HomeMy WebLinkAbout2017-11-28 Parks & Recreation Agenda PacketAGENDA IS POSTED IN ACCORDANCE
WITH GOVERNMENT CODE SECTION
54954.2(a) OR SECTION 54956 PARKS AND RECREATION COMMISSION Regular Meeting November 28, 2017 AGENDA City Hall Chambers
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. DEPARTMENT REPORT
V. BUSINESS
1. Approval of Draft Minutes from the October 24, 2017 Parks and Recreation Commission
meeting – PRC Chair Keith Reckdahl – Action – (5 min) ATTACHMENT 2. Peers Park Dog Park- Park Improvement Ordinance – Daren Anderson – Action – (30 min) ATTACHMENT 3. Draft Revisions to Dog Park Rules – Daren Anderson -Discussion– (30 min)
ATTACHMENT
4. Palo Alto Swim & Sport Year End Review – Jazmin Le Blanc - Discussion – (20 min) ATTACHMENT 5. Update on Youth and Teen Programs – Adam Howard – Discussion – (20 min)
ATTACHMENT
6. Other Ad Hoc Committee and Liaison Updates – Chair - Discussion – (15 min)
V. COMMENTS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS
VI. TENTATIVE AGENDA FOR DECEMBER 19, 2017 MEETING
VII. ADJOURNMENT
ADA. 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.
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MINUTES 5
PARKS & RECREATION COMMISSION 6
REGULAR MEETING 7
October 24, 2017 8
CITY HALL 9 250 Hamilton Avenue 10 Palo Alto, California 11 12 Commissioners Present: Anne Cribbs, Jeff Greenfield, Jeff LaMere, Ryan McCauley, Don 13
McDougall (arrived late), David Moss, and Keith Reckdahl 14
Commissioners Absent: None 15
Others Present: 16
Staff Present: Daren Anderson, Peter Jensen, Kristen O'Kane, Tanya Schornack 17
I. ROLL CALL CONDUCTED BY: Tanya Schornack 18
II. AGENDA CHANGES, REQUESTS, and DELETIONS: 19
Chair Reckdahl: Next, Agenda Changes, Requests, Deletions. Does anyone have any 20
changes they want made? We'll move on to Oral Communications. 21
III. ORAL COMMUNICATIONS: 22
Chair Reckdahl: This is Oral Communications for anything that is not on the agenda. I 23
think we do have a speaker. We have two speakers. Neal Aronson. 24
Neal Aronson: Hi, members of the Commission. Thank you very much for letting me 25 speak for a few minutes. My name is Neal Aronson. I'm the Director of Operations and 26 a Board Member of the Palo Alto Soccer Club. We're a 40-year-old Palo Alto 27 organization helping develop youth programs, athletics, through competitive soccer. We 28
were started in 1977, so this is our 40th anniversary. We've been around a long time 29
helping develop soccer in the community. As I'm sure you're all aware, the City suffers 30
from an acute shortage of well-maintained athletic fields. The Palo Alto Soccer Club has 31
worked with staff and fellow youth soccer clubs over the last few years to help improve 32
the condition and the availability of City fields. However, this work has been challenging 33
as the condition of our fields has continued to deteriorate for a number of reasons, 34
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drought and so forth, while the need for fields continues to grow. Youth soccer, lacrosse, 1
and other field sports are growing very fast, not just in Palo Alto but nationwide. It 2
continues to put more pressure on these fields. The Palo Alto Soccer Club has come up 3
with a novel idea to help create some additional field availability during some of the most 4
critical times of the year, right now, typically late fall and early spring when we start to 5
lose the daylight. We've yet to change back to daylight savings, so it's still dark in the 6 late afternoon hours. What we propose—we're here to get a sense from you as to how we 7
might pursue this. What we propose is to try to utilize a temporary, mobile lighting 8
system powered by solar—that's solar power saved with batteries, so it's a solar storage 9
solution, no emissions, no noise—to light the Cubberley turf field between the hours of 10
5:00 and 8:30 p.m. The units that we're looking at, are considering, are about the length 11
and width of a food truck to give you some context. They have two light towers 12
approximately 20 feet tall with LED lights on each end. Our hope is to test this concept 13
during the month of February. The reason we're looking at February is for a number of 14
reasons. One, we start to practice again after the holiday break. The fall season is 15
coming to a conclusion in about a month, at the end of November. We'll take a break for 16
December and part of January. Teams start up again typically in mid-January, February. 17
That's an important window for teams to get up to speed and begin to be prepared for the 18
season. We realize that using lights on the Cubberley turf field can create some concern 19
for neighbors. We're very sensitive to that. Obviously, Cubberley is—maybe it's not 20
obvious. Cubberley is our home fields, if you will. We spend a lot of time out there. We 21
know a lot of the neighbors. We know a lot of the issues that go on. We try to have a 22
good rapport with the neighbors. We've already started a little bit of informal outreach 23
by contacting some of the immediate neighbors right behind the Cubberley turf fields to 24
see if this would even be something they would entertain. Surprisingly, we've had some 25 reasonable feedback. Nobody's come out and said, "No way." What we'd like to do—of 26 course, as part of this effort we would accelerate our outreach if there's some direction 27 from the Commission or staff that this proposal might be considered. We would continue 28
that outreach and really try to get a—probably work with the City to get a very good 29
sense of what the community thinks of this idea as a temporary solution. We hope you 30
will consider our request and maybe provide us with some timely direction as to how we 31
might advance this proposal, get it reviewed and approved within the City's process by 32
January if possible. As a general note, I did take this idea to staff first, and they didn't 33
really know what to do with it. That's why I'm here. I realize you can't respond to me, 34
but perhaps through back channels you can communicate to us as to how we might 35
proceed with this idea. Again, temporary, one-time, want to see how it works in 36
February. If it works, of course, we would probably be interested in doing it again, but 37
that's what we're looking for right now. Thank you very much. 38
Chair Reckdahl: I have some questions for Daren and Kristen. How would this work if 39
they want to pursue this? Would they have to go to staff and get it on the agenda for next 40
month? What would be the process for … 41
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Daren Anderson: I believe that we would work with staff if there was some guidance 1
from the Commission that this is something interesting, a policy you'd like to be 2
considering. I suggest staff work with soccer groups and come up with some ideas on 3
how we can make this work and bring it to the Commission for some policy input and 4
ultimately public outreach and go from there. 5
Chair Reckdahl: Personally, I would support that. I like a trial project. If it doesn't work 6 out, we haven't lost much. If it does work out, the community benefits. I think it would 7
be worth pursuing. I can't speak for the rest of the Commission. 8
Commissioner Greenfield: I have a question. As far as the Commission assisting staff 9
with this, do you think this would fall under the liaison role with the turf management—10
Neal is one of the stakeholders we've been working with for many years—or would this 11
fit under the fields/court facility policy group? 12
Kristen O'Kane: This would fit under probably the field use policy ad hoc. 13
Commissioner Greenfield: Thank you. I know that that ad hoc is busy, but this is a 14
timely issue for the soccer groups since they're aiming for a February window and maybe 15
not super time consuming. I'd like to recommend that we figure out a way to look into it 16
further. 17
Vice Chair Moss: The only other area that should be looked at is the traffic patterns on 18
Nelson in the dark. It can be very, very busy. In the dark, it's going to be a lot worse. If 19
there's some way they could use the parking lot instead of Nelson during those hours, 20
maybe you want to get—I don't know—the Planning and Transportation input on that. 21
Commissioner Cribbs: I just want to echo my support for trying to do this and doing a 22
pilot project and seeing if we can move fairly quickly on it. Thank you very much. 23
Commissioner McCauley: Since everyone's chiming in, I'll put in my two cents. I agree. 24
I support it as well. It seems like a good pilot to try out certainly. I'm curious as to 25 whether or not there's actually any restriction presently on people using the fields. I 26 appreciate that they want to have a temporary structure essentially that would provide 27 light. If someone wanted to go to the Cubberley fields right now at 8:30 at night in 28
February, there'd not be any restriction on doing that, right? It's certainly within the 29
park's hours. 30
Mr. Anderson: That's correct. Although, it's not parkland. My understanding is the 31
hours of the facility aren't necessarily closing with sunset. 32
Commissioner McCauley: I guess, just give some targeted thought to what role the 33
Commission would have, if it's some sort of particular approval of having the temporary 34
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lighting structure or what it would be that we would do. It seems as though you don't 1
need an amendment to any sort of existing rules. 2
Mr. Anderson: I think it's a policy one in just recognizing the fact that lighting in general 3
is sensitive, especially in a new facility, and where there's such close proximity to 4
residences. This is certainly something that we would—especially given our previous 5
situation at Cubberley where we were forced into a situation where we rushed the public 6 process, this is one we would not rush. We would take our time and make sure we got 7
the buy-in. I've had the privilege of speaking with Neal about this a little bit too—some 8
of the staff that worked with Neal, rather. I'd be glad to help make this happen, work on 9
it. 10
Chair Reckdahl: This would not need Council approval? 11
Mr. Anderson: My hunch is it would just need policy direction from the PRC, but I'm not 12
sure. Maybe we would flesh that one out some more. 13
Chair Reckdahl: I think it'd be appropriate for the field use to get together, the ad hoc, 14
and work with Daren on that and see if we can get it on one of the upcoming agendas. 15
Thank you, Neal. Monica Williams, you are up next. 16
Monica Williams: Hello. I'm Monica Engle Williams. My heart is in Palo Alto, having 17
lived here for 25 years, but I now live in Mountain View. I'm President of the Silicon 18
Valley Pickleball Club and ambassador for the local area of the USA Pickleball 19
Association. I'm here tonight to represent our Mitchell Park pickleball group and would 20
like to give you a brief update. We only recently founded our nonprofit club. Our 21
mission is to provide a place for people to gather and enjoy low-impact exercise, social 22
and emotional health, and camaraderie for all ages and abilities. As of today, we have 23
317 members. Pickleball has brought new meaning to life for some of our players who 24
are suffering from disabilities such as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, and 25 muscular dystrophy, not to mention new shoulder, hip, and knee replacements. We have 26 a new name for tennis courts 5, 6, and 7, the magical pickleball playground. This facility 27 is an ideal location because there are no residents nearby to be disturbed. The noise 28
factor is imperative to address when deciding a location for pickleball. The 29
recommended distance from a residence is 300 feet, and Mitchell Park fills the bill. 30
Unlike most other sports, pickleball is easy to learn and inexpensive to play. We're now 31
reaching out to teenagers and youth, the local youth in our community, to find ways to 32
include them in a pickleball program. We have a host of volunteers that are only too 33
willing to teach our youth. We just need to find the best way to offer the program. I 34
personally have taught pickleball on a volunteer basis for the past three seasons through 35
Palo Alto Recreation Department. The class is full with a maximum of 30 attendees. 36
We're proud to be hosting the Bay Area senior games again in May. I believe pickleball 37
had more entries last year than any other event. We have been keeping data on the 38
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number of people who play pickleball at Mitchell Park. The average for each weekday is 1
38. The average for Saturdays is 76, and for Sundays the average is 65 people for a total 2
of 330 players every week. All of this on only three tennis courts. Last but not least, we 3
are very excited that the Mayor and the Palo Alto City Council will be presenting our 4
group with the honor of a Proclamation in November for bringing pickleball to Palo Alto 5
and in recognition of the health and wellness pickleball provides to the Palo Alto 6 community. Thank you all for your support and for the opportunity to speak. Thank you. 7
Chair Reckdahl: Thank you, Monica. We appreciate your work. We like it when people 8
use the parks. It's always good. 9
IV. DEPARTMENT REPORT 10
Chair Reckdahl: Next, Department Report. 11
Mr. Anderson: Good evening. Daren Anderson, Open Space, Parks and Golf. I'll give 12
you a couple of quick updates. Chair Reckdahl had sent me an email asking me for a few 13
items. I'll be glad to pass that information on to the full Commission. The first one was 14
about the closed trails up at Foothills Park and where we're at with that process of trying 15
to get them open again. This is just a quick recap. Last winter's storms caused a 16
tremendous amount of damage to the trails up at Foothills Park. Staff was able to correct 17
most of them but not on Los Trancos Trail. There was a significant section, about 3 18
miles, that is currently closed all due to that storm damage, specifically the areas closest 19
to the creek and also on Costanoan Trail also very close to the creek. That one's about 20
0.83 miles. The actions the City took is we hired a geologist to walk the site with staff 21
and give us an analysis of this. Can we fix it as is or is this landslide, as we see it, too 22
pronounced to fix it in the same location? We also brought a trail builder for his 23
perspective too. The consensus between the two was that those trails need to be rerouted, 24
at least small portions of them. I had our trail contractor lay out a proposed route for 25 where those trails could go. He said, "Yes, I can build this. Here's the route you would 26 take. I've positioned it in such a way that this will hold up far better in the rains than your 27 previous trail alignments did." From there, we went to contact Mid-Peninsula Regional 28
Open Space District—they're kind of a partner organization that build their own trails and 29
do lots of new trail-building, reroutes, that kind of thing—to get advice. Their guidance 30
was that we are going to need environmental review. It's not something you can just go 31
in and make that kind of change unfortunately. The City hired an environmental 32
consultant to give us some guidance on how to go about this. The consensus was that we 33
should do biological and cultural assessments of that proposed trail route, where we want 34
to send this reroute through. They would do that; actually it's happening tomorrow. I'll 35
go up with the biologist, and we'll hike through the poison oak and other stuff through 36
this rerouted section. We'll find a good trail and see if there's any cultural or biological 37
things that would cause us to shift it and move it over a little bit. Hopefully, it's in the 38
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right place, and we aren't hitting anything sensitive. At that point, once we've completed 1
that assessment, we would use the information to realign those trail reroutes if there was 2
some information. If not, we'll stick with that. Then, we have to do the CEQA analysis. 3
That same consultant will give us a price. We'll probably have to hire—sorry—go out to 4
bid for two more. We'll take that information and, once we get through the CEQA and 5
have our environmental approvals, we'd hire the contractor to do this work, and we'll get 6 it built. It's tough to give you the ETA that I know you want. The challenge is I don't 7
know how long the CEQA would take. I asked for a crude estimate of what she thought. 8
She said it could take somewhere between 3 to 6 months for the CEQA analysis. I don't 9
know whether that's optimistic or not, to tell you the truth. We'll see. That's the trail 10
situation. 11
Chair Reckdahl: Can we build the trails any time of year or do we want to … 12
Mr. Anderson: No. There will be times where we can't, probably not in the rainy season 13
when you can't get up there. It'll be too slick. 14
Chair Reckdahl: Most likely next summer. 15
Mr. Anderson: I think so. There was also a question regarding the Foothills fire 16
mitigation update, where we are with the Foothills Fire Management Plan. Those plans 17
have been in place since 2001, when we got it done, but it took us a while to start 18
implementing it mainly because we didn't have enough funding and staff to manage it. I 19
think the question is a very poignant one given everything that's gone on in our state with 20
wildfires and where we're at. I'm very pleased to say, thanks to great cooperation with 21
other departments, namely Public Works, Urban Forestry, Fire Department and our 22
department, especially the rangers, we have worked cooperatively and as a team to 23
manage this fire concern. You asked if there was a CIP. There's no longer a CIP; it's 24
now funded through the department's operating budgets. Pulling the money from all 25 three departments, it's $181,000 per year. We've taken that money and leveraged far 26 more than we ever would have been able to do with individual contractors. We've done it 27 through a partnership with the Santa Clara Fire Safe Council. Essentially we're in a 28
partnership and an agreement with them. We funnel the money through them, and they 29
hire out subcontractors including CalFire crews that work very cheap and get a great 30
amount of work done. Let me tell you just a little bit about what we've got done over the 31
last 5 years. It's been ambitious, and we're really pleased with the improvements. This is 32
above and beyond the annual mowing and disking and periodic treatments of Trapper 33
Trail that was part of our regulation operation forever. This is above and beyond that. 34
The areas we really focused on were evacuation routes. That's the core part of the Fire 35
Management Plan within the City boundaries on public roads, Pearson-Arastradero Road, 36
Page Mill Road, and Los Trancos Road and the evacuation routes within the park itself, 37
which are your Wildhorse Valley leading to Towle Camp, the Foothills Park maintenance 38
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yard to the gate, and Foothills Park to the Hewlett property. We also worked on 1
prescribed fire and associated containment lines, residential boundary treatments, doing 2
disking and mowing. As a result of the work we've put into this fire plan, there's been 3
several benefits. I'd say the most important is that increased ease of evacuation and 4
emergency access through that roadside vegetation work that we've done. The roadsides 5
along those roads I talked about, Arastradero, Los Trancos, and Page Mill, are all safer 6 for access and egress. Thanks to this work, there's increased line of sight, reduced fuel 7
loads and volumes, and reduction of ladder fuels. Ladder fuels are the ones that lead up 8
to the canopy of trees and cause the big fires that will cross over roads. The probability 9
of ignitions has been reduced through reduction of fuels near barbecues, structures, and 10
along roadsides. This is all inside the park elements. This is where the CSD portion of 11
the budget goes towards. We're the inside the park element. Public Works does the 12
roadside; that's Page Mill. Fire is contributing towards our prescribed fires and/or other 13
analysis. We can use that extra budget money for other work too, depending on what's 14
needed. 15
Male: (inaudible) 16
Mr. Anderson: We have done a prescribed burn at Pearson-Arastradero. We haven't in a 17
while, and we've talked to Fire. We check in every year to see where they are. It's a 18
combination of either weather, staffing, and other issues whether we can do one. If we 19
don't, we do other things. In light of the fact that we weren't able to do this one, we've 20
been discussing using other techniques like goats and sheep, for example, to come in and 21
graze those same areas that we might have burned. We're very pleased with the work 22
we've done on it. There was another question about what do we do with the Baylands. Is 23
that covered in this plan? It's not. The Baylands are handled separately between the Fire 24
Department and the open space rangers, but it's not part of that plan. The fire risk there is 25 relatively low because it's mostly salt marsh. We do manage ruderal weeds in upland 26 areas through basically the same techniques, regular mowing when necessary. There was 27 … 28
Vice Chair Moss: Question? 29
Mr. Anderson: Yes, sir. 30
Vice Chair Moss: The barbecues in Foothill Park, I noticed that there are barbecues at 31
almost every site, even the more obscure ones on the way down below the dam. I was 32
wondering do you have to have barbecues at each and every site because some of those 33
are pretty—they're not the same as the oak grove and the one near the bathrooms. 34
Mr. Anderson: There are some on that roadway as you come down from the lake towards 35
the Interpretive Center that are up on a fairly steep embankment. They were once larger. 36
When I first started, they were almost double the size, and we've reduced them 37
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(inaudible) they don't get used. They're way back up the hill; they're really inaccessible. 1
There are still occasionally people that use them, so we've maintained them. When 2
there's overuse in some of our—like oak grove or orchard glen, it's nice to have that 3
alternative. On really busy days, there are families that use them. Your question was do 4
we need them. 5
Vice Chair Moss: No. Do we need the barbecues there? 6
Mr. Anderson: I see what you're saying. 7
Vice Chair Moss: You don't need—I don't think you need the barbecues at each and 8
every one of those sites. Keep the barbecues down there at the orchard and oak. 9
Mr. Anderson: Just have picnic tables? 10
Vice Chair Moss: Yeah. 11
Mr. Anderson: It's possible, yeah. It makes the clearing work that's necessary for that 12
area perhaps reduced a little bit. That's a good question. There was another question 13
about the Baylands Boardwalk. You were presented with that information. The question 14
was are we going to Council or are they holding off on that. This is Public Works 15
leading this. This is the Baylands Boardwalk project. They are going to go ahead. They 16
had ARB review on the 19th of October. They'll go back to the Commission here in 17
November. Next month, they'll come to you with an update. It won't be an action item; 18
it's an informational update. Then, on to Council in December. I have good news about 19
a different project, the dog park project at Peers. Where we last left off, I was going to go 20
through that potentially long wait through the planning process. The good news is we've 21
got staff-level review and approval for the design at Peers Park. That's great, really 22
exciting. There's a 2-week public review period. After that, we should be good to go. 23
The next step in the process is in November I'll come here with a Park Improvement 24
Ordinance, asking for your recommendation. December we'd go to Council. We'll go 25 out to bid and hopefully build this thing as soon as we can. The CIP process. This is the 26 capital improvement plan. Again, that's a 5-year cycle of planning for projects over 27 $50,000, usually building something. We're having a staff kickoff meeting on 28
November 1st. Then, Chair Reckdahl and I will get together and start discussing it and 29
report back to the Commission on the status of that. The Cubberley bleachers, you may 30
know that there were two very large bleachers on either side of the synthetic turf field, 31
both in bad condition. The worse of the two was replaced with two smaller units about 2 32
months ago approximately. Unfortunately, the larger remaining one is in very poor 33
condition and now unsafe and had to be closed. We've got a fence around that with signs 34
that explain the why and the what and how. The when piece is we're getting it repaired. 35
In about 3-4 weeks, we're buying the materials and hiring a contractor to help staff. We'll 36
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put new wood on and reattach it safely. Once it's safe, we'll open it back up, again, in 1
approximately a month. That's my report. 2
Chair Reckdahl: Any questions? 3
Commissioner Greenfield: Yes. I have a question on the first item, on the Foothills Park 4
trail closures. Is the website updated with some information giving people an idea that 5
it's not going to be open for 6, 9, 12 months or so, something to set expectations 6 appropriately? 7
Mr. Anderson: Thank you. Good question. We didn't do a very good job—I have to 8
own that entirely—of getting the message out to where we were. Right now, I've got 9
staff updated. Everyone's sending the same message in the open space staff to everyone 10
who visits the park and the entrance on weekends. All the rangers are aware. We've 11
updated the signage on the signs themselves. The next step is to get the website updated. 12
We're working on the language and having the right map that's posted there. That will be 13
up very soon. 14
Commissioner Greenfield: That's great. You guys have been working really hard on it 15
and putting in a lot of effort. You should get credit for it. 16
Mr. Anderson: Thanks very much. 17
Vice Chair Moss: As far as the bleachers are concerned, I had asked you earlier if the big 18
bleacher could or should be reduced in size. You had said that there were several user 19
groups using the parks that like it as big as it is. Obviously, if you don't need it as big, 20
you have more room for other things. Can you explain a little bit more about that? 21
Mr. Anderson: I'm sorry. I wasn't the direct recipient of those responses; that was 22
through our recreation staff. I had said—we've just had this back-and-forth with the staff 23
that either manage the recreation activities, the soccer groups and other field users as well 24
as Cubberley, the facility itself. I just said, "What are you hearing? What are you seeing 25 especially in light of the fact that we've already transitioned from one large one to small? 26 Is that okay?" We were getting preliminary estimates back on replacing the whole 27 structure that were extraordinarily expensive, $300,000-plus. We were looking at 28
options. Can we get rid of it for some smaller, less expensive ones? We were told that 29
it's still used. A lot of the feedback was we like having it (a) for exercise and (b) because 30
they're running the steps. Secondarily or perhaps primarily, for events they'll have 31
sometimes crowds that are larger, and they'd like to have the space of those large 32
bleachers to watch. 33
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Commissioner McDougall: I have to say that's still qualitative and not quantitative. I 1
don't know if we have any way of measuring it or whatever. I'm concerned that people 2
want to run steps. That'd be a very small set of stairs. 3
Mr. Anderson: Unfortunately, probably the cheapest route is to repair it rather than 4
demoing that thing and putting in two smaller ones. The structure on that big one is still 5
solid and good. The foundation's great; the metal's still robust. It's just the wooden 6 planks. Believe it or not it's cheaper to rehab it, and then you have the option of having a 7
larger bleacher if you ever wanted the bigger event out there. A fair enough question. 8
Given that I can get it fixed for around $10,000 or so, it seemed to make sense to move 9
ahead. 10
Commissioner McDougall: Let us know how to help. 11
Vice Chair Moss: I was going to say that the people running the bleachers are there a lot. 12
They do use both aisles. I was concerned more because I live right behind it, and there 13
are very few events that have more than maybe 50 or 60 people. That was the only 14
reason I brought that up. I guess there have been one or two events where they've had a 15
lot more. I suspect that there aren't that many fields that are that big. If we did want to 16
have a big event, that would be the place to have it. 17
Chair Reckdahl: One more thing about the trails. Funding is not arranged yet for the trail 18
construction? 19
Mr. Anderson: That's a great question. I'm sorry I didn't bring that up. Staff just did a 20
little more research. I think we will be able to fund those, both the construction and the 21
CEQA. Obviously, the cultural and biological assessment that are happening tomorrow 22
are already funded. 23
Chair Reckdahl: Otherwise, I was going to suggest—can we get it in the CIP? It'd be 24
new, so we'd have to displace something. That timing for the CIP would be all right 25 since it won't be starting, at least construction, until summer. 26
Mr. Anderson: What I think I'll do is—if we see that what my plan is doesn't work or for 27 some reason I'm going to be short or the price quotes for the CEQA come higher than 28
anticipated, that's probably what we'd do, ask for a one-time increase for the CIP that 29
funds trails and just ask for whatever is necessary. I believe we will be able to make it. 30
Chair Reckdahl: That's good news because those are great trails. We miss them. I was 31
up there last weekend, and there was a contractor clearing Los Trancos Trail from just 32
above Costanoan up to the road, doing a very nice job. There's a lot of overgrowth there. 33
Any other questions for Daren? Kristen, do you have anything to add? 34
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V. BUSINESS: 1
1. Approval of Draft Minutes from the September 26, 2017 Parks and 2
Recreation Commission meeting. 3
Approval of the draft September 26, 2017 Minutes was moved by Commissioner Cribbs 4
and seconded by Commissioner McDougall. Passed 7-0 5
2. Update on the Palo Alto Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space and Recreation 6
Master Plan Funding Plan. 7
Chair Reckdahl: This is a very important item, the funding for the Master Plan. I was 8
looking through this. You did a very nice job in a very short period of time. Good job. 9
Go ahead. You'll be doing the presentation? 10
Ms. O'Kane: Yeah. Thank you. Kristen O'Kane, Community Services. I'm going to 11
share with you the status of what's a very preliminary analysis of potential funding 12
opportunities for the Master Plan. The reason we decided to bring this to you tonight in 13
its very preliminary form is because of the Council direction from the September 11 14
Council meeting, in which Council directed the Commission to explore funding options 15
to fund the Master Plan including a possible ballot initiative. Staff and the PRC Master 16
Plan funding ad hoc met a few times to discuss this topic. We looked at what are the high 17
priority projects and programs in the Master Plan, which are included in Chapter 5 of the 18
Master Plan. We did two things. The first is in the spreadsheet that you have included in 19
your staff report we took the estimates that were included in Chapter 5 of the Master 20
Plan. They were categorized as either having one dollar sign, two, three, or four. We just 21
translated those into the dollars that they represent. The estimates that are in the 22
spreadsheet aren't anything really new. It's just taken from the Master Plan. They're 23
very, like I said, preliminary. They aren't based on a specific cost breakdown of what one 24
of these projects would cost. We also looked at potential timeline also based on the 25 Master Plan. We then took it a step further. I will say that the ad hoc has not weighed in 26 on this portion of the spreadsheet. We looked at possible funding opportunities for 27 different priority projects and programs. The different types of funding opportunities we 28
looked at were, first, the new tax revenue. There are different types of tax revenues that 29
could be generated. These would require a ballot measure. There is a brief description in 30
the staff report on those different types of taxes that could be a source of new revenue. 31
We would have to do quite a bit more research to really dig deep into what would be the 32
best new revenue source for the Master Plan. The second is to use existing capital 33
improvement funds and operating budget sources. Every project will require some level 34
of funding from the general fund or the capital improvement fund. It could just be staff 35
resources, but there will always be something from there. One thing that I failed to 36
include in the staff report are the park development impact fees, the community center 37
impact fees, and the parkland dedication ordinance fees. We do have existing funds from 38
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collection of those fees. Some are already allocated for some projects, but there are funds 1
that exist. Those would be included in the existing funds. 2
Chair Reckdahl: Do you happen to know roughly how much we have? 3
Ms. O'Kane: I do. The current park impact fee account balance is $3.9 million. The 4
parkland dedication ordinance fund, which is the Quimby Act fund, is $3.2 million. 5
There are certain restrictions on how and where these funds can be used. We would have 6 to carefully look at those as we would want to use those funds to fund the Master Plan. 7
The next we categorized as donations, which could be a capital campaign, which is what 8
the Junior Museum and Zoo did to raise their funds for the new zoo facility. There are 9
also public-private partnerships and also the Palo Alto Recreation Foundation and the 10
Friends of the Palo Alto Parks, our nonprofit partners who have provided support to us 11
through the years. We would hopefully continue to work with them for funding options. 12
Also grants, there are always grants particularly related to environmental enhancements, 13
restorations, all-inclusive playgrounds, things like that. These are the different funding 14
options that we looked at. What we tried to do is assign to each of the high priority 15
projects and programs what could be a likely funding opportunity for those. I, again, 16
want to mention that this is very preliminary. It's to start the dialog to get us to a point 17
where we can present to Council and ask Council direction on how we would like to 18
proceed. 19
Commissioner LaMere: Kristen, I have a quick question just to reference back to the 20
existing fees. Those are fees that are currently being charged and will be charged in the 21
foreseeable future, parcel taxes or whatever those may be, that are going into those funds. 22
Is that correct or is there a time limit that at some point funds will stop flowing into it? 23
Ms. O'Kane: You're referring to the impact fees and the parkland dedication fees? The 24
park development impact fees and the community center impact fees are fees imposed on 25 nonresidential development. As long as there is development within Palo Alto, those fees 26 would be charged. Likewise, the parkland dedication ordinance or Quimby Act fees are 27 for residential subdivisions. It would depend on the amount of development that's 28
occurring in Palo Alto. 29
Vice Chair Moss: This is a great list. I look forward to going through those right four 30
columns. What you've listed is possible sources, but I suspect they're our best sources for 31
each of these. Enhanced seating in parks, you would not burden a ballot measure with 32
that level, and you would probably go for donations or existing CIP. The same thing with 33
exceeding ADA requirements. You might go with a grant that would be the best 34
possible. I look forward to playing with that. They're really exciting. If I thought 35
everything had to be done with a ballot measure, it would be quite demoralizing. The 36
fact that there are these other areas is really—I like that. 37
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Commissioner Cribbs: This actually is a great start. Thank you very much for all of this. 1
We talked about how much the Master Plan could possibly cost. I just want to make sure 2
I'm clear. The low estimate for implementation is the $25 million. Am I reading that 3
right? I know it's just a number. The high is $95 million. 4
Ms. O'Kane: That's correct. Very preliminary estimates. 5
Commissioner Cribbs: As we look at Cubberley, that's just the plan to plan what we're 6 going to do with Cubberley. Is that right? 7
Ms. O'Kane: It says plan design and redevelop. Cubberley is its own—I almost feel like 8
it should not be in this list and have its own category just because of the size and scope 9
and because we don't know what the size and scope is. 10
Commissioner Cribbs: I think we don't do the Master Plan without Cubberley. If there's 11
a way to call that out on this list and talk about how it's a special project or something, 12
I'm not sure. 13
Ms. O'Kane: I agree. 14
Commissioner Cribbs: The other two high and low estimates are the ongoing costs of 15
maintenance and funding to make sure we take care of everything. 16
Ms. O'Kane: Correct. 17
Commissioner Cribbs: That's all for now. 18
Ms. O'Kane: I'd like to add to that. I didn't include estimates for the programs partly 19
because, number one, it's difficult to estimate implementing a program. Also, some of 20
the programs could be completed through reallocation of staff priorities or making minor 21
changes to some things that we're already doing now to accomplish those. To tie an 22
implementation cost on those is a little difficult. If we need to do that, we could try to 23
spend a little bit more time trying to estimate that. A lot of it is staff resources. 24
Chair Reckdahl: Before you go to Council, you don't want—they just want some rough 25 numbers. You're only a factor of four between low and high. That's not bad. In the tech 26 industry, a factor of four is really tight. This is a pretty good estimate. For example, 27 when I look at Cubberley … 28
Vice Chair Moss: (inaudible) Cubberley. 29
Chair Reckdahl: Yeah. The low is $1 million for Cubberley. I don't think we could—30
you might want to bump that one up to $5 million on the Cubberley Community Center. 31
We wouldn't be able to do very much for $1 million there. We'll go through. Jeff. 32
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Commissioner Greenfield: A question regarding the ongoing cost. Is that intended to be 1
incremental beyond what's already spent or is this the total number that would be spent? 2
For example, for the first one, enhance the existing sports fields, we obviously have 3
money in the budget now to maintain the sports fields. If we put money in to enhance 4
them, is the ongoing cost the additional money that you would anticipate spending to 5
enhance them or have you given that any thought? 6
Ms. O'Kane: That's a great question. I'm not sure I have an answer to that. What we will 7
do is get better cost estimates for all of these, and then we'll make a notation whether this 8
is in addition to what we currently have budgeted or included. My initial guess is this is 9
in addition just because this is looking at funding that we would need in the future that 10
we don't already have. That's my initial response. Again, we'll look more deeply into 11
that and we'll make a notation. 12
Commissioner Greenfield: Maybe it would be helpful to have another column that would 13
be the total amount that you would be spending on something, which would include 14
what's typically in the CIP currently and then what the increase would be. Something to 15
provide the information. Obviously, some of these areas won't—the current number will 16
be zero, but other items it won't be. Just a little specific input. Again, on the first item, 17
on the sports fields, there is money in the current budget for a study. We had a meeting 18
with the soccer field users this month with Daren and staff. That study is going on in 19
fiscal 2018. Just hope that there could be some implementation in 2019 instead of 2020. 20
I don't know if you're looking for feedback on specific numbers. The numbers are 21
probably pretty low on that item as well. Thank you. 22
Commissioner LaMere: I just want to say it's a great start for this. As being part of the 23
ad hoc with this, we're excited to continue the dialog. It's great to see how far we've 24
come with it in a somewhat short period of time. Continue to push this, and continue to 25 do what we can. Please, if there is feedback you need from us or anything that you would 26 need to continue to fast track this or just get this going, I know the City Council is 27 pressuring us a little bit with some decisions. I think this is a great template to begin 28
with. We'll certainly provide you the feedback needed to really get things moving with it. 29
Thank you very much for working with us on this. 30
Ms. O'Kane: Thank you for the work that you did on it as well. I will say that what I 31
would like to do for our next steps is get some more detail on this spreadsheet, meet with 32
the ad hoc again, and then possibly come back here to the Commission in November with 33
a greater idea of what we would like to present to Council. I'm trying to get a Council 34
date for December of this year. We are trying to—since this is fresh on their minds, they 35
just adopted the Master Plan—go back to Council relatively quickly. It's going to be a 36
very tight timeframe, but I'm hopeful that we can present something to Council in 37
December. 38
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Chair Reckdahl: I don't think Council wanted a perfect answer. I think they wanted 1
some preliminary numbers. What you have in here is going to be what they want. They 2
can direct you to get better numbers or they may direct you to do other things. At least 3
we get back there quickly so they still have their options open. 4
Ms. O'Kane: I want to make sure that the Commission is comfortable with what we're 5
presenting as well, since it was direction to the Commission. I want you all to be 6 comfortable with that. 7
Commissioner Greenfield: The format's great. 8
Commissioner Greenfield: Don, go ahead. 9
Commissioner McDougall: I got really carried away. I actually did exactly what you 10
were talking about. In fact, just proving I was thinking about it, I have a column for fees 11
because I guessed that fees were probably missing. I understand your numbers are 12
random numbers, not quite random. I understand that. Therefore, mine are similar, but 13
they're all scalable. If you adjust your numbers, I could adjust these numbers. What I 14
tried to do is say if I was on Council. I don't think Council wants us to just come and 15
give them a bunch of numbers. My guess is the Council also expects a strategy. In that, 16
my first question was were there things missing. I forget what we call it now, but the 17
former ITT facility doesn't seem to be on the list, but it is in the Master Plan. I don't 18
know if there are other things that we're missing. You can worry about that later. The 19
other thing I did is look at this in terms of the total numbers that came out, just on an 20
average, and then tried to guess what—I don't even know how I could guess—the 21
appetite might be for some sort of bond measure. The two numbers that jumped out—I 22
ended up saying that I had a Tax 1 and a Tax 2 plan, to use your terminology. Both the 23
gymnasium and purchase of new land stand out in a way that they could crater a bond 24
measure. The next item on our agenda is the use fees and so on and the categories of 25 usage. It seemed to me that one of the other columns that could be added here is which 26 of those fee categories does it fall into, not because we're worried about collecting the 27 fees but because it tells us something about the nature of the item on here. Is it totally 28
public benefit or is it private benefit? That would tell you also how much bond measure 29
funding you might want to pursue versus how much outside funding you might want to 30
pursue. When I did that, the gymnasium and the new land, I worried about those being 31
things—everything else on the list, I don't think anybody would argue with. Those two 32
things risk the whole project. I want to echo you did a spectacular job. It was great 33
fodder for playing with. You probably don't want me to share this with you, but I'll share 34
it with you anyway. 35
Ms. O'Kane: Please do. I would like to see it. 36
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Commissioner McCauley: I'll try to be quick. First off, the plan you just proposed is 1
exactly right that you need to go back and work with the ad hoc. These thoughts that I 2
have are designed to help inform that process potentially. Appreciating Keith's comment, 3
I actually think the delta between the high and low estimates on implementation is 4
problematic. I think you need to have a much closer range. Just looking at these 5
numbers, the low estimates to me seem pretty unrealistic. Perhaps the high estimates are 6 actually close to what we think is going to be the real cost. I think you need to have a 7
tighter range. Anything you can do to improve what you think that range will be is going 8
to be beneficial. Second, the implementation timing. We have all of these running 9
through 2038. You can be more detailed as to when you think these things might actually 10
take place or ideally would take place. That would also be helpful. The third comment is 11
within our listing I don't think there's a prioritization. It might be helpful for the ad hoc 12
committee to give thought to what should the prioritization of these different projects be. 13
Maybe it's going to be that some of the short-term projects are the top priority followed 14
by what we think are the most feasible long-term projects. It would be helpful to actually 15
have a prioritized list. 16
Ms. O'Kane: Thank you. That's all very good feedback. We'll look at that with the ad 17
hoc and with staff as well. 18
Chair Reckdahl: I want to echo the ITT. If we want to refurbish that ITT land, that's 19
going to be very expensive. We'd have to pipe water in from the Bay if we want that to 20
be a saltwater marsh. There is a pipe already, but there still needs to be a lot of work to 21
refurb that. Development has really cut that off, so there's going to be a lot of work on 22
that. The numbers, I don't think you can get any closer than a factor of four just because 23
there's so much uncertainty on the scope. I am nervous that our low estimates are way 24
too low and our high estimates are also low. The scope, for example, for construct new 25 restrooms. It'd be nice if you could specify is this one restroom, ten restrooms. How 26 many restrooms do we have for here? This is so tight, these are just rom guesses, but still 27 it'd be nice to have some type of bases for these as opposed to guessing. The small ones I 28
don't think are important. For example, any of the large ones like gymnasium, can we 29
scrub that? Some of the big ticket items, can we scrub that and have a more realistic 30
estimate on that? I don't know how to do that. Do we know of other cities that made 31
gymnasiums and research what they spent on that? The big ones, the top five, are the 32
ones that are driving the total number. The ones down below—dog parks are not going 33
to drive the total bill. If we can have some realism on scrubbing numbers just for the big 34
ticket items, that would be good. For programs, if we can have some guess of the cost of 35
programs, that would be good. What the Council's going to want to look at is how much 36
is this going to cost and what are our funding options. Now, when they're comparing the 37
funding options, the impact fees numbers that you have are very useful. New tax 38
revenues … Is there any way to bound each of these buckets? New tax revenues, can we 39
give reference for what the libraries did—the libraries earned this much—just to give 40
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them a ballpark number of what would be feasible? CIP or operating budget, could we 1
cite what our current budget is and say that's for reference? When they're looking at 2
these columns, they'll know this is going to be so large. Donations, how many did the 3
Friends of Palo Alto Parks get last year? If some big donor gives a large amount, that 4
number certainly could go up, but it at least gives them an estimate of where to start. 5
Grants, I have no idea what size grants. I assume that they're all fairly small grants. If 6 we could size each of the buckets, that would be a big thing. Otherwise, it looks really 7
good. The Council wanted us to work on this with a sense of urgency. I think we've 8
done that. I think we want to go to them and give them preliminary numbers and let them 9
iterate. Does anyone have follow-ups? The ad hoc will work next month, and then we'll 10
come back next month with an update. Hopefully, in December we'll go to Council. 11
Ms. O'Kane: That's the plan. 12
Chair Reckdahl: Thank you. 13
Ms. O'Kane: Thank you. 14
3. Audit Status Report: Community Services Department Fee Schedule Audit. 15
Chair Reckdahl: We'll be moving on to the audit status report. Jazmin is here to talk 16
about that. 17
Ms. O'Kane: Good evening. I'd like to welcome Jazmin LeBlanc back to the Parks and 18
Rec Commission meeting. She's going to be presenting the status of the Community 19
Services Department's fee audit report and recommendations that came out of that report. 20
Jazmin LeBlanc: I'm Jazmin LeBlanc with Community Services Department. This is a 21
status update for the implementation of our recommendations in the fee schedule audit. 22
A little bit of background on this audit. It was issued earlier this year in February. They 23
had an objective to determine if our fees cover the cost of services provided as expected. 24
What they mean by "as expected" is that we have a sustainable funding source that we're 25 being fiscally responsible and trying to make sure that there's equity in how we charge 26 residents and nonresidents for services. We had three recommendations come out of that 27 report. We will be presenting our update on the recommendations to the November 28
Policy and Services Committee. The recommendations were, one—that was not directed 29
at our department actually but the Office of Management and Budget in the 30
Administrative Services Department and the City Manager's Office—directing them to 31
update the City's policy on cost recovery to allow for cost recovery over 100 percent of 32
cost. Parks and Rec programs are some of the only services where you can charge a fee 33
that exceeds the cost of providing the service as State law dictates. This is, I believe, a 34
relatively new interpretation of the State law, which is why our City's policy limited it to 35
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100 percent in the past. Most of the fees that we charge in the department can exceed the 1
cost of service. 2
Chair Reckdahl: What limits that? How does the law read? Why are we exempt from it? 3
Ms. LeBlanc: I couldn't tell you the exact words, but I can tell you the justification. The 4
idea is if you were the only game in town, if you need to get your water heater reviewed 5
by the Fire Department to make sure it's not going to tip over in an earthquake, you have 6 no choice but to pay the Fire Department for that review. It's not fair for them to charge 7
you whatever they want. They can only charge you up to the cost to do that service. 8
Whereas, if you have a golf course that you want to charge people to use, they have lots 9
of other options for golf courses. You're not limiting their ability to play golf, so you can 10
charge market rates. Also in that was a request to the Office of Management and Budget 11
to adjust their Questica budgeting system to allow to go over 100 percent of the cost of 12
something in their fee module. On that recommendation, it hasn't begun yet. It's on the 13
radar of OMB, and they're expecting to have that recommendation implemented at some 14
point during this fiscal year. The second recommendation was directed at our 15
department. It was asking us to update our procedure that expands on the City's policy 16
for cost recovery. They had a whole host of recommendations for that procedure as well 17
as to how we review costs and how we—we have a fee-setting formula that our 18
programmers can enter costs into this, and it essentially is a calculator that will tell them 19
how much they could charge in order to recover a certain amount of the cost. We have 20
just received approval from the City Auditor's Office today that they do accept the 21
proposed changes that we had. We will be presenting that audit recommendation as 22
completed when we go to the Policy and Services Committee next month. We have 23
made all of these changes in the policy, in our procedure, and updated the calculator and 24
updated our overhead rate to make sure that we're tracking costs as we should. The third 25 recommendation was directed at our department as well as ASD and IT to make sure that 26 the costs of programs are in the right spots essentially. We've done quite a bit of cleanup. 27 In my role as a budget manager, we've moved a lot of things around behind the scenes so 28
that we can get—for example, all the Children's Theatre summer camps are in one cost 29
center, where they had previously been spread out over a variety of different cost centers 30
in SAP and made it really difficult to see what the true costs of Children's Theatre 31
summer camps were. Likewise, the true revenue as well. We've done a lot of cleanup in 32
preparation for this fiscal year, but there's more cleanup to do of several other programs 33
before we feel like that recommendation will be fully completed. That's the end of the 34
presentation, so I can take questions. 35
Chair Reckdahl: Ryan, you want to start? 36
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Commissioner McCauley: Yeah. With respect to Recommendation 1, that seems to be 1
lagging in implementation a little bit. Is there any effect to the Community Services 2
Department while that is lagging? 3
Ms. LeBlanc: No, there is not actually because the Questica fee module is very valuable 4
for departments like Public Works and Fire Department where a huge driver of their cost 5
is staff time. It'll calculate precisely the cost of 15 minutes of a management analyst's 6 time in their department. Our fees are set much more around market rates, so it's 7
important to understand the total costs. In general, when we're looking at total costs, 8
we're looking at hourly employees or contractors providing a lot of the services, who 9
don't have high overhead rates. It's a lot easier to get a sense of the cost of a particular 10
program, and then use our calculator that gives ranges for cost recovery where a 11
programmer can then say where in this range of $60-$80 for a session of art 12
programming is the market, what can I actually set, what's reasonable compared to other 13
programs. 14
Commissioner McCauley: These audit recommendations are not actually impacting the 15
setting of current fees? 16
Ms. LeBlanc: No. 17
Commissioner McCauley: Perfect. 18
Commissioner McDougall: A couple of random questions. I wasn't going to say 19
anything about it until you mentioned the idea of true cost and, therefore, true charges. 20
Within the SAP system or at least within SAP software, there's a concept of activity-21
based costing, not just specific direct costing. I don't know if they're paying attention to 22
that or not paying attention to that, but it's a big deal in the SAP software. It would 23
probably tell you true cost. My other observation is—two observations. One is I really 24
appreciate the report. This report is just great. The problem with putting all of the data in 25 the years as opposed to taking aquatics and putting all the years together under aquatics is 26 you can't really tell the direction. To me, it's more the direction that some of these costs 27 are going rather than the absolute number. Another look at it that way. My last 28
observation has to do with the groups. I don't know what page it is here. In Exhibit 1, 29
where you've got all of the CSD programs listed and then the expenses and the revenue 30
and then the recovery percentage, one of the recommendations, of course, isn't 31
specifically listed here is that we should make the CSD grouping match the City's 32
groupings. One has three, one has four, whatever. I'm not sure I care which one works. 33
On this cost recovery thing, it should tell me what group you think they're in. If 34
recreation is a community benefit, is that group one and, therefore, the 50-percent 35
recovery is too high or too low. The same with aquatics. Is that a public benefit or is that 36
more in the group three category? The reason I think that's really important—I appreciate 37
that the transcript from the Council Committee was included. Chair Wolbach said that, I 38
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guess in talking to Rob, what we want to do is make sure we have more visibility so we 1
can participate in setting the prices. I really think having Council setting the prices is 2
wrong. I do think you could give them the option of participating in what class things are 3
in. If we were more deliberately upfront about what class and what expectations are in 4
that class, then that would make more sense. It could save you an awful lot of pain in the 5
long run. 6
Ms. LeBlanc: I think those are really interesting comments. This particular exhibit was 7
done by the Auditor. These are groupings that they thought were the most reasonable to 8
present to the public and to the City Council. For me as the budget manager, they're at 9
too high of a level for me to really get down into it. I want to look at, like I said, the cost 10
centers in SAP so I can see specifics. For example, with the Art Center I'm going to want 11
to see a much higher cost recovery rate for the Art Center's children's fine art programs 12
than I am for their special events and outreach. In children's fine arts, that's going to be 13
more towards the personal benefits side of the spectrum. Outreach is more like special 14
events. We don't have a lot of cost recovery expectations on those. We see those as 15
more of a public benefit. When you look at this on the whole, it gives you a sense that 16
altogether it's about 43 percent of the cost recovery, but you don't know how we're doing 17
in those specific areas where we do have recovery expectations. 18
Commissioner McDougall: My first thought was I'm really happy to have you 19
investigate that and leave us at the higher level. If it makes a difference in terms of what 20
category the things are, that becomes the important thing. Like you said special events, I 21
would say is that public benefit and the cost recovery should be low or is that something 22
special and, therefore, we should find sponsors, and the cost recovery should be really 23
high. Overall, this is spectacular. Thank you. 24
Ms. LeBlanc: I did toy with the idea of including the actual procedure in here for you to 25 see. It had a table of the general breakdowns for cost recovery. Special events was in the 26 low cost recovery based on our interpretation of the benefits. I think it really does 27 depend on who's looking at it. 28
Commissioner McDougall: Special events could be decided one-by-one almost. Thank 29
you. 30
Commissioner LaMere: I appreciate this report. Three quick questions. There's a 31
statement that talks about the parks and open space and most of the costs are for 32
maintenance. There's $9.2 million spent. When it says maintenance, that's including the 33
salaries of rangers and people like that or is it separate maintenance costs and separate 34
salary costs? 35
Ms. LeBlanc: That's the sum of our in-house salaries as well as actual maintenance and 36
contract for maintenance. 37
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Commissioner LaMere: Has there been any study or—how do we determine what a 1
nonresident pays? What's the delta between what a resident pays and what a nonresident 2
pays? What's the threshold for what we can charge a nonresident who's going to be 3
potentially taking up a spot of a resident? Is there a formula for that or is it a guess? 4
Ms. LeBlanc: No. For most of our classes and camps, it's historically been 15 percent. I 5
don't have a good explanation for why it's been 15 percent. I did a little bit of research in 6 updating our procedure and found that a lot of other jurisdictions are charging between 25 7
and 40 percent more for nonresidents. We thought it would make sense as we move 8
forward to start moving towards a 30-percent increase for costs for nonresidents for most 9
of our programming. Facility rentals have been historically higher, more like 25 percent 10
over residents for those. 11
Commissioner LaMere: We use active for our camp registration. That's correct. Does 12
that go out to bid periodically? In my experience, I've dealt with them and found it's 13
possible to negotiate with them. Certainly you need to have another vendor or have used 14
another vendor. Was wondering when the contract for that is up. 15
Ms. LeBlanc: The contract for that is—I believe there's about eight—I want to say it 16
ends late in 2019. I have it on my calendar that we'll be starting the RFP process this 17
spring. I want to get started on it early because we'll need a lot of time if we're going to 18
switch software vendors. 19
Commissioner LaMere: Yes. There's definitely some pain in migration of all of your 20
programs and all of the literature that you have from one to another. Thank you so much. 21
Commissioner Greenfield: Thank you for the report and for the explanations. Some 22
information between the lines is helpful. Thank you. I have a question. Do you have an 23
example or two of programs or activities where fees would increase to market rates? 24
What that increase would be? 25
Ms. LeBlanc: When we did our initial breakdown trying to make sure we could 26 implement this procedure, I actually didn't see any programs that had a fee that was out of 27 line with the percentile that we have applied. Our programmers have a really good sense 28
of where their money is coming in, and it's generally classes, camps, and facility rentals. 29
Those are money generators. Whereas, like I said, special events and park maintenance 30
are not. When we've been asked to make budget cuts, for example, in the past we've been 31
given the opportunity to either cut or increase revenues. Expenses might go up but not as 32
much as the revenue. We've been doing, I would say, a pretty good job of making sure 33
that we are sticking in these cost recovery ranges if not exceeding them. 34
Commissioner Greenfield: Thank you. That's all. 35
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Vice Chair Moss: I have a couple of items. This is really fantastic. I never had any idea 1
how we set prices. I'm particularly happy about those four categories. The idea that you 2
can subsidize more those things that have the best benefit for the community and for the 3
health of the community and things like that versus woodshop classes for adults, which 4
are more personal, is fantastic. I suspect there isn't very much low-hanging fruit. You've 5
been managing this for years. I was really surprised at how much we—how little we 6 recover costs. I expected that we would be recovering 100 percent of our costs for almost 7
everything that's personal or even partially personal. The fact that only the golf comes 8
even close is surprising to me. I would have thought that all of these would be higher. 9
It's obvious from this conversation that you have market forces that some of these classes 10
people can go other places like the YMCA. The demand, I noticed that you have a 11
number of classes where you didn't even meet the minimum. Instead of cutting the class 12
or canceling the class, you went ahead and did it anyway. The demand is really 13
important. This thing about cost recovery percentages, you could give a lot more 14
scholarships and come out way ahead by charging closer to the market rate for some of 15
these things that have benefits but be more generous with your scholarships. I hope that 16
will come out as well. The other thing I saw that—if you don't do your cost recovery, 17
you'll end up subsidizing more programs than you needed to. Some residents will pay 18
more or less than appropriate, and the City will not achieve its social goals and objectives 19
such as subsidizing low-income individuals and seniors. It is really important to try to 20
boost that up. This is really an amazing effort that you're doing. I hope you can keep 21
moving it up. Thanks. 22
Commissioner Cribbs: Just a couple of questions particularly about Cubberley. The cost 23
recovery at Cubberley, does it come mostly from the rentals or from the—where does the 24
revenue come from at Cubberley? 25
Ms. LeBlanc: The revenue that you're looking at here is for our hourly rentals. I am not 26 quite sure why, but they didn't include the lease rentals in the revenue. That's what it is. 27
Commissioner Cribbs: The aquatic program has gone down in cost recovery, if I'm 28
reading this right, from 2015 to 2016. 29
Ms. LeBlanc: Yes. That was something that we're hoping is going to turn around. 30
Commissioner Cribbs: It's going to go up. 31
Ms. LeBlanc: Yeah, with Palo Alto Swim and Sport. 32
Commissioner Cribbs: For a program for instance, there's the direct cost of what it costs 33
to put on the program, and then the City costs would be indirect costs that are added on 34
top of that program? 35
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Ms. LeBlanc: Yes. Our overhead rate is approximately 35 percent, and that includes our 1
own department's admin such as Kristen and my time as well as the City Attorney's 2
Office, budget, the printing, all of the City costs. 3
Commissioner Cribbs: Those are things that you don't really have much control over, 4
that's just a number that you get. 5
Ms. LeBlanc: That's right. We check that periodically and apply that when we're doing 6 the analysis. 7
Commissioner Cribbs: You don't expect there to be big increases in fees that we're 8
charging residents coming down the pike? 9
Ms. LeBlanc: No, I don't think so. 10
Commissioner Cribbs: That's what I heard that people said, so I just wanted to check. 11
Ms. LeBlanc: Market rate has a huge impact, so we really can't charge a huge increase 12
over what you could do if you go to Menlo Park or YMCA or whatever it is. Our 13
programmers have been very aware of market rates. They could tell you right now if you 14
went and quizzed somebody how much it costs to go to Gymboree or come to our 15
program. We try to stay in line. We don't want to go significantly above or also 16
significantly undercut our local competitors. 17
Commissioner Cribbs: Thank you very much. 18
Vice Chair Moss: Following up on that then. Trying to beat the market price is very 19
difficult to do. That means you have to reduce costs. Do you think Palo Alto costs are 20
much higher than other cities where those market forces have made the price lower? 21
Ms. LeBlanc: I did some research while this audit was occurring. We actually are right 22
in line with the other areas that I saw, Mountain View, San Jose, Menlo Park, Walnut 23
Creek. We're recovering costs at roughly the same amount. When you're looking at a 24
table like this, that shows a range for as low as roughly 30 percent for cost recovery in 25 theater, music, and dance or as high as 85 percent for golf, that includes all of those 26 programs that we provide and that have no cost recovery expectations. With theater, 27 music, and dance, for example, that includes the summer concert series where we don't 28
expect anyone to pay for that. We probably should investigate getting sponsorships 29
more, but historically that hasn't been a big driver. That whole cost is in this number. 30
We also have not—what you're not seeing here are programs that we don't charge a fee 31
for, such as participating in the Children's Theatre presentations, being one of the actors. 32
You don't pay for that, but in exchange for not having a fee the Friends of the Children's 33
Theatre has made a deal that they will cover the cost of that through donations. The 34
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donations are not included here. You're not getting a complete picture if you just look at 1
what comes through City revenues in our department. 2
Vice Chair Moss: The last thing is when you look at the market rate, say it's $25 for a 3
class for an hour, could you raise it to match the nonresident price that a Palo Altan 4
would have to pay to go to Menlo Park to take that same class. You would both be $25 5
an hour, but if the Palo Altan went over there they'd pay $35. Could you charge $35? 6
Ms. LeBlanc: That's definitely something we could consider. Historically we've had 7
these really wide ranges. Recreation classes, for example, can be between 30-70 percent 8
cost recovery. We've left the actual pricing to the division managers to see how they 9
want to set that. It's something we could consider especially if we get into another budget 10
crunch. Are there ways that we could increase fees without losing a lot of customers on 11
some of those programs? It isn't something that we've scrubbed, so to speak, in that 12
manner. 13
Chair Reckdahl: Good stuff. I really enjoyed this. A couple of questions. What are 14
human services? 15
Ms. LeBlanc: Those are mostly the HSRAP programs. 16
Chair Reckdahl: The what? 17
Ms. LeBlanc: The Human—it's the HSRAP—I can't think of what that acronym stands 18
for. Resource Allocation Program. If Minka has come to you guys with her list of 19
nonprofit service providers … 20
Chair Reckdahl: This coordination the City does. 21
Ms. O'Kane: Human Services provides a few different things. Their main program that 22
they have is what's called the HSRAP grants, which is Human Services Resource 23
Allocation Program. They are grants that different organizations can apply for to help 24
fund their organization's mission to help with more social services within Palo Alto. One 25 that's been funded in the past is Adolescent Counseling Services within the School 26 District. I'm trying to think of some others. The Human Services works with Downtown 27 Streets Team. It's those programs. 28
Ms. LeBlanc: Kara Grief Counseling as well as Avenidas and the Palo Alto Children's 29
Community Center, PACCC. 30
Chair Reckdahl: I was looking at the 2013 table there. Public art had a negative revenue. 31
I'm not sure how you get negative revenue. I'm curious, but we don't expect much 32
revenue out of that anyway. I would think that would be a zero as opposed to negative. 33
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You mentioned about the Friends fees do not show up here. If we included the Friends 1
fees as additional—when CSD is looking at its goals, does it consider the Friends fees? 2
Ms. LeBlanc: Yes. 3
Chair Reckdahl: Are they revenue or are they decreased expenses? 4
Ms. LeBlanc: It's generally—it depends. 5
Chair Reckdahl: That would change your number. It doesn't change the delta, but the 6 percentage depends—you'd take it off the numerator or the denominator. David 7
mentioned scholarships. Do we see a lot of scholarships for the programs? Do people 8
apply to get reduced fees? 9
Ms. LeBlanc: It's not as many as I would have guessed given who I think would qualify 10
in the community. 11
Chair Reckdahl: You need income, qualifying income? 12
Ms. LeBlanc: It's based on income. You need to be a resident or within the School 13
District. It's only available to children and seniors and adults with disabilities. It's 14
limited to $300 of subsidy per calendar—per 12-month rolling period. Whenever you 15
apply, you have 12 months. We actually had our summer intern look at this. I can't 16
remember a lot of the details in terms of how—I want to say that the seniors who do use 17
the program, use about $75 on average. The youth who use the program use $150 on 18
average. They're not actually using up all of the allotment that they could use. You can 19
get either a 25-percent or 50-percent discount on the classes and camps. It also includes 20
community garden fees. It's something that we could—we've been asked in the past to 21
investigate expanding it. It's certainly something that we could expand. It ends up 22
costing about $35,000 in total to provide all of these fee reduction subsidies each year. 23
Commissioner Cribbs: How do we publicize that? How do people know about it? 24
Ms. LeBlanc: It's on the City's website, and it's also in the Enjoy! catalog, right in the 25 information on how to register for things. 26
Commissioner Cribbs: It's on a regular basis? 27
Ms. LeBlanc: It's in every Enjoy! catalog. 28
Chair Reckdahl: Do we think people aren't signing up because they don't know about it 29
or they don't need it or … 30
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Ms. LeBlanc: I think there's several possibilities. One, they don't know about it. 1
Another is that our reduction is not deep enough actually. A 25-percent discount off a 2
$300 camp is still a lot of money for someone who is struggling. We could try—if we 3
want to make changes, we could try something in beta test form to figure out what 4
interest there is and how … 5
Chair Reckdahl: What is the income limit to qualify? Do you know? 6
Ms. LeBlanc: I believe it's 80 percent of the Santa Clara County—what's considered 7
the—it's … I can't think of the term. Essentially it's based on your family size as well as 8
your income. It's the same numbers that Santa Clara County publishes for affordable 9
housing units. It's the same cutoffs that you would get if you want to get into a low-10
income housing unit. 11
Chair Reckdahl: I would think we should make it that if your income is low enough, you 12
have a much deeper discount than 25 percent. 13
Ms. LeBlanc: We do have a 50-percent. You can get either 25 or 50 percent. The 50-14
percent discount is—I want to say it's 60 percent of what's considered the county median 15
income. If you're up to 80 percent of that median income, you can get 25 percent. More 16
people take advantage of the 50-percent discount. Who doesn't take advantage are those 17
people who don't qualify for the 50. There's not a lot of people taking advantage of a 25-18
percent discount. 19
Chair Reckdahl: I think we should try to really increase the scholarships because there 20
are poor people in Palo Alto. 21
Commissioner McDougall: There are local nonprofits that basically waive—a 22
scholarship is to waive the fees. I would suggest we might even want to consider that. 23
You're spending, of this total budget, you said $75,000. Maybe we could be a little more 24
aggressive. 25
Ms. LeBlanc: $35,000 actually, even below that. 26
Commissioner McDougall: Then let's go to $75,000. 27
Ms. LeBlanc: The ideal would be to figure out what is the $75,000 program. The reason 28
that we cut it down to what it is now is that roughly 10 years ago we had almost no limit 29
on this program. I think it was a 75-percent discount. There was no annual limit to how 30
much you could take for it. It was several hundred thousand dollars. I think it was close 31
to $400,000. We had to—but we might have swung it a little too far. 32
Commissioner McDougall: A more generous program with better control. 33
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Chair Reckdahl: I would like to see a 5-percent increase across the board, and then really 1
concentrate on scholarships. 2
Ms. LeBlanc: It's something that we've talked about, Kristen and I, presenting that as 3
part of our budget proposal package in the spring to really get a good sense of what we 4
might want to try changing and how it would fit into our overall budget. 5
Chair Reckdahl: My last question is about flow of fees. When we collect money, does 6 that go to CSD or does it go straight back to the City? 7
Ms. LeBlanc: In most cases, it goes to CSD. In the case of Cubberley leaseholders, 8
those go straight into the City. I can't think of any other program where it goes straight 9
into the City. 10
Chair Reckdahl: If there was some class that was very popular and we had more room 11
and more teachers, we have enough funding to say we're going to offer a new class and 12
collect the fees and pay for that directly? 13
Ms. LeBlanc: If we've already used up all of our, say, temporary salary—part-time salary 14
dollars for that particular program area, we would have to go to the Budget Office to 15
request that they add money. Normally … 16
Chair Reckdahl: We can't just collect the fees and then pay our people or it has to go—17
it's more complicated than that. 18
Ms. LeBlanc: Yeah. It's always more complicated is the answer. 19
Chair Reckdahl: We would have to go then and say, "We want to offer another course, 20
and we think we're going to fill it up. Can we have the money?" Then, we'd collect it 21
and … 22
Ms. LeBlanc: Yes. 23
Chair Reckdahl: You have to pass it all around. 24
Ms. LeBlanc: Yeah. Generally, there's a timing issue, but they generally say yes to 25 things like that. 26
Chair Reckdahl: Does anyone else have any go-backs? Very good. We really appreciate 27 this. Very well done. Thank you. 28
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4. Rinconada Park Long Range Plan. 1
Chair Reckdahl: Next, we have Rinconada Park Long Range Plan. Peter Jensen is here. 2
It's good to see you, Peter. 3
Peter Jensen: To see you as well. 4
Chair Reckdahl: This is meat and potatoes for us. This is a park design. 5
Mr. Jensen: Good evening, Commissioners. Peter Jensen, Landscape Architect for the 6 City of Palo Alto. Very excited to be here tonight to hopefully get a recommendation for 7
the adoption of the Rinconada Long Range Plan as well as the environmental work that 8
coincided with it. The project has been going on for several years, especially the last few 9
years as it has been coupled with the JMZ and the design of that and refining that design 10
down to the point where we could do the environmental work. Now that that work has 11
been completed and we're through the public process of review of that document, we're 12
back tonight to request this recommendation. I'm going to do a little presentation here, 13
and then we can move into discussion. At some point, I hope that we can get to a vote 14
where we can adopt as well. I think we went in pretty good detail last time of what was 15
in the Long Range Plan. I will give a little synopsis of those things and group those 16
things into the elements in the park that we would like to add or renovate or maintain 17
there. Of course, the image on the screen is what we have in Rinconada Park. I think it 18
is very important to talk about the Long Range Plan in the similar sense as the Master 19
Plan, where the recommendations made in the plan especially on the—are 20
recommendations for general items that we want to, like I said, either add, renovate, or 21
maintain in the park. As you'll see in the process and, of course, just with the Master 22
Plan process as well as when specific projects come back to the Commission for 23
redevelopment or adding new features, we will have the opportunity to vet those ideas 24
and to expand on those. I do have a couple of those that we are actually working on now 25 with the west end of the park. Just to give you a general idea of what I'm talking about 26 there … The image showing on the screen now is the current design of the parking lot 27 for Rinconada Park. If you compare that design to the design that's shown in the 28
schematic plan for the Long Range Plan, there are definitely differences. Those 29
differences derive out of a more complex design process that has more community input, 30
more input from the Commission as well as more input from staff on the design. For the 31
parking lot at Rinconada Park, the development of the pedestrian/bicycle link that links to 32
Embarcadero there is a new feature that is not currently shown in the graphic for the 33
Long Range Plan. Again, that derived out of the development of the project. The Junior 34
Museum and Zoo's footprint is smaller than what is shown in the Long Range Plan. 35
Again, that comes from direct feedback from the Commission as well as the community. 36
There's a lot of flexibility, I think, within the plan that I just want to bring up as we go 37
along. The next one is our early development of the west end of the park and the 38
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redesign of the playground. I don't think we've talked about this recently, but we did 1
apply for an inclusive playground grant from the County of Santa Clara. We've 2
developed this plan as that process to go out and get the grant and provide the pricing for 3
such a thing. If you start to compare, again, this design to what is shown in the Long 4
Range Plan, there definitely are going to be differences to them. As far as the major 5
elements that we want to see within the plan that the plan addresses are the connection 6 aspects to Rinconada Park and linking the elements all around the park, creating that 7
central walkway that gets you from the Art Center over to Lucie Stern, combining the 8
playgrounds together, adding more group picnic areas, developing again that link which 9
is then to move the central restroom off the visual, I guess, corridor in the park next to the 10
pool facilities so that is more open. Like I said, a lot of connections around the park and 11
pathway work and those types of things that the park really needs. As I said, we've been 12
in the process of developing the plan. Really, the plan's been developed a few years ago, 13
and now we're at a point that we're ready to move forward. I know the PARC is ready to 14
move forward with some renovations out there. It would be nice to get to that aspect 15
where we can actually do some things in the park by recommending adoption of the plan. 16
The adoption is on a timeline linked with the Junior Museum and Zoo project since they 17
are linked together in the development of the park and the parking lot and the Junior 18
Museum and Zoo space. The plan currently is to take the Long Range Plan to Council on 19
November 27th along with a whole bunch of other things, agreements between the 20
Friends of the Junior Museum and the City and the CEQA document and have that 21
adopted so the Junior Museum and Zoo project and the Rinconada Long Range Plan 22
project can proceed forward. There were questions last time from the presentation before 23
that are addressed in the staff report. We can discuss those items and any other questions 24
that you may have. If you would like, I can go into more specific detail about things in 25 the park, but that's up to you. 26
Chair Reckdahl: I want to say one thing. I really like this table with all the comments 27 and the responses. Quite often when we do follow-ups we don't know if our comment 28
was ignored, why it was ignored. This is very good. I like that a lot. 29
Mr. Jensen: I'm going to give credit to Kristen on that, for making that up in the Master 30
Plan process as we went through that. It makes it a lot clearer and specifically addresses 31
the comments from the previous meeting, which is a lot more transparent in how they are 32
addressed in the plan. 33
Commissioner Greenfield: I felt like you were spoon-feeding the Commissioners on that 34
one. It's appreciated. Thank you. 35
Chair Reckdahl: Anne, do you want to start? Do you have any questions? 36
Commissioner Cribbs: (inaudible) 37
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Mr. Jensen: The question was do we have money for the Long Range Plan, which is 1
based over a 25-year period. Currently, we have funding for a portion of Phase I, that 2
portion around the Junior Museum and Zoo. Majority of that money is going to go to the 3
reconfiguration of the parking lot, and then we're going to try to stretch as much as 4
possible to also include this west end work in that process as well. The Junior Museum 5
and Zoo is looking at constructing next summer. Sometime after that we would also be 6 embarking on this Phase I. The further funding of the plan goes along with the rest of our 7
funding conversations about renovations to the park. In our study of the renovation 8
process, we're looking at between $1 and $2 million every 4 years to the park to achieve 9
what is in the plan. That does not include big-ticket items like the pool, though, which 10
are bigger, standalone capital projects to do that. Do we have the money to do it all right 11
now? No, we do not. Most of the things in the plan are definitely items that we really 12
want to do, especially the connection aspects and just the upkeep and maintenance of the 13
park to maintain the way it is now. We will definitely be putting in the future, of course, 14
more capital improvement requests to keep moving forward with the renovations of the 15
park. 16
Vice Chair Moss: Will the Phase I that goes with the Junior Museum include that park 17
restroom at that west end? 18
Mr. Jensen: That is the plan if we can get it in there. We've talked about, which again 19
goes back to some of the conversations before, maybe using some park impact funds for 20
that since there's not a restroom down there. Impact funds can be used for new amenities. 21
They couldn't be applied towards the playground, because the playground already is in 22
that location. It could be applied towards a restroom, and that would be one of the 23
revenue streams that we'd be drawing from to build that. Of course, we also have a CIP 24
for new restrooms. We could use our upcoming CIP to fund that as well. I think there 25 are some options in doing that. The plan would be to get the restroom in there. 26
Vice Chair Moss: The only thing is parking. I know that the City Council is concerned 27 about not too much parking and a lot of other alternatives. You have the shuttle stop, and 28
you have the bike paths. Do you think you'll get any pushback on the number of parking 29
spaces? 30
Mr. Jensen: The number of parking spaces in the new design of the parking lot is very 31
similar to what's out there now. It's actually a few less than what is there now. The 32
environmental review studied parking there. During the weekdays, the parking was 33
sufficient for the facility itself. Of course, in peak hours and on the weekend, the parking 34
lot is impacted. Instead of expanding into some of the oak tree stands there to make the 35
parking lot bigger to grasp ten more spaces, it was felt by Public Works and 36
Transportation Department that it wasn't worth that impact to supply that few parking 37
stalls. It's always going to be an impact to the park. It just does not have a lot of parking 38
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around there. Definitely the overflow parking usually happens to the neighborhood to the 1
north along Hopkins and that direction. During big scale events, that is going to continue 2
to happen. 3
Vice Chair Moss: I think the Junior Museum is going to be quite a draw. With the Palo 4
Alto Players and other events at Lucie Stern, it could get quite hairy. This is the best we 5
can do. 6
Mr. Jensen: One thing that we talked about previously with staff working on this is 7
making sure the calendars of those facilities around that parking lot, that use that parking 8
lot, are taking into account each other and what they're doing there. Hopefully, the Lucie 9
Stern doesn't rent itself out for a wedding while the Junior Museum has a large event out 10
there itself. Those types of things can help really lessen the impact of that limited 11
parking out there. The other thing that also is helping with parking as well is the 12
expansion of the parking lot and allowing more school buses to come to the Junior 13
Museum and Zoo. That will alleviate some of the single cars that are coming there. 14
That's also another option of reducing that. 15
Commissioner Greenfield: This is an amazing plan, offering lots of resources to the 16
community on many different levels and lots of details. Great job with that. Thank you. 17
I appreciate seeing the additional circulation diagrams. I have some questions. I'm not 18
quite sure what you're trying to convey and some of the choices of them. There's the 19
circulation diagram, circulation and connections, and you have three different levels of 20
paths, the Type A main pathway, Type B secondary pathway, and Type C support 21
pathway, which is clear. That's great. On the next diagram, you're showing the 22
circulation diagram of major connections. Rather than just showing the Type A—you're 23
not showing the Type A path through the center of the park. I'm just wondering what that 24
decision was based on. 25
Mr. Jensen: Are we talking about the graphic that's on the screen currently? 26
Commissioner Greenfield: Yes. The more direct path between the pink dot and the Zoo 27 isn't highlighted there. 28
Mr. Jensen: The graphics that you're seeing there, that are in the appendix, are from the 29
Initial Study from the site analysis that was done of pathways through the park. Mostly 30
the graphic is there to show this path of travel from one end to the other is taken. I do 31
agree that it starts to get onto the other pathway. At the time that the consultant was 32
doing a field operation or observations, this particular path—actually in the process of the 33
Long Range Plan, there were three options of pathways through the park of where the 34
primary path could go. This was one of them that was shown at the beginning. It did 35
receive a lot of community pushback that the actual lower path along the school was the 36
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main path that should be linking there. That's the path that is now associated with the 1
development of the plan. 2
Commissioner Greenfield: Some of these drawings are a little bit out of date? 3
Mr. Jensen: They evolved from the first site analysis where they started to study where 4
people move and entered through the park and how they got from one end to the other, or 5
they accessed it from the surrounding neighborhoods. 6
Commissioner Greenfield: I had similar questions on the pedestrian path and the bike 7
paths of travel. For example, on the bike paths there's kind of a dead end at the school. 8
There's no direct path from the parking lot/Middlefield area to the center of the park. 9
Similarly on the pedestrian paths, there's nothing on Middlefield Road. There's obviously 10
lots of people walking from their homes in the community into the park. I'm just 11
wondering why there weren't circulation paths shown for (crosstalk) cases like that. 12
Mr. Jensen: The absence of those were some of the main aspects of the analysis. For the 13
pedestrian pathway, there is not along Middlefield a clear connection into the actual park 14
because of the boundary of the school that's there and the parking lot, the Junior Museum 15
and Zoo. There was no clear access into the park to show that in an analysis diagram. 16
That's something that we wanted to make, and that came clear from doing the analysis. 17
Especially with the bike path at the end of the school, that access point which is right here 18
currently doesn't have a great access point too. A lot of kids from the surrounding 19
neighborhoods use that as their main access point into the school grounds. There was no 20
identified bike path of travel there. As we developed the plan, the plan is to add that link 21
from Middlefield as well as a direct link from Hopkins to the back of the school, that 22
helped develop the connection point. 23
Commissioner Greenfield: Are these diagrams for the purposes of analysis to determine 24
what paths you need to end up with or is this part of the plan? The way it's labeled it 25 looks like this is your plan. 26
Mr. Jensen: No. These were used to analyze where paths were being used and where 27 links or connections were missing in that plan to develop the plan overall. We can make 28
that—in the appendix, I think we can clean that up a little by titling them a little bit 29
differently so it's clear they're used more for analysis aspects than actually the plan itself. 30
Commissioner Greenfield: It's more historical. 31
Mr. Jensen: Right. 32
Commissioner Greenfield: Thank you. That's all. 33
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Vice Chair Moss: Before you leave this picture, the neighborhood down in the lower left. 1
There is really no clear bike path except on Embarcadero. You see the arrow coming 2
down—right there, right there. There should be at least a crosswalk or something to get 3
down into that area and all the way into Stanford. Is there any plan for that? 4
Mr. Jensen: The plan discusses that. I say that there's a first phase, but there have been 5
phases that have been taken from this plan already that are going on. Currently, 6 Transportation is working on—that's the Kellogg intersection at Embarcadero. They're 7
adding an enhanced crosswalk across the street, which does not exist now. They've 8
actually also designated Kellogg a bike route, designated bike route. That's where the 9
development of that—eliminating that driveway and just making it a pedestrian/bike 10
access path straight across Kellogg into the park came to be through development of that 11
process. That was something we recognized early in the development of the plan and is 12
already starting to be addressed in the plan. 13
Commissioner LaMere: Great plan. Excited to see it come to fruition and get going. 14
One quick question. I don't know if it's out of the scope of things. The path from the 15
Children's Library into the park is kind of a strange path right now for a kid because it 16
goes by two driveways. I think one of them is for maybe the refuse. I don't know if it's a 17
service lane. It crosses a parking lot. If you were a kid, it's a tough walk. What changes 18
with the new parking lot are from—if you were coming from the Children's Library and 19
you were a younger kid with or without a parent, what are changes to that path? 20
Mr. Jensen: We are going to address that. Right now, it's kind of an ambivalent zone of 21
where you're supposed to walk. It does cross a few driveways. In fact, some of the 22
walkways are the ramps of the driveways coming in. There's really not a specific 23
sidewalk there. From the edge of the Children's Library that makes the curve at Hopkins, 24
we are going to rebuild that whole thing and put a sidewalk there, actually extend the 25 ramps out a little bit, and make that whole connection there a lot better than what it is. 26 Right now, yes, there's no clear direction there. Also, going to shift the driveway down a 27 little bit and align it more with Harriet to make that a clear entry. Right now, it's pushed 28
off to the side. We're definitely going to address that area. 29
Commissioner LaMere: Thank you. I also appreciated the addition of the sidewalk all 30
along Hopkins, which right now doesn't exist. That's a great addition. Thank you. 31
Mr. Jensen: Besides the main path in the center of the parkway, which is the featured 32
pathway because it gets you interior of the space, the direct link along Hopkins is very 33
important. Currently, along the tennis courts there is no sidewalk at all. You have to 34
walk behind the cars, which isn't the greatest situation. Along the Magical Bridge edge, 35
there's a sort of decomposed granite path that is no longer considered accessible. To 36
continue the path from one end of the park to the other is a key feature. 37
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Commissioner McDougall: Peter, thank you. Thank you very much. The comments 1
relative to the table, everybody was saying thank you very much. I'd like to double that 2
or triple that because half the questions and half the table were my questions. Thank you 3
very much for the detail on that. It was probably done so you could point out I ask too 4
many questions. In terms of the presentation, I do want to comment on the timeline slide. 5
Congratulations or thank you to you and everybody else involved for the perseverance 6 that has gone on. I don't happen to have and I should have my copy of the plan that we 7
had from before with us. One comment would be in this presentation, it says Long Range 8
Plan why, and then it says project goals. What's missing from there—I don't know if it's 9
actually in the plan and missing from the presentation or if it was missing in the first 10
place—is something about access to nature. This basically just describes everything else 11
you're trying to do. The park is big enough—particularly at one end, it's got lots of 12
opportunity for access to nature. You are doing things there. That should be—if it's not 13
in the plan itself, it should be. If it's just missing from the presentation, I'm sure you're 14
going to be making this presentation again, particularly to Council. It needs to be called 15
out. If it was called out and we thought about it more, I'm still bothered—I know I asked 16
this question before—by the fact that this is described as a nature area, and then you've 17
got the Magical Forest over here. You've got this corridor in between. Across the street 18
you've got all of that park area that's part of the Library. It would seem to me that if that 19
was looked at as all one piece instead of three separate pieces, that's a nontrivial amount 20
of nature access including people access to nature, but also nature access to habitat. I'd 21
like to see that reinforced. The other thing—I hate to go back to the table. If you could 22
find that slide that has the pedestrian circulation. This one. Consistent with what Jeff 23
was just talking about too, when I talked about circulation, I thought about some of the 24
parks where once you get to the park, then you can walk around in a circle and you can 25 measure out is that a quarter mile, a half mile, or whatever else. Everything we've done 26 here—I think you've done a tremendous job of it—is not so much circulation within the 27 park as it is access to the park or in fact, as you were just talking about, how you get from 28
Point A to Point B at one end of the park or the other. Just like you were just talking 29
about, if this diagram included a path behind the Magical Forest and behind the tennis 30
courts, I could see that you could easily create a very nice, long walk that included 31
watching people on the fields, passing the swimming court, walking through that nature 32
area. Sure, you had to get back out behind the tennis courts, but you could create a really 33
long walk. If you went further and included going around the school on the outside, it'd 34
become a tremendous fitness area, particularly for older people that are into walking and 35
not running or whatever. For runners, getting through the park and finding the bathroom 36
on the way is great. For walkers going around and around, I'd like to see that added. I'm 37
not going to stand in the way of a recommendation and movement with it tonight. As 38
you say, if each of these drawings might be considered incomplete and if one more red 39
line could be added, I would sure like to see that. Thank you for everything. 40
Mr. Jensen: Thank you. 41
Draft Minutes 34
DRAFT
1
Chair Reckdahl: I'm happy. I like this. I don't have any comments. Big picture. We did 2
this for Rinconada. We have two other large parks, Greer and Mitchell. Do we have 3
something similar to that coming forward for those two? 4
Mr. Jensen: Not currently we don't. That's something that we can definitely talk about. 5
The initial CIP for Rinconada Park was to renovate the pathways and drainage and 6 irrigation in 2008. Here we are now at 2017. It was thought at the time that there was 7
money allotted, but there was not my position in the City. No one knew exactly what that 8
money was supposed to be tied to and exactly what we were supposed to be fixing out 9
there. The idea was to move into a long range planning process for it, to figure that 10
aspect out. I would probably have simplified the graphic to be just a little more bubble 11
diagram to explain what we would like to see out there and try to lessen the time to 12
develop the plan, so we could get to the actual stage of implementation. 13
Chair Reckdahl: Funding is a big issue. Something like this is going to go a long way in 14
getting funds because it is a nice, big plan. 15
Mr. Jensen: Right. Currently, for our other regional parks, it would be more appropriate 16
to do those types of things. It is something we can consider doing. The capital 17
improvement budget is based on maintenance of existing. Now we have the Parks 18
Master Plan, which has a whole bunch of stuff in it that we'd like to implement, a lot of 19
those things are implemented at our regional parks. We may want to consider—I know 20
that Mitchell Park is coming up for a good-sized renovation in 4 or 5 years from now. I 21
think we can have further conversations if we want to maybe start up the planning 22
development a little bit sooner than that, to try to identify the elements from the Master 23
Plan that are recommended for the park to add new items to it and how we can develop 24
that further. 25
Chair Reckdahl: What about Greer Park? That always … 26
Mr. Jensen: Greer Park as well. 27
Chair Reckdahl: … seems like it's not very polished. The athletic fields get a lot of use, 28
but the facilities in Greer don't seem to be the same togetherness as Mitchell or 29
Rinconada. 30
Mr. Jensen: The development of the park itself is very different than Mitchell and 31
Rinconada Park, which were designed by RHAA in the 1950s, where there was 32
definitely—that design group is very well known for the detail and the thought that was 33
put into those parks. You can see Mitchell Park, Rinconada Park have elements that have 34
stood the stand of time and are still very well used. The ideas behind the development of 35
Draft Minutes 35
DRAFT
Greer Park was to develop more of a sports complex field area that lacks some of those 1
details. There is nothing on the books currently for any type of renovation for Greer Park 2
in the short term. That doesn't mean we can't look at how we can improve it or add new 3
enhancements to that park. 4
Chair Reckdahl: I really think that having a thoughtful process with Greer might be 5
useful and be able to step back and say what could we use here and where would we put 6 it, and develop a plan like this, that is kind of inspirational and says what our eventual 7
goal is. I don't think we have an eventual goal for Greer. It just seems to be used and 8
kept as is. Any other questions? Go ahead. 9
Commissioner Greenfield: I have one more comment related to the circulation paths. It 10
might be interesting to consider signage somewhere within the park that would show a 11
circular route or multiple routes and state the distances of that. People would be 12
interested in knowing this is a half-mile loop, this is a mile loop, whatever it is. I 13
wouldn't go overboard with it. Including that in one place is sufficient, but I think it 14
would be popular. 15
Mr. Jensen: That definitely would be one of the main aspects of the park as far as an 16
exercise facility goes if it was maintaining that inner loop around the turf area. To Don's 17
point, providing the opportunity to have different pathways or provide the opportunity 18
that these pathways link up in different sequences could be more interesting to walk 19
instead of the same loop over and over again. Identifying those in the park is a great way 20
to promote that aspect of it, so people just don't think about the utilitarian aspect of 21
walking through this space, but they can also gain some physical—maybe it also will 22
promote people to use the pathways for physical activity as well. 23
Chair Reckdahl: This is an action item. I need a motion for approval of the Rinconada 24
Long Range Plan. 25
MOTION 26
Commissioner McDougall: I'd like to so move. 27
Chair Reckdahl: Do we have a second? 28
Vice Chair Moss: Second. 29
Chair Reckdahl: We have a second. All in favor. Opposed. Unanimous. 30
Mr. Jensen: I think you have to make a recommendation on the environmental as well. 31
Chair Reckdahl: This is the environmental—what actually are we approving? 32
Draft Minutes 36
DRAFT
Mr. Jensen: Last time, I would say, I presented on the findings of the mitigation. They 1
were the standard findings. Nothing has come back from the community that would 2
require any further amendment or revision to the CEQA document. Pretty much is what 3
it is. 4
Commissioner McDougall: (inaudible) the motion to include that. 5
Chair Reckdahl: Two separate motions or one? That's strange. My agenda does not 6 have that one, but Jeff's does. Do we have a second? 7
Commissioner Greenfield: I'll second it. 8
Chair Reckdahl: All in favor. Opposed. The environmental is also passed. 9
Mr. Jensen: Thank you very much. 10
5. Other Ad Hoc Committee and Liaison Updates. 11
Chair Reckdahl: Ad hoc and liaison updates. Does anyone have anything? 12
Commissioner LaMere: Quickly, I met with Palo Alto Recreation Foundation. They've 13
agreed to be an organization that would accept donations toward the Master Plan. 14
However, they would like to target any donations toward programs, which would keep 15
toward the mission of what they do as an organization. 16
Chair Reckdahl: We had the School Board and the City get together once a month. We 17
had a sharing of athletic facilities overview. Actually, it wouldn't be bad to have 18
Stephanie come in here and just—it took 10 minutes or something, but it would be worth 19
listening to her. 20
Ms. O'Kane: Sure. We can arrange for that. What Chair Reckdahl is referring to is we 21
gave a presentation at the City/School Liaison Committee, which is two School District 22
Board Members and two Council Members, on the current facilities that are shared 23
between the City and the School District and the agreements that are in place to make that 24
sharing happen. We can come back with that presentation here as well. That's a good 25 idea. 26
Chair Reckdahl: She has it done, and I thought it was useful. It'd be worth our time. I 27 think it was probably 10 minutes or something like that, so it's not bad. Next month we 28
meet about middle school athletics. Is that set or is that tentative? 29
Ms. O'Kane: I think it's set for November. It was originally December, and I think 30
they've moved it to November. 31
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DRAFT
Chair Reckdahl: This is for the liaison committee, not here. That's something else that if 1
we put together a presentation for that, we may want to bounce that to here afterwards. 2
Ms. O'Kane: Definitely. We could maybe combine that presentation since it's related to 3
the School District. 4
Commissioner Cribbs: Would that presentation include the places that are possibilities 5
for use of School District facilities that we're not able to use right now and what the 6 barriers are to them? 7
Ms. O'Kane: We talked a little bit about what other opportunities for sharing space are, 8
which would be the high schools. We currently don't use the high school gyms or fields 9
and then also pool access, additional swimming pools. We talked about it briefly. What 10
was decided is that was a forum to mention it but not really make progress on it. We 11
discussed having a regular meeting where staff from the two agencies would talk about 12
moving things forward like that. There could be opportunities where the School District 13
wants to use City property, so that would be the right forum probably to do it. We talked 14
about convening a group of staff. 15
Commissioner Cribbs: That's really great news because it feels like this has been a really 16
long discussion and barriers pop up that may be solvable and may not be. Given all of 17
the demand for facilities, especially for sports, it'd be great to investigate every single 18
inch. Thank you. 19
Vice Chair Moss: Along those lines, Cubberley separate and distinct from the long-term 20
plan, we use Cubberley gyms a whole lot and other School District property on that site. 21
Can we talk about that a little bit, the current use of those gyms? I don't really know—22
every time I walk by there, there's badminton or volleyball or whatever. I really don't 23
know how much we're really using on that site. 24
Ms. O'Kane: We can include that in our presentation as well. 25
Commissioner McDougall: I would just put out a reminder that Project Safety Net is 26 having a meeting tomorrow. What they're doing is reviewing results from the 27 development assets survey. The development assets are something that we as a 28
Commission should and do support. Just be aware of that meeting. 29
Commissioner McCauley: Is it possible to get a little bit more detail on the field, tennis 30
court, and pickleball subcommittee? What's happening? I appreciate the update in the 31
packet, but I'd be interested to know what the next steps are. 32
Chair Reckdahl: Do one of the members want to discuss? 33
Draft Minutes 38
DRAFT
Commissioner Greenfield: We met to discuss a proposed schedule for pickleball and 1
working with the community to set up—Adam Howard set up some milestones of 2
outreach to the pickleball community, outreach to tennis. There is a sketch of a plan 3
moving forward; it's not really fleshed out at this point to be able to communicate. I see 4
it is on the agenda for the December meeting, so we're aiming to have the details worked 5
out and then come to the full Commission at that point in time. I don't know if you have 6 more specific questions. 7
Commissioner McCauley: I'm mostly just interested in the timing. I know that we've all 8
spoken about this is something that, if possible, we want to move upon quickly. I don't 9
think it's probably a timing issue on our side, but it's now taken almost the entire year to 10
hopefully have this before the Commission in a form that we can do something on it. 11
Commissioner McDougall: That's why we're proceeding with these outreach. We can't 12
bring something to ourselves and to Council without having this outreach. I think 13
Adam's trying very hard to put that together. I don't think there's any lack of effort, 14
particularly on Adam's part. 15
Commissioner Greenfield: Timing was definitely discussed. Certainly we're pushing to 16
get things done as quickly as possible. Adam, frankly, put together what seemed to be a 17
fairly aggressive schedule even without—the end line is further out than we would be 18
hoping. I don't remember offhand what the target was, but it's going to be well into 2018. 19
Chair Reckdahl: I understand your frustration. Things move slow around here. The 20
good news is the pickle people are using the courts. We're not impeding their enjoyment. 21
I think we have time to do it right and do the proper outreach and come back to it. As 22
long as we are still using the parks and they're using the parks, I think we're happy. 23
Commissioner Greenfield: I think the pickleball community should be confident that this 24
hasn't fallen off the burner plate. There is active work being done on this fairly 25 aggressively. 26
Commissioner McDougall: Why don't we take an action to be more articulate on that 27 subcommittee next meeting? 28
Commissioner McCauley: Fair enough. It was not meant as criticism. I'm just 29
(crosstalk). 30
Chair Reckdahl: Curious. No. The field use pickleball, in December we're on the docket 31
for that. Is that a policy change or is that—do we have to bounce that off Council or is 32
that something that we can do ourselves? 33
Draft Minutes 39
DRAFT
Ms. O'Kane: I don't think at that time it will be a policy change. It's possible we could 1
move this to November depending on how far we are with—before we bring this out 2
really into the public, we want to have some focused discussions with the tennis players, 3
the groups that use the tennis courts as well as the pickleball users out of respect for them 4
and the need for them to use the courts. That's the driving force right now. It's possible 5
that we might be able to come back in November, but it's really going to be a report on 6 the direction that we would like to go with pickleball. It could be November; it could be 7
December. I don't think at that time we would be necessarily coming with policy 8
language. It would be more a direction of where we're headed. 9
Chair Reckdahl: I think my preference would be if we could have a short update next 10
month, a discussion item. Agendize that and then shoot for some type of action in 11
December then. 12
Vice Chair Moss: Are you going to have some of the ad hoc committee helping you with 13
the discussions with the tennis players? You guys did a great job on the pool, the 14
aquatics, getting all the different parties together. I'm assuming you're going to do the 15
same thing with the tennis players. I don't think there's as many groups. Still, it's 16
daunting. 17
Ms. O'Kane: We are. We'll definitely include the ad hoc in those discussions. 18
Commissioner Cribbs: (inaudible) the field and tennis court facility use. We also need to 19
talk about the lights for the soccer. If they want to get started in February and have a 20
pilot program, then we should be discussing it pretty soon. 21
Commissioner Greenfield: I agree we need to talk about that. Another topic for the 22
committee as well as the facility use policy that we have directives from Council to 23
address. We have work to do. We have had discussions of keeping these items separate 24
in terms of actions is the appropriate way to go rather than lumping them all in together 25 so as to try and make progress on something without confusing the issues. We definitely 26 would like to move forward on all of them. 27
Chair Reckdahl: If we have limited time, the soccer at Cubberley, the lights, are a higher 28
priority because their schedule is much tighter. Pickleball, at least they're using the 29
courts right now. 30
Commissioner Greenfield: Agreed. 31
Mr. Jensen: If you haven't been over to the tennis courts by the Magical Bridge 32
playground to see the pickleball, it is a … 33
Commissioner Cribbs: A sight. 34
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DRAFT
Mr. Jensen: Yes. It is probably the most fast exploding sport that I've ever seen. It 1
started out as a few people playing out there, and now it's quite a large community. 2
Chair Reckdahl: What are the hours for that? Do you know? 3
Mr. Jensen: I've seen them out there playing all day long. 4
Commissioner McDougall: Some of us have even gone and played. Right, Kristen? 5
Ms. O'Kane: That's right. I believe they're Wednesdays. 6
Commissioner Cribbs: And the weekends as well. 7
Ms. O'Kane: And the weekends as well. On Wednesdays, I think they're wrapping up 8
around 1:00, earlier, late morning. 9
Chair Reckdahl: It's like 10:00 to 1:00 or something like that. 10
Ms. O'Kane: Something like that. 11
Vice Chair Moss: I can't emphasize enough what was said earlier about the noise and 12
needing to be far enough away from the residences. That spot in Mitchell Park is perfect. 13
You won't find another one in the whole City as perfect as that, except maybe El Camino 14
Park. 15
Chair Reckdahl: What is the noise? Are the people chattering? 16
Vice Chair Moss: No, no, no. The pop, pop, pop. 17
VI. COMMENTS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS 18
Chair Reckdahl: Now, let's look at comments and announcements. Do we have 19
anything? We can move on to Tentative Agenda … 20
Mr. Jensen: I'll make one. We are going to for this fiscal year start pretty soon 21
embarking on a renovation of Boulware Park, which is over by the Fry's facility. We'll 22
be bringing that back to the Commission at some point in the next few months to start 23
looking at the—commenting on the design. 24
Vice Chair Moss: What about the AT&T property next door? 25
Mr. Jensen: I don't really have—it's kind of out of my … 26
Vice Chair Moss: You really should get that going before you do much planning. 27
Draft Minutes 41
DRAFT
Mr. Jensen: Definitely for the community meeting purposes, I will have to have a pretty 1
solidified answer. That's probably going to be one of the major questions that is going to 2
be asked as we look at the renovation of the park that's adjacent to it. I don't have an 3
answer for that now, but I will be delving more into that with staff to see where we're at 4
with that. I don't know, Kristen, if you have anything to add with that. 5
Vice Chair Moss: There are many stakeholder groups—not many, but the Ventura 6 neighborhood and the Friends of the Palo Alto Parks who would love to be involved and 7
help you push. We have gotten much guidance about how to do that. If there's some way 8
that we can push from the outside, can you let us know? 9
Chair Reckdahl: The last I heard, they had not even divided the property yet. Have you 10
heard anything up to date? 11
Ms. O'Kane: I haven't heard any updates. I know they had—I believe they've submitted 12
their application for the lot line adjustment. I can talk to our real estate department and 13
let you all know what the status is of that property. 14
Chair Reckdahl: November … 15
Ms. O'Kane: I have one other announcement. I would like to recognize Tanya. She has 16
taken a job somewhere else, so she'll be leaving us. I did want to say thank you to Tanya 17
for all your help with the Parks and Rec Commission and getting up to speed and all your 18
support. 19
Tanya Schornack: It's been an absolute pleasure. 20
Ms. O'Kane: Thanks for ordering the name tags too. 21
Chair Reckdahl: What is your last day? Wednesday, this coming Wednesday. This is 22
your last meeting then. They really should have bought her an orchid or something like 23
they do for the outgoing Commissioners. 24
Vice Chair Moss: Thank you. 25
Chair Reckdahl: You'll be out with Herb every month. We'll miss you. We just got you 26 trained, and now we have to—who's going to be taking over? Do we know yet? 27
Ms. O'Kane: We don't know yet. It's possible you'll see Catherine's face back here 28
filling in until we have a replacement. 29
Chair Reckdahl: We thank you. You've done a wonderful job. We'll miss you. Good 30
luck. 31
Draft Minutes 42
DRAFT
VII. TENTATIVE AGENDA FOR NOVEMBER 28, 2017 MEETING 1
Chair Reckdahl: November 28th, which is the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. Park 2
dedication, activities prohibited, the Buckeye Creek. This is not a PIO for Buckeye 3
Creek. This is just a status. 4
Ms. O'Kane: I believe it's just a status update. 5
Chair Reckdahl: An information update for Baylands Boardwalk. Dog park PIO, I 6 understand that. What does "and rules" mean? 7
Ms. O'Kane: There's a desire to have some dog park rules for each of the dog parks, such 8
as how many dogs you can bring. Maybe the ad hoc can help with the others. 9
Commissioner McCauley: There are presently rules for dog parks and just to update 10
them along with doing the Park Improvement Ordinance for Peers Park to dedicate that 11
space for the dog park. 12
Chair Reckdahl: Is the concern that people—are dog walkers coming with 20 dogs or 13
something? 14
Commissioner McCauley: That's one concern, yes. 15
Chair Reckdahl: We need supervision at the parks. There was a case at Mitchell Park 16
where a dog was killed. We really need to limit the number of dogs that one person can 17
bring in. 18
Commissioner McCauley: The proposal that the ad hoc and a group of stakeholders 19
looked at was a maximum of three dogs per person. 20
Vice Chair Moss: Do people bring their dogs and leave them? 21
Commissioner McCauley: No, they should not. In terms of next month's agenda, I think 22
it might be a fairly busy one with some things that have to be done. One of which is the 23
dog park. It sounds as though field use is going to have one or two issues that probably 24
need to be addressed next month. I wonder whether the park dedication agenda item 25 could be postponed perhaps to December or another month. 26
Chair Reckdahl: We'll evaluate that. I agree. We may want to bump that, but we'll see. 27 Quite often things get bumped on their own. We'll keep it there until we need it. We 28
don't want to cram too much of it. December, we have … I'm confused. The PIO for the 29
Long Range Plan, is there actually a PIO? I thought each one does a … 30
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DRAFT
Mr. Jensen: When we further develop the west end, which I started to show you the 1
playground aspect of it, we will bring that back at some point to get a PIO for it. It 2
probably will mostly be a few months from now, though. That will be an aspect of it 3
definitely. 4
Chair Reckdahl: That will be a PIO for the west end, not the whole. 5
Mr. Jensen: It'll be for the limits of the specific boundary of the project, which will be 6 hopefully the complete west end. 7
Chair Reckdahl: That'll be 2018 you think. 8
Mr. Jensen: Yes. 9
Chair Reckdahl: Any other suggestions of things we want? 10
Commissioner Cribbs: Where's the school liaison and the School/City discussion 11
presentation? 12
Chair Reckdahl: Where is it? 13
Commissioner Cribbs: When is it going to be on our agenda? Is that something else? Is 14
that going to be another time or … 15
Chair Reckdahl: If Stephanie has time, we can bring her back either in November or 16
December to give that 10-minute spiel she had about sharing. 17
Ms. O'Kane: I think that's fine. It'll depend—if the November agenda gets really long, 18
we might postpone to December. I'll work with the Chair to find the best time. It should 19
be either November or December. 20
Commissioner Greenfield: Do we have a date confirmed for the December meeting? 21
Ms. O'Kane: December 19th. Is that correct, Tanya? 22
Chair Reckdahl: That is confirmed. If there are no other changes to the agenda, we're 23
down to Number 7. 24
VIII. ADJOURNMENT 25
Meeting adjourned on motion by Commissioner McDougall and second by 26 Commissioner Greenfield at 9:30 p.m. 27
Draft Minutes 44
TO: PARKS AND RECREATION COMMISSION
FROM: DAREN ANDERSON DEPARTMENT: COMMUNITY SERVICES
DATE: NOVEMBER 28, 2017 SUBJECT: PARK IMPROVEMENT ORDINANCE FOR PEERS PARK DOG OFF-
LEASH EXERCISE AREA
RECOMMENDATION
Staff recommends that the Parks and Recreation Commission (Commission) recommend that
Council adopt a park improvement ordinance for a new dog off-leash exercise area at Peers Park.
BACKGROUND The Commission has been interested in expanding the number of City dog parks for many years.
Palo Alto has three dog parks: Greer Park (.12 acres), Hoover Park (.14 acres), and Mitchell Park
(.56 acres). The Commission’s 2010 policy directive to consider dog recreation opportunities as part of any park renovation project has not resulted in any new dog parks.
During the Parks Master Plan process, staff and the Ad Hoc Committee analyzed all areas of
Palo Alto’s park system for potential dog park locations. The results helped form the dog park
policy and program included in the draft Parks Master Plan: Parks Master Plan
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.
Program 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)
o Bowden (North, .37 Acres)
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)
1
o Werry Park (North, .31 Acres)
o Juana Briones Park (South, .47 Acres)
o Heritage (North, .27 Acres)
On December 15, 2016, a community meeting was held to discuss the concept of adding a dog
park at Peers Park. Approximately 25 people attended the meeting. Most of the participants
supported the idea of adding a dog park. There was one family that spoke out against it. They
explained that they walk their dog at the park, often off-leash, but they like the park the way it is. Parks and Recreation Commission
Staff, the Dog Park Ad Hoc Committee, and two former Parks and Recreation Commissioners
(who had previously served on the Dog Park Ad Hoc Committee) met on March 8, 2017 to discuss adding a dog park. The Ad Hoc Committee and staff agree that adding a dog park at Peers Park is appropriate, and that staff should proceed with the design phase.
At the March 28, 2017 Parks and Recreation Commission meeting, staff discussed the concept of
adding a dog park at Peers Park. The Commission supported the concept and recommended that staff proceed with creating a design. At the July 25, 2017, the Commission reviewed the dog park design and requested that staff proceed with Planning Review and Park Improvement
Ordinance process.
The Planning Department completed the Architectural Review Application on October 23, 2017. DISCUSSION
Using feedback generated from recent (and previous) dog park community meetings, suggestions
from the Commission and Ad Hoc Committee, and years of feedback from dog park users at the City’s other three dog parks, staff created a draft design for the Peers Park Dog Park.
Key features include:
● Five foot high vinyl clad chain link fence ● Separate large dog and small dog enclosures
● Wind Screens for the tennis courts to limit interactions with the dogs
● Water fountains to provide water for the dogs
● Concrete sidewalk leading to the dog park entrance
● Six picnic tables for seating ● Trash receptacles and dog waste bag dispenser
The capital improvement project to fund the dog park was approved by Council in June 2017,
and the funds are now available.
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Process and Approximate Timeline:
●Council approval of the Park Improvement Ordinance
●Solicit Bids and hiring contractor to build a dog park (2-3 months) ●Construction (3 weeks)
ATTACHMENTS
Attachment A: Park Improvement Ordinance for the Peers Park Dog Off-Leash Exercise Area
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*NOT YET APPROVED*
ORDINANCE NO. _____
Ordinance of The Council Of The City Of Palo Alto Approving And
Adopting a Plan for Construction of a Dog Off-Leash Exercise Area at
Peers Park
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) Peers Park (the “Park”) is dedicated to park purposes.
(c) The City intends to authorize construction of a dog off-leash exercise area at
the Park. The area intended as the location of the dog off-leash exercise area is in an
undeveloped section of the Park (See Exhibit “A.”) The design is attached as Exhibit “B”.
(d) The Plan of improvements shall comprise, as follows:
(1) The Project will result in the construction of a dog off-leash area that
is approximately 0.72 acres. The existing substrate, turf and mulch,
would continue to serve as the substrate. Perimeter fencing, several
seating areas, waste disposal containers, and a water fountain are
also part of the design.
(2) Access to the dog off-leash area would be gained from the existing
pathways in the Park. Double entry gates will aid in control of
unleashed dogs that might run into the park.
(3) The location of the dog off-leash area was selected due to the Park’s
existing trees, which will provide shade, as well as the proximity to
the train tracks, which help negate the noise issue.
(4) The Project will not impact any trees.
(e) The Project described above and as otherwise depicted in the attached
exhibit, is consistent with park, playground, recreation, and conservation purposes.
(f) The Council desires to approve the Plan for the Project described above and
as depicted 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.
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*NOT YET APPROVED*
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:
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: DAREN ANDERSON DEPARTMENT: COMMUNITY SERVICES
DATE: NOVEMBER 28, 2017 SUBJECT: UPDATE TO DOG PARK RULES
RECOMMENDATION
Staff recommends that the Parks and Recreation Commission (Commission) discuss updates to
the City’s dog park rules.
BACKGROUND The existing rules relating to the dog exercise areas are found in the Parks and Open Space
Regulations (R1-32):
R1-32. DOG EXERCISE AREA
• Dogs may be allowed off leash in the dog exercise areas, designated as such, in Hoover
Park, Greer Park and Mitchell Park.
• No person, with or without a dog, shall be in a dog exercise area before sunrise or after 10:30 PM, consistent with normal park hours.
• City employees performing their assigned duties are exempt from this restriction. No dog is to be left unattended in any dog exercise area.
• A muzzle shall be securely attached over the mouth of all aggressive dogs.
• Any person with a dog in the dog exercise area shall properly dispose of any dog fecal
matter by placing it in the provided receptacles.
• All dogs shall be placed on a leash upon leaving any dog exercise area.
• Violations of these regulations may result in a citation and /or limiting the use of the dog
exercise area.
DISCUSSION
On October 10, 2017, the Commission Ad Hoc Committee working on dog parks met with staff
and a few dog park stakeholders to discuss possible updates to the City’s dog park rules. The group recommends completely replacing the existing rules with the following revised rules:
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• Dogs may be allowed off leash in the dog exercise areas, designated as such, in Hoover
Park, Greer Park, Mitchell Park, and Peers Park.
• Dogs must be licensed, vaccinated, and wearing a collar with ID.
• Dogs must be leashed until safely inside the dog park and returned to a leash prior to exiting.
• Dog owners must remain in the fenced area and monitor and manage their dogs at all
times.
• Dogs behaving aggressively must be removed from the dog park immediately.
• Dog waste must be picked up.
• Children accompanying dog owners must be closely supervised.
• No more than three dogs per person.
• No food or alcohol.
• The small dog section is for dogs 35lb and less. The mixed size dog section is for both large and small dogs. (Applicable at dog parks with this option)
• Dog Park Hours are 7am to 9pm.
• All dog bites must be reported to the City of Palo Alto Animal Services (650) 329-2413
• The City of Palo Alto assumes no liability for the users of this area. Use these facilities at your own risk.
The Parks’ website has a link to the Parks and Open Space Regulations. Signs with these
regulations will be added to each of the City’s dog parks. Staff will also add welcome signs
asking visitors to be considerate of neighbors and help keep the dog park quiet and clean.
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TO: PARKS AND RECREATION COMMISSION
FROM: JAZMIN LEBLANC, COMMUNITY SERVICES DEPARTMENT
DATE: NOVEMBER 28, 2017
SUBJECT: REVIEW AQUATICS CONTRACTOR ANNUAL REPORT
RECOMMENDATION
Palo Alto Swim and Sport has submitted an annual report for review by the Park and Recreation
Commission (PRC), as required by their contract. Staff will provide an overview of the report for
discussion only. No action will be taken by the Parks and Recreation Commission.
BACKGROUND
The City of Palo Alto’s (City’s) agreement with Team Sheeper (operating as Palo Alto Swim and Sport)
requires an annual presentation in the fall of each year to the PRC reporting on:
• Total program hours by program area
• Participation statistics by program area including resident and non-resident percentages
• Customer satisfaction survey results
• User group feedback by program area or rental
• Gross revenues and revenue shares between Palo Alto Swim and Sport and the City
• Risk management documentation
• Training certifications listed by staff members
DISCUSSION
Palo Alto Swim and Sport entered into a full service public/private partnership with the City earlier this
year as a way for the City to provide expanded, high-quality aquatics programming to Palo Alto residents
and to alleviate long-term staffing shortages. Since their full-time operation began on August 14th, they
have already made significant progress in expanding programming. Notably they maintained
recreation/open swimming and offered youth swim lessons through October. They expect to begin
offering recreation/open swim and swim lessons again in April.
Performance highlights include:
• Over 145 residents now hold a monthly pass for Rinconada’s lap swim program,
• Over 400 families participated in extended season open swim sessions, with more than three
thousand others using drop-in lap and open swim since mid- August; several hundred more
people than dropped in to the pool in the same period in 2016 - likely due to increased pool
hours.
• The Swim School provided nearly 10,000 swim lessons this summer, almost twice as many
lessons as provided in 2016.
• 106 children participated in new summer swim camps at Rinconada Pool this year
• 83 percent of swim lesson survey respondents said they were extremely or very satisfied with
swim instruction in the lesson program and nearly all respondents reported that they would
recommend the program to friends
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•95 percent of lap swim survey respondents said they were satisfied or extremely satisfied with
their lap swim experience
•Palo Alto Stanford Aquatics (PASA) has maintained their youth swim team programming with 21
hours of Rinconada Pool use each week and the Rinconada Masters swim program has
maintained their programming with 17.25 hours of Rinconada Pool use each week.
City and Palo Alto Swim and Sport staff meet regularly to ensure that we continue to improve and
expand aquatics programming. Staff will also continue to seek feedback from customers as we engage
in a second year of the aquatics public/private partnership.
For additional reporting information, please review the attached Palo Alto Swim and Sport Annual
Report.
ATTACHMENTS
Attachment A: Palo Alto Swim and Sport Annual Report 2017
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Teen Programs and Services
Tyler Stetson
City of Palo Alto
Recreation Coordinator
Background
The City of Palo Alto recognizes the importance of
creating a positive and safe environment where
teens can develop life skills and grow as individuals.
The Community Services Department offers several
programs focusing on developing the spirit, mind
and body; stimulating creativity, offering challenges,
and building developmental assets.
Teen Leadership
City of Palo Alto Teen Leadership focuses
on empowering teens by providing them
the tools, resources, and support to take
lead in meeting teen needs within the
community.
Palo Alto Youth Council (PAYC)
Teen Advisory Board (TAB)
Teen Arts Council (TAC)
Teen Library Advisory Board (T-LAB)
Teen Center
The Mitchell Park Teen Center
provides a fun, safe, and
engaging space for middle
school and high school teens in
the Palo Alto community.
Afterschool programing and
special events are run out of
the Teen Center.
After-School Programing
Learning Enrichment After-School
Program (LEAP)
Middle School focused program.
The goal of LEAP is to ensure youth
are provided the space, resources,
support, and opportunities to be
empowered and thrive within their
schools, homes, and communities.
Learning Enrichment
After-school Program (LEAP)
Enrollment has seen a 66% increase from last
year. (Fall 2016: 105 enrolled and Fall 2017: 175 enrolled)
Drop-In program with an average daily
attendance of 35-45 participants.
Program activities are built around
participants’ interest.
Activities include: art, music, sports, skill
workshops, games, etc.
Think Fund
Think Fund (formally known as
Bryant Street Garage Fund)
brings mentorship, support,
resources, and funding to
teen-led ideas. With support
from teen services throughout
the process, Think Fund
supports teen ideas from
beginning to end.
Think Fund
Fiscal Year 2017
Funded 20 teen inspired and led projects totaling
$23,067
Served ~1,665 teens
Hosted 2nd annual Think Fund Gala with 125
guests
Summer Camps
Summer Camps
Camp Palo Alto for Preschoolers (Ages 3-4)
Foothills Camps
–Fun Camp (Ages 5-7)
–Day Camp (Ages 8-10)
–Adventure Camp (Ages 11-13)
Teen Camps
–Teen Week Out (Ages 13-17)
–Counselor-In-Training (Ages 13-14)
Summer Camps
Staff hired: 38
–Camp Coordinators (Rec Leader III): 2
–Site Directors (Rec Leader III): 7
–Assistant Site Director (Rec Leader II): 8
–Camp Counselors (Rec Leader I): 21
Number of participants: 656
Revenue: $280,441.60
Teen Week Out
Summer Camp
7 sessions
Number of participants: 56
Camp Themes: California beaches, hiking
trails, amusement parks, aquatic centers,
outdoor activities
Counselor-In-Training Program
(CIT)
The counselor-in-training program provides
opportunities for teens ages 13 to 14 to be a
part of summer camps and gain valuable work
experience.
All CIT participants apply to be a part of the
program and participate in an in-service
training week.
45 participants Summer 2017
Thank You!
Questions?