we've been contemplating is whether it's best to score everything now so we 6
have this prioritization list or is it better to look at them in groups, like the first 5 years, 7
the first 10 years, 15, 20 years and group them into what can we do in the next 5 years 8
and these things we will do because of X, Y and Z. We're still sort of trying to work that 9
out. We're not sure that the scoring system that we originally had proposed is necessarily 10
the way to go. We're trying to come up with a way where we can each year thoughtfully 11
proposed projects based on a certain set of criteria, but they may not necessarily have a 12
score of 50, 45, down the list. That's where we are with that. 13
14
Chair Lauing: That scoring system was controversial to this panel as soon as it was 15
presented for the reasons that you just underscored, which is that everything is going to 16
come out looking great, which it seems like it did in your own confabs. 17
18
Ms. O'Kane: There are some. I will say there were quite a few that scored quite low for 19
us. It wasn't a clear ranking. There was some at the very bottom, a lot at the top, and 20
some in the middle. When you bring in these other factors, logistics, feasibility to 21
construct, feasibility to maintain, that may move those things around on the scoring list. 22
Then it didn't seem like it was necessarily the right way to go. 23
24
Chair Lauing: That was the second thing with respect to the document here. It used 25
that—what do we call that—fill existing gaps and address community preferences that we 26
worked a lot on. Generally the Commission thought they made sense. There's sort of a 27
disclaimer here, in the next paragraph, with those bullet points that basically say all of 28
these bullet points would trump all that. Sorry for using that word. Overrule all that. I 29
started thinking that it's quite fuzzy at this point. If we're going to say the length of time 30
to plan and implement is some sort of constraint that means we shouldn't do it, I don't 31
even think that's right. We're trying to make a 20-year plan here. I think we've said from 32
the get-go if this is something that needs to be done 10 years out and costs $20 million, if 33
that's what's really needed for the City in 10 or 20 years, then we step up and do it. 34
Length of time to plan or implement or construct is not irrelevant cost-wise, but it may be 35
irrelevant priority-wise. That caused concern. When you say overall feasibility, you 36
guys can do anything. Everything's feasible. You can do anything if you have the right 37
amount of staffing and commitment and so on. I was really worried about that one as 38
well. The reason I'm raising it now on behalf of the Commission is that you don't want to 39
spend a couple more months doing scoring on this if we're not kind of aligned, I don't 40
think, on what makes the most sense to get to the outcome. Welcome your feedback on it 41
as well as my colleagues'. Commissioner Moss. 42
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1
Commissioner Moss: One more comment. We don't have to have everything prioritized 2
in order to go the next step to the City Council to get the plan approved, do we? The plan 3
that you have here has all of the goals, policies and programs without any prioritization. 4
Isn't that good enough to go to the City Council next month? 5
6
Chair Lauing: I don't think so. 7
8
Commissioner Hetterly: Next month, for their study session? 9
10
Chair Lauing: Next month. Sorry, I missed that. In terms of approval of the Master 11
Plan, there has to be a timeline for some of these projects. 12
13
Commissioner Moss: That could take, as you said, months and months. Don't you want 14
to get approval for the list before you do prioritization? 15
16
Chair Lauing: Next month is not an approval. It's just the status, a study session with 17
City Council on where the situation is, where the Master Plan is. The intent is not to have 18
the Master Plan approved by Council. It's actually this month, I guess, at the end of this 19
month. 20
21
Commissioner Moss: You're saying that in order to have the Master Plan, you must have 22
a timeline. If you have to have a timeline, how detailed does it have to be? 23
24
Chair Lauing: To me, that's a better question. We're in this collaboratively, and you've 25
got to make the presentation, but I don't think we can get a Master Plan approved that has 26
no suggestions for what's done in the first 5 years, the first 10 years or the next 25 years. 27
28
Ms. O'Kane: I agree. I think Council is also interested in how much will this Master 29
Plan ultimately cost if everything in the Master Plan is implemented. They're also 30
interested in when will things be implemented. One of the things we proposed, like I said 31
earlier, what may be relevant now may not be relative in 10 years. What we're 32
contemplating is maybe we show to Council what we think is the best way to move 33
forward for the next 5 years and what are the cost implications of that, and sort of leave 34
the implementation plan to the first 5 years knowing that things may change significantly 35
after the first 5 years. That's sort of where—just back to your point, Chair Lauing, about 36
the length of time to plan, implement and/or construct. What that meant is not that 37
something wouldn't be done because of a certain length of time to plan, implement or 38
construct. It just means that it may be pushed out to the end of the 20-year timeframe as 39
opposed to we want to do something in the next 3 years. That's really going to dictate 40
what that project is in the next 3 years. If something takes 10 years, we ... 41
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Chair Lauing: That's a good clarification. It's just that ideally you would do the highest 1
priority things, no matter if they were expensive or took too long. You wouldn't do just 2
the short-term things because it's low hanging fruit and we can get a lot done in the first 2 3
years. 4
5
Ms. O'Kane: What we were trying to say here is that there's a lot of different—we could 6
say we have all these programs, and this is the order we're going to do them in. In reality, 7
there's a lot of other internal factors that come into play when making these decisions. 8
That's really what this was trying to point out. Again, with the overall feasibility based 9
on staff knowledge and expertise, permitting and things like that, it's that same thought 10
process that what we think we may be able to do now—Daren has a certain amount of 11
staff today. Maybe there's a different amount of staff in 7 years. That may also dictate 12
what we do 7 years from now. 13
14
Peter Jensen: I would say in terms of prioritization, starting to look at the budget or the 15
funding aspects of what is being proposed and how our current system is set up now, 16
where we already have parks that are set up on specific times to be renovated. As we 17
started to basically cross-reference what was new and the timeline of what was renovated, 18
you could start then hooking up the new with the renovated to make a bigger project. It 19
helps to dictate or provide a guideline or framework of when these things would happen. 20
I think that's how we started to just look at the criteria, if it was high, medium or low, 21
instead of ranking it. All those things that we are prioritizing are things that are going to 22
be or want to be part of the Master Plan. They wouldn't be something we would look at 23
if they're weren't. We can start to see that they can start to be slotted in this way without 24
being scored and having a number score that could be looked at and scrutinized and try to 25
decipher how that score came to be when we could just give a high, medium or low. We 26
are starting to look at the times when money is allotted to start to prioritize when projects 27
will come to be. 28
29
Chair Lauing: Any other comments on the prioritization issues? Did you have some? 30
31
Commissioner Hetterly: Yeah. I just wanted to confirm that what we're talking about is 32
the programs in this document is the whole universe of programs that you're proposing to 33
include in the Master Plan. We're talking about prioritizing these specific programs 34
across a timeline. Is that right? 35
36
Mr. Jensen: I would say we don't have to prioritize the specific programs that are in here. 37
They're usually more general. They don't talk specifically that you're going to build a 38
dog park here or have a restroom there. When it comes down to the prioritization, that'll 39
be the part that's prioritized when those things go, the actual specific projects. The 40
programs in this document allude to multiple projects in themselves. 41
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Commissioner Hetterly: The Master Plan we lay out here are goals, policies and 1
programs. Under this program, these are the projects that we want to get done in the first 2
5 years. Under this program, these are the projects that ... That's what we're looking at 3
here. The prioritization is not around the programs; it's around the specific site 4
developments or specific program function. Thanks. 5
6
Chair Lauing: David. 7
8
Commissioner Moss: The prioritization of programs versus these individual projects, I 9
was sort of thinking that all of the programs more or less had an equal prioritization. We 10
wanted to look at every project that we get and prioritize more at that level. Going back 11
to his comment originally about cultural diversity, we want to have something for 12
everybody. These programs cover a broad range. There's something in here for 13
everybody. Why wouldn't you handle them more or less equally at this level? Maybe 14
there's a little bit of prioritization. For instance, expanding and getting new parkland 15
should be—you can't wait 10 years or 20 years for that. You have to do something now. 16
What do you think about that? About not prioritizing too much at the program level. 17
Does that make sense? How would you prioritize? 18
19
Chair Lauing: Are you asking ... 20
21
Commissioner Moss: Do we need an offsite to go through and meet on this as a group? 22
23
Chair Lauing: There's already an ad hoc which could be used for some of this 24
processing. I don't see how you can't prioritize. At some point, Council's going to make 25
decision. If they say that parkland is a low priority instead of a high priority, but dog 26
parks are a high priority instead of a low priority, that's the priority. Staff should come in 27
with a recommendation hopefully as consistent as possible with our perspective, because 28
all things aren't created equal. To segue to my other question that maybe we can move 29
over to now. One way of answering your question is what if there was a crying need for 30
lots of new facilities for seniors. We've done the statistical analysis; there's going to be a 31
lot more seniors. We've done the park inventory, and there's not enough close to where 32
the seniors are living. That should be called out as a much higher priority than X, Y, Z 33
demographic that may be perfectly well served at this point. That's the rigor that, I think, 34
we're trying to get from the consultant through all these months and years to get to some 35
real recommendations like that, which I don't see here yet. The verbiage around the 36
programs, I thought, was really good. I'm just not seeing that kind of connection of the 37
demographics and the trends and the projections of population growth and that kind of 38
thing. Comments on that? Commissioner Hetterly. 39
40
Commissioner Hetterly: I actually didn't notice that at all. I thought it was pretty clear 41
that there was a focus on youth and teens and there was a focus on seniors and there was 42
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a focus on cultural groups that we haven't engaged to date very thoroughly in community 1
Services programs. 2
3
Chair Lauing: Let me rephrase my question. As an attorney, you can rephrase your 4
question. The question is are we prioritizing the right demographics with the references 5
to—I saw teens very strikingly, and I saw cultural diversity, and I saw—what was the 6
third one I mentioned? Low income, accessibility regardless of price. I don't see specific 7
cultural groups called out or specific age groups of kids or specific age groups of adults. 8
That may be okay, but I'm saying are we tying the statistics and the growth to the right 9
demographics when we're doing the words here. We'll leave it as a question. 10
Commissioner Cribbs. 11
12
Commissioner Cribbs: I'm still trying to catch up here. I'm wondering if it's possible to 13
take the first in the Attachment B, to take the first policy, 1A, and just go through the 14
programs there and do kind of a sample what would we prioritize. 15
16
Chair Lauing: I think we can still do that now. 17
18
Commissioner Cribbs: If we can do that, is it possible that we can put cost to that yet or 19
not? That was a concern way back, I think. 20
21
Chair Lauing: I don't think that's ... 22
23
Commissioner Cribbs: It's not possible yet. 24
25
Chair Lauing: That's in process now. 26
27
Mr. Jensen: That's being worked on now. 28
29
Commissioner Cribbs: Is it possible that we could do like they do for restaurants, a lot of 30
dollar signs if it's really expensive and one dollar sign if it's not? Maybe that's already in 31
there, isn't it? No. Just to sort of guess. Maybe that's not worthwhile. 32
33
Chair Lauing: If we want to go through programs, I think that's great. I just wanted to 34
get these preliminary things out on the table about prioritization. 35
36
Commissioner Cribbs: I think that was really important, especially the part about the 37
demographics. 38
39
Chair Lauing: Let's raise the question again then. How do we want to go through 18 40
pages of programs? 41
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Commissioner Hetterly: Can I ask a clarifying question ... 1
2
Chair Lauing: Yes. 3
4
Commissioner Hetterly: ... because I'm more confused now than I was when I started out 5
here. I thought that the goals, policies and programs, we were talking about whether 6
these programs represent all of the programs we want the Master Plan to represent. I 7
understood that there was not—as Commissioner Moss was saying, we're not trying to 8
prioritize among these programs in this document. The prioritization falls under the 9
projects that would implement those programs. Is that right? 10
11
Ms. O'Kane: That's correct. I'll use an example of Program 1A3, develop a teen advisory 12
committee. We could do that next month. That's isn't something that needs to 13
necessarily go on a prioritization list. There's things that are the more programmatic 14
things that staff can implement. Establishing more communication with other City 15
departments, with other entities, those are things I don't think need to necessarily be 16
prioritized either, because we can just do them. You're correct that it's more of we've 17
identified dog parks, which dog park goes in first. We've identified parks that need 18
restrooms, which restroom goes in first? Those are really the things that need to be 19
prioritized. 20
21
Commissioner Hetterly: There's no implied hierarchy to the way the programs are listed 22
in this document. We don't have to prioritize and make sure this comes first, that comes 23
second. Is that what you all were talking about? 24
25
Chair Lauing: Yeah, except that it seems like some of these that we've talked about 26
before, such as dog parks and restrooms—I have to find these; I didn't annotate these—27
are sort of very high priorities. Are those just high priority programs? Is that how you 28
think about that? 29
30
Mr. Jensen: There are high priority specific projects for a specific site. As Jen was 31
saying, the programs that are found in this document aren't really meant to be prioritized. 32
They are the priority that the analysis and the community has brought up already, that we 33
want to see in the Master Plan. We want these things. It's tied to what we're going to talk 34
about next, the specific site concepts plans, and start to talk about specific things at 35
specific locations. Those are the things to be prioritized. Right now what that is doing, 36
what I was alluding to earlier, is we're looking at the projects that are already on the 37
books and what they include and adding these new elements to those projects. That's 38
how we're aligning the projects right now. We start to look that we know we want a dog 39
part immediately, where can we do that. That may just be a separate, standalone project 40
that we prioritize. The majority of them will be folded into a capital improvement project 41
that's already set on a specific timeline. Of course, everything that's being proposed in 42
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those books is kind of the maximum of what you can have. We can't have all that stuff. 1
That's asking you to start to prioritize as you go through the concept plans and to look at 2
them and give us feedback on which specifically of those elements are a higher priority to 3
do. Some of them will drop off just because of the funding it's going to take to pull the 4
whole thing off. Things that we've done specific, more work on like restrooms and dog 5
parks, where we've already identified specific sites. Those sites are definite; we are going 6
to do them. It is now looking at the timeline and how they're prioritized, which one and 7
where is it going to be first, that it's going to be implemented at. Again, it's looking at 8
what's the next project that comes along that we can tie. There's a renovation project for 9
Rinconada in 2018; we can add another $300,000, $400,000 to that and add another 10
bathroom or playground. We can start to set up our timeline of these projects and 11
funding. Once we have that—again there will be other things, like I said. For Pardee 12
Park, it's next time for renovation is way in the future because we just did it. We have 13
noticed that would be a good location for a dog park and would probably want to act 14
quickly on getting one there. That would be a separate, standalone project that we would 15
put as a separate project. 16
17
Chair Lauing: Back to the question of what would be helpful for all of us relative to 18
these 18 pages of programs. 19
20
Mr. Jensen: I think the goal was to, as far as the programs go, look at what we have and 21
either decide if they were right and the right language or if we have missed something 22
there that you think should be a project, that's not in that list. 23
24
Ms. O'Kane: Correct. I think it's mostly any gaps, anything that we've really missed, 25
anything maybe that's missed the mark completely. As far as wordsmithing, we probably 26
don't need to get into that tonight. 27
28
Chair Lauing: Let's just jump on then with Policy 1. 29
30
Commissioner Hetterly: I have some comments on Policy 1. I think that we should add 31
seniors to that first bullet, for advanced skills, build community, improve the quality of 32
life among participants. Not just call out youth, teens and seniors. Program 1A2, which 33
is about free or low cost teen programs to develop life skills such as leadership and 34
community service, I wonder if we can't expand that to have free or low cost teen 35
programs that go beyond those kind of resume builder activities to things that teens see 36
differently. I think teens generally see community service and leadership, and that's 37
work. Something here, maybe mindfulness or something that's more about the kid, 38
individually as opposed to what they're trying to accomplish would be nice to add to that. 39
On the next page, 1A8, the last one, develop additional community gardens focusing on 40
underrepresented areas of the City. It was brought up at the community meeting this last 41
week and, I think, at previous meetings that community gardens are one of those funny 42
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situations where it's really an individual benefit for gardeners. There was some concern 1
about that. I wonder if we can't add to this program or consider additional programs that 2
would—I know this costs money and staff—maybe consider community engagement 3
opportunities around those community garden programs, like maybe partnering with the 4
School District and setting up school workdays to help do their maintenance days or to do 5
some sort of cooking demonstration using produce from the gardeners or have a 6
community garden market on occasion. Something that brings the garden benefit out to 7
the broader community as opposed to just the individual gardeners. That's all I have on 8
1A. Do you want me to go through all of them? 9
10
Chair Lauing: No, let's just stay on Number 1 and go down. Let's just go right down and 11
then come back the other direction. That actually addressed a number of my questions. 12
Obviously we need to emphasize teens for all the reasons that we completely understand 13
in the community. It just looked like it was a teen-oriented spreading of the wealth of 14
affordability. I don't think I have anything else to add. Commissioner Reckdahl. 15
16
Commissioner Reckdahl: (inaudible) dovetail. I sent the staff a link. Rand just came out 17
with a big study about parkland, and they looked at thousands and thousands of park 18
users. What they came up with is that teen girls, women and seniors are underserved, 19
when you look at the number of park users. Middle-aged males and young males 20
outnumber women. The point was that we should make an effort to get more women 21
involved in using the parks and also more seniors. That does dovetail with adding seniors 22
to this. I would add women on that too. I don't know if that's the case in Palo Alto, but at 23
least nationwide women do not use the parks as much as men. On 1A, I would add 24
women. I was going to say underrepresented, but that's kind of fuzzy. I would say 25
women. My anecdotal evidence is that when I go to parks, I see a lot more guys playing 26
soccer than I see women, just pickup games. Pickup basketball games, there's a lot more 27
boys out there than girls. Policy 1B, develop a system to save and preserve funds ... 28
29
Chair Lauing: (inaudible) 30
31
Commissioner Reckdahl: Are we moving to 1B or just 1A? I'll hold off on 1A then. 32
That's it. 33
34
Chair Lauing: Commissioner Moss. No. Commissioner Cribbs. 35
36
Commissioner Cribbs: The 1A5, just a way to make sure that all sports could be 37
included, not just calling out specific sports. Definitely calling out pickleball. 38
39
Chair Lauing: Keep the floor and come back this way. Go on to 1B. 40
41
Commissioner Cribbs: No, I don't. 42
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1
Chair Lauing: Commissioner Moss, 1B. 2
3
Commissioner Moss: I'm going to change what I said about prioritization. I think 1B.8 4
should be one of the higher priority ones. I don't know how we can—I think we should 5
prioritize some things over others. 6
7
Chair Lauing: That's not what we're ... 8
9
Commissioner Moss: As far as the wording, it's fine. 10
11
Chair Lauing: That's not what we're doing here now. The wording's okay? 12
13
Commissioner Moss: Yeah. 14
15
Chair Lauing: Commissioner Reckdahl. 16
17
Commissioner Reckdahl: My complaint about that is that I don't think the wording is 18
strong enough for 1B8. It says develop a system to save and reserve funds. That's kind 19
of like a world peace type thing. I think we have to say we need funding mechanisms. If 20
we don't get funding mechanisms, it's never going to happen. That's the primary problem 21
here; we don't have funding mechanisms that will allow us to save. That's far more 22
important than just the concept of saving for a park. 23
24
Chair Lauing: Wasn't that what a system was supposed to be? Could you be more 25
specific on funding? 26
27
Commissioner Reckdahl: We need a funding mechanism. We just can't have an account 28
that sits there, and we hope that money appears in it. We have to find new funding either 29
through taxes or through a dedicated stream from the Council that will expand the parks. 30
Otherwise, we'll never expand parks. That's all for 1B. 31
32
Chair Lauing: I'm good. 1B. 33
34
Commissioner Hetterly: My comment on 1B was I wondered if the policy should be use 35
the NRPA standard as a guide, blah, blah, blah, or if it should really be expand urban 36
parkland inventory using the National Recreation and Park Association standard as a 37
guide. That puts right up front that expansion is important. I also had the similar 38
reaction to 1B8 about a system. I wondered if we wanted to include more specifics about 39
a set-aside percentage out of development impact fees or if developing the system is the 40
process of looking at all the possibilities and coming up with a plan for how we're going 41
to fund it. I think that's an open question. I would like to add a program about 42
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identifying and preserving existing recreation and park-like uses on City-controlled land 1
by dedicating it as parkland. There I’m talking about places like the Rinconada 2
community gardens, the Winter Lodge which we traded dedicated parkland for in order to 3
preserve for the community. We should dedicate that land that the Winter Lodge is on so 4
that it continues to be preserved for the community. It includes the Stanford playing 5
fields; they should be dedicated just like El Camino Park is dedicated. Even though we 6
don't own the land, it's a long-term lease. Tennis courts, I think a lot of our tennis courts 7
are not on dedicated parkland. That's a use we want to preserve for the community. I 8
don't know about the Ventura fields. I think they may not be dedicated; that's another 9
opportunity. We have several well sites plopped all around town that are really small, but 10
they are used as parks in many cases. We ought to make them mini parks and dedicate 11
them as parkland. I think that's a way to not only add to our parkland inventory, but also 12
preserve those uses. For the long term, I'd really like to see a program in there for that. 13
Another thing that came up at the Comp Plan Update Committee, an idea they really 14
loved was developing a program to accept real estate bequests, if people wanted to 15
bequeath their property to the City for park uses. I don't know if that's something that's 16
appropriate for this Master Plan or if it's really better suited to the Comp Plan alone, 17
because that's a real estate department thing. I throw it out there. Sorry, I have one on 18
the next page, 1B9, construct a new park in Park Search Area E which represents an area 19
in the City with the least park acreage. Further down the page, we have 1C3, says 20
acquire and develop new neighborhood park in each Park Search Area. I wondered if 21
those were intentionally separated out or if they should be combined. 22
23
Chair Lauing: Did you have anything else on C? 24
25
Commissioner Hetterly: No, I didn't. 26
27
Chair Lauing: I don't either. 28
29
Commissioner Cribbs: I just wanted to go back to—I'm sorry—the 1B8 to see if there's a 30
way to incorporate the opportunity for private funding into the other vehicles for funding 31
to become more aggressive about letting people know that there are opportunities for 32
private funding and there is a vehicle that we could use if the opportunity came up. 33
34
Ms. O'Kane: Was that for 1B1? 35
36
Commissioner Cribbs: I'm sorry. 37
38
Ms. O'Kane: Program 1B1, was that the ... 39
40
Commissioner Cribbs: 1B8. The one down at the bottom. It was just adding private. 41
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Ms. O'Kane: No, I was asking for clarification on which program. Thank you. 1
2
Chair Lauing: Anne, did you have any other comments on 1C? 3
4
Commissioner Cribbs: None that haven't been (inaudible). 5
6
Chair Lauing: Jump on D then. 7
8
Commissioner Cribbs: No. 9
10
Commissioner Reckdahl: I don't have anything against 1D. This goes into that best 11
practices thing, but we won't go into that. I can resist. Go ahead. 12
13
Chair Lauing: I'm on the same page as Keith. Some of these things don't really have to 14
be policies. You just do whatever you want. I don't have any comments. 15
16
Commissioner Hetterly: I actually had that reaction in 1D as well, in particular to 1D2, 17
installing directional signs with the walking time to the next nearest park. That seems 18
like maybe something that doesn't rise to a Master Plan program, but I don't have strong 19
feelings about it. 20
21
Chair Lauing: Going to 1E then. 22
23
Commissioner Hetterly: 1E2 about universal park design. I'd like it to—this is a little bit 24
wordsmithing—say adopt a standard of universal park design for accessibility and add or 25
upgrade play areas and picnic facilities to meet and exceed the standards. The reason I 26
think that's a substantive change is I don't want to see us just throw away great equipment 27
that we have, that people love and maybe has a long history in the community just 28
because it doesn't meet those universal design standards. There are several parks I can 29
think of now where I'd rather meet those universal design standards by adding on 30
additional facilities. That's it for E. 31
32
Chair Lauing: No comment. E? 33
34
Commissioner Reckdahl: On E? No comment either. 35
36
Chair Lauing: F is to you, Anne. 37
38
Commissioner Cribbs: I think it's fine the way it is. 39
40
Commissioner Moss: I noticed that there were quite a few comments about swimming 41
pools and more swimming pools. Do we want to expand 1F to include swimming pools? 42
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This is reviewing existing and updated needed. This is not to do with adding tennis 1
courts, is it? Is there a place where they talk about adding tennis courts or adding 2
swimming pools? Is there a program? 3
4
Ms. O'Kane: There is currently not a program for adding swimming pools or tennis 5
courts. 6
7
Chair Lauing: These are just the brokering policies for those two. 8
9
Commissioner Hetterly: I'm wondering if we have a use policy for (inaudible). 10
11
Chair Lauing: No. 12
13
Rob de Geus: Chair Lauing, I have a question. 14
15
Chair Lauing: Yeah, sure. 16
17
Mr. de Geus: A process question. Good evening, Commissioners. As we hear these 18
comments, we're sort of hearing them individually. I'm not sure if all the Commission 19
agrees with the comments. I want to be sure we're clear what's going to happen with 20
those comments, because some of them we may not agree with. An example is the 21
wayfinding sign. I actually think a policy around that is important, that we improve in a 22
strategic way how people move around and between parks, and we be creative about that 23
and innovative about that. Maybe some language needs to be changed to make it more 24
that. I just wanted to put it out there that maybe if there's something that an individual 25
Commissioner feels really strongly about, that you think it needs to change or you're 26
going to have trouble with it, you say as much as "opposed" to "I kind of have a comment 27
about this," "I don't really feel that strongly about it," "I think that'll help us." It may 28
come back with something still in there, and you say, "They didn't hear me." Maybe we 29
did hear you and have a different perspective. 30
31
Chair Lauing: Totally fair; helpful for the productivity as well. I think we're done with 32
F. Who's got G? I guess you have G. Just a practical question on 1G7. What does that 33
really mean to integrate art and nature on the bike lanes? You're obviously not going to 34
put a sculpture on a bike lane. Does that just mean make it look pretty? Make it look 35
nature-like? 36
37
Mr. Jensen: To make it look pretty. 38
39
Commissioner Reckdahl: This is for the dividers between—if you have a separator 40
between traffic and the bike lane, you would make that pretty? What are you making 41
look pretty? 42
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1
Mr. Jensen: I think it depends on the specific design. It either is that or—it's basically 2
more the buffer space between the pathway and whatever is adjacent to it. 3
4
Ms. O'Kane: The policy is to encourage walking or biking. Making something more 5
aesthetically pleasing and making the experience more favorable to the user by adding art 6
or nature would encourage that. 7
8
Chair Lauing: David? No. No. We're on to 1H. Anne. 9
10
Commissioner Cribbs: No. That was fine. 11
12
Chair Lauing: No. Yes. 13
14
Commissioner Hetterly: Before I get to 1H, just to clarify my earlier comments. I don't 15
feel strongly about the bequeath suggestion or the mileage signs. You can go either way 16
on that. I do feel strongly about all the other things. I don't agree with Keith's 17
recommendation to include women in Policy 1A. In my experience in Palo Alto, I see far 18
more women and girls in parks that I see men, so I'm not convinced that it's a problem 19
that needs to be directly addressed in a program. Getting to 1H.1, conduct an annual 20
survey of cultural groups to identify gaps in recreation program. I think an annual survey 21
may be too frequent. I would suggest doing maybe every 2 years. Otherwise, you don't 22
have time to implement any changes and see an impact. I would insert something to the 23
effect of before recreation gaps in aware or design or access to recreation. It's not just 24
that maybe we're not offering this program that they need us to offer. Maybe they don't 25
know that we're offering it or maybe it's not designed properly to meet their needs. I had 26
another comment that kind of crosses over H and I. That was about adding a program 27
about multicultural outreach to build awareness and participation in volunteer programs. 28
I'm not sure if that belongs in the incorporate diversity in projects and programs of H, or 29
if it belongs in the stewardship and volunteerism section. I'd like to see some outreach 30
beyond just programming, but also to engage in the civic process and volunteerism. 31
32
Chair Lauing: 1H1 reminds of a general comment that I wanted to make. I like the fact 33
that you're putting quantification on it, such as an annual survey. When we get over to 34
1J1, 2 and 3, all three of those have specifics about we're going to focus annually, but 35
we're going to do a quarterly survey system that selects da, da, da. To the extent you can 36
measure it—we've talked about this before—that's better. I also think you're committing 37
to that. I would agree on this point on 1H1 with Commissioner Hetterly, that might be a 38
little bit too much work for the ROI. Because it's specific, it needs to be specifically 39
accomplished or else you're missing the goal, wherever you find those kinds of wordings. 40
That's it on 1H. Anyone else down here? You want to look at 1I, Anne? 41
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Commissioner Cribbs: No. 1
2
Chair Lauing: Keith. 3
4
Commissioner Reckdahl: No. 5
6
Chair Lauing: I don't either. I. 7
8
Commissioner Hetterly: 1I1, the last bullet, I was a little confused about the repetition of 9
Counselor in Training and lifeguard programs. If that was intentional, then I want to 10
understand why it's like that. It seemed to me that there was surely more opportunities 11
for students to earn community services hours through Community Services Department 12
programs. I assume these two were just suggestions among others. Is that right? 13
14
Male: That's right. 15
16
Commissioner Hetterly: That's my only comment on I. 17
18
Chair Lauing: Take J as well. 19
20
Commissioner Hetterly: J, I would like to add demographics in front of interests. 21
Periodically collect and evaluate data on the changing demographics and interests of the 22
community and adjust programs accordingly. 23
24
Chair Lauing: I think that would be a great add. I've already referenced the fact that it's 25
quantitative there, which I think is good. Keith. 26
27
Commissioner Reckdahl: No. 28
29
Chair Lauing: Anne. 30
31
Commissioner Cribbs: You just said measurement at the end of each, yeah. 32
33
Chair Lauing: There is measurement for all three of these, which I think is great and 34
should in general be put in whenever it makes sense and you can commit to that 35
measurement going forward. We're on to Item 2. 36
37
Commissioner Reckdahl: I had a question about the goal, services at the end. What are 38
we getting at with that? 39
40
Female: Programs. 41
42
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Commissioner Moss: (inaudible) camps. 1
2
Ms. O'Kane: That's related to the programs that we offer. 3
4
Commissioner Reckdahl: The recreation? 5
6
Ms. O'Kane: Exactly. 7
8
Commissioner Reckdahl: In our policies, we don't go and look at that. I wonder if we 9
need more policies for that. We talk about recreation facilities and turf fields and dog 10
parks and restrooms, but we don't do anything with recreation programs. 11
12
Ms. O'Kane: We can look at that in more detail. I know that, for example, 2B1 is related 13
to recreation programming. 14
15
Commissioner Hetterly: All of 2B. 16
17
Ms. O'Kane: All of 2B. We can look into that more and see if there's any gaps. 18
19
Commissioner Reckdahl: 2B2 is parks projects. I guess that would ... 20
21
Chair Lauing: Let's start with Anne on 2A or do you guys want to do altogether here? 22
It's kind of tight. Why don't we just do 2 altogether. Comments on any points on 2. 23
24
Commissioner Cribbs: I was confused about what 2A2 is. To design recreational 25
facilities that can be maintained with existing budget (inaudible). It seems like you'd 26
have to develop a new budget to go with new facilities. 27
28
Mr. Anderson: I can give you a small example. When we built the Mitchell Community 29
Center, they added a green wall. I would argue that that's neither sustainable in terms of 30
water use nor in staff time. You can spend more on that green wall that you could on 31
almost a soccer field. 32
33
Commissioner Cribbs: That makes sense. Thank you. 34
35
Chair Lauing: Any other things on any of the 2 points? 36
37
Commissioner Cribbs: No. 38
39
Commissioner Moss: Under 2C, this does not include artificial turf? 2C1 talks about 40
existing synthetic turf fields, but the 2C policy doesn't mention synthetic turf. It 41
specifically says high-quality natural turf fields. Why don't you just say design and 42
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maintain high quality turf fields? Underneath, you have some programs that are synthetic 1
and some programs that are natural. Just take out the word natural on 2C policy, then 2
down below. That's all I had. 3
4
Chair Lauing: Keith. 5
6
Commissioner Reckdahl: We're on 2? 7
8
Chair Lauing: Yeah. 9
10
Commissioner Reckdahl: I don't have anything else on 2. 11
12
Chair Lauing: My comments on 2 are we're spending a lot of ink on athletic fields. It's 13
an important issue in the City, but I'm wondering if it could at least be condensed in 14
terms of point. For example, on the C4, 5 and 6, it seems to me the second is quite 15
obvious, that you would fund the appropriate ones and do upgrades. That's seems to be 16
the same point. Maybe it could all just be condensed into a 2C4. Similarly all those 17
things on C1, 2 and 3 about turf fields. It just seems like a lot of ink, when it could just 18
be condensed in terms of—basically you're saying you're going to look at both, you're 19
going to make judgments on both and implement and upgrade where necessary. I just 20
had a question about where did this issue of creative expression come in. Was that 21
something that was uncovered in the surveys on 2B? It just sounds interesting. It just 22
struck me as odd that we'd have a whole policy around that. 23
24
Mr. Jensen: I think the program came about for making space that activate parks and 25
increase the activity in parks. It was also something that was brought up in parallel with 26
the Public Arts Master Plan and encouraging those spaces. They do in that actual Master 27
Plan reference creating space in parks to bring people together to have art-making 28
programs. That's where that was spawned from. 29
30
Chair Lauing: That's quite a level of detail at the program level. That's it on 2 for me. 31
32
Commissioner Hetterly: I like all those programs under 2B. I think they're a good 33
expansion of what we offer now. I don't have any other comments on 2 or 3A. I only 34
have one comment on 3. Should I go ahead to "? 35
36
Chair Lauing: Mm-hmm. 37
38
Commissioner Hetterly: Goal 3. I also really like all the new programs under 3B. It's 39
beefed up a lot with the art elements, and I think that's cool. Policy 3C, this is a pet 40
peeve. On the last line—sorry, it's the middle line. I'll read it. Require that proposed 41
privately owned public spaces are providing in lieu of park fees—park fees are in lieu of 42
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park dedication. It's more accurate to say that privately owned public spaces that are 1
provided under the Park Dedication Ordinance meet the design guidelines. The thing that 2
bothers me is later on they're designed to support self-directed exercise and fitness. I'd 3
like to see that be broadened to recreation as opposed to just exercise and fitness, which I 4
think are more specific. That's all I have for 3. 5
6
Chair Lauing: My only comment on 3 is I'm not sure why we have to call out the 3C1, 7
but that's a staff decision. Things need rules, but ... Go ahead, Keith. 8
9
Commissioner Reckdahl: Again for Goal 3, we have social connections on there. I think 10
the policies and programs are pretty weak for social connections. We address Healthy 11
City Healthy Community in 3A. Some of those you can stretch and say social 12
connections. I don't think that really is as beefy as it could be. That's it. 13
14
Chair Lauing: Let's see. " is two pages, why don't we just take all of 4? We'll start with 15
Commissioner Cribbs. No. Commissioner Moss. 16
17
Commissioner Moss: No. 18
19
Chair Lauing: Keith. 20
21
Commissioner Reckdahl: No. 22
23
Chair Lauing: I'm good. Commissioner Hetterly. 24
25
Commissioner Hetterly: Did you have something? 26
27
Chair Lauing: No, I did not have any for 4. 28
29
Commissioner Hetterly: I just want to follow up on Commissioner Reckdahl's comments 30
(inaudible) about Program 3C1, develop and apply clear expectations and definitions of 31
public access for privately owned spaces. I do think that's important to have. We've had 32
a number of public spaces dedicated under the Planned Community zoning process that 33
have now been completely removed from public access. I think it's important to have 34
(inaudible). 35
36
Commissioner Reckdahl: Those private spaces are not dedicated to the City or not 37
donated to the City? 38
39
Commissioner Hetterly: No. 40
41
Commissioner Reckdahl: They remain privately owned? 42
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1
Commissioner Hetterly: They remain private, but they're supposed to be open to the 2
public. On 4C2, join the Bay Area Children and Nature Collaborative/Children and 3
Nature Network. I don't know what that is, but it wasn't clear to me whether it belonged 4
on regional efforts to protect natural resources or if it belonged under connecting people 5
to nature. Sorry to jump back. 4A1, again instead of elements tailored to be of interest to 6
youth as well as other ages, cultures and abilities, why don't we just say of interest to 7
multiple ages, cultures and abilities? I don't think we need to call out every single 8
demographic. That maybe contrary to what they're looking for (inaudible). 4D, I think 9
all of those programs are about sustainability and not about promoting, expanding and 10
protecting habitat in natural areas in parks. I think they can fit under there, but I don't 11
think they're adequate by themselves to represent that policy. I would like to see the 12
addition of programs like—I think you all can probably come up with betters ones than 13
this. Maybe design trails and recreation activities to avoid impact on habitat, habitat 14
corridors in natural areas. Design native planting areas to optimize habitat potential. 15
Something to that effect that actually gets to the habitat and natural areas. Whereas, all 16
these other things are really about water management which, of course, affects natural 17
areas. That's all I have (inaudible). 18
19
Chair Lauing: Keep the mike and start on 5. 20
21
Commissioner Hetterly: 5A7, provide additional lighting to enhance park safety and 22
expand park use to dusk. I do think it's appropriate to add additional lighting in some 23
cases, but I think we need to be selective about the particular type of lighting to minimize 24
the wildlife impact. I think there should be some indication that we're going to do that in 25
the policy. 26
27
Commissioner Reckdahl: Is this lighting that would be used just in dusk and then turned 28
off overnight or it would be 24 hours a day? 29
30
Male: It's turned off. 31
32
Commissioner Reckdahl: It's turned off after a certain time. 33
34
Commissioner Hetterly: Program 5E—do you want me to do all of 5? 5E1, partner with 35
PAUSD to provide open gym programs in the summer, weekends, etc. I would really 36
like to see called out specifically in this Master Plan somewhere that we're looking to 37
expand access to PAUSD high school facilities. Otherwise, as written now, we can 38
basically do that already. It doesn't require any—can't we? Through our arrangements 39
with PAUSD at the middle schools. 40
41
Mr. de Geus: The question is do we have access to PAUSD gyms? 42
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1
Commissioner Hetterly: Yeah, middle school gyms. 2
3
Mr. de Geus: For our middle school athletic program we do. 4
5
Commissioner Hetterly: We don't on the weekends or in the summer? I thought we used 6
it in the summers for camps. 7
8
Mr. de Geus: No. We use the Cubberley gyms for the camps that need gyms. 9
10
Commissioner Hetterly: I think it makes sense to specify middle and high school gyms. 11
I would not like to see it limited just to middle, and I'm sure that's what the easiest step 12
would be. 5E2, I was confused about PAUSD and Stanford staff that will be providing 13
the programs. I guess I'm not clear what this partnership is (inaudible) on 5E as it relates 14
to 5E2. Similarly on 5E4, I'm not sure what you have in mind for increased access, what 15
athletic facilities and recreational facilities at Stanford we want to increase access to. 16
That's all I have (inaudible). 17
18
Chair Lauing: On 5A, is this a problem that we have now, underused parks, or is that 19
more recreation facilities? Just the general policy. I know we have some recreation 20
facilities; I just don't know if we have parks that are underused at this point. 21
22
Mr. Anderson: I think we do have some underused parks. I think Esther Clark park 23
would be a good example. There's no amenities there to draw them in. 24
25
Chair Lauing: It was kind of a blank in my knowledge. Again the specificity under 5B6 26
is really excellent. Pinning yourself down to try at least 10 percent in new program 27
offerings, that's really good. On 5D, I know there's a lot of press and excitement about 28
parklets, which is one thing. Temporary park spaces, that's a lot of work for a short 29
amount of time. Do you guys really want to sign up for that? I'm not sure that one's 30
really necessary. These temporary park spaces are both long and short-term uses. I don't 31
know. That's kind of up to whether or not you want to commit to those and if there's 32
enough need for those. 33
34
Commissioner Reckdahl: You're committing to experimenting with it. Maybe you do it 35
a couple of times and say this ain't worth it. 36
37
Chair Lauing: If it's an experiment, I'm not sure you need a policy to experiment. I'm not 38
sure this whole thing is necessary. You can do the exact same thing. Unless we really 39
want to get serious about parklets, then you could just leave it at that. 40
41
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Mr. de Geus: There is a movement; it's sort of tactical urbanism. Have you heard about 1
that? People are rethinking what to do with urban spaces and being creative about that. 2
There's more and more of that type of thing happening. We've tried a few things here in 3
Palo Alto (crosstalk). 4
5
Chair Lauing: A couple of parking spaces that turn green for the day and stuff like that. 6
7
Mr. de Geus: Things like that, yeah. 8
9
Chair Lauing: I'm not sure that's a parklet. I'm always sensitive to workload, because 10
this all requires resources and a lot of stuff that we're trying to get done. Commissioner 11
Hetterly's comment on high schools was great. When I read this, I read right through it 12
and read high schools were included; they're definitely not specified here. My experience 13
is fighting for even baseball field space from the high school coaches. I think specificity 14
on the level of schools is a good add. On 5G, I think what is stated here is completely 15
correct, because you're talking about conservation groups to expand access to open space, 16
but that's access to that space, not ownership. Right? We're not stepping up to acquire 17
open space. We're saying we just want to have access to it. I just wanted to confirm for 18
myself. I think it's written incorrectly. 19
20
Commissioner Moss: New acquisitions of spaces to bridge us to them, not acquisition of 21
their land, but acquisition of a corridor to get to their land. For instance, Foothill Park 22
(crosstalk). 23
24
Chair Lauing: This isn't talking about acquiring any property. This is talking about ... 25
26
Commissioner Moss: (crosstalk) talk about new acquisitions ... 27
28
Chair Lauing: ... shared usage basically. 29
30
Commissioner Moss: New acquisitions of those corridors. 31
32
Ms. O'Kane: It does say new acquisitions. I'll agree with Commissioner Moss there. I 33
think what that means is exactly that. If there's a property that's limiting a connection 34
between another agency's open space area, we could perhaps partner with the other 35
agencies on the purchase of that property or an easement on that property. There isn't a 36
certain property that we have in mind right now, but it would be an opportunity. If that 37
opportunity came up, it would be a possibility. 38
39
Chair Lauing: You could end the sentence after open space, but I don't want to get into 40
wordsmithing. 41
42
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Ms. O'Kane: I didn't hear that one. 1
2
Chair Lauing: If that's the case, you could just say partner da, da, da, and other land 3
conservation groups to expand access to open space. You wouldn't have to talk about 4
new acquisitions and improved connections. 5
6
Commissioner Hetterly: I don't like that. I like new acquisitions and improved 7
connections. 8
9
Ms. O'Kane: I do too. 10
11
Chair Lauing: The point I'm trying to clarify is we're not trying to buy land ... 12
13
Commissioner Moss: We are. 14
15
Chair Lauing: ... by this statement. Correct? 16
17
Commissioner Hetterly: I think we're not committing to buying land, but I think we're 18
open to it if that is the outcome of whatever partnership we can come to. Whatever 19
agreement we may come to with them on whatever place, maybe jointly we want to add 20
this chunk between our open space and their open space. We want to work out a deal to 21
have that acquired, maybe paid for by us and maybe paid for by them. 22
23
Chair Lauing: That's what you intend there? 24
25
Commissioner Reckdahl: That would be a possibility. 26
27
Chair Lauing: That's why I was asking. I just didn't understand the phraseology there. 5 28
is to you, Keith. 29
30
Commissioner Reckdahl: 5A6, create small and medium-sized group picnic areas. Is it 31
that we don't have enough picnic areas? We have a lot of picnic areas around the City, 32
don't we? What is the ... 33
34
Commissioner Hetterly: That's for activating the underused parks. 35
36
Commissioner Reckdahl: Do we think "built it and they will come"? If you build a 37
picnic area in an underused park, you'll get people picnicking? 38
39
Mr. de Geus: We had all of our customer service staff look at the plans. One of the 40
learnings from that exercise—they do the reservations for picnic tables. There isn't 41
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enough really large group picnic tables for 25-plus or more people. There's only a 1
handful of those, so they get booked up very fast. 2
3
Commissioner Reckdahl: If there's a need, then that’s a good idea. 5E, I agree with Jen's 4
assessment on that, but I think we have to be stronger about—right now if you want to do 5
any type of reservation, you want to reserve a baseball field or a basketball court, you've 6
got to call, call, call, call, call. It would be so nice, so convenient for residents to be able 7
to call one place and say, "I need a baseball field. What's open?" You may call one and 8
find out that you do a round robin three or four times before you get the time that you 9
want. If they were all under one location, you could just do it and save yourself a lot of 10
time and frustration. That would be just the convenience of a common reservation 11
system, which is something we should be striving for. I would want to add that under 5E. 12
Having a common reservation system for gyms and other athletic facilities. Also about 13
the Stanford, I've never heard of this before, trying to get access to Stanford's athletic 14
facilities. 15
16
Commissioner Moss: Are you talking about the Dish or are you taking about gyms? 17
18
Mr. de Geus: Gyms but more athletic fields, all of those fields right across El Camino. 19
They frequently actually are not used, in our observations. We would love to have some 20
access to those for some of the sports groups. We've asked before and not had success. 21
22
Commissioner Reckdahl: This is just saying we should continue to pursue that. I can 23
support that. That's it. 24
25
Commissioner Moss: I have quite a few comments about 5E, but it's really related to 2. 26
It seems shortsighted that we don't mention in 2 anything about pools and tennis courts 27
for the next 20 years somewhere. There were many comments about wanting more pool 28
space, trying to get their kid into a program at Rinconada. That's their only alternative. 29
Having another pool to use, I think we shouldn't leave it out for 20 years. The same thing 30
is true with tennis courts. I don't know if we have a problem with tennis courts, but it 31
seems like in every community meeting there is a group of tennis players that come. I 32
don't play tennis. Are we saying that we have enough tennis courts for the next 20 years? 33
Also, that little paddle ball thing that came up ... 34
35
Ms. O'Kane: Pickleball. 36
37
Commissioner Moss: Pickleball that came up, do we have enough courts for the next 20 38
years or should we make some reference in 2? If you don't make reference in 2, then I 39
want to expand 5E. I want to say not only Palo Alto Unified and Stanford University but 40
also private facilities like Eichler Swim Club and Greenmeadow Swim Club. If we could 41
have an arrangement, then we don't have to build another pool. The same thing, I would 42
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expand 5E1 to say partner with PAUSD to provide open gym, pools, courts, baseball 1
fields. In other words, everything that the middle school and the high school has on their 2
land and not just open gym. That would be not only the PAUSD but also Stanford and 3
also private. 4
5
Commissioner Cribbs: You're wanting an inventory of all of the potential facilities, not 6
just gyms, but fields ... 7
8
Commissioner Moss: Think of how many pools there are in the City, how many pools 9
there are in the City. There's one at Terman, and there's one at Gunn, and there's one at 10
Paly, and there's one at Greenmeadow and there's one at Eichler. Nobody can use them; 11
they can only use Rinconada. Is there another one? I don't think so. Something's not 12
right for the next 20 years. How can we expand 5E1 and perhaps 5E2? Does anybody 13
else agree or disagree? 14
15
Commissioner Reckdahl: It's not so much 5, you should have something in 2 that is more 16
generic about athletic facilities. That would be pretty easy to do under 2A, sustain the 17
community's investment in recreation facilities. 18
19
Commissioner Moss: (crosstalk). 20
21
Commissioner Reckdahl: That is generic enough. One of the 2A's could be ... 22
23
Commissioner Moss: 2A1 talks about existing. 2A2 talks about future. 24
25
Commissioner Reckdahl: I almost think 2A1 covers what we have. 26
27
Commissioner Hetterly: 2A is all about sustaining our investment in existing facilities; 28
it's not about adding new facilities. 29
30
Commissioner Reckdahl: It's sustain the community's investment. I read that as 31
generically both new stuff and continuing the old stuff. 32
33
Ms. O'Kane: I think we can add a program that doesn't commit to adding a certain 34
amount of tennis courts or pools, that we can periodically look into that need and see if 35
there's a need for that in the future. We can add something along those lines. 36
37
Chair Lauing: Is your conclusion that based on the data that we don't need another pool 38
at this point? That is specifically one of the things we went into the Master Plan to figure 39
out. Is that the current conclusion? 40
41
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Mr. de Geus: It did come up by a few people, but it wasn't a strong theme throughout the 1
outreach, for an additional pool. The same is true for tennis courts actually, which is 2
consistent with where staff is. Twenty years is a long time, so we need to continue to 3
evaluate. The interest in these change, and the demographics change. 4
5
Chair Lauing: Pool, I thought we had one geographical demand, meaning that there's 6
only one central pool that only covers a certain part of the City. Second, your aquatics 7
programs are always jammed and pool time was really, really jammed. Not referencing 8
pools at all for the next 20 years, I would concur with that. 9
10
Mr. de Geus: They need to be referenced in there. We'll think about how best to do that. 11
12
Chair Lauing: On the other hand—as long as I'm on the mike—I don't think we should 13
be pursuing private pools for pool time. That's kind of your whole shtick, to be a private 14
swim club and to share their thing with the public. I just don't think that's a ... 15
16
Commissioner Moss: What about high schools and middle schools? 17
18
Chair Lauing: That's School District. I'm talking about tennis clubs and swim clubs, 19
private. We actually had that kind of removed from the inventory when we were at the 20
very beginning of this Master Plan process, because we didn't think that was a road worth 21
going down. It was a resource that we couldn't control, I don't think, with any amount of 22
negotiations, you're going to get much pool time from (crosstalk). 23
24
Mr. de Geus: For the entire summer every year, we rent a pool in South Palo Alto from 25
the Unified School District and run swim lessons. We'll probably get 700 kids through 26
swim lessons in the southern pool. What I would like to see changed is that we don't get 27
charged the full rack rate as a City to pay for that pool for the entire summer. 28
29
Commissioner Cribbs: Regarding the pool situation from the swimmer's perspective, I 30
think that you always can use more pools. I think any community would say that. It is a 31
big omission that we didn't put anything about pools in here. What happens in 20 years 32
both geographically and that Rinconada continues to need some—it's a lovely pool, but it 33
needs some upgrades. On the same token, tennis courts. Tennis is a little bit of a 34
declining popularity; we seem to have enough tennis courts. We have very vocal tennis 35
court supporters, but maybe not so much in terms of tennis courts. 36
37
Commissioner Hetterly: Another thing about swimming pools is in our demographic 38
projections early on, that was an area where swimming and diving stood out very highly 39
for a particular demographic group. I think it was Asians in particular had a much higher 40
demand for those services that they felt were unmet than other demographic groups. To 41
the extent we're trying to balance out those kinds of needs. 42
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1
Commissioner Cribbs: It is a sport seriously for a lifetime. Seniors take this (inaudible). 2
3
Mr. de Geus: This is an interesting topic, and it's one that we're looking at closely as a 4
department right now. We may need more pools, but also the existing pool is 5
underutilized. We have swim lessons really just for the late spring and summer. There 6
isn't staff resources to keep them going year round. We're looking at new ways that we 7
can have more activity throughout the day, throughout the year at the existing pool in 8
addition to other. 9
10
Commissioner Cribbs: It's all masters and lap swimming. 11
12
Mr. de Geus: I know. You look at some of the other pools in the neighboring 13
communities, and they have a lot more activity year round, a lot more programming. 14
15
Commissioner Cribbs: This is true. Menlo Park is a great example of that. 16
17
Commissioner Moss: I know that costs for the individual at places like Greenmeadow 18
and Eichler are pretty high because of the cost of energy to heat the pools in the winter. 19
If there were a partnership with the City, that they could provide 100 regular users during 20
the winter, then the cost would go down and pools would get more utilized. I don't think 21
we should discount the use of private pools if we could work out a public-private contract 22
or some kind of a use contract, not a free for all. 23
24
Chair Lauing: We're on 5. Did you have any on 5? 25
26
Commissioner Cribbs: No. 27
28
Chair Lauing: You want to start with 6? 29
30
Commissioner Cribbs: I was all the way down to 6D and the garbage cans and the 31
importance of that park maintenance and garbage cans. Let me see where I put that. 32
33
Commissioner Moss: 6D6. 34
35
Commissioner Cribbs: Yeah, 6 and 5. I'd love to see in there something about the 36
opportunity for residents and people who are close to the park to help take care of that 37
park. I know that there are some issues back and forth on that. When there are 38
overflowing garbage cans in parks because it's Sunday and people have used the parks a 39
lot, there should be a way for people who are walking through the parks can help out with 40
that. 41
42
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Chair Lauing: Anything on 6, David? 1
2
Commissioner Moss: No. 3
4
Commissioner Reckdahl: Not to beat a dead horse, but a whole bunch of these in 6 are 5
what I consider best practices. Energy efficient products, high efficiency urinals, toilets 6
and sinks. Who would argue against that? Why does it have to be a program? That's 7
just my soapbox. I don't feel strongly about that. 6B, we have a policy there, but we 8
have no programs. It seems kind of strange that we have a very detailed policy but no 9
programs. What's the policy towards policies and programs? I thought every policy was 10
supposed to be implemented with programs. 11
12
Ms. O'Kane: There's actually quite a few policies that do not have programs associated 13
with them. I mentioned earlier that there's two that I think do need some programs, but 14
there's others like this one that perhaps does not need programs. There's a few more. For 15
example, 6C doesn't have any programs. I think that's okay. If there's other opinions on 16
that, I'd be happy to hear that. 17
18
Commissioner Reckdahl: For 6B, I would make a more general statement and have that 19
be the policy, and then have what you have there as the policy be the program. Those are 20
very specific; that's the implementation. 21
22
Commissioner Moss: What would you say for the policy? 23
24
Commissioner Reckdahl: Ensure that the general public has access to parks, something 25
along those lines. (inaudible) program would be limit the booking from outside sources. 26
Again, I don't feel strongly about that. It just seems kind of strange how throughout this 27
most of these—there were a couple earlier that were kind of programs but called policies, 28
and there was no program to support them, because they already were programs. This is 29
getting into wordsmithing, I guess. That's it. 30
31
Chair Lauing: Commissioner Reckdahl, you covered all my comments. Thank you. 32
Commissioner Hetterly. 33
34
Commissioner Hetterly: I only have one comment left on 6. 6D14, as infrastructure 35
expansion allows, extend recycled water use to more park sites. I understand that we 36
can't magically put recycled water everywhere. I think it should be a priority and not an 37
afterthought. I don't think that it should—I would like to take out as infrastructure 38
expansion allows, and just put in the program extend recycled water use to more park 39
sites or reverse the order at a minimum, so that the emphasis is not on when we can do it, 40
we might do this. Emphasize that we want to do that, extend recycled water. That's it. 41
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Chair Lauing: Unless anybody forgot anything, we've muscled through that one. What 1
would we expect for next month in this regard? 2
3
Ms. O'Kane: We'll have this revised to include the comments that we heard tonight, that 4
we think are relevant. I'll turn it over to Peter to discuss where we'll be with the 5
implementation piece at that point, as far as costs, things like that. 6
7
Mr. Jensen: We are still developing the costs, so I can't say that we are going to bring 8
that back next month. I would like to, but it is a large task. Just the task of reviewing it 9
for staff, which we are working on now, is a large chore to do. I'm hoping that we can 10
bring that aspect back next time as part of it, but I can't guarantee that right now. 11
12
Commissioner Reckdahl: Next month, we meet on the 28th, and the Council meeting is 13
on the 27th. Do you have everything that you need from us for what you're going to 14
present? 15
16
Mr. de Geus: I think so, yeah. It's largely what you're seeing here. I will tell you I was 17
informed today that the Mayor and Vice Mayor, due to a variety of action items that need 18
to go to Council, have asked a number of study sessions be pushed to after the break. 19
That includes our study session. I have to talk to Jim, the City Manager, about whether 20
that's really necessary, because we don't want to get too far along here without a check-in. 21
It's time for that. It may yet change. At a minimum, we'll send an information report to 22
let Council know where we are in the process. 23
24
Mr. Jensen: Any more questions about the ... 25
26
Commissioner Reckdahl: One more thing. Do we have a good idea of what the Council 27
wants in the study session or are we just doing what we think the Council wants? 28
29
Mr. de Geus: I think we have a good idea. They're ready to see some specifics at this 30
point. This is the meat of the plan, this Chapter 5 where we talk about the goals, policies 31
and programs. We want to continue to refine that. That’s why this meeting was very 32
important as we do that and sharpen the goals, policies and programs. If we get fairly 33
good response from Council on that, I think we're ready to get into real drafting of the 34
plan, which we'd like to bring back to Council in the fall for a review. Hopefully the 35
ability to adopt a plan by the end of the calendar year, that's I'm hoping we can do. 36
37
Chair Lauing: Peter, did you want to go over any of these items? 38
39
Mr. Jensen: Yes (inaudible). 40
41
Chair Lauing: This is the document that was already presented to the community, right? 42
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1
Mr. Jensen: Now we ... 2
3
Chair Lauing: What's the format? Are we going to go through each one of these? 4
5
Mr. Jensen: No. Tonight I'm to explain what they are and what's entailed inside of them. 6
You have the month to provide us with feedback or input, and we'll discuss them more at 7
the next meeting as well. The next thing we're going to look at is the site concept plan. I 8
passed out the booklet that is going to be on display at City Hall and the libraries for 9
people to look at. It's also online; that's probably how most people will access it and look 10
at it with the opportunity to review that with a comment form. How they were put 11
together is—if you remember the second matrix that we had, not the first opportunities 12
matrix but the second matrix we had, was this large group of different projects and 13
programs that identified specific projects like restrooms and started to identify specific 14
locations. When you started to look at that whole list, it was fairly substantial to that. To 15
make it easier to review those things, we've now deduced it down to a graphical 16
interpretation of what that was meaning and what the new proposed amenities are for 17
each site. Sites in this discussion refer to both parks and community facilities. 18
Cubberley Community Center, Ventura Community Center, Lucie Stern, those things are 19
considered facilities, not actually parks. This booklet, that's in front of you, takes a look 20
at new amenities that are proposed for each one of those things. It was deduced from that 21
large list of projects. It also started to look at the areas of focus that we had to group 22
projects per specific sites. Each one of those new amenities is called out with a legend in 23
the plan, and it has a specific color coding or bubble that specifically shows the location 24
where it is proposed and the relative size to that facility. At the beginning of the book, 25
there is a definitions of the items that are found in the legend, a breakdown of what those 26
specific things are and gives some examples for some things. Adult fitness, you'll see 27
pops up a lot on the different plans. That is done as part of a playground renovation. We 28
saw that as a way to incorporate some type of adult fitness activity, either some type of 29
workout equipment or just providing a soft-surfaced area that you could have 30
programming out in the park for seniors. That could stretch from some type of yoga class 31
or other strength building, those types of things. Even though they do have just one color 32
code, like the adult fitness is an orange circle that calls out "AF." It does have different 33
possibilities of doing things there. The book was created to look at the possibilities of 34
potential new amenities for each park. I think it's key to note that not everything that's on 35
each of these plans will be incorporated into the Master Plan. Just based on budgetary 36
constraints, we can't have all these things. What is being asked is that you and the 37
community review the plans and provide input on prioritization, what you think is the 38
best things for the parks to be there, that are shown on the plan, and to also provide input 39
if there are things missing with the plans, so we can dial it in to a specific location. The 40
booklets in front of you and online differ in one way; each shows two plans for the same 41
park or facility. One is an existing that shows what the existing amenities are there and 42
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calls out some opportunities and constraints. The other plan just shows the new 1
amenities as far as bubbles on a plan. If there's not a specific bubble over a certain 2
amenity in a park, then that specific amenity will stay as is and won't be changed. You'll 3
see that the majority of the parks don't have a lot of change to them. They're usually the 4
addition of native or habitat spaces, which we found from the community output as being 5
one of the key things that the community would like to see more incorporated into the 6
parks. They can range through—as we started to break down the cost estimate of it, the 7
enhancement of the playing fields is currently one of the high dollar items. Because we 8
do have a shortage of playing fields and they are so highly used, if we're going to make 9
what we've got work, then enhancing those playing fields to meet the capacity as much as 10
we can, of course, even if those fields were topnotch, they wouldn't meet capacity now, 11
but they could be used a lot more than they currently are. What's being shown on the 12
screen is an existing site plan. You can see it is calling out at Heritage Park, what is there 13
currently. The next slide is showing what the new proposed amenities are. You can see 14
for Heritage Park in this instant that a dog park is added. That's one of the main additions 15
to the park itself. There is an adult fitness area that’s incorporated into the playground. 16
Again, we talked about prioritization and when these things are actually going to be. For 17
those things like adult fitness, you'd start to look when the next time that playground was 18
going to be renovated, when it was going to need new equipment, and you'd start to 19
incorporate a space not just for children but for adults and for the elderly to use as well as 20
far as adult fitness to get better use out of those spaces. The native habitat shows up in 21
most of the plans. It shows up in one major element, the reduction of passive turf that we 22
have now. Heritage Park actually has a lot of ivy that was planted there before, that is 23
lost space, that doesn't really provide any type of habitat and usable area. We'd be 24
looking at those areas to remove the ivy and establish some type of native or drought-25
tolerant planting or some type of garden that would sustain the habitat better. This one 26
also has a longer stretch along the houses that have a—from just staff input, there's a 27
drainage issue along the new housing that was built there. That native habitat area would 28
also be addressing, not just providing habitat but working on the drainage and helping 29
that space dry out. You can see that it's for this specific park. Besides the dog park, it's 30
fairly minimal. For most of the parks as you go through the changes that are proposed 31
are minimal. They seem big. Some of the things, like I said the enhancement of the 32
sports fields where there are sports fields, the circle on the page looks like it takes up a lot 33
of area, but those places are proposed to stay as they are. They're just proposed to be 34
better than what they are. That has a cost associated with it that we do want to 35
understand, because that will dictate how we move forward with doing that in the future. 36
37
Commissioner Reckdahl: Did you say that it specifies when this last was remodeled, 38
each of the parks? 39
40
Mr. Jensen: I don't believe that information is on the plan. I think some of them, for the 41
new ones like Monroe Park and Scott Park and Eleanor Pardee Park, it says specifically 42
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on the plan when it was renovated. Some of those like Scott Park and Monroe Park don't 1
have any proposed new amenities associated with them. It just states there is no new 2
amenities. It was remodeled in 2015. 3
4
Commissioner Reckdahl: It might be useful to have a table that lists all the parks and 5
when they last were done or, more importantly, when are they scheduled to be 6
remodeled. I don't know if that's (crosstalk). 7
8
Mr. Anderson: One of the challenges of that is that lots of these remodels are really 9
partial, quarter of it. It's not holistic, and it could be misleading. 10
11
Commissioner Reckdahl: That's true. 12
13
Mr. Jensen: We are working with our current maintenance or upkeep schedule to try to 14
incorporate these new amenities into that schedule, so it's all one project, so you're not 15
fixing something and 2 years later going back and adding a bathroom. You'd be 16
combining those into one project throughout the park at one time. 17
18
Commissioner Reckdahl: That's where maybe having a list of estimated, no 19
commitment, of what order we think we're going to be remodeling the parks. Would that 20
be possible? I don't want to make work for you, but if it's something we have available 21
that we can just throw in. When I'm looking through some of these, I'm wondering when 22
will this be done, which one will be done first. 23
24
Mr. Jensen: That is something that we've started to look at with a review of the budget 25
and funding for those things. We haven't specifically called them out per a specific year 26
now. We're keeping them in our groups of short-term, mid and long-term and breaking 27
them down that way. 28
29
Commissioner Reckdahl: Even if it's just a rough order with no year associated with it. 30
It might be nice to say this is coming up fairly soon or this is way down the list. 31
32
Mr. Jensen: We are working to develop that. The next example of this is Hoover Park. 33
I'm showing this one because it does have actually the most proposed changes or new 34
amenities. In the analysis of the parks systems, it was found that Hoover Park as a 35
central location had a lot of use and a lot of access, people from around the neighborhood 36
walking to it. It has already a lot of amenities there; however, those amenities aren't the 37
most efficient use of the space if you've been there to see how it is arranged. Looking 38
just at that park in general, this is kind of a big scale of how we looked at Scott Park. 39
Instead of just replacing the in-kind of what was there, we started to rearrange the space a 40
little bit more to make it a lot more efficient and usable. This plan starts to look at that. 41
You can see here the enhanced field comes up time and again on each that has an 42
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enhancement. The field basically stays the same on this one. The dog park which is in 1
this area here gets relocated and is moved to the back. The sports courts and the tennis 2
courts get rebuilt in this area and are combined. The basketball court that is sitting in the 3
back gets added to this space. The location of where the dog park is now becomes a 4
more expanded picnic area. There is a natural area there right now with the redwoods 5
and a dry stream bed; that would have some more natural play amenities to it that would 6
enhance that area. It could be used as a play area. Because it has so many proposed uses, 7
this one does provide another option with it. This is the only plan that has a second 8
option that is basically renovating the park less than what is proposed on the first one by 9
just taking the dog park and using that unused area behind the outfield of the baseball 10
field to add as a dog park and to expand the group picnic areas. This is different because 11
it gives two options. That was done because of the amount of change that is proposed in 12
the main option. That could provide the opportunity for the community to comment, to 13
say, "We'd rather see less change in the park. This is proposing too much change." This 14
allows us to see another option of revising it less than the first one. I do have all the 15
definitions; they're in the front of the book. If you look online, you can read what the 16
definition of each one of those things on the legend is. I think they're pretty self-17
explanatory. I won't go through it. We did go through them in the community meeting, 18
which was last week. We went through these and talked about how to review them, what 19
was in them, took some feedback from that, allowed the group that was there to provide 20
feedback for specific park locations that they wanted to review at the time. Again, there 21
is an online option that you can look at as well to provide feedback for that. We did set 22
up an actual booth at the May Fete Parade, which was very successful until it started 23
raining on us. It did start to generate a lot of questions and people looking at the plan and 24
providing feedback. That was good. Of course, we had a community meeting about this 25
last week. It's online now and will be for at least the remainder of the month, if not a 26
little bit longer to provide the opportunity for people to provide comment. The comments 27
are broken into site-specific or parks and facilities. You choose which facility you want 28
to comment on and provide comment for that on the form. You can do that for every 29
park if you wish to do so. We imagine that most people will either look at their favorite 30
park or the few parks they like to go to and provide comment on that. We'll take that 31
input, the input from the community as well as the input from the PARC, and look at the 32
budget that we're constructing right now and start to pare these plans down until we can 33
get to a final set of site concept plans that will be in the Master plan. What we're asking 34
for the month is that you take the opportunity to look at the plans online and provide 35
comment and feedback for that. We'll come back next month and review and discuss 36
again the feedback we've heard from the community as well as you. We can discuss and 37
ask questions. 38
39
Chair Lauing: The feedback that you want is what, if not order of creation? 40
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Mr. Jensen: We want some prioritization, looking at the plans and what of those specific 1
elements on there are most important to you, that you think should be included in the 2
final plans. Further input, if there's items that are missing or things should be expanded 3
more that are shown on the plans. Looking at those specific things as far as feedback 4
from the community. 5
6
Ms. O'Kane: I'd like to add that we've got in the habit of calling all of these site plans 7
proposed amenities. It's really more potential. As you look at it, don't think—for the 8
Hoover Park example, all of these proposed amenities aren't actually we're thinking we're 9
going to build all of them. These are the potential things that could go in this park space. 10
Of those, which would be the most appropriate, which should be highlighted as a priority 11
versus the others. If we did everything in all of these books, we certainly wouldn't have 12
the budget for that. These are just potential amenities that could go in these parks. 13
14
Chair Lauing: Comments, Commissioner Cribbs. 15
16
Commissioner Cribbs: How are people finding out about the opportunity to comment on 17
these plans? 18
19
Mr. Jensen: We're using the same techniques that we used before for the other 20
community surveys. Mostly through email lists. We have an email list now for the Parks 21
Master Plan that includes the stakeholders. It's about 115 people; it gets sent out to the 22
head of each neighborhood association. There's quite a few in Palo Alto; some of them 23
are very well organized, like Midtown. Some of them aren't. We send an email to those 24
people and ask them to distribute to their lists. An email blast will go out to our 25
Community Services list, which is a good sized list. I don't know exactly how many; it's 26
thousands of people on that. It seemed to be successful in the past. Our first survey, we 27
got 1,100 response. The prioritization challenge got in the 700 range. We hope that it'll 28
generate again a good response. As far as the community meeting, I did add a line item 29
to our sign-in sheet, because it is interesting to me how people find out about the 30
meetings. Everyone that came—26 community members came to the meeting. They all 31
said that they got an email from someone about the meeting. That's seems to be the best 32
way. That's usually the best way because it's usually from someone you know instead of 33
just a blanket thing stating come to our meeting. You are actually getting something 34
from someone who is asking you to participate, which is a lot more powerful than just 35
sending out a blanket statement. We also used social media, but I don't know exactly 36
how that is working. There's no way to track it. Twitter and Facebook are things the 37
City does use as well as Nextdoor. The meeting was advertised on those platforms as 38
well. We will use those platforms to advertise this. We'll try as many ways as possible 39
to get the message out. 40
41
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Commissioner Cribbs: I know several of us were at the meeting. I was particularly 1
pleased with the broad range of people who were there in terms of age groups and 2
younger generation people who have the most to benefit from all of this. It was good. 3
4
Chair Lauing: Any other comments or questions? Commissioner Hetterly. 5
6
Commissioner Hetterly: I just have a quick question. Do we still have those signs up at 7
all the parks with the—I don't know what you call that thing to connect to the survey. Is 8
that live now for this survey or has that been defunct for (crosstalk). 9
10
Mr. Jensen: That just takes you to the home page. I did try to make that sign as general 11
as possible. I think we learned from the Rinconada; we started to put dates on those 12
things. They stayed up past the dates. That bar code takes you to the webpage and from 13
there it's fairly clear on the webpage that you click on that middle box. It's prompting 14
you to access it that way. 15
16
Commissioner Hetterly: Thanks. 17
18
Chair Lauing: Is that it? Go ahead, Keith. 19
20
Commissioner Reckdahl: I had one specific comment. On Baylands, you have the 21
layout, but we're going to lose a lot of this land due to the JPA project. I'd be nice on the 22
Baylands if you—do we know where the JPA is going to be—the levee is going to be? 23
24
Mr. Anderson: Yes. 25
26
Commissioner Reckdahl: I'd be nice if we could put that in. A lot of the area just goes 27
away, so you have a lot less options if you know where that is. 28
29
Mr. Jensen: Right. I think that was one of the comments from our staff review. We did 30
have an extensive staff review of the concept plans. We were showing the parking lot 31
that's adjacent to the levee remaining and then improving that. That parking lot is not 32
going to be there anymore. It's going to be the levee. That was taken out. 33
34
Chair Lauing: Thank you. See you next month. 35
36
Mr. Jensen: Thank you. 37
38
5. Other Ad Hoc Committee and Liaison Updates. 39
40
Chair Lauing: The next item on the agenda is ad hoc committee and liaison updates. I 41
know that Commissioner Cribbs has ... Gym use ad hoc. 42
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1
Commissioner Cribbs: We have a short report. We met with Kristen and Adam Howard 2
a couple of weeks ago. We defined our mission to really understand gym use in Palo 3
Alto currently and to see what the needs were and to understand the availability in Palo 4
Alto and see if we're missing anything. Our first step was to get the gym policies from 5
Kristen and review what's going on at Cubberley in terms of who gets to use the gym and 6
that kind of thing. I think the most important thing we'll do is inventory the available 7
gyms in Palo Alto, the City's three at Cubberley. We'd like to delve into the PAUSD, 8
which is a particular interest of mine, both the middle schools and the high schools. Add 9
the private schools to our list and then check with the Chamber of Commerce and any of 10
the corporations who have gyms. I know that might be crazy, but there's some 11
opportunities there, I think. Stanford in addition has incredible facilities which are 12
sometimes tough to use. I think it's certainly worth putting them on the list. There are 13
several for-profit gyms and exercise clubs and private clubs in Palo Alto that should go 14
on this list. Any plans that anybody has, whether it's a corporation or a private company, 15
for new or renovated gyms, and then we'd like to look at the neighboring cities too to see 16
if there's any potential for partnerships with gyms that exist. We want to start with the 17
data and make sure that the gyms that we have right now are being used. If they're not 18
being used, this isn't actually necessary, to go through the exercise. In looking at the Park 19
Master Plan, there's certainly a lot of ideas and a lot of policies and a lot of programs that 20
have to do with shared space and use and all of that. We have asked Adam for some 21
historical data, and he's busy collecting that. We should see that pretty soon. Once we 22
get the historical data, if there is any, then we'll proceed on the inventory. 23
24
Chair Lauing: The Master Plan consultants gave us an inventory of City gyms. You'll 25
have that. 26
27
Mr. Jensen: I can actually send that to you. 28
29
Commissioner Cribbs: That would be great. Thank you very much. That's it for now. 30
31
Chair Lauing: Did you want to talk about Matadero? 32
33
Commissioner Reckdahl: Yeah. Do you want to go ahead? 34
35
Commissioner Moss: The Planning and Transportation Committee meeting last week 36
had a big discussion about the Matadero Creek Trail. That's one of our programs in our 37
Master Plan. There are many issues with a creek-side bicycle and pedestrian path along 38
the length of the creek. We're playing more of a monitoring role than having input. I 39
think the big thing that the City Council wants is the path to somehow touch the creek a 40
little bit. I think they've pretty much given up on the idea that they're going to have a 41
path from Alma to the Baylands along the creek. All we can do is watch as the many 42
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issues are confronted. I think we're going to end up with some kind of hybrid where 1
there will be a very small portion of that trail be next to the creek, and a bigger portion of 2
it will be along, say, Loma Verde. The issues have everything to do with flood control 3
and getting across the many streets that it has to cross in the middle of the road between 4
stop signs and also encroachment by several private properties in very strategic places. I 5
don't see those issues being fixed any time soon. I think a hybrid is going to happen. The 6
only thing we've been able to talk to them about is going underneath 101 at the very end 7
and perhaps bypassing some of the creek but being able to use that underpass. That's 8
about all we've been able to contribute. 9
10
Commissioner Reckdahl: The fact that you have property that goes right up to the creek 11
does prevent the path from following along, but we do have Wilkie Way, for example, 12
where we cantilever that and it runs along the channel for a while. Just because there's 13
private property there, it doesn't preclude it. It just makes it a lot more expensive and 14
more complicated. Some people in the City still hold out hope that we'll have something 15
that goes down. What they debated at the PTC was either go down Loma Verde and have 16
a straight shot and don't even mess the creek or you wiggle through and hit the creek 17
when you can and move off of it. The PTC eventually voted for recommending that 18
wiggle path, what they call the hybrid, where you're along the sometimes and away from 19
the creek other times, simply because it's the cheaper option. Loma Verde would have 20
been rather expensive. There was some concern about Loma Verde would have a 21
separate bike path with a divider. You'd have the bikes going in opposite direction on the 22
wrong side of the street; some people had complained about that. The bottom line is our 23
concern about going under, whether they go Loma Verde or whether they go this hybrid 24
path, both could end up going under the bridge over there at Matadero Creek under 101. 25
We're still in play. There's some still logistics to hand out. Josh Mello, the transportation 26
officer, still is optimistic that we can get something through, that will get us at least 27
seasonal access under the 101 underpass. We're still working on it. 28
29
Mr. Jensen: As far as staff goes, I know that Elizabeth Ames in Public Works has 30
worked on that underpass with the Water District for a long time. She has probably the 31
most information as far as that goes; she'd be the best person to talk to about background 32
history of what the conversation has been and all that stuff. 33
34
Commissioner Reckdahl: Deirdre and I met with her last year, and she gave us a data 35
dump. That was very useful. I'm optimistic, but it's not going to be trivial just because 36
the Water District's involved. 37
38
Chair Lauing: Any other ad hoc reports or liaison reports? 39
40
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V. DIRECTOR'S REPORT 1
2
Chair Lauing: The next item of business is a new category item of business called the 3
Director's Report. 4
5
Ms. O'Kane: Thank you. I'm just going to explain why this was added. I just thought it 6
would be a good place for Rob or I or both of us to provide any announcements, any 7
updates on what's been happening, what's about to happen, and separate it from the more 8
general announcements that are also on the agenda. That's the reason for this is. We can 9
see how it works and revise as needed. I'm going to turn it over to Rob to start out. 10
11
Mr. de Geus: I get a little more structure. I think it's a good idea; we should play with it 12
and maybe even have it at the beginning of the meeting. I just have two announcements 13
that I wanted to share with you. One, Bernie Sanders is coming to town tomorrow, is 14
going to be at the Cubberley Community Center, which is going to be a rally. There's a 15
meeting that he'll have there for an hour, from 1:00 to 2:00, and then he's with the press 16
for half an hour, and then out to the football field for the rally. Big deal. Don't know 17
how many people to expect, but thousands for sure. If you want to go to the rally, come 18
on down. If you don't, I would stay away from South Palo Alto for the day. 19
20
Commissioner Reckdahl: How much are they paying in rent for that? 21
22
Mr. de Geus: It's somewhere around $4,000 to $5,000 rental fee. We're charging based 23
on how many hours they're using the fields and the pavilion where the meeting is. 24
25
Commissioner Reckdahl: Do they pay for cleanup afterwards or how does that work? 26
27
Mr. de Geus: No. Because it's a political campaign and the Secret Service are involved, 28
there will be 20 Secret Service agents that'll be there. The police are working closely 29
with them as part of an in-kind arrangement. I think that's typical for political candidates. 30
We had Secretary Clinton here a month or more ago to meet with the United Farm 31
Workers at the Lucie Stern Center. That was again a time when we had Secret Service 32
and police involved. They have to sweep the whole place. Tomorrow's event is a big 33
deal. Wanted to be sure you knew about it, because it is in a community center and on a 34
park. 35
36
Commissioner Reckdahl: Do they put up any bond or deposit in case there's damage? 37
38
Mr. de Geus: That is in the facility rental rules; they have to pay for any damage. I 39
certainly expressed that to the campaign numerous times. We'll have to see. I have to 40
say big shout out to the police department. They've been terrific. They're managing a lot 41
of the work that needs to be done with security and parking and safety of the Greendell 42
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School in particular, which is still in session tomorrow. They have a plan, and I think it's 1
going to be fine. CSD will have 15-20 staff there as well helping manage the crowds. 2
3
Commissioner Moss: I live right behind there. There's a path from there to Nelson, and 4
they couldn't find the keys to take out the post, so they had to cut them off. Of course, 5
they're going to have to put them back up. These things are sticking up like this, and 6
people ride their bikes across there. Somebody's going to trip and fall on that overnight. 7
8
Mr. de Geus: We'll replace those, because they were concreted in actually. They needed 9
to be repaired. 10
11
Commissioner Moss: What a mess. 12
13
Mr. de Geus: The other is the golf course. Still planning to close in July. Bids are in. 14
We are working with the lowest bidder to try and draft the contract to bring to Council. 15
We were hoping to be there on June 13th; we're not going to be ready for that, so it'll be 16
June 20th when we're before Council with a contract for the golf course. That's pretty 17
exciting. So far so good. 18
19
Chair Lauing: Any risk of it falling out now on those dates? Not from a contractor's 20
standpoint, but from the Water Board and all that. 21
22
Mr. de Geus: There's still some risk. The latest, unless Kristen you've heard, is that we 23
have permits in hand. Everything we're hearing from Joe Teresi, the project manager, is 24
that we will have them in hand. We're moving forward as though it's happened. That's 25
exciting. There will be a staff report related to that. We'll send you the link as soon as 26
it's ready. 27
28
Ms. O'Kane: I have a couple of things. I'll try to be brief. I first wanted to introduce—29
you may have noticed there's a new face on this side of the table. Amanda Deng 30
[phonetic] is a new employee in our department. She's going to be cross-training with 31
Catherine and eventually taking over the role that Catherine has with the Commission. 32
Catherine will still be here for the next few months, training Amanda. She's here to help, 33
and she's a quick study so I'm sure she'll pick it up very quickly. I'm going to have—34
Amanda, could you pass out the ... There's something else I've added that will eventually 35
go out in your packets. I think this is something that you've seen in the past. It may have 36
a different format. There's two things that were handed out to you. One is a calendar; it's 37
a 2-month calendar that just provides you with information on upcoming events, 38
meetings that you might find interesting or be relevant to the Commission. This will be, 39
like I said, sent out in your packet, but we'll also update it periodically. We can send it to 40
you if there's significant changes in advance. I also thought it would be helpful to have a 41
work plan of our agenda topics for the calendar year. This way we can see what's 42
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Draft Minutes 58
planned in the future. If there's something that a Commissioner would like to see added 1
to the agenda, we can use this as a work plan to say, "We haven't heard about this for a 2
few months, so we'll add it to November" or "November's looking really full, let's add it 3
to October." Right now, the next few months look pretty empty, but they will fill up. If 4
anyone has any topics they would like added to the agenda, we could do that. We can 5
also see from a staff standpoint if something is going to be happening, say, related to 6
community gardens. We can add that at the appropriate time. It's just sort of a snapshot 7
of the year as to what we've seen in the past already and what we might want to see in the 8
future. Both of these things will be sent out in the packets from now on. One other last 9
thing is I did want to say—it's not on the calendar—every Friday there's a summer 10
concert series at the Magical Bridge Playground that's put on by Friends of the Palo Alto 11
Parks as well as Friends of the Magical Bridge Playground. I encourage you to go out. I 12
haven't been to them; their first one was last Friday. Like I said, they're every Friday 13
from 6:30 to 8:00, different types of music. 14
15
Commissioner Reckdahl: Is it just during the summer? 16
17
Ms. O'Kane: It's just during the summer. It'll go through the end of September. They 18
just kicked off their season last Friday, and they'll continue with those every Friday. 19
That's all I have. 20
21
Chair Lauing: We should do specific questions to both of you as well on stuff. For 22
example, where's the CIP process right now? Are we winning or losing this year is what 23
I really want to know. 24
25
Mr. de Geus: That's a good question, because it is changing. We have been told that they 26
are out of balance, and we will need to push some things off, particularly in 2017. It's a 27
5-year plan, and we fund 1 year at a time. They need to push some things out of 2017, 28
and they've asked every department to prioritize 2017 CIPs. The one we're looking at 29
is—there is a CIP in '17 for Rinconada Park, a large one, but it's not really shovel ready. 30
We haven't yet approved the long range plan. There's still questions about the Junior 31
Museum and Zoo; not questions so much but there's still a process to go through there. 32
We don't think we'll be ready to do a lot in Rinconada Park in '17 anyway. That's one we 33
put forward, so we might have to push that out. Other than that, I don't think there's any 34
changes of significance. 35
36
Chair Lauing: Do either of you know where we are with that hydrologic study up at 37
Foothills on the extra acreage? 38
39
Mr. de Geus: Council was asking me about that just in the meeting earlier. 40
41
Chair Lauing: You're prepped for that question then. 42
DRAFT
Draft Minutes 59
1
Mr. de Geus: It's been delayed a little bit. Other CIPs have been getting priority. We 2
finally got the RFP done and selected a contractor to do the study. It's scheduled to go to 3
Council in June, so they can start this summer. It's moving. 4
5
Chair Lauing: Other questions for the Director and Assistant? 6
7
Vi. COMMENTS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS 8
9
Chair Lauing: Any other general comment and announcements folks want to make? 10
11
Mr. Jensen: Bowden Park will start a renovation project next Monday. The Palo Alto 12
playing fields are scheduled to begin on June 13th to have the synthetic turf replaced. 13
Before our next meeting, those two projects will be under way. 14
15
Commissioner Reckdahl: Bowden originally, when we passed the PIO, didn't have a dog 16
park. Are we just doing the work outside of that dog park area? There is minimal work 17
in that area. 18
19
Mr. Jensen: There was no work planned for the frontage where (crosstalk). 20
21
Commissioner Reckdahl: I thought we were going to plant some trees there. 22
23
Mr. Jensen: It's fairly minimal. The space still stays the same. It's felt that we should 24
approve the Master Plan before we start to implement the items from it. That will be one 25
of the first things that we'll look at, implementing the dog park at that location. 26
27
Commissioner Reckdahl: We'll go back later and do the dog park. 28
29
Mr. Jensen: Yes. It's a fairly simple thing to do there for the dog park. 30
31
VI. TENTATIVE AGENDA FOR JUNE 28, 2016 MEETING 32
33
Chair Lauing: The next item is tentative agenda items for the June 28th, '16 meeting. I'm 34
sure one of them is going to be the Master Plan. Others that are pending? The Zoo is 35
done, right? They're not coming back? 36
37
Commissioner Reckdahl: (inaudible) 38
39
Chair Lauing: Except for the PIO. 40
41
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Draft Minutes 60
Ms. O'Kane: It'll probably be August. We'll have to work on that agenda. I don't have 1
anything right now for June. 2
3
Chair Lauing: Short meetings are okay, if we only want to work on the Master Plan. 4
5
Commissioner Hetterly: Can I just clarify on the dog parks? It was my understanding 6
that we were going to move forward with neighborhood meetings and drafting a PIO for 7
those first two near-term dog parks. Has that been abandoned now in anticipation of 8
eventual passage of the Master Plan? 9
10
Ms. O'Kane: I think it's been delayed because we need to get Council approval and their 11
feedback on whether that's how they want to move forward. 12
13
Mr. de Geus: That's one of the delays and why we're not happy about not having the 14
study session. That's one of the topics we were going to focus on with the Council on the 15
study session, the outcome of the dog parks (inaudible). I'll talk to Daren about this one. 16
I know we want to move it forward; we don't want to delay this. 17
18
Commissioner Reckdahl: I can see if we were going forward with 12 dog parks. We're 19
just going forward with two. We pretty much know that we have the demand for two, 20
and that these are reasonable locations. We still have to pass a PIO. Council could look 21
at the PIO and say, "No. We want to talk about the dog park, and we're not going to 22
confirm the PIO." I would personally think it'd be safe to go forward with the community 23
meetings and push forward on just those two. 24
25
Commissioner Hetterly: That would be my leaning as well. With the Council study 26
session delayed, if we got the community meetings done in advance of the Council study 27
session, that just gives them more information in order to make a decision. 28
29
Chair Lauing: I agree. 30
31
Mr. de Geus: I think that's probably okay. Let me talk to Daren about it. I may check in 32
with City Manager too, because it's always this question of getting too far ahead of where 33
the Council might be. I think Council's very supportive of this, more dog parks. We've 34
heard that from a number of them. I'll have to check in with a few folks before we ... 35
36
Chair Lauing: We'll monitor for additional agenda items. 37
38
Mr. de Geus: I have a suggestion. One area that's not fully fleshed out in the Master Plan 39
yet, and their big things are the 10 1/2 acres at the golf course and what are we going to 40
do there, and Cubberley is another one. We sort of briefly talk about what we'd like to 41
see there. They would be two interesting topics for us to talk about as staff and 42
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Draft Minutes 61
Commission. Given all the feedback we've heard through this process, what has 1
percolated to the top to start thinking about what we're going to recommend for that 10 2
1/2 acres at the golf course and also Cubberley. I don't know if we'll be ready for any of 3
those next month. Perhaps I would begin with the 10 1/2 acres at the golf course. 4
5
Chair Lauing: Those are gaps relative to the document we went over tonight on the 6
Master Plan. 7
8
Commissioner Hetterly: Have there been any further developments on Cubberley with 9
the School District setting up your design, visioning plan? 10
11
Mr. de Geus: It's been slow. We've been trying to connect with the design school at 12
Stanford. It's been hard to nail them down. This is a big project, so we tacked and got in 13
touch with Ideo which is a local design company. Kristen and I went and visited their 14
San Francisco offices where they have an education branch. It's really exciting and 15
interesting. We were like, "This is it. These folks are going to help us out." They told us 16
how much it would cost to do that; it was a bit of sticker shock. We're now trying to find 17
some time to meet with the City Manager and Dr. McGee with a couple of options for 18
moving forward. We still want to by the end of the year have a real plan in place for how 19
we're going to go through this process, so we get there by the end of the 5-year lease with 20
the School District. More to come. 21
22
Chair Lauing: Any other items we should raise? 23
24
VII. ADJOURNMENT 25
26
Meeting adjourned on motion by Commissioner Hetterly and second by Commissioner 27
Cribbs at 10:15 p.m. Motion passed 5-0 28
6053001
TO: PARKS AND RECREATION COMMISSION
FROM: HUNG NGUYEN, PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT
DATE: JUNE 28, 2016
SUBJECT: PARK IMPROVEMENT ORDINANCE COVERING LUCY
EVANS BAYLANDS NATURE INTERPRETIVE CENTER
IMPROVEMENTS PROJECT
RECOMMENDATION
Staff recommends that the Parks and Recreation Commission recommend that the City Council
approve a Park Improvement Ordinance (PIO) (Attachment A) for the design of the Lucy Evans
Baylands Nature Interpretive Center (Center) Capital Improvements Project (CIP).
BACKGROUND
The City Charter and Section 22.08.005 of the City’s Municipal Code require that before any
substantial building, construction, reconstruction or development approval on dedicated
parkland, the Council must first approve and adopt a proposed improvement plan.
The Center is located within the City’s Baylands Nature Preserve. Built on piles above the salt
marsh in 1967, the Center was the first educational center within this unique Bay Area
ecosystem. The Center offers various programs and activities such as nature walks, animal and
fossil workshops, an ecology laboratory, and displays of tidelands flora and fauna. The City and
its partners provide hands-on standards-based curriculum at the Center to more than 3,000
elementary school students from over 30 schools and more than 80,000 visitors to the marsh
annually. The scope of this CIP project includes replacement of decking, railing, fascia repair,
structure framing members (as needed), exterior wood siding, flooring refinish, cabinetry, doors,
exterior lighting replacement, electrical panel upgrade, restroom accessibility upgrade, fire
sprinkler heads replacement, piping and conduit repairs.
At the October 27, 2015 Commission meeting, staff discussed the upgrades and maintenance
proposals for the Center. The Commission was in general agreement of the following items:
All exterior colors should match the more earthy color tones of the Baylands
Desire to include grey water plumbing for future usage
Desire for a solution to retain the habitat for swallows on-site
Desire to have gender neutrality for the restroom
Concerns that glass panes for the interpretive signage may injure birds
Interpretive signage should include American with Disability Act (ADA) features
Design should reflect the Baylands Design Guidelines
Desire to salvage existing siding and other materials for uses elsewhere
The project is currently under minor staff-level Architectural Review.
6053001
Discussion
FOG Studio, design consultant, incorporated the Commission, public, and staff’s
recommendations regarding site features to create a final site design for improvements at the
Center (Attachment A). The design includes:
Refinishing of wood flooring throughout building
Reconfiguration of restrooms to accommodate current ADA clearance requirements for a
multi-occupant restroom
Installation of new plumbing fixtures to meet ADA and water-conservation requirements
Installation of new interior lighting fixtures and hand dryers in renovated restrooms to
meet Title 24 energy requirements
Installation of a new interior drinking fountain with filtered bottle filling station
Installation of new interior wall and floor tile in renovated restrooms to meet health code
standards. The original exposed wood wall finish would be retained where possible and
augmented with new wood finish where needed.
Installation of new interior storage closets
Replacement of all exterior wood and metal decking, guardrails, siding and fascia
Replacement of water and sewer piping under the deck as required by restroom remodel
Replacement of exterior lighting fixtures and sprinkler heads
Improvement of building weatherproofing
Installation of a new exterior drinking fountain with bottle filling station
Replacement and upgrade to the building electrical panel
Installation of swallow nesting boxes in areas favored by swallows, specific to species
Installation of redwood boards to match new siding, covering crevices created by roof
rafters
Removal of selected sections of decking to allow swallows droppings to fall directly into
marsh
Installation of new guardrails adjacent to the removed sections of decking and new
guardrails along the entire deck perimeter
Identification of interpretive signage locations and installation of glass panels designed to
minimize the potential for birds collisions at selected locations within the railings
Design features
The glass panels will be inserted at three select railing locations to act as an interpretive feature
and will be using bird deterrence collision glass panels. The bird deterrence glass panels will
deter birds while allowing children to view the Baylands through the glass.
Staff recommends removing select sections of decking to allow swallow droppings to fall
directly into the marsh. This deck opening to the marsh below would act as an interpretive design
feature while reducing the need for on-going cleaning and maintenance. New guardrails adjacent
to the removed decking sections would be needed to provide safety. However, if the
Commission does not favor this recommendation, this option would be removed from the
6053001
project. Swallow nesting boxes would still be installed in areas favored by the birds and the
droppings onto the deck would continue. In this case, the Commission will need to recommend
that the City Council approve a PIO without the deck openings.
Coordination
The project will require cancelling most of the classes and/or having limited off-site classes due
to the need for temporary closure during construction. Temporary closure of the Baylands
Boardwalk during construction is also needed. It is anticipated that the railings selected for the
Interpretive Center will also be incorporated into the Boardwalk project.
On May 4, 2016, the City released a Request for Proposal for the Baylands Boardwalk
Replacement Project. Biggs Cardosa Associates, Inc. (BCA) was selected as the designer for the
Boardwalk. The City plans to contract with BCA for design services in September 2016. The
goal for the boardwalk construction is to begin September 2018, pending receipt of agency
permits. Staff will update the community and Commission throughout the Boardwalk design
review process.
With the exception of the etched glass panels at selected railing locations, the new exterior
interpretive signage fabrication and installation will follow completion of this project as part of a
separate CIP - AC-1400, Baylands Interpretive Center Exhibit Improvements.
Project Timeline
Council 1st reading of PIO – 8/15/2016
Council 2nd reading of PIO – 8/29/2016
Submit 100% Design documents for Building permit – July 2016
Obtain Building and San Francisco Bay Conservation & Development Commission
(BCDC) administrative permits – August 2016
Bid opening – August 2016
Council construction contract approval – September 2016
Construction start – October 2016
Complete project – March 2016
To avoid impacts on birds during the nesting season, construction with noise impactscan take
place only from September 1 to January 31. To meet this schedule, the City must complete
100% design documents in July 2016 and obtain permits prior to starting construction. A bid
addendum may be needed to include modifications to the project scope dependent on comments
received during the Commission and Council reviews.
Resource Impact
Funding is available in the Capital Improvement Program project PE-15029, Lucy Evans
Baylands Nature Interpretive Center Improvements.
6053001
Policy Implications
The proposed park improvements are consistent with Policy C-26 of the Community Services
element of the Comprehensive Plan that encourages maintaining park facilities as safe and
healthy community assets; and Policy C-22 that encourages new community facilities to have
flexible functions to ensure adaptability to the changing needs of the community.
Environmental Review
The Lucy Evans Baylands Nature Interpretive Center Improvements Project falls under the
California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) exemption found in California Code of
Regulations, Title 14, Section 15301 because it consists of the repair and maintenance of existing
facilities, involving negligible or no expansion of use beyond that existing prior to the
improvements.
The proposed project is limited to the renovation of the existing building. No expansion is
proposed and the project will not impact any wetlands. A City Building permit and San
Francisco Bay Conservation & Development Commission (BCDC) administrative permit are
necessary prior to start of construction.
Attachments
Attachment A: Ordinance Approving and Adopting Plans for Improvements to Lucy Evans
Baylands Nature Interpretive Center (PIO)
PREPARED BY:__________________________________________________________
HUNG NGUYEN
PUBLIC WORKS ENGINEERING, PROJECT
ENGINEER
*NOT YET APPROVED*
1
ORDINANCE NO. _____
Ordinance of The Council Of The City Of Palo Alto Approving And
Adopting Plans For Lucy Evans Nature Baylands Interpretive Center
Improvements Project
The Council of the City of Palo Alto does ORDAIN as follows:
SECTION 1. Findings. The City Council finds and declares that:
(a) Article VIII of the Charter of the City of Palo Alto and Section 22.08.005 of
the Palo Alto Municipal Code require that, before any substantial building, construction,
reconstruction or development is commenced or approved, upon or with respect to any land
held by the City for park purposes, the Council shall first cause to be prepared and by ordinance
approve and adopt a plan therefor.
(b) Lucy Evans Baylands Nature Interpretive Center is dedicated to park
purposes.
(c) The City intends to authorize construction of improvements to the Lucy
Evans Baylands Nature Interpretive Center, as detailed in Exhibit “A.”
SECTION 2. The Council hereby approves the Plan for replacement and construction
of improvements in Lucy Evans Baylands Nature Interpretive Center and hereby adopts the Plan
attached hereto as Exhibit "A" as part of the official plan for the construction of improvements
in Lucy Evans Baylands Interpretive Center.
SECTION 3. The City Council finds that this ordinance falls under the California
Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) exemption found in Title 14 California Code of Regulations
Section 15301 because it consists of the repair and maintenance of existing facilities, involving
negligible or no expansion of use beyond that existing prior to the improvements.
SECTION 4. This ordinance shall be effective on the thirty-first day after the date of
its adoption.
INTRODUCED:
PASSED:
AYES:
NOES:
ABSENT:
ABSTENTIONS:
*NOT YET APPROVED*
2
ATTEST:
____________________________ ____________________________
City Clerk Mayor
APPROVED AS TO FORM: APPROVED:
____________________________ ____________________________
Senior Deputy City Attorney City Manager
____________________________
Director of Community Services
____________________________
Director of Administrative Services
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TO: PARKS AND RECREATION COMMISSION
FROM: KRISTEN O’KANE, COMMUNITY SERVICES DEPARTMENT
PETER JENSEN, PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT
DATE: JUNE 28, 2016
SUBJECT: PARKS, TRAILS, NATURAL OPEN SPACE AND RECREATION MASTER PLAN
RECOMMENDATION
No action to be taken.
BACKGROUND
The City of Palo Alto has 36 parks and open space preserves covering approximately 4,165 acres of land,
which includes Foothills Park, Pearson Arastradero Preserve, Esther Clark Park, and the Baylands Nature
Preserve. A Capital Improvement Project for a Parks, Trails, Open Space, and Recreation Master Plan (Master
Plan) was adopted by Council for the 2013 fiscal year. The purpose of this effort is to provide the necessary
analysis and review of Palo Alto’s parks and recreation system for the preparation of a long-range (20-year)
Master Plan. The Master Plan will provide the City with clear guidance regarding future renovations and
capital improvement projects aimed at meeting current and future demands on the city’s recreational,
programming, environmental and maintenance needs, establishing a prioritized schedule and budget of
future park renovations, facility improvements and expansion of recreational programs.
The Master Plan process consists of three phases:
1. Phase 1: Specific Site and Program Analysis and Community Engagement (complete): Development
of a comprehensive inventory and analysis of all Palo Alto parks, trails, developed natural open
space areas (picnic areas, parking lots) and recreational facilities and programs; analysis of current
and forecasted demographic and recreation trends, and analysis of community recreation needs.
Identify community and stakeholder needs, interests and preferences for system enhancements
using a proactive community engagement process.
2. Phase 2: Developing and Prioritizing Project and Program Opportunities (complete/ongoing):
Preparation of goals, policies, and programs; identification of capital projects, needed renovations
and other improvements; and implementation timeline of short (5-year), medium (15- year) and
long-term (20-year) projects and programs.
3. Phase 3: Drafting of the Master Plan, Review and Adoption (ongoing): Community, Parks and
Recreation Commission (PRC), and Council review; and Council approval to adopt the Master Plan.
The technical assessment and analysis, and the community and stakeholder engagement activities are
complete (Phase 1). The goals and policies have been developed (Phase 2) and were presented to the PRC
on April 26, 2016 and May 31, 2016, at which time the draft programs were also presented. A discussion of
program prioritization is included in this staff report to provide clarification on the process that will be used
to prioritize the programs in the Master Plan. Additionally, site concept plans of each of the City’s parks have
been developed, providing an illustrative representation of potential park amenities and improvements. Staff
introduced the concept plans to the PRC on May 31st and Commissioners were asked to review and provide
comments. Commissioner feedback will be reviewed at the June 28th Commission meeting.
2
DISCUSSION
Goals, Policies and Programs:
The Master Plan framework consisting of goals, policies and programs has been reviewed by the
Commission at various stages of development. The draft goals, policies, and programs include comments
received from Commissioners on May 31st (Attachment A) and additional comments provided by the Master
Plan Ad Hoc group (Attachment B).
Program Prioritization:
Prioritization of the programs will be an important step towards implementation. The Master Plan will
include the near-, mid-, and long-term programs based on the 5-year Capital Improvement Plan and the
Final Report of the Infrastructure Blue Ribbon Commission. Near-term is defined as starting within 5
years or less, mid-term is 6-10 years, and long-term is 11-20 years. To account for the many unknown
variables and external factors that may influence when programs are completed, further prioritization
beyond mid-, near-, and long-term will be conducted annually as part of the budget review process. As
priorities shift over time, the City’s ability to implement certain programs may change. For example,
new trends in sports and fitness activities may call for adaptable recreation areas to support trends in
high demand. As technology advances in the quality of synthetic turf, opportunities to replace natural
turf fields may arise that offer more sustainable synthetic varieties. Additionally, changes in the
economy may influence the amount and type of programs that are implemented.
When considering the priority of programs and the order in which they will be completed, the following
set of criteria will be used as an initial guide to identify the benefit of the proposed program to the
community and parks system in relation to other programs. Proposed programs will be ranked using a
range of low, medium, and high; on how well the programs meet the criteria. These criteria will not
provide a program score, but will be used to inform staff, the PRC, and Council on how a particular
program could serve community needs.
1. Fill existing gaps: Bring recreation opportunities (parkland, facilities, programs) to areas of the
City and to users where gaps exist.
2. Address community preferences: Target the highest priority types of projects and programs
identified through citywide outreach.
3. Respond to growth: Add features or programs, modify or expand components of the system to
prepare for and address increasing demand.
4. Maximize public resources: Create the most impact for each dollar of capital and operating
expenditure possible.
5. Realize multiple benefits: Advance the Master Plan principals, goals, projects and directions of
other City efforts.
While the first step provides guidance on prioritization; additional factors that influence the timing of
implementation will be considered, including the following:
Timing
Timing of programs in relation to other facility improvements will minimize disruption and increase
efficient use of resources. For example, planning for the installation of an adult fitness area to
coincide with other planned improvements within the same park minimizes disruption to the
neighborhood and is a more efficient use of City funds. The City currently has a future renovations
and improvements schedule for all parks and facilities. New proposed amenities for a specific site
3
will be added to the scope of planned improvements in the existing schedule. New amenities that
have high demand and limited access may be considered stand along projects if future renovations
are determined too far out or if the project is a large facility. Examples of possible standalone
projects include restrooms and dog parks as well as the 10-acre development at the Baylands, and
Cubberley Community Center and Rinconada Pool large-scale renovations.
Resources
The capital improvements and future maintenance costs are a significant factor in planning for the
future of the parks, recreation, and open space system. The availability of funds for park,
recreation, and open space improvements will vary year-to-year and limit the level and extent of
improvements and expansion.
Feasibility and additional constraints
Additional constraints influencing program timing or completion may include difficult permitting
requirements, public safety access, and immediate needs based on a specific event or incident.
Property availability
For park expansion, property availability is a limiting factor. Lack of surplus land in Palo Alto and
the high price per square foot of land makes acquisition difficult without assistance from private
donations or other revenue opportunities.
Master Plan Outline:
An outline of the Master Plan has been developed to provide a preliminary structure of the report. The
outline divides the report into eight sections:
1. Introduction
2. Elements of Palo Alto’s Parks, Trails, Natural Open Spaces and Recreation System
3. Needs and Opportunities
4. Our Desired Future
5. Policies and Programs
6. Site Specific Plans
7. Implementation, Funding and Maintenance
8. Appendix
Staff is requesting feedback from the PRC on the outline. For the full summary of the master plan report
outline Refer to Attachment C.
Site Concept Plans:
Site concept plans for Palo Alto’s parks and recreation facilities can be reviewed on the project web page at
www.paloaltoparksplan.org. The site concept plans provide the opportunity for the community to provide
input on what new amenities could be considered for each site. Input gathered from the community review
of these site concept plans will assist staff, the PRC and City Council to determine what new amenities are
added to the specific sites. The park concept plans were developed from site analysis and extensive
community outreach by the project team with assistance of park and recreation staff, common requests and
feedback received from the public, as well as the feasibility of proposed improvements. The project team is
currently providing numerous opportunities for the public to review and comment on the concept plans.
Outreach efforts include the City of Palo Alto May Fete fair information booth on May 7, 2016, a community
4
meeting that was held on May 25, 2016, and use of online site concept plan input forms. Printed versions of
the site concept plans are available at all the City’s libraries for comment. The review period of the site
concept plans began May 25th and is anticipated to continue through July 2016. The site concept plans were
introduced to the Commission at the May 31st meeting. The Commission was requested to review the site
concept plans and provided input concerning the prioritization of potential new amenities proposed for
specific parks and facilities. Input from the PRC and community will be utilized by the project team to finalize
the site concept plans.
NEXT STEPS
A City Council Study Session scheduled for September 19, 2016 will review the master planning process and
activities completed to date and obtain feedback on the goals and policies. Specific focus will be placed on
the policies that address dog parks and restrooms.
POLICY IMPLICATIONS
The proposed CIP recommendations are consistent with Policy C-26 of the Community Services element of
the Comprehensive Plan that encourages maintaining park facilities as safe and healthy community assets;
and Policy C-22 that encourages new community facilities to have flexible functions to ensure adaptability to
the changing needs of the community.
ATTACHMENTS
A. Revised goals, policies and programs from PRC - May 31, 2016
B. Ad-hoc Committee comments on goals, policies and programs
C. Master Plan Outline
Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space and Recreation Master Plan 1
WORKING DRAFT 6/28/16
ATTACHMENT A: Goals, Policies, and Programs
– PRC comments 5/31/16
Overview
This provides each of the six goals, numbered 1 through 6. Under each goal, the policies are
numbered for reference (1.A, 1.B, 1.C, etc.) as are the programs (1.A.1, 1.A.2, 1.A.3 etc.).
Goal 1: Provide high-quality facilities and services that are accessible, affordable,
inclusive and distributed equitably across Palo Alto.
Policy
1.A Emphasize equity and affordability in the provision of programs and services and the
facilitation of partnerships, to create recreation opportunities that:
o Advance skills, build community and improve the quality of life among
participants, especially Palo Alto youth, teens and seniors; and
o Are available at a wide range of facilities, at an increased number of locations
that are well distributed throughout the city.
Programs
1.A.1 Continue to implement the Fee Reduction Program for low income and
disabled residents and periodically evaluate its use and effectiveness.
1.A.2 Develop free or low cost teen programs that develop life skills, such as
leadership, community service and mindfulness.
1.A.3 Develop a teen advisory committee to provide feedback on newly
proposed parks, recreation and open space projects and programs.
1.A.4 Partner with local recreation providers to relocate existing programs or
offer new programs in Palo Alto parks.
1.A.5 Recruit or develop programs for additional and alternative sports that can
take place in existing parks and make use of existing outdoor recreation
facilities. Examples include cross country running, track and field, bike
polo, parkour, cycling, and pickleball.
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1.A.6 Expand offerings of preserves' interpretive facilities to area schools
through curriculum packages (backpacks, crates, etc.) that can be
brought into the field or the classroom.
1.A.7 Evaluate the geographic distribution of program offerings and make
adjustments to equally offer programs throughout the City.
1.A.8 Develop additional community gardens focusing on underrepresented
areas of the City, including and provide community engagement
opportunities around gardens.
Policy
1.B Use Expand parkland inventoryies using the National Recreation and Park
Association standard as a guide (see sidebar) for park development in Palo Alto’s
Urban Service Area. New parkland should be added to meet and maintain the
standard of 4 acres/1,000 residents. Parkland should expand with population, be
well distributed across the community and of sufficient size to meet the varied needs
of neighborhoods and the broader community. Maximum service area should be
one-half mile.
Programs
1.B.1 Develop design standards for privately-owned public open spaces
(POPOS) that clearly set the expectation for public access, recreation
activities and natural elements. (Examples: NY POPS and SF POPOS).
1.B.2 Establish a system in the City's real estate office that identifies land being
sold and reviews it for park potential, prioritizing review of land within park
search areas. (See Figure X: Park Search Areas).
1.B.3 Review all city owned land and easements (starting in park search areas)
for potential parkland development or connection locations. (See Figure
X: Park Search Areas and Figure X: Bikeways and Pedestrian Routes to
Parks and Recreation Facilities).
1.B.4 Examine City-owned right-of-way (streets, which make up the biggest
portion of publicly owned land) to identify temporary or permanent areas
for improvements that connect or add recreation activity space.
(Examples: California Ave., Indianapolis Cultural Trail, Parklets).
1.B.5 Identify and approach community organizations and institutions that own
land in park search areas to create long-term agreements and
improvements for public park space. (Examples: Friendship Sportsplex,
New Riverside Park).
1.B.6 Create usable park space on top of utilities, parking or other infrastructure
uses. (Examples: Anaheim Utility Park, UC Berkeley Underhill Parking
Structure, Portland’s Director Park).
1.B.7 Monitor properties adjacent to parks that are smaller than the minimum
recommended size for potential acquisition to expand existing parks.
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1.B.8 Develop a system to save and reserve funds for parkland acquisition so
that when appropriate land is available the City is in a position to
purchase it.
1.B.9 Acquire and develop a new neighborhood park in each park search area,
starting with the most underserved areas and targeting a central and well-
connected location to maximize access.
1.B.9 Construct a new park in park search area ‘E (See map X), which
represents the area in the City with the least park acreage and highest
density.
1.B.10 Develop a creek walk along Matadero Creek that links parks and creates
open space and habitat corridor.
1.B.11 Incorporate other underutilized City-owned outdoor spaces for park and
recreational programming.
1.B.12 Identify and dedicate City-owned parklike spaces as parkland.
Policy
1.C Ensure the maximum distance between residents’ homes and the nearest public
park or preserve is ½-mile, ¼-mile preferred, that is evaluated using a walkshed
methodology based on how people travel.
Programs
1.C.1 Maintain the City’s digital map developed during this Master Plan process,
updating for new activities and access points.
1.C.2 Establish a review step in the Planning and Community Environment
department for any major redevelopment or the purchase/sale of any City
land in the park search areas.
1.C.3 Acquire and develop a new neighborhood park in each park search area,
starting with the most underserved areas and targeting a central and well-
connected location to maximize access.
Policy
1.D Adopt the wayfinding signage used at Rinconada Park as the standard for Palo Alto
parks and provide standardized directory signs for all large parks, preserves and
athletic field complexes.
Programs
1.D.1 Create and implement a signage and wayfinding program that conveys the
park system identity, incorporates art, connects bike paths to parks and
enhances the experience of park visitors
1.D.2 Install directional signs at parks that include the walking time to the next
nearest park or parks.
Policy
1.E Apply universal design principles as the preferred guidance for design solutions in
parks, striving to exceed Americans with Disabilities Act requirements.
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Programs
1.E.1. Create a process to address adaptive program requests for individuals with
cognitive, sensory, and physical disabilities (to be coordinated with
upcoming ADA Transition Plan).
1.E.2. Adopt a standard of universal park design for accessibility and/or upgrade
play areas and picnic facilities to meet or exceed the standard. (Note: a
source and reference will be added).
Policy
1.F Maintain a Field and Tennis Court Brokering and Use Policy as well as the
Gymnasium Use Policy (as well as any subsequent updates) to guide the allocation
of these recreation facilities with a preference for youth and Palo Alto residents.
Programs
1.F.1. Periodically review the existing Field and Tennis Court Brokering and Use
Policy and Gymnasium Policy and update as needed.
1.F.2. Develop an annual field usage statistics report, including number of prime
timeslots that were unused due to field condition/resting and the number of
requests for field space that were unfilled due to capacity.
Policy
1.G Encourage walking and biking as a way of getting to and from parks, supporting
implementation of the Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation Plan.
Programs
1.G.1 Select parks as destinations along routes for “Ciclovia” or “Sunday Streets”
type events where streets are closed to traffic and opened up for citizens of
all ages to interact with each other through exercise, entertainment and fun;
1.G.2 Provide bike parking for cyclists as a standard feature at parks, open
spaces, preserves and community centers;
1.G.3 Provide, identify and mark “Safe Routes to Parks” from locations such as
schools, shopping centers, libraries, after-school programs, community
centers, and residential neighborhoods;
1.G.4 Educate residents about the city’s Bike Boulevards – streets prioritized for
bicycles – to promote greater use, and plan new Bike Boulevard projects
that connect parks, open spaces and recreation facilities.
1.G.5 Identify gaps in the walking and cycling network to improve access to parks,
open spaces, preserves and community centers, including sidewalk repairs,
easements, trail improvements/repair and improved pedestrian visibility.
1.G.6 Collaborate with school communities to enhance routes to schools,
especially where they pass through parks; and
1.G.7 Integrate art and nature into bike lanes, routes and paths as appropriate.
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1.G.8 Develop a regular bicycle and walking tour of Palo Alto parks and preserves
as a new recreation program. Develop online materials for self-guided
tours.
Policy
1.H Incorporate cultural diversity in projects and programs to encourage and enhance
citizen participation.
Programs
1.H.1. Conduct an annual survey every two years of cultural groups to identify
gaps, barriers to access, preferred design, and access and awareness in
recreation programming.
1.H.2. Provide multi-cultural and multi-lingual recreation programs, signage, and
educational information.
1.H.3. Encourage and provide opportunities for civic engagement by directly
connecting with cultural groups.
Policy
1.I Increase stewardship and volunteerism by creating and promoting opportunities for
youth and adults to participate in parks, recreation, open space events, projects and
programs.
Programs
1.I.1. Create a robust volunteer recruitment and management program utilizing
the following steps:
o Explore funding a dedicated Volunteer Coordinator position with
sole purpose of recruiting, training, managing and appreciating
volunteers throughout the City.
o Have detailed job descriptions created for all volunteer needs and
make available at all City sites, as well as online.
o Conduct outreach to senior centers and senior housing facilities to
promote volunteer programs and opportunities.
o Provide volunteer opportunities for Palo Alto youth and students to
earn community service hours by offering programs like the
Counselor in Training and Junior Lifeguard programs and partnering
with Counselor in Training and Junior lifeguard programs and
partnering with PAUSD..
1.I.2. Continue to offer volunteer habitat and landscape improvement projects,
and support partnership organizations that offer volunteer programs in
Parks and Open Space areas.
Policy
1.J Periodically collect and evaluate data on the changing demographics and interests of
the community and adjust programs and plans accordingly.
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Programs
1.J.1 Create pilot recreation programs to test the public's interest in new types
of classes, events and activities utilizing an evaluation process.
1.J.2 Initiate a community-wide focus group on an annual basis to provide
feedback on programs, facilities and long-term roadmaps.
1.J.3 Create a streamlined and effective quarterly survey system that solicits
feedback from customers, including program participants, facility renters,
and the general community.
Goal 2: Enhance the capacity, quality and variety of uses of the existing system
of parks, recreation and open space facilities and services.
Policy
2.A Sustain the community’s investment in recreation facilities.
Programs
2.A.1 Continue to program and prioritize projects for existing facilities as identified
in the Infrastructure Blue Ribbon Commission (IBRC) report, and plan the
keep up of new facilities as they come on line, recognizing their expected
lifespan and revised based on real-world experience.
2.A.2 Research best practices to design recreational facilities that can be
maintained with existing budgets.
2.A.3 Collaborate with Palo Alto Unified School District to develop a vision and
master plan for the future of the Cubberley Community Center.
Policy
2.B Provide opportunities for creative expression in park and recreation facilities and
programs.
Programs
2.B.1 Incorporate artists and art into youth recreation programming, particularly
day camps, utilizing the expertise of the Arts and Sciences Division.
2.B.2 Create outdoor studios and program spaces for creating art in parks
(Coordinated with the Public Art Master Plan).
2.B.3 Encourage the community to participate in more expressive projects lead
by the department, such as community mural projects in facilities, pop up
open mic’s in open spaces or chalk art programs in parks.
2.B.4 Continue to provide “maker” space to Palo Alto teens to encourage
creative thinking and expression.
Policy
2.C Design and maintain high quality natural turf fields with adequate time for resting to
support maximum use in parks by multiple organized sports and casual users with
areas large enough for practice or play.
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Programs
2.C.1 Continue to monitor and track industry developments and the latest
reputable scientific studies regarding synthetic turf in order to: 1.
understand the environmental and human safety impacts of our existing
synthetic turf fields and; 2. determine if the City should continue to use
synthetic turf; 3. determine which type of synthetic turf product to use when
it comes time to replace replacing an existing synthetic turf field.
2.C.2 Sustain the existing synthetic turf fields, and, as they need to be replaced,
use the information learned from industry developments, scientific studies,
and best practices from leaders in the field to select the most appropriate
products (Reevaluate this policy based on the analysis from reputable
scientific studies).
2.C.3 Synthetic turf fields should be striped for multiple sports to maximize use.
Whenever possible, synthetic turf playing fields should have lights in order
to maximize use of the field.
2.C.4 The City should complete an athletic field assessment and maintenance
plan, review the various recommended improvement options, fund the
appropriate improvements, and upgrade fields at select parks to high
quality turf standards including irrigation system upgrades, drainage
improvements, etc. The report should include analysis and
recommendations regarding the soil profile, agronomy, irrigation systems,
field slope, drainage, field-use demand, and maintenance.
2.C.3 The City should complete an athletic field assessment and maintenance
plan, in an effort to improve the condition and sustainability of the City’s
natural grass fields. The report should include analysis and
recommendations regarding the soil profile, agronomy, irrigation systems,
field slope, drainage, field-use demand, and maintenance.
2.C.4 The City should review the various improvement options recommended in
the athletic field assessment, and fund the appropriate improvements.
2.C.5 Upgrade fields at select parks to high quality natural turf standards
including irrigation system upgrades, drainage improvements, etc.
Policy
2.D Actively pursue adding dedicated, fenced dog parks in multiple neighborhoods,
equitably distributed between north and south Palo Alto. The size of the dog parks
will vary, but should strive to be at least .25 acres. Dog parks should not be placed
in Open Space Preserves.
Programs
2.D.1 The City will evaluate and select at least six dedicated, fenced dog parks,
equitably distributed across north and south Palo Alto, from the following
list of potential locations:
o Eleanor Pardee Park (North, .41 Acres)-Near Term
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o Bowden (North, .37 Acres)-Near Term
o Greer Park (Improve existing) (South, .87 Acres)
o Peers Park (North, .73 Acres)
o Hoover (Improve existing) (South, 1 Acre)
o Robles (South, .47 Acres)
o Mitchell Park (Expand existing) (South, 1.2 Acres)
o Kingsley Island (North, .27 Acres)
o Werry Park (North, .31 Acres)
o Juana Briones Park (South, .47 Acres)
o Heritage (North, .27 Acres)
o *El Camino Park (North, .5 Acres)
*Additional research is needed regarding El Camino Park as a
suitable location due to future transit improvements in the
proposed area. *We acknowledge that Hoover and Greer’s current
dog parks are inadequate in terms of size, and they should not be
counted in their current configuration towards the minimum of six
dog parks recommended in this program.
Policy
2.E The City will actively pursue adding park restrooms in parks that are approximately
two acres or larger, have amenities that encourage visitors to stay in the park, have
high level of use, and where there are no nearby public restrooms available.
Programs
2.E.1 Develop a restroom standard, in collaboration with the Architectural
Review Board, for neighborhood parks.
2.E.2 The City will actively pursue adding park restrooms at the following
potential locations:
o Bol Park
o Bowden Park
o Eleanor Pardee Park
o Johnson Park
o Ramos Park
o Robles Park
o Terman Park
Goal 3: Create environments that encourage active and passive activities to
support health, wellness and social connections.
Policy
3.A Implement the Healthy City Healthy Community resolution with the community’s
involvement.
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Programs
3.A.1 Convene and lead a Healthy City Healthy Community stakeholder work
group consisting of other agencies and nonprofit organizations to
collaborate on initiatives and benefit from existing programs.
3.A.2 Develop an annual plan that supports implementation of the resolution.
3.A.3 Achieve designation as an Age-Friendly Community.
3.A.4 Add drop-in programs (free or BOOST!) focused on physical and mental
health in settings that are near home/work and maximize the health
benefits of being outside and surrounded by nature.
3.A.5 Connect walking paths within and between parks to create loop options of
varying length that encourage walking and jogging.
3.A.6 Enhance seating areas to take advantage of quiet spaces or to create
opportunities for social interaction.
3.A.7 Promote and enforce the ban on smoking in Palo Alto's parks through a
marketing campaign and signage program.
3.A.8 Upgrade or add drinking fountains with water bottle filling and water for
dogs.
3.A.9 Develop adult fitness areas in parks including exercise areas for the
exclusive use of older adults (seniors).
Policy
3.B Incorporate art into park design and recreation programming (consistent with the
Public Art Master Plan).
Programs
3.B.1 Promote temporary public art installations in local parks.
3.B.2 Promote interactive public art features that also serve as play features
(i.e. climbable sculptural elements integrated into the natural environment
that invite touch and exploration).
3.B.3 Update park design policies to incorporate artistic elements consistent
with the Public Art Master Plan.
3.B.4 Commission artwork that interprets local history, events and significant
individuals; represents City core values of sustainability, youth well-being,
health, innovation.
3.B.5 Bring in performance-based work, social practice, temporary art and
community art.
3.B.6 Explore suitable art for preserves and natural areas.
3.B.7 Incorporate public art in the earliest stages of the design of parks and
facilities that may utilize wind direction, sunlight and ambient sound
(Coordinated with the Public Art Master Plan).
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3.B.8 Install permanent and temporary installations and exhibits in well-
trafficked parks and plazas, following the guidance of the Public Art
Master Plan.
3.B.9 Integrate functional public art into play areas, seatwalls and other built
features in parks across the system.
Policy
3.C Require that proposed privately owned public spaces that are providing in lieu of
park feesprovided through parkland dedication fees, meet Palo Alto design
guidelines and standards for publicly owned parks, allow public access, and are
designed to support self-directed exercise and fitnessrecreation, incorporate natural
ecosystem elements and comply with the policies of the Urban Forest Master Plan.
Programs
3.C.1 Develop and apply clear expectations and definitions of public access
(hours, rules) for privately owned public spaces
Goal 4: Protect natural habitat and integrate nature, natural ecosystems and
ecological principles throughout Palo Alto.
Policy
4.A Connect people to nature and the outdoors through education and recreation
programming.
Programs
4.A.1 Expand access to nature through elements and interpretive features that
explore ecological processes, historical context, adjacent waterways,
specific plant/animal species that can be encountered onsite and
elements tailored to be of interest to youth as well as other ages,
cultures and abilities.
4.A.2 Expand programs working with volunteers on invasive species removal
in preserves and creek corridors.
4.A.3 Improve and increase access to creeks for learning and stewardship
experiences by designing access points that minimize impact on the
waterway.
4.A.4 Expand programs such as Foothills camps to connect youth with parks
year-round.
4.A.5 Partner with boys/girls scouting organizations for outdoor education
programs and/or the Junior Rangers program.
4.A.6 Expand and increase events that educate and promote native plants,
species and wildlife.
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Policy
4.B Connect natural areas, open spaces and vegetated areas in parks and on public land
to create wildlife, bird, pollinator and habitat corridors by planting with native oaks and
other species that support pollinators or provide high habitat values.
Programs
4.B.1 Develop a map that identifies locations for habitat corridors including the
appropriate plant palette for each corridor.
4.B.2 Work with local environmental groups to grow native plant species and
utilize their network of volunteers to install and maintain planted areas.
Policy
4.C Support regional efforts that focus on enhancing and protecting significant natural
resources.
Programs
4.C.1 Collaborate with regional partners in projects to control the spread of
invasive species and plant pathogens.
4.C.2 Join the Bay Area Children in Nature Collaborative/Children in Nature
Network.
Policy
4.D Promote, expand and protect habitat and natural areas in parks.
Programs
4.D.1 Promote urban greening by integrating storm water design into planting
beds, reducing irrigation and providing interpretive information about park
contributions to city water quality.
4.D.2 Train City maintenance staff and include specific standards and
expectations in maintenance contracts for the care of for low-water,
naturalized landscapes, natural play environments and other new types of
features in the system.
4.D.3 Ensure project designs for new facilities and retrofits will be consistent with
sustainable design principles and practices. This includes evaluating all
projects for opportunities to implement Green Stormwater Infrastructure
such as bioswales, stormwater planters, rain gardens, permeable pavers
and porous concrete and asphalt.
4.D.4 Identify locations and develop swales, detention basins and rain gardens
to retain and treat storm water.
4.D.5 Provide shade for play areas using shade trees as the preferred solution.
Policy
4.E Identify and pursue strategies and opportunities to expand native trees and planting
areas in urban parks.
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Programs
4. E.1 Update the preferred planting palette and approved tree species list.
4. E.2 Partner with organizations such as Canopy and Acterra
4. E.3 Replace low-use turf areas with native shrubs and grasses, incorporating
educational elements about native habitats.
Policy
4.F Integrate and implement the Urban Forest Master Plan Policies and Programs as
applicable to parkland in Palo Alto.
Policy
4.G In Natural Open Space, focus on features and activities that are compatible with the
protection of nature.
Programs
4.G.1 Prioritize development of comprehensive conservation plans for Baylands
Preserve, Foothills Park, Esther Clark and Pearson-Arastradero Preserve
to identify strategies to balance ecosystem preservation, passive
recreation, and environmental education.
4.G.2 Continue to work with partnership organizations to remove invasive
weeds and plant native plants and trees in riparian and natural open
space areas.
Goal 5: Develop innovative programs, services and strategies for expanding the
park and recreation system.
Policy
5.A Identify and pursue strategies to activate underused parks and recreation facilities
Programs
5.A.1 Implement short-term placemaking improvements (flexible, small scale
interventions such as seating, art, programming or planters that have
minimal capital cost) to attract users and experiment with potential longer-
term options.
5.A.2 Emphasize flexibility and layering uses (allowing for different uses at
different times of day, week, etc.) in parks over installing fixed-use
equipment and single-use facilities.
5.A.3 Expand Day Camp program opportunities, utilizing all preserves and
more local park sites and additional topic areas, to meet excess demand.
5.A.4 Leverage social media and develop marketing materials to encourage
“pop-up” recreational activities in rotating parks.
5.A.5 Invite and encourage local businesses to utilize neighborhood parks for
weekly or monthly outings and lunches.
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5.A.6 Create small (10-12 people) and medium-sized (20-25 people) group
picnic areas that can be used for both picnics and programming
5.A.7 Provide additional lighting to enhance park safety and expand park use to
dusk while minimizing impacts to wildlife impact
Policy
5.B Support innovation in recreation programming and park features and amenities.
Programs
5.B.1 Review program data based on clearly communicated objectives for
reach, impact, attendance and financial performance.
5.B.2 Retire, end or refresh programs that require staff, facility and financial
resources but do not achieve program objectives, thereby freeing up
resources for new programs.
5.B.3 Actively develop a small number of pilot programs each year to test new
ideas, locations and target audiences.
5.B.4 Build on partnership with Avenidas to build intergenerational
programming as well as additional older adult programming.
5.B.5 Expand BOOST!, the pay-per-use exercise class system to cover fees for
any drop-in classes or facility use (lap swim, drop-in gym time, new
programs in parks).
5.B.6 Set goal of 10% new program offerings each season; new programs
should be offered based on needs assessment, industry trends, and/or
class evaluation data.
5.B.7 Create a robust marketing and outreach program to highlight new and
innovative programs to community.
5.B.8 Develop short-term recreation access strategies (such as temporary use
agreements for vacant or park like property) and seek long-term or
permanent park and recreation space in each park search area. Actively
recruit property and facility owners to participate in the development of
the short and long-term strategies.
Policy
5.C Expand the overall parks and recreation system through repurposing public land,
partnering with other organizations for shared land, incorporating public park spaces
on parking decks and rooftops and other creative means to help address shortages of
available land.
Programs
5.C.1 TBD
Policy
5.D Explore and experiment with parklets and other temporary park spaces for both long
and short-term uses.
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Programs
5.D.1 TBD
Policy
5.E Enhance partnerships and collaborations with Palo Alto Unified School District and
Stanford University to support access and joint use of facilities, where appropriate for
effective delivery of services and programs.
Programs
5.E.1 Partner with PAUSD to provide “Open Gym” programs middle and high
schools recreation facilities to community (basketball, badminton, indoor
soccer) in the evening, in the evening, during the summer months, and on
weekend mornings.
5.E.2 Develop a steering committee that consists of key officials from PAUSD
and Stanford to develop partnership agreements and connect facility
managers and programmers with the PAUSD and Stanford staff that will
be providing the programs to develop, implement, and monitor program
success
5.E.3 Increase access to PAUSD public schools (outside of school hours)
schools to increase the availability of recreation activity spaces. Target
school sites that are within or adjacent to "park search areas".
5.E.4 Work with Stanford to create or increase access to athletic facilities and
other recreational facilities for Palo Alto residents.
Policy
5.F Pursue other/private funding sources for recreation programming, capital
improvement projects and facility maintenance.
Programs
5.F.1 Encourage foundations to assist with soliciting sponsorships and grants.
5.F.2 Create a more formalized annual or one-time sponsorship program that
provides the donor with marketing and promotional opportunities.
5.F.3 Contract or add job responsibilities for managing fundraising and
developing donors for the park system to pursue funding opportunities
and sponsorships.
5.F.4 Engage nonprofit friends groups to seek donor funding, including
foundation grants, corporate giving and small and major philanthropic
gifts by individuals, for priority projects and programs.
Policy
5.G Partner with Mid-peninsula Regional Open Space District and other land conservation
groups to expand access to open space through new acquisitions and improved
connections.
Goal 6: Manage Palo Alto’s land and services effectively, efficiently and
sustainably utilizing quantitative and qualitative measures.
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Policy
6.A Continue to implement the Cost Recovery Policy for recreation programs, refining the
cost and fees using the most current information available.
Programs
6.A.1 Periodically benchmark the City’s Cost Recovery Policy against other
Cities’ cost recovery models.
Policy
6.B Limit the exclusive use of Palo Alto parks (booking an entire park site) for events by
outside organizations that are closed to the general public.
6.B.1 No exclusive use of parks by private parties is permitted on peak days
(e.g., weekend, holidays) or peak times (e.g., evening hours on weekdays, 10
am – 6 pm on weekends) as defined by Community Services staff unless
approved in advance by the Director of Community Services. Exclusive use
of certain sites and facilities within parks, such as reservable spaces like
picnic areas, is generally permitted during peak days and times.
6.B.2 Use of parks for locally focused events, where more than 50% of
participants are expected to be Palo Alto residents and that allow registration
by the general public (e.g., events such as, races, obstacle course events,
triathlons, etc.) may be considered by staff if consistent with this Master Plan;
6.B.3 Private events that are closed to the general public (e.g., corporate
events, private weddings) and are intended to use an entire park (rather than
a reservable space in excess of capacities as defined in the Special Event
Permit procedures) may only be considered outside of peak days and times
as defined by Community Services staff. These events should recover 100%
of all associated costs, including wear and tear on public parks and facilities.
6.B.4 Events that allow public access are permitted, in accordance with
Special Event Permit procedures.
Policy
6.C Periodically review and update existing guidance for development, operations, and
maintenance of Palo Alto’s Parks, Trails, Natural Open Spaces, and Recreation
system based on the best practices in the industry and this Master Plan, including:
o Park Rules and Regulations;
o Open Space Policy & Procedure Handbook;
o City of Palo Alto Landscape Standards;
o City of Palo Alto design guidelines and standards; and
o Tree Technical Manual.
Policy
6.D Incorporate sustainable best practices in the maintenance, management, and
development of open spaces, parks, and recreation facilities where consistent with
ecological best practices.
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Programs
6.D.1 Increase energy efficiency in Palo Alto parks, including allocating funding
to retrofit facilities for energy efficiency with increased insulation, green or
reflective roofs and low-emissive window glass where applicable.
6.D.2 Conduct energy audits for all facilities, establish an energy baseline for
operations, benchmark energy performance against comparable facilities,
and implement energy tracking and management systems for all park
facilities and operations;
6.D.3 Select Energy Star and equivalent energy-efficient products for Park
equipment purchases; and
6.D.4 Expand the collection and use of solar power (parking lots, roofs) and
other renewable energy sources at parks and facilities (e.g. pools).
6.D.5 Provide convenient and well-marked compost and recycling receptacles
throughout the park system, in recreation facilities and at special events;
6.D.6 Ensure that trash, recycling, and compost receptacles have covers
to prevent wildlife access to human food sources.
6.D.7 Review purchasing policies and improve employee education to reduce
overall consumption of materials throughout the system;
6.D.8 Procure environmentally preferable products (as required by the City’s
Environmentally Preferred Purchasing policy) as the “default” purchasing
option;
6.D.9 Initiate composting of green waste within the park system.
6.D.10 Work with Public Works to replace the vehicle fleet with electric vehicles
whenever practical;
6.D.11 Install electric vehicle (EV) charging stations at park facilities with parking
lots;
6.D.12 Enforce a “No Idle” program with vehicles and other gas-powered
equipment. Conduct water audits for all parks and recreation facilities and
park operations;
6.D.13 Install high-efficiency urinals, toilets, sinks and showers in all facilities;
6.D.14 As infrastructure expansion allows, eExtend recycled water use to more
park sites;
6.D.15 Explore water capture opportunities in parks for irrigation and recycling;
6.D.16 Ensure any irrigation systems on public landscapes are run by a smart
controller and/or sensors and that staff are trained in programming them
6.D.17 Link all park facilities to a centralized irrigation management system to
maximize water use efficiency.
6.D.18 Encourage residents to organize and participate in park maintenance and
cleanup events to foster a sense of ownership, establish social
connections, and reduce maintenance costs.
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Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space and Recreation Master Plan 17
Policy
6.E Strengthen the Integrated Pest Management (“IPM”) policy as written. While some
parks may be managed as “pesticide free” on a demonstration basis, IPM should
continue to be Palo Alto’s approach, grounded in the best available science on pest
prevention and management.
Programs
6.E.1 Periodically review and update the IPM policy based on best available
data and technology.
Policy
6.F Strategically reduce maintenance requirements at parks, open spaces, natural
preserves and community centers while maintaining Palo Alto’s high quality
standards.
Programs
6.F.1 Locate garbage and recycling receptacles in a single-location that is
easily accessible by maintenance staff and vehicles.
6.F.2 Explore high capacity, compacting and smart garbage and recycling
receptacles that can reduce the frequency of regular collection; and
6.F.3 Select standardized furnishing palettes for durability, vandal-resistance
and ease of repair.
Policy
6.G Coordinate with and/or use other relevant City plans to ensure consistency,
including:
o Urban Forest Master Plan;
o Urban Water Master Plan;
o Long-term electric acquisition plan (LEAP);
o Water Reclamation Master Plan;
o Recycled Water Project;
o Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation Plan
o Comprehensive Plan; and
o Others adopted in the future.
Policy
6.H Continue to engage other relevant City departments and divisions in planning, design
and programming, drawing on the unique and specialized skills and perspectives of:
o The Palo Alto Art Center;
o Library, including Children’s Library;
o Junior Museum and Zoo;
o Children’s Theatre;
o Public Art;
o Transportation;
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Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space and Recreation Master Plan 18
o Urban Forestry;
o Planning;
o Public Works, and
o Palo Alto Youth and Teen Leadership
Policy
6.I Participate in and support implementation of regional plans related to parks,
recreation, natural open space and trails, such as:
o 2014 Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District Vision;
o Clean Bay Pollution Prevention Plan; and
o Land Use Near Streams in Santa Clara County.
Policy
6.J Develop a proactive Asset Management Program to identify new, and maintain
existing park and recreation infrastructure.
Programs
6.J.1 Research asset management programs used by other City parks and
recreation departments.
Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space and Recreation Master Plan 1
WORKING DRAFT 6/28/16
ATTACHMENT B: Goals, Policies, and Programs
– Ad hoc committee comments
Overview
This provides each of the six goals, numbered 1 through 6. Under each goal, the policies are
numbered for reference (1.A, 1.B, 1.C, etc.) as are the programs (1.A.1, 1.A.2, 1.A.3 etc.).
Goal 1: Provide high-quality facilities and services that are accessible, affordable,
inclusive and distributed equitably across Palo Alto.
Policy
1.A Emphasize equity and affordability in the provision of programs and services and the
facilitation of partnerships, to create recreation opportunities that:
o Advance skills, build community and improve the quality of life among
participants, especially Palo Alto youth, teens and seniors; and
o Are available at a wide range of facilities, at an increased number of locations
that are well distributed throughout the city.
Programs
1.A.1 Continue to implement the Fee Reduction Program for low income and
disabled residents and periodically evaluate its use and effectiveness.
1.A.2 Develop free or low cost teen programs that develop life skills, such as
leadership, community service and mindfulness.
1.A.3 Develop a teen advisory committee to provide feedback on newly
proposed parks, recreation and open space projects and programs.
1.A.4 Partner with local recreation providers to relocate existing programs or
offer new programs in Palo Alto parks.
1.A.5 Recruit or develop programs for additional and alternative sports that can
take place in existing parks and make use of existing outdoor recreation
facilities. Examples include cross country running, track and field, bike
polo, cycling and pickleball
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Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space and Recreation Master Plan 2
1.A.6 Expand offerings of preserves' interpretive facilities to area schools
through curriculum packages (backpacks, crates, etc.) that can be
brought into the field or the classroom.
1.A.7 Evaluate the geographic distribution of program offerings and make
adjustments to equally offer programs throughout the City.
1.A.8 Develop additional community gardens focusing on underrepresented
areas of the City, and provide community engagement opportunities
around gardens.
Policy
1.B Expand parkland inventory using the National Recreation and Park Association
standard as a guide (see sidebar) for park development in Palo Alto’s Urban Service
Area. Parkland should expand with population, be well distributed across the
community and of sufficient size to meet the varied needs of neighborhoods and the
broader community. Maximum service area should be one-half mile.
Programs
1.B.1 Develop design standards for privately-owned public open spaces
(POPOS) that clearly set the expectation for public access, recreation
activities and natural elements. (Examples: NY POPS and SF POPOS).
1.B.2 Establish a system in the City's real estate office that identifies land being
sold and reviews it for park potential, prioritizing review of land within park
search areas. (See Figure X: Park Search Areas).
1.B.3 Review all city owned land and easements (starting in park search areas)
for potential parkland development or connection locations. (See Figure
X: Park Search Areas and Figure X: Bikeways and Pedestrian Routes to
Parks and Recreation Facilities).
1.B.4 Examine City-owned right-of-way (streets, which make up the biggest
portion of publicly owned land) to identify temporary or permanent areas
for improvements that connect or add recreation activity space.
(Examples: California Ave., Indianapolis Cultural Trail, Parklets).
1.B.5 Identify and approach community organizations and institutions that own
land in park search areas to create long-term agreements and
improvements for public park space. (Examples: Friendship Sportsplex,
New Riverside Park).
1.B.6 Create usable park space on top of utilities, parking or other infrastructure
uses. (Examples: Anaheim Utility Park, UC Berkeley Underhill Parking
Structure, Portland’s Director Park).
1.B.7 Monitor properties adjacent to parks that are smaller than the minimum
recommended size for potential acquisition to expand existing parks.
1.B.8 Develop a system to save and reserve funds for parkland acquisition so
that when appropriate land is available the City is in a position to
purchase it.
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Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space and Recreation Master Plan 3
1.B.9 Acquire and develop a new neighborhood park in each park search area,
starting with the most underserved areas and targeting a central and well-
connected location to maximize access.
1.B.10 Develop a creek walk along Matadero Creek that links parks and creates
open space and habitat corridor.
1.B.11 Incorporate other underutilized City-owned outdoor spaces for park and
recreational programming.
1.B.12 Identify and dedicate City-owned parklike spaces as parkland.
Policy
1.C Ensure the maximum distance between residents’ homes and the nearest public
park or preserve is ½-mile, ¼-mile preferred, that is evaluated using a walkshed
methodology based on how people travel.
Programs
1.C.1 Maintain the City’s digital map developed during this Master Plan process,
updating for new activities and access points.
1.C.2 Establish a review step in the Planning and Community Environment
department for any major redevelopment or the purchase/sale of any City
land in the park search areas.
Policy
1.D Adopt the wayfinding signage used at Rinconada Park as the standard for Palo Alto
parks and provide standardized directory signs for all large parks, preserves and
athletic field complexes.
Programs
1.D.1 Create and implement a signage and wayfinding program that conveys the
park system identity, incorporates art, connects bike paths to parks and
enhances the experience of park visitors
1.D.2 Install directional signs at parks that include the walking time to the next
nearest park or parks.
Policy
1.E Apply universal design principles as the preferred guidance for design solutions in
parks, striving to exceed Americans with Disabilities Act requirements.
Programs
1.E.1. Create a process to address adaptive program requests for individuals with
cognitive, sensory, and physical disabilities (to be coordinated with
upcoming ADA Transition Plan).
1.E.2. Adopt a standard of universal park design for accessibility and/or upgrade
play areas and picnic facilities to meet or exceed the standard. (Note: a
source and reference will be added).
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Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space and Recreation Master Plan 4
Policy
1.F Maintain a Field and Tennis Court Brokering and Use Policy as well as the
Gymnasium Use Policy (as well as any subsequent updates) to guide the allocation
of these recreation facilities with a preference for youth and Palo Alto residents.
Programs
1.F.1. Periodically review the existing Field and Tennis Court Brokering and Use
Policy and Gymnasium Policy and update as needed.
1.F.2. Develop an annual field usage statistics report, including number of prime
timeslots that were unused due to field condition/resting and the number of
requests for field space that were unfilled due to capacity.
Policy
1.G Every five years, quantitatively evaluate demand and capacity of major recreation
facilities including pools, gyms, tennis courts, and teen centers with appropriate
attention to geographical distribution in the city. Adjust plans as appropriate to
accommodate significant demographic or demand changes.
Programs
1.G.1 TBD
Policy
1.H Encourage walking and biking as a way of getting to and from parks, supporting
implementation of the Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation Plan.
Programs
1.H.1 Select parks as destinations along routes for “Ciclovia” or “Sunday Streets”
type events where streets are closed to traffic and opened up for citizens of
all ages to interact with each other through exercise, entertainment and fun;
1.H.2 Provide bike parking for cyclists as a standard feature at parks, open
spaces, preserves and community centers;
1.H.3 Provide, identify and mark “Safe Routes to Parks” from locations such as
schools, shopping centers, libraries, after-school programs, community
centers, and residential neighborhoods;
1.H.4 Educate residents about the city’s Bike Boulevards – streets prioritized for
bicycles – to promote greater use, and plan new Bike Boulevard projects
that connect parks, open spaces and recreation facilities.
1.H.5 Identify gaps in the walking and cycling network to improve access to parks,
open spaces, preserves and community centers, including sidewalk repairs,
easements, trail improvements/repair and improved pedestrian visibility.
1.H.6 Collaborate with school communities to enhance routes to schools,
especially where they pass through parks; and
1.H.7 Integrate art and nature into bike lanes, routes and paths as appropriate.
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Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space and Recreation Master Plan 5
1.H.8 Develop a regular bicycle and walking tour of Palo Alto parks and preserves
as a new recreation program. Develop online materials for self-guided
tours.
Policy
1.I Incorporate cultural diversity in projects and programs to encourage and enhance
citizen participation.
Programs
1.I.1 Conduct a survey every two years of cultural groups to identify gaps barriers
to access, preferred design, and awareness in recreation programming.
1.I.2 Provide multi-cultural and multi-lingual recreation programs, signage, and
educational information.
1.I.3 Encourage and provide opportunities for civic engagement by directly
connecting with cultural groups.
Policy
1.J Increase stewardship and volunteerism by creating and promoting opportunities for
youth and adults to participate in parks, recreation, open space events, projects and
programs.
Programs
1.J.1. Create a robust volunteer recruitment and management program utilizing
the following steps:
o Explore funding a dedicated Volunteer Coordinator position with
sole purpose of recruiting, training, managing and appreciating
volunteers throughout the City.
o Have detailed job descriptions created for all volunteer needs and
make available at all City sites, as well as online.
o Conduct outreach to senior centers and senior housing facilities to
promote volunteer programs and opportunities.
o Provide volunteer opportunities for Palo Alto youth and students to
earn community service hours by offering programs like the
Counselor in Training and Junior Lifeguard programs.
1.J.2. Continue to offer volunteer habitat and landscape improvement projects,
and support partnership organizations that offer volunteer programs in
Parks and Open Space areas.
Policy
1.K Periodically collect and evaluate data on the changing demographics and interests of
the community and adjust programs and plans accordingly.
Programs
1.K.1 Create pilot recreation programs to test the public's interest in new types
of classes, events and activities utilizing an evaluation process.
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Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space and Recreation Master Plan 6
1.K.2 Initiate a community-wide focus group on an annual basis to provide
feedback on programs, facilities and long-term roadmaps.
1.K.3 Create a streamlined and effective quarterly survey system that solicits
feedback from customers, including program participants, facility renters,
and the general community.
Goal 2: Enhance the capacity, quality and variety of uses of the existing system
of parks, recreation and open space facilities and services.
Policy
2.A Sustain the community’s investment in recreation facilities.
Programs
2.A.1 Continue to program and prioritize projects for existing facilities as identified
in the Infrastructure Blue Ribbon Commission report, and plan the keep up
of new facilities as they come on line, recognizing their expected lifespan
and revised based on real-world experience.
2.A.2 Research best practices to design recreational facilities that can be
maintained with existing budgets.
2.A.3 Collaborate with Palo Alto Unified School District to develop a vision and
master plan for the future of the Cubberley Community Center.
Policy
2.B Provide opportunities for creative expression in park and recreation facilities and
programs.
Programs
2.B.1 Incorporate artists and art into youth recreation programming, particularly
day camps, utilizing the expertise of the Arts and Sciences Division.
2.B.2 Create outdoor studios and program spaces for creating art in parks
(Coordinated with the Public Art Master Plan).
2.B.3 Encourage the community to participate in more expressive projects lead
by the department, such as community mural projects in facilities, pop up
open mic’s in open spaces or chalk art programs in parks.
2.B.4 Continue to provide “maker” space to Palo Alto teens to encourage
creative thinking and expression.
Policy
2.C Design and maintain high quality turf fields with adequate time for resting to support
maximum use in parks by multiple organized sports and casual users with areas
large enough for practice or play.
Programs
2.C.1 Continue to monitor and track industry developments and the latest
reputable scientific studies regarding synthetic turf to understand the
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Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space and Recreation Master Plan 7
environmental and human safety impacts of our existing synthetic turf
fields and determine which type of synthetic turf product to use when
replacing an existing synthetic turf field.
2.C.2 Synthetic turf fields should be striped for multiple sports to maximize use.
Whenever possible, synthetic turf playing fields should have lights in order
to maximize use of the field.
2.C.3 The City should complete an athletic field assessment and maintenance
plan, review the various recommended improvement options, fund the
appropriate improvements, and upgrade fields at select parks to high
quality turf standards including irrigation system upgrades, drainage
improvements, etc. The report should include analysis and
recommendations regarding the soil profile, agronomy, irrigation systems,
field slope, drainage, field-use demand, and maintenance.
Policy
2.D Actively pursue adding dedicated, fenced dog parks in multiple neighborhoods,
equitably distributed between north and south Palo Alto. The size of the dog parks
will vary, but should strive to be at least .25 acres. Dog parks should not be placed
in Open Space Preserves.
Programs
2.D.1 The City will evaluate and select at least six dedicated, fenced dog parks,
equitably distributed across north and south Palo Alto, from the following
list of potential locations:
o Eleanor Pardee Park (North, .41 Acres)-Near Term
o Bowden (North, .37 Acres)-Near Term
o Greer Park (Improve existing) (South, .87 Acres)
o Peers Park (North, .73 Acres)
o Hoover (Improve existing) (South, 1 Acre)
o Robles (South, .47 Acres)
o Mitchell Park (Expand existing) (South, 1.2 Acres)
o Kingsley Island (North, .27 Acres)
o Werry Park (North, .31 Acres)
o Juana Briones Park (South, .47 Acres)
o Heritage (North, .27 Acres)
o *El Camino Park (North, .5 Acres)
*Additional research is needed regarding El Camino Park as a
suitable location due to future transit improvements in the
proposed area. *We acknowledge that Hoover and Greer’s current
dog parks are inadequate in terms of size, and they should not be
counted in their current configuration towards the minimum of six
dog parks recommended in this program.
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Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space and Recreation Master Plan 8
Policy
2.E The City will actively pursue adding park restrooms in parks that are approximately
two acres or larger, have amenities that encourage visitors to stay in the park, have
high level of use, and where there are no nearby public restrooms available.
Programs
2.E.1 Develop a restroom standard, in collaboration with the Architectural
Review Board, for neighborhood parks.
2.E.2 The City will actively pursue adding park restrooms at the following
potential locations:
o Bol Park
o Bowden Park
o Eleanor Pardee Park
o Johnson Park
o Ramos Park
o Robles Park
o Terman Park
Goal 3: Create environments that encourage active and passive activities to
support health, wellness and social connections.
Policy
3.A Implement the Healthy City Healthy Community resolution with the community’s
involvement.
Programs
3.A.1 Convene and lead a Healthy City Healthy Community stakeholder work
group consisting of other agencies and nonprofit organizations to
collaborate on initiatives and benefit from existing programs.
3.A.2 Develop an annual plan that supports implementation of the resolution.
3.A.3 Achieve designation as an Age-Friendly Community.
3.A.4 Add drop-in programs (free or BOOST!) focused on physical and mental
health in settings that are near home/work and maximize the health
benefits of being outside and surrounded by nature.
3.A.5 Connect walking paths within and between parks to create loop options of
varying length that encourage walking and jogging.
3.A.6 Enhance seating areas to take advantage of quiet spaces or to create
opportunities for social interaction.
3.A.7 Promote and enforce the ban on smoking in Palo Alto's parks through a
marketing campaign and signage program.
3.A.8 Upgrade or add drinking fountains with water bottle filling and water for
dogs.
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Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space and Recreation Master Plan 9
3.A.9 Develop adult fitness areas in parks including exercise areas for the
exclusive use of older adults (seniors).
Policy
3.B Incorporate art into park design and recreation programming (consistent with the
Public Art Master Plan).
Programs
3.B.1 Promote temporary public art installations in local parks.
3.B.2 Promote interactive public art features that also serve as play features
(i.e. climbable sculptural elements integrated into the natural environment
that invite touch and exploration).
3.B.3 Update park design policies to incorporate artistic elements consistent
with the Public Art Master Plan.
3.B.4 Commission artwork that interprets local history, events and significant
individuals; represents City core values of sustainability, youth well-being,
health, innovation.
3.B.5 Bring in performance-based work, social practice, temporary art and
community art.
3.B.6 Explore suitable art for preserves and natural areas.
3.B.7 Incorporate public art in the earliest stages of the design of parks and
facilities that may utilize wind direction, sunlight and ambient sound
(Coordinated with the Public Art Master Plan).
3.B.8 Install permanent and temporary installations and exhibits in well-
trafficked parks and plazas, following the guidance of the Public Art
Master Plan.
3.B.9 Integrate functional public art into play areas, seatwalls and other built
features in parks across the system.
Policy
3.C Require that proposed privately owned public spaces that are provided through
parkland dedication fees, meet Palo Alto design guidelines and standards for publicly
owned parks, allow public access, and are designed to support recreation,
incorporate natural ecosystem elements and comply with the policies of the Urban
Forest Master Plan.
Programs
3.C.1 Develop and apply clear expectations and definitions of public access
(hours, rules) for privately owned public spaces
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Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space and Recreation Master Plan 10
Goal 4: Protect natural habitat and integrate nature, natural ecosystems and
ecological principles throughout Palo Alto.
Policy
4.A Connect people to nature and the outdoors through education and recreation
programming.
Programs
4.A.1 Expand access to nature through elements and interpretive features that
explore ecological processes, historical context, adjacent waterways,
specific plant/animal species that can be encountered onsite and
elements tailored to be of interest to youth as well as other ages,
cultures and abilities.
4.A.2 Update or rebuild interpretive centers with modern interactive exhibits.
4.A.3 Expand programs working with volunteers on invasive species removal
in preserves and creek corridors.
4.A.4 Improve and increase access to creeks for learning and stewardship
experiences by designing access points that minimize impact on the
waterway.
4.A.5 Expand programs such as Foothills camps to connect youth with parks
year-round.
4.A.6 Partner with boys/girls scouting organizations for outdoor education
programs and/or the Junior Rangers program.
4.A.7 Expand and increase events that educate and promote native plants,
species and wildlife.
Policy
4.B Connect natural areas, open spaces and vegetated areas in parks and on public land
to create wildlife, bird, pollinator and habitat corridors by planting with native oaks and
other species that support pollinators or provide high habitat values.
Programs
4.B.1 Develop a map that identifies locations for habitat corridors including the
appropriate plant palette for each corridor.
4.B.2 Work with local environmental groups to grow native plant species and
utilize their network of volunteers to install and maintain planted areas.
Policy
4.C Support regional efforts that focus on enhancing and protecting significant natural
resources.
Programs
4.C.1 Collaborate with regional partners in projects to control the spread of
invasive species and plant pathogens.
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Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space and Recreation Master Plan 11
Policy
4.D Promote, expand and protect habitat and natural areas in parks.
Programs
4.D.1 Promote urban greening by integrating storm water design into planting
beds, reducing irrigation and providing interpretive information about park
contributions to city water quality.
4.D.2 Train City maintenance staff and include specific standards and
expectations in maintenance contracts for the care of for low-water,
naturalized landscapes, natural play environments and other new types of
features in the system.
4.D.3 Ensure project designs for new facilities and retrofits will be consistent with
sustainable design principles and practices. This includes evaluating all
projects for opportunities to implement Green Stormwater Infrastructure
such as bioswales, stormwater planters, rain gardens, permeable pavers
and porous concrete and asphalt.
4.D.4 Identify locations and develop swales, detention basins and rain gardens
to retain and treat storm water.
4.D.5 Provide shade for play areas using shade trees as the preferred solution.
Policy
4.E Identify and pursue strategies and opportunities to expand native trees and planting
areas in urban parks.
Programs
4.E.1 Update the preferred planting palette and approved tree species list.
4.E.2 Partner with organizations such as Canopy and Acterra
4.E.3 Replace low-use turf areas with native shrubs and grasses, incorporating
educational elements about native habitats.
Policy
4.F Integrate and implement the Urban Forest Master Plan Policies and Programs as
applicable to parkland in Palo Alto.
Policy
4.G In Natural Open Space, focus on features and activities that are compatible with the
protection of nature.
Programs
4.G.1 Prioritize development of comprehensive conservation plans for Baylands
Preserve, Foothills Park, Esther Clark and Pearson-Arastradero Preserve
to identify strategies to balance ecosystem preservation, passive
recreation, and environmental education.
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Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space and Recreation Master Plan 12
4.G.2 Continue to work with partnership organizations to remove invasive
weeds and plant native plants and trees in riparian and natural open
space areas.
Goal 5: Develop innovative programs, services and strategies for expanding the
park and recreation system.
Policy
5.A Identify and pursue strategies to activate underused parks and recreation facilities
Programs
5.A.1 Implement short-term placemaking improvements (flexible, small scale
interventions such as seating, art, programming or planters that have
minimal capital cost) to attract users and experiment with potential longer-
term options.
5.A.2 Emphasize flexibility and layering uses (allowing for different uses at
different times of day, week, etc.) in parks over installing fixed-use
equipment and single-use facilities.
5.A.3 Expand Day Camp program opportunities, utilizing all preserves and
more local park sites and additional topic areas, to meet excess demand.
5.A.4 Leverage social media and develop marketing materials to encourage
“pop-up” recreational activities in rotating parks.
5.A.5 Invite and encourage local businesses to utilize neighborhood parks for
weekly or monthly outings and lunches.
5.A.6 Create small (10-12 people) and medium-sized (20-25 people) group
picnic areas that can be used for both picnics and programming.
5.A.7 Provide additional lighting to enhance park safety and expand park use to
dusk while minimizing impacts to wildlife.
Policy
5.B Support innovation in recreation programming and park features and amenities.
Programs
5.B.1 Review program data based on clearly communicated objectives for
reach, impact, attendance and financial performance.
5.B.2 Retire, end or refresh programs that require staff, facility and financial
resources but do not achieve program objectives, thereby freeing up
resources for new programs.
5.B.3 Actively develop a small number of pilot programs each year to test new
ideas, locations and target audiences.
5.B.4 Build on partnership with Avenidas to build intergenerational
programming as well as additional older adult programming.
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5.B.5 Expand BOOST!, the pay-per-use exercise class system to cover fees for
any drop-in classes or facility use (lap swim, drop-in gym time, new
programs in parks).
5.B.6 Set goal of 10% new program offerings each season; new programs
should be offered based on needs assessment, industry trends, and/or
class evaluation data.
5.B.7 Create a robust marketing and outreach program to highlight new and
innovative programs to community.
5.B.8 Develop short-term recreation access strategies (such as temporary use
agreements for vacant or park like property) and seek long-term or
permanent park and recreation space in each park search area. Actively
recruit property and facility owners to participate in the development of
the short and long-term strategies.
Policy
5.C Expand the overall parks and recreation system through repurposing public land,
partnering with other organizations for shared land, incorporating public park spaces
on parking decks and rooftops and other creative means to help address shortages of
available land.
Programs
5.C.1 TBD
Policy
5.D Explore best uses for newly acquired parkland as it is added.
Programs
5.D.1 Determine optimal usage for Foothill Park 7.7 acres of parkland.
5.D.2 Over time, evaluate optimal usage, including open space, for 10.5 acre
land bank created by golf course reconstruction.
5.D.3 Evaluate possible uses for Cubberley Community Center.
Policy
5.E Explore and experiment with parklets and other temporary park spaces for both long
and short-term uses.
Programs
5.E.1 TBD
Policy
5.F Enhance partnerships and collaborations with Palo Alto Unified School District and
Stanford University to support access and joint use of facilities, where appropriate for
effective delivery of services and programs.
Programs
5.F.1 Partner with PAUSD to provide middle and high schools recreation
facilities to community (basketball, badminton, indoor soccer) in the
evening, in the evening, during the summer months, and on weekend
mornings.
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5.F.2 Develop a steering committee that consists of key officials from PAUSD
and Stanford to develop partnership agreements and connect facility
managers and programmers with the PAUSD and Stanford staff that will
be providing the programs to develop, implement, and monitor program
success
5.F.3 Increase access to PAUSD public schools (outside of school hours)
schools to increase the availability of recreation activity spaces. Target
school sites that are within or adjacent to "park search areas".
5.F.4 Work with Stanford to create or increase access to athletic facilities and
other recreational facilities for Palo Alto residents.
Policy
5.G Pursue other/private funding sources for recreation programming, capital
improvement projects and facility maintenance.
Programs
5.G.1 Encourage foundations to assist with soliciting sponsorships and grants.
5.G.2 Create a more formalized annual or one-time sponsorship program that
provides the donor with marketing and promotional opportunities.
5.G.3 Contract or add job responsibilities for managing fundraising and
developing donors for the park system to pursue funding opportunities
and sponsorships.
5.G.4 Engage nonprofit friends groups to seek donor funding, including
foundation grants, corporate giving and small and major philanthropic
gifts by individuals, for priority projects and programs.
Policy
5.H Partner with Mid-peninsula Regional Open Space District and other land conservation
groups to expand access to open space through new acquisitions and improved
connections.
Goal 6: Manage Palo Alto’s land and services effectively, efficiently and
sustainably utilizing quantitative and qualitative measures.
Policy
6.A Every five years actively review demographic trends of city population by segment
for critical drivers of facility usage including school children, teens, seniors, and
ethnic groups.
Programs
6.A.1 TBD
Policy
6.B Continue to implement the Cost Recovery Policy for recreation programs, refining the
cost and fees using the most current information available.
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Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space and Recreation Master Plan 15
Programs
6.B.1 Periodically benchmark the City’s Cost Recovery Policy against other
Cities’ cost recovery models.
6.B.2 Invest in and market city facilities to increase revenue for cost recovery.
Policy
6.C Limit the exclusive use of Palo Alto parks (booking an entire park site) for events by
outside organizations that are closed to the general public.
Programs
6.C.1 No exclusive use of parks by private parties is permitted on peak days
(e.g., weekend, holidays) or peak times (e.g., evening hours on
weekdays, 10 am – 6 pm on weekends) as defined by Community
Services staff unless approved in advance by the Director of Community
Services. Exclusive use of certain sites and facilities within parks, such as
reservable spaces like picnic areas, is generally permitted during peak
days and times.
6.C.2 Use of parks for locally focused events, where more than 50% of
participants are expected to be Palo Alto residents and that allow
registration by the general public (e.g., events such as, races, obstacle
course events, triathlons, etc.) may be considered by staff if consistent
with this Master Plan;
6.C.3 Private events that are closed to the general public (e.g., corporate
events, private weddings) and are intended to use an entire park (rather
than a reservable space in excess of capacities as defined in the Special
Event Permit procedures) may only be considered outside of peak days
and times as defined by Community Services staff. These events should
recover 100% of all associated costs, including wear and tear on public
parks and facilities.
6.C.4 Events that allow public access are permitted, in accordance with Special
Event Permit procedures.
Policy
6.D Periodically review and update existing guidance for development, operations, and
maintenance of Palo Alto’s Parks, Trails, Natural Open Spaces, and Recreation
system based on the best practices in the industry and this Master Plan, including:
o Park Rules and Regulations;
o Open Space Policy & Procedure Handbook;
o City of Palo Alto Landscape Standards;
o City of Palo Alto design guidelines and standards; and
o Tree Technical Manual.
Policy
6.E Incorporate sustainable best practices in the maintenance, management, and
development of open spaces, parks, and recreation facilities where consistent with
ecological best practices.
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Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space and Recreation Master Plan 16
Programs
6.E.1 Increase energy efficiency in Palo Alto parks, including allocating funding
to retrofit facilities for energy efficiency with increased insulation, green or
reflective roofs and low-emissive window glass where applicable.
6.E.2 Conduct energy audits for all facilities, establish an energy baseline for
operations, benchmark energy performance against comparable facilities,
and implement energy tracking and management systems for all park
facilities and operations;
6.E.3 Select Energy Star and equivalent energy-efficient products for Park
equipment purchases; and
6.E.4 Expand the collection and use of solar power (parking lots, roofs) and
other renewable energy sources at parks and facilities (e.g. pools).
6.E.5 Provide convenient and well-marked compost and recycling receptacles
throughout the park system, in recreation facilities and at special events;
6.E.6 Ensure that trash, recycling, and compost receptacles have covers
to prevent wildlife access to human food sources.
6.E.7 Review purchasing policies and improve employee education to reduce
overall consumption of materials throughout the system;
6.E.8 Procure environmentally preferable products (as required by the City’s
Environmentally Preferred Purchasing policy) as the “default” purchasing
option;
6.E.9 Initiate composting of green waste within the park system.
6.E.10 Work with Public Works to replace the vehicle fleet with electric vehicles
whenever practical;
6.E.11 Install electric vehicle (EV) charging stations at park facilities with parking
lots;
6.E.12 Enforce a “No Idle” program with vehicles and other gas-powered
equipment. Conduct water audits for all parks and recreation facilities and
park operations;
6.E.13 Install high-efficiency urinals, toilets, sinks and showers in all facilities;
6.E.14 Extend recycled water use to more park sites;
6.E.15 Explore water capture opportunities in parks for irrigation and recycling;
6.E.16 Ensure any irrigation systems on public landscapes are run by a smart
controller and/or sensors and that staff are trained in programming them
6.E.17 Link all park facilities to a centralized irrigation management system to
maximize water use efficiency.
6.E.18 Encourage residents to organize and participate in park maintenance and
cleanup events to foster a sense of ownership, establish social
connections, and reduce maintenance costs.
Policy
6.F Strengthen the Integrated Pest Management (“IPM”) policy as written. While some
parks may be managed as “pesticide free” on a demonstration basis, IPM should
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Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space and Recreation Master Plan 17
continue to be Palo Alto’s approach, grounded in the best available science on pest
prevention and management.
Programs
6.F.1 Periodically review and update the IPM policy based on best available
data and technology.
Policy
6.G Strategically reduce maintenance requirements at parks, open spaces, natural
preserves and community centers while maintaining Palo Alto’s high quality
standards.
Programs
6.G.1 Locate garbage and recycling receptacles in a single-location that is
easily accessible by maintenance staff and vehicles.
6.G.2 Explore high capacity, compacting and smart garbage and recycling
receptacles that can reduce the frequency of regular collection; and
6.G.3 Select standardized furnishing palettes for durability, vandal-resistance
and ease of repair.
Policy
6.H Coordinate with and/or use other relevant City plans to ensure consistency,
including:
o Urban Forest Master Plan;
o Urban Water Master Plan;
o Long-term electric acquisition plan (LEAP);
o Water Reclamation Master Plan;
o Recycled Water Project;
o Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation Plan
o Comprehensive Plan; and
o Others adopted in the future.
Policy
6.I Continue to engage other relevant City departments and divisions in planning, design
and programming, drawing on the unique and specialized skills and perspectives of:
o The Palo Alto Art Center;
o Library, including Children’s Library;
o Junior Museum and Zoo;
o Children’s Theatre;
o Public Art;
o Transportation;
o Urban Forestry;
o Planning;
o Public Works, and
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Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space and Recreation Master Plan 18
o Palo Alto Youth and Teen Leadership
Policy
6.J Participate in and support implementation of regional plans related to parks,
recreation, natural open space and trails, such as:
o 2014 Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District Vision;
o Clean Bay Pollution Prevention Plan; and
o Land Use near Streams in Santa Clara County.
Policy
6.K Develop a proactive Asset Management Program to identify new, and maintain
existing park and recreation infrastructure.
Programs
6.K.1 Research asset management programs used by other City parks and
recreation departments.
ATTACHMENT C: Draft Master Plan Outline
Draft 6/28/16
Front Matter
Cover, acknowledgements, table of contents
Executive Summary
High-level summary of direction and key messages boiling down the plan for the
public and City Council. This section will be prepared following the staff review of
the first full draft plan.
1. Introduction 4 pp
Overview: The introduction will describe the need, purpose and intent of the
Master Plan drawing from the January 2016 staff report; and provide an overview
of the planning process.
Structure:
A. Purpose and Intent
B. Planning Process Overview
2. Elements of Palo Alto’s Parks, Trails, Natural Open Spaces and
Recreation System 8-10 pp
Overview: This chapter will summarize the existing system, organized by the
three elements. It will include key content drawn from the park inventory, site
visits/evaluations, and part 1 of the recreation program analyses. The existing
system map will be included within the chapter. Detailed information will be
presented in Appendices.
Structure:
A. Parks, Trails and Natural Open Spaces
B. Recreation Facilities
C. Recreation Programs
PLAN OUTLINE: WORKING DRAFT 6/28/16 2
3. Needs and Opportunities 12-16 pp
Overview: This chapter will incorporate much of the content from the January
2016 Council Report, further distilled. It will include a description of the analyses
completed at the system-wide and site- specific levels, highlighting key findings
as shared with City Council in January 2016. It will also include a description of
community and stakeholder engagement activities and resulting themes and
priorities. The final section will present the results of the Data Summary and
Opportunity Analysis, setting the stage for the subsequent chapters of the Master
Plan.
Structure:
A. Technical Assessment and Analysis
a. Demographic and Recreation Trend Analysis
b. Analysis of the System
B. Community Outreach
C. Data Summary and Opportunity Analysis
4. Our Desired Future 6-8 pp
Overview: This chapter will articulate the “big picture”, incorporating the
principles, goals, and system maps.
Structure:
A. Principles
B. Goals
C. System Concept Maps (Park Search Areas, Enhanced Bike and
Pedestrian Connection, Natural Systems and Habitat)
5. Policies, Programs, and Projects 12-16 pp
Overview: This chapter will include the policies, programs and projects that will
achieve the principles, goals, and system concepts.
Structure:
A. Policies
B. Projects and Programs
6. Site-Specific Plans 38-40 pp
Overview: This chapter will include the concept plans for each site.
PLAN OUTLINE: WORKING DRAFT 6/28/16 3
7. Implementation 6-8 pp
Overview: The final chapter will present the prioritization process and he action
plan resulting from the prioritization process. It will also describe how to evaluate
future proposals for consistency with the plan, and present a progress reporting
methodology
Appendices TBD
Overview: Only some of the material developed during the planning process will
be incorporated into appendices. If desired, all project materials can be
consolidated into a “Technical Supplement” that will provide supporting
background material, but that will not be adopted as part of the plan.
Preliminarily, separate appendices will include
• Data on population trends and projections
• Inventory tables
• Site analysis maps
• Community engagement summary from the January 2016 Council report
(but not the summaries of each individual activity)
• Technical analysis maps (full set of analysis maps)