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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2019-01-22 Parks & Recreation Agenda PacketADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org This agenda is posted in accordance with government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members ofthe public are welcome to attend this public meeting. AGENDA IS POSTED IN ACCORDANCE WITH GOVERNMENT CODE SECTION 54954.2(a) OR SECTION 54956 PARKS AND RECREATION COMMISSION Special Meeting January 22nd, 2019 AGENDA City Hall Community Meeting Room 250 Hamilton 7pm *In accordance with SB 343 materials related to an item on this Agenda submitted to the Commission after distribution of the agenda packet are available for public inspection at the Lucie Stern Community Center at 1305 Middlefield Road during normal business hours. Please call 650-463-4912. 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 timerestriction may be imposed at the discretion of the Chair. The Commission reserves the right to limit oralcommunications period to 3 minutes. IV. DEPARTMENT REPORT V.BUSINESS1. Approval of Draft Minutes from the December 18th, 2018 Parks and Recreation Commission Meeting – PRC Chair McDougall – Action (5 min) ATTACHMENT 2. Election of Chair for 2019 – Chair McDougall – Action (10 min) 3. Election of Vice Chair for 2019 – New Chair – Action (10 min) 4.Green Stormwater Infrastructure Plan– Pam Boyle Rodriguez - Discussion (20 min) ATTACHMENT •Follow up from November 27th meeting 5.Cubberley Master Plan Update– Kristen O’Kane/ Concordia - Discussion (45 min) ATTACHMENT •Presentation on Program Document 6. Aspen Institute Palo Alto Dialogue on Libraries and Community Services– Monique le CongeZiesenhenne - Discussion (30 min) ATTACHMENT 7.Other Ad Hoc Committee and Liaison Updates – Chair – Discussion (15 min) VI. TENTATIVE AGENDA FOR FEBRUARY 26th, 2019 MEETING-PRC Retreat February 8th, 2019, 9AM-1PM, Foothills Park Interpretive Center 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. VII. COMMENTS AND ANNOUCEMENTS VIII. ADJOURNMENT DRAFT Draft Minutes 1 1 2 3 4 MINUTES 5 PARKS & RECREATION COMMISSION 6 SPECIAL MEETING 7 December 18, 2018 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, David Moss, and Keith Reckdahl 14 Commissioners Absent: None 15 Others Present: 16 Staff Present: Daren Anderson, Kristen O'Kane, Natalie Khwaja 17 I. ROLL CALL 18 II. AGENDA CHANGES, REQUESTS, and DELETIONS 19 Chair McDougall: The agenda is available to everybody. Are there any changes, 20 additions, requests, deletions? We don't seem to have a large audience of people that 21 would cause me to want to change any of the order. If not, we'll continue with the 22 agenda as published. 23 III. ORAL COMMUNICATIONS 24 Chair McDougall: That gives us a chance for Oral Communications. I think there are 25 people here with interests, but I don't have any cards for Oral Communications. 26 IV. DEPARTMENT REPORT 27 Chair McDougall: I would invite the Department Report. 28 Kristen O'Kane: Thank you, Chair. Kristen O'Kane, Community Services. I have a 29 couple of things to announce. First, I wanted to let the Commissioners know that last 30 night the City Council did approve our contract amendment for the Cubberley Master 31 Plan. That is to include Greendell School and 525 San Antonio properties into the 32 Cubberley Master Plan scope. The School District Board of Education will be voting on 33 DRAFT Draft Minutes 2 the same item tonight, not the contract but the cost sharing agreement between the School 1 District and the City for that amendment. Last week, as I'm assuming everyone knows, 2 Council did approve the contract with Team Sheeper for operation of Rinconada Pool for 3 a five-year term. That includes subcontracts with PASA, Palo Alto/Stanford Aquatics 4 youth swim team, and Rinconada Masters. Finally, I wanted to mention that Friday, 5 December 28th, is our annual senior New Year's Eve Brunch from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 6 p.m. at Mitchell Park Community Center. The Tenth Avenue Band will be playing. 7 They're an awesome band that has a great following. They're really fun. Tickets are on 8 sale now for $10 at the three community centers and Avenidas and also online at 9 Eventbrite. That's all we have today. 10 Chair McDougall: Thank you. Are there any questions or comments? 11 Vice Chair Greenfield: Could you repeat the time of the lunch please? 12 Ms. O'Kane: It's 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on Friday, December 28th, which I understand 13 is not New Year's Eve. We find we have a better turnout if we don't do it in the middle of 14 the craziness of New Year's Eve. 15 V. BUSINESS 16 1. Approval of Draft Minutes from the November 27, 2018 Parks and 17 Recreation Commission meeting. 18 Approval of the draft November 27, 2018 Minutes was moved by Vice Chair Greenfield 19 and seconded by Commissioner Reckdahl. Passed 7-0 20 2. Aquatics Annual Report 21 Chair McDougall: Next, I'd like to invite Stephanie Douglas to provide the annual 22 aquatics report. I'll let her introduce her guest. 23 Stephanie Douglas: Good evening. Stephanie Douglas, Superintendent of Recreation. 24 I'm joined tonight by Tim Sheeper, CEO of Palo Alto Swim and Sport. I'm here tonight 25 to present on the 2018 annual report, which is required to be submitted by Palo Alto 26 Swim and Sport on an annual basis based on their contract. We started working with Tim 27 Sheeper back in 2015 when we had a crisis with staffing and we needed some assistance 28 with getting lifeguards. That's when we first created a partnership with Tim Sheeper. In 29 2017, we furthered that agreement by having Tim Sheeper take over all of our aquatic 30 operations including lessons, swim camps, and lap swim. They offer swim lessons, 31 aquatic camps, lap swim, open swim, and oversees contracts with Rinconada Masters and 32 PASA. To make it easier to digest the information that was provided in the annual report, 33 I took a snapshot of the data between 2017 and 2018. That time period is August through 34 DRAFT Draft Minutes 3 October. In the 2017 report, that was the information that was provided. In 2017, there 1 were 146 resident monthly memberships. In 2018, there were 212 resident monthly 2 memberships. That is a 45-percent increase. In 2017, there were 2,771 resident drop-ins. 3 In 2018, that number increased to 4,873, a 161-percent overall increase in drop-ins. In 4 2017, 1,297 nonresidents dropped in, and 5,748 nonresidents dropped in 2018. 5 Altogether that's an increase of 161 percent with both residents and nonresidents. Four 6 thousand two hundred seventeen enrolled in swim lessons in 2017. That number did 7 decrease a little bit to 3,205 in 2018, but there were more enrollments in the aquatic 8 camps, which might be the reason why we had a decrease in the swim lessons. The 9 decrease in swim lessons was about 23 percent, but the increase in summer camp 10 enrollments was 233 percent, a substantial increase in the camp enrollment. Overall, 84 11 percent of swim lessons respondents reported that they were extremely satisfied or 12 satisfied with the swim lessons, and 96 percent of lap swimmers also reported they were 13 satisfied or extremely satisfied with their lap swim experience. 14 Chair McDougall: Stephanie, have you moved to a new slide? 15 Ms. Douglas: No. That information is just a side note; it's also in the report. For 2019, 16 Palo Alto Swim and Sport does have some goals that they'd like to achieve. Overall, they 17 do want to increase lap swim, swim lessons, and swim camp opportunities. They want to 18 add water exercise classes for adults, spring board diving for youth, and scuba diving 19 certification for adults, some new, innovative programs that we haven't offered in the 20 past. They also want to expand operating hours and limit facility closures. Facility 21 closures can happen for a number of reasons. Right now, we do have the JMZ 22 construction happening, and that's required a couple of unexpected closures. We're 23 hoping to curtail those in 2019. Most importantly, ensure continued safety of all 24 programs including subcontracted programs. You do have a copy of the report. I also 25 have Tim Sheeper, who can answer any questions you may have pertaining to specific 26 programs. 27 Chair McDougall: Before we go to Commission questions, I do have one speaker card 28 relative to this. I'd like to give Jan Colee [phonetic] an opportunity to speak if she'd like. 29 Jan, you'll have three minutes. 30 Jan Colee: Hi there. I'm a Palo Alto resident and a lap swimmer. I just have three 31 questions that I wanted to ask since the City will be the go-between with Tim and the lap 32 swimmers. On the proposed schedule starting next January—on Saturday and Sunday 33 the lap swimmers currently swim on Saturday from 6:30 a.m. to 9:30, on Sunday from 34 7:00 a.m. to 9:30. The proposed schedule for January has 8:00 to 9:00 closed to lap 35 swimmers and all 14 lanes are given to Masters. This was a proposed schedule prior to 36 Carol Macpherson's Masters being agreed upon. It may have been when Tim Sheeper 37 was going to bring his own Masters in. We have not seen the new schedule, so we'd like 38 DRAFT Draft Minutes 4 to know as lap swimmers whether we'll be continuing to get our primetime hour of 8:00 1 to 9:00 a.m. both Saturday and Sunday rather than handing that over to Masters. We 2 understand that the City has the final say with the schedule and the fees. We see that fees 3 are going up again in January. They went up when Tim took over the pool in August 4 2017. For the seniors, they went up 66 percent and, I believe, for the non-senior 5 swimmers 50 percent. We're wondering why an increase again when the pool starts in 6 January. I'm putting in a plug that every time work has been done in the last few years on 7 the pool, it's been done in December. This week we have lost the warm showers when 8 it's 40 degrees out in the morning. I'd just love it if they could do the maintenance work 9 in November or March or February when the pool is still not at maximum use. If we 10 could have any kind of locker room closure not at the coldest time of the year, that's my 11 one big question. 12 Chair McDougall: Jan, thank you for speaking. I'm going to now go to Commission 13 members to ask questions. Through the process of that, questions that were asked during 14 Jan's questions and comments might come up. Otherwise, I'll encourage her to find a 15 way to work with staff and Tim to get those. I'd like to start with questions from anybody 16 up here. Anne. 17 Commissioner Cribbs: Thank you. I see there will be diving offered. Is that new? We 18 used to have diving, and we haven't had diving, so we're going to have diving again. 19 Ms. Douglas: That would be new for our programs. We haven't had it in the last few 20 years. That's something that Palo Alto Swim and Sport is proposing to try in 2019. 21 Commissioner Cribbs: That's great that you're doing it. I was wondering about the 22 insurance. 23 Tim Sheeper: Those are our target programs for 2019. That's what we'd like to do and 24 introduce to the community. We're still working on that. 25 Commissioner Cribbs: For a long time, it's been a great part of the program. It'd be good 26 if it could come back again. 27 Mr. Sheeper: There are wonderful diving boards, just refinished and redone. We want to 28 put them into use other than just for open swimmers who come in on the weekends. We 29 want to get programs involved. 30 Commissioner Cribbs: We've increased the swimming lessons and increased the people 31 dropping in and increased the programs, which is great. The numbers look really good. 32 What about reaching children for sure but adults as well who would like to learn to swim 33 but can't afford the lessons? What kind of scholarship plan do we have? What do we do 34 to make sure that we're taking care of everybody? 35 DRAFT Draft Minutes 5 Ms. Douglas: The City does have a financial plan, a scholarship plan. If anybody's 1 interested in that, they can contact me directly. There's an application form to fill out. 2 We do work with Palo Alto Swim and Sport to make sure those scholarships are honored 3 through their programs. 4 Commissioner Cribbs: Is it easy to find out? 5 Ms. Douglas: It is online. If you go to the Palo Alto website and then the Recreation 6 website, you'll find a tab that states financial aid. 7 Commissioner Cribbs: Is it mobile—able to do … 8 Ms. Douglas: You would need to fill out a paper application and turn it in. 9 Commissioner Cribbs: No, no. I was wondering if the access was mobile, because some 10 of the population may not have a computer but would have a cell phone. 11 Ms. Douglas: If they come to any of our community centers, they can also pick up a 12 form. 13 Commissioner Cribbs: I'm happy to see the contract going forward, happy to see the 14 modifications that were made. I appreciate everybody working together for the 15 swimmers in Palo Alto. I look forward to hearing more about it in the future. Thank you 16 very much. 17 Ms. O'Kane: Tim Sheeper has secured a certain dollar amount of scholarships through 18 the Beyond Barriers program, which provides scholarships for youth in the community. 19 He has secured that funding. We really appreciate that to provide a deeper level of 20 assistance to the community. 21 Commissioner Cribbs: That's a really wonderful program. Is it specific to Palo Alto or 22 for all of your venues? 23 Mr. Sheeper: Beyond Barriers was started five or six years ago. It has grown. Beyond 24 Barriers is able to offer scholarship lessons in Menlo Park, specifically at Belle Haven 25 Pool. This year will be the first year at Rinconada Pool. We're pretty excited about that. 26 It's going to be a lot of lessons that we're able to give. People just come into the pool, 27 and there will be information about the scholarship and posters and flyers. They'll be 28 able to ask. It'll be on the website as well, like Stephanie mentioned. A lot of it will be 29 people coming in and asking about it. It's not a typical thing to come to a swimming pool 30 and get a scholarship for a swim lesson. It's quite unique, and we're really pleased that 31 we've been able to start this program six years ago and that it has expanded. It's been 32 well funded by the swimming community in Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and the Atherton 33 area. It's mostly funded by Masters swimmers. They're giving back to the community. I 34 DRAFT Draft Minutes 6 think they have a limit of over $20,000 this year, $25,000 in scholarships. It's quite 1 substantial. 2 Commissioner Cribbs: Are either of you in touch with the U.S. Swimming Foundation. 3 Their program is learn to swim, and they do have some resources and some publicity 4 resources. If you're not, I'm happy to make an introduction. Thank you. 5 Mr. Sheeper: Is that the make a splash? 6 Commissioner Cribbs: Yeah. 7 Mr. Sheeper: We've looked into that before, lovely program, wonderful. I think we've 8 found a way to fast-track it and get the lessons right away. We could process and give 9 lessons the same day a lot of the time with the system that we have in place and that 10 we've refined over six years. 11 Commissioner Cribbs: Whatever works. It's so good to take advantage of all the 12 resources our there because teenage and kid drowning is critical now, and adults as well. 13 That's great. Thank you. 14 Ms. O'Kane: That program also provides scholarships for kids to become certified 15 lifeguards. Kids are also learning a skill that they can use for employment. 16 Mr. Sheeper: It's a hurdle for a lot of youth, to become certified. It's anywhere from 17 $150 to $300 for the certification through the Red Cross, depending on where you get the 18 service. Beyond Barriers funds 75 percent of that cost whether we do the certification in 19 Palo Alto or Menlo Park. 20 Commissioner Moss: I want to echo Anne's comments. I am so happy that the growth 21 has been so successful. I'm also very happy that you were able to make an agreement to 22 keep Rinconada Masters and keep the lap swimmers' schedule as close to what they've 23 had in the past as possible. I don't want to see this stellar growth in lessons if it's going to 24 impact those two very valuable stakeholder groups. You have about eight stakeholder 25 groups, but they are two of those eight. I want to make sure everybody gets equal 26 support. I really appreciate everything that you've done. I look forward to a great year 27 this year. Thanks. 28 Vice Chair Greenfield: I want to echo the appreciation the whole Commission and the 29 plurality of the whole community feels about the contract success that we've had and 30 keeping Rinconada Masters. Thank you. I'm glad we were able to make progress on 31 that. In looking at the survey and the usage comparisons, very positive and successful 32 numbers. I observed that PASA and Palo Alto Masters weren't included in this. I 33 understand that they're subcontractors, but we're missing a part of the story by not having 34 DRAFT Draft Minutes 7 data for those programs. I'm wondering if it'd be possible in the future and perhaps 1 retroactively to get a similar survey to users from those subcontractors and to have 2 comparison numbers available. I'm wondering if we've had this in the past. 3 Mr. Sheeper: We'll have to reach out to both PASA and the Rinconada Masters and have 4 them send out the survey link to their memberships. We don't have access to their 5 membership lists because they're private entities. We have flyers at the pool, so people 6 can answer the survey. For 2019, we can send out or we can … 7 Vice Chair Greenfield: I understand you're providing qualitative and quantitative data on 8 the programs which you administer. That makes perfect sense. It'd be great to get those 9 numbers for the complete picture. The last time the pool discussion came before the 10 Commission, the only schedule we saw was January, and there were questions about lane 11 usage and comparisons of what exists now versus what's coming. I share the concerns 12 we heard from the speaker to understand the changes or the status quo that is going to be 13 maintained. 14 Mr. Sheeper: What we're trying to do is open the pool more and prevent closures and 15 provide more service to the community. We are moving in that direction with this 16 schedule we put out. We are hoping and planning to open every day at 6:00 a.m. and 17 keep the pool open until 4:00 p.m. without any closures. After PASA uses the pool, we 18 plan to open the pool for a few nights a week. Prior to operation, the pool had three 19 openings and three closures per day. It's difficult for the community to get a good handle 20 on the schedule without looking at the schedule, so it's not intuitive. It's also difficult to 21 staff the schedule because we have to find a workforce who will work in short blocks of 22 time, 3 hours or 2 1/2 hours. There are a lot of individuals who need a full-day shift. 23 We've moving in that direction, and we hope at one point in time to keep the pool open 24 from 6:00 a.m. until 8:00, 8:30, 9:00 p.m. if the demand is there. That's where we want 25 to move. We put the January schedule out because that was the request, and it seemed to 26 cause a lot of concern that we're all of a sudden going to change the schedule or shorten 27 the schedule. I think that's the assumption. Contrary to that, we want to open the pool a 28 lot more. The concept is shared usage as much of the time as possible rather than 29 exclusive usage of the pool because it's large, 14 lanes. We're moving in that direction. 30 That was one of the big changes with the Rinconada Masters. Their leadership team was 31 able to see and align with our values on that. There's going to be a shared usage that will 32 take care of a lot of the concerns that we've had in the past. 33 Vice Chair Greenfield: I do appreciate the desire to open the pool to more of the 34 community and increase usage as much as possible. I do remember commenting 35 previously that the mornings showed shared usage, which is a change from exclusive 36 usage from one group to another. My recommendation is that the staff continue to 37 oversee the schedule. A lot of the groups seem to be happy with the exclusive usage 38 DRAFT Draft Minutes 8 model. It seems like there are benefits going either way. The shared usage model means 1 there should be availability for all. In the case of the speaker's question, it would suggest 2 if there's shared usage, there should be access during these hours that the speaker was 3 concerned about. Would that be the case or am I missing something? 4 Mr. Sheeper: There's going to be shared access at that time. 5 Vice Chair Greenfield: Staff is happy with this schedule? How far out will you be 6 posting the schedule? Obviously, January is right around the corner, so we want to make 7 sure that's … 8 Mr. Sheeper: The goal is to have two schedules a year, a summer and a non-summer 9 schedule. The non-summer schedule is 42 weeks. The summer schedule is a specific ten 10 weeks. That's our model of operation and has been for a dozen years in the pools that 11 we've operated. 12 Vice Chair Greenfield: The schedule that's posted for January is likely to continue until 13 June? 14 Mr. Sheeper: Correct, yes. 15 Vice Chair Greenfield: Thank you for that clarification. 16 Mr. Sheeper: The community gets used to it; the staff gets used to it. 17 Vice Chair Greenfield: Glad that the Rinconada Masters are included with the program 18 right now. I know this is a trial basis essentially. I would like to know what the 19 Commission can do to help increase the likelihood of success, whether it's Commissioner 20 Cribbs serving some sort of role as the Commission liaison to the pool program or what 21 we can do. That's a question for staff or for you, Tim. 22 Mr. Sheeper: Hopefully, we never get to the point where we're meeting with Ms. Cribbs. 23 We had a great discussion meeting a few weeks about. It was about alignment of values 24 and what our company values are. Once we're able to get both entities to see the values 25 and the importance of them, we're going to turn the corner. They've changed a little bit of 26 their leadership model, so we have a point of contact. It's going to help us work through 27 any challenges or any issues that may arise. I don't foresee any issues. 28 Ms. O'Kane: From staff's perspective, if you hear anything in the community, if you 29 notice something related to aquatics, just let staff know. I'm fairly confident that between 30 Tim and his great staff and our staff everything will run smoothly. We welcome any 31 feedback and comments that you hear from the community. 32 DRAFT Draft Minutes 9 Commissioner Cribbs: It feels like, seems like all of the parties are well on their way to 1 making the agreements work. I don't think there's any need for me to be a liaison; 2 although, I appreciate your suggestion. Everybody is going to adhere to the contract. I 3 suspect the next time you come back it'll be great and will continue to be great. 4 Everybody loves swimming, and everybody wants to see the pool utilized and open and 5 lifeguarded and safe and have enough room for everybody. That's how I'm thinking at 6 this point. 7 Commissioner Reckdahl: The speaker said one of the weekend days all the lanes are 8 dedicated for the Masters swimmers. You're saying that's not the case. It's going to be 9 split 50/50? 10 Mr. Sheeper: I'm trying to recall the schedule. We put it together, and it was proposed a 11 while ago. When the Rinconada Masters are in the pool right now, they'll be using half 12 of the pool. The other half of the pool will be open to the lap swim community. That 13 will allow us to provide the safety staff, the lifeguarding, for both the Masters and the lap 14 swimmers. 15 Commissioner Reckdahl: That's very good. That is a good strategy. I like the idea of 16 splitting it 50/50. If it's 100 percent Masters, the lap swimmers are kicked out of the 17 pool. I'd rather have them 50/50. That's more convenient for everybody. Stephanie, can 18 we go back a couple of slides to those numbers? Those are impressive. The resident 19 drop-ins on the second bullet are a big increase. Do we know why that occurred? Did 20 we do better marketing? Did people just fall in love with swimming? 21 Mr. Sheeper: We're opening the pool more. 22 Commissioner Reckdahl: It's longer hours. 23 Mr. Sheeper: There's more availability. 24 Commissioner Reckdahl: If you look at the numbers, we about doubled residents and 25 tripled or maybe a factor of four for nonresidents. Do you know why that is? 26 Mr. Sheeper: Your competition pool is used mainly by residents, lap swimmers and 27 Masters swimmers. Your play pool is used mostly by nonresidents. 28 Commissioner Reckdahl: Do we know where these nonresidents are coming from, 29 Menlo or EPA? 30 Mr. Sheeper: I would say they're not coming from Menlo. I don't know where they are 31 exactly coming from. My assumption is … 32 Female: From San Francisco to San Jose. 33 DRAFT Draft Minutes 10 Commissioner Reckdahl: Everywhere. The swim lessons went down. Did we offer less 1 swim lessons or we didn't get as much enrollment in swim lessons? 2 Mr. Sheeper: Those 354 kids in camps also get one swim lesson per day, so that's an 3 additional 1,800 swim lessons that were given. If you put that into the total, we're 4 reaching up to 11,000 lessons provided this past year. That's not shown in that, but it's 5 within that 354 campers. 6 Commissioner Reckdahl: You think the aquatics camps cannibalized some of the swim 7 lessons? Is that why … 8 Mr. Sheeper: You could look at it that way or it embellished the swim lessons. 9 Commissioner Reckdahl: When we offered the swim lessons, did we have empty spots 10 or were they pretty well full? 11 Mr. Sheeper: In my opinion, the swim lessons will never fill. We just try to hire and 12 staff and train more instructors so that we can meet the demand. 13 Commissioner Reckdahl: This last year, you were happy with the offerings? Did we 14 pare back the offerings or did we find … 15 Mr. Sheeper: We didn't pare back, no. 16 Commissioner Reckdahl: I'm just looking at the difference in the 42 and 32. Was that 17 unexpected that we would see that decrease? 18 Mr. Sheeper: There have been some changes in the community. These are just 19 assumptions, being a social scientist and an operator. There was a decline in swim 20 schools in general in the area. We had a decline of 10-15 percent in Menlo Park, our first 21 decline in a dozen years. There's been a decline in enrollment in schools. There are other 22 factors going on the community. That's one thing. Another thing is this was the first year 23 where the swim lessons were not subsidized by the City so the lessons went to market 24 rate. One of those three or a portion of all those three went into the numbers. 25 Commissioner Reckdahl: The speaker also mentioned that they had a price increase or 26 we'll have another price increase in January. How do our lap swim rates compare to 27 other cities? Are we higher, lower, the same? 28 Mr. Sheeper: We try to keep it—it's right in the same sweet spot. It doesn't really move. 29 I would like to talk to the speaker to see how it's raised 66 percent. I'm not sure if that's a 30 number that I remember her saying. We've changed the whole fee structure of how they 31 pay to come and use the facility. It really benefits frequent and consistent users because 32 they're paying a fixed monthly cost. The more times you use the pool, the lower the cost. 33 DRAFT Draft Minutes 11 Commissioner Reckdahl: It could be apples and oranges if you're talking about paying 1 per swim as opposed to paying a monthly fee. 2 Mr. Sheeper: Right. There's still that fee to come in and use the pool. We're not 3 changing that; we haven't changed that. 4 Commissioner Reckdahl: I would really encourage, Stephanie, the next time you come 5 back to have a comparison of our prices for lap swimming and swim lessons, etc., to 6 some other cities around. It'd be a nice sanity check for us. 7 Ms. Douglas: Definitely. We do have those numbers, and we can pass them on. I'll 8 make sure next year's report will have that included. 9 Commissioner Reckdahl: In the staff report, we looked at the survey responses, and 85 10 percent said they were satisfied or extremely satisfied. Is the glass 84-percent full or 16-11 percent empty? Sixteen percent of people being unsatisfied seems kind of high to me. 12 Do we know why they were unsatisfied? 13 Mr. Sheeper: In which … 14 Commissioner Reckdahl: This is swim lessons. Do we know why people were 15 unsatisfied? 16 Mr. Sheeper: There are five categories they can go in. 17 Chair McDougall: Less than 16 percent are unsatisfied because there's a middle 18 category. All they did in the staff report was put the top two. There's satisfied and less 19 satisfied and then totally unsatisfied. This doesn't include the middle category that was 20 satisfied. 21 Commissioner Reckdahl: This is extremely satisfied or satisfied. 22 Chair McDougall: If you look at the detail of the report, you'll find … 23 Commissioner Reckdahl: There's a middle. That would make me feel happier that most 24 of those were neutral. Thank you. 25 Ms. Douglas: There are some comments in the report from the survey. Some of the 26 comments do speak about the water being too cold or the children not learning very 27 specific swim strokes and things of that nature. That may impact some of the survey 28 results, that feedback. 29 Commissioner Reckdahl: That's the kind of thing I'd want to know, that it's something 30 outside our control. 31 DRAFT Draft Minutes 12 Chair McDougall: It is Palo Alto after all, number one. Number two, whatever the 1 number is, it is an important number to look at. If it's 3 percent unsatisfied, you still want 2 to know why the 3 percent. That's a good question. Commissioner McCauley. 3 Commissioner McCauley: Staying on the topic of the surveys. I thought there were a 4 pretty low number of actual survey respondents based on the number of people who are 5 using the pool. What's the method for collecting the surveys? 6 Mr. Sheeper: It's a broadcast email that goes out with a link to the survey. That's sent out 7 several times. There are also surveys that can be filled out at the pool. What was it, 61 8 respondents? 9 Commissioner McCauley: It was something like that. I expected it to be thousands. I 10 appreciate that people are busy. I would just plant the seed of is there a way to in a 11 systematic way get additional feedback that's going to be helpful to you. I'm sure you're 12 already thinking about. You don't need to answer on the spot. I'm just suggesting that 13 maybe there's something you could do to augment or supplement the survey process at 14 the moment. 15 Mr. Sheeper: In all the years that we've been doing it, it's usually in that range. It's never 16 really come up into triple digits as far as people responding. When people are satisfied 17 and happy, they really don't let you know. It's usually the converse of that. 18 Commissioner McCauley: Understood. There are a couple of comments that seem to 19 repeat. I don't know that there's really a trend that you see as you look through those 20 comments, at least that I don't see, that stands out to me. Is there something that stands 21 out to you? From those survey responses, are there takeaways that you would say "these 22 are the top three things that we think we need to do"? For example, one of the things I 23 saw repeated a couple of times was the locker rooms need to be significantly upgraded. 24 That's obviously not on you; it's on the City. Are there other things? What are your top 25 three items from the survey responses that stand out to you as priorities? 26 Mr. Sheeper: My top one is always in the swim school. This is a constant challenge in 27 any swim school. It's about the consistency of the swim instructor. The end user wants 28 to come in and get that same swim instructor each and every lesson that they have. As a 29 parent, I want the same thing. On the other side of it, that's an extreme challenge for us, 30 to give that service because of all the changes in the workforce through the summer or 31 through that period of time with moving classes, illnesses within the workforce. That's 32 the number one thing that always gets me. The second thing is ease of registration. 33 We're constantly working on streamlining what it takes the end user to, first, engage with 34 us, learn the program and what we're offering, and then get them registered into a class. 35 It's this really complex puzzle that we're trying to simplify and make quick and easy for 36 the end user. We're constantly working on that. Those are the top two things. 37 DRAFT Draft Minutes 13 Commissioner McCauley: On the revenue numbers, I think this is a question for 1 Stephanie. Can you give us a comparison of net impact to the City from when the City 2 was running the pool to now with Team Sheeper? This year we're going to have going to 3 the City as of October 31st $6,422. I think it was the case when the City was running the 4 pool that we were in the red rather than being in the black at all. Maybe you can put a 5 little color on what that circumstances … 6 Ms. Douglas: You mean from a financial standpoint between Palo Alto Swim and Sport 7 versus when the City was doing it? 8 Commissioner McCauley: Right. 9 Ms. Douglas: I don't have exact figures. Since we're not paying labor costs, overhead, 10 really the only cost to the City is maintaining the pool. I don't have the exact figures, but 11 it is substantially less. There is significant savings for the City. Kristen, I don't know if 12 you have any other … 13 Ms. O'Kane: We included that in our presentation to Council last Monday. I can try and 14 pull it up or forward the Commission … 15 Mr. Sheeper: It was a savings of $140,000 for the City of Palo Alto. 16 Chair McDougall: That's the number that I was going to use from that report. 17 Commissioner McCauley: That's helpful to know. It's probably always important when 18 you think about these reports to include the comparison for the City. Obviously, there's 19 lots of different considerations going into a public-private partnership like this one, but 20 the bottom-line cost is one of the things to have in mind and consider, particularly when 21 it's CSD's unanimous view that we have better service today than we did when we were 22 trying to operate it ourselves. On the note of potential improvements for this sort of 23 report in the future, I appreciate the checklist that's in the contract for what Tim's annual 24 report should look like. I also appreciate very much your doing the year-over-year 25 comparison. We're going to continue to compile more and more data. It's helpful in this 26 report to see those year-over-year comparisons and hopefully growth in programs year-27 over-year. Where there isn't growth, we can quickly identify it and understand where 28 there might be areas for rethinking a program or perhaps rededicating resources towards 29 an initiative that we think is important. It would also be important to include, to the 30 extent we have data that is comparable, information about when the City operated the 31 pool so that we have a complete perspective. If you had numbers from 2015 or 2016 32 when the City was operating the pool, we can see the continuum. Everyone here is 33 telling us that things are much better than they used to be, which is great, but it would be 34 helpful and put everything in context to have those numbers laid out. Everyone else has 35 noted this, and congratulations again on the new contract with the City. Congratulations 36 DRAFT Draft Minutes 14 as well on the favorable resolution of the issue with Rinconada Masters. To be very 1 candid, there's a little bit of dissonance between what I've heard and the other 2 Commission members have heard in the past two months about the situation with the 3 contract versus what we're hearing tonight, which is everything is going really well. 4 Chair McDougall touched on this at the October Parks and Recreation Commission 5 meeting. There's probably a lot of work to do in order to rebuild trust within the Masters 6 community. I hope you would continue to do that. I don't know if there's any particular 7 mechanism, but this goes to the speaker's comment as well. If there were a mechanism 8 for regular feedback—I don't know if you have an advisory committee that includes 9 PASA and Rinconada Masters and a representative or two from the lap swim community. 10 That would be great. It would be hopefully a means by which you can both promote 11 communication on a very regular basis and also have something tangible to say that 12 you're working hard to rebuild that trust with these different constituencies. I don't know 13 if you have thoughts on that, but I'd be interested to hear your thoughts. 14 Mr. Sheeper: Those mechanisms are put into the agreement that we have with them. Just 15 to reiterate what I said earlier, it has been a realignment of the principles that we've laid 16 out and of our values. What we have been able to do is work together with the group so 17 that we can hit one of our number one company core values, which is safety. We have 18 now taken on the role as the safety provider when the Masters are in the pool, which was 19 the big challenge and the hurdle that we were unable to overcome. Moving forward, we 20 have a point of contact, a single point of contact, with the Rinconada Masters where we 21 can work through any issues that may arise as we work towards the long-term agreement. 22 Commissioner McCauley: I appreciate that you have appointed folks to help in the 23 communication realm when an issue arises. I guess what I'm suggesting is it would be 24 helpful if you were proactively meeting once a month or every other month with your 25 different constituencies so that it's not only issues that you always hear about or problems 26 and trying to put out fires but rather that there's hopefully good will generated through 27 that regular communication, folks feeling as though they're kept in the loop and people 28 aren't surprised by changes and adjustments that happen. If you already have that, that's 29 great. If not, then I would … 30 Mr. Sheeper: One hundred percent agree, yes. 31 Commissioner LaMere: I appreciate all of the previous comments by Commissioners. I 32 just have a couple of questions. In regard to the open swim drop-in that's more for the 33 younger kids, is that impacted or has there been a problem with lines and people getting 34 in or does it seem—obviously, it seems like it's fairly high usage. Is that correct? 35 Mr. Sheeper: Yeah, it's very high usage. There's a challenge on some warm days in the 36 summer to get everybody into the pool that wants to get into the pool. We've worked 37 DRAFT Draft Minutes 15 through wait lists. We've worked on putting as many guards in the swimming pool as 1 possible and still keep it safe. 2 Commissioner LaMere: I don't remember the fee structure as far as drop-in. Is there 3 much of a price difference between a resident and a nonresident user? 4 Mr. Sheeper: It's a $1 difference. 5 Commissioner LaMere: In your calculations, you base things off family drop-in counting 6 as four visits. What's the range of a family pass? It could be anywhere from two or three 7 people up to six or seven? What's your limit? 8 Mr. Sheeper: Five. 9 Commissioner LaMere: The calculations for drop-in for July for the nonresidents is not 10 correct. The nonresident number should be higher in your July calculations. 11 Mr. Sheeper: There's a mistake? 12 Commissioner LaMere: You didn't multiply the family by four. It's a significant 13 difference in your report, just as a note. I would echo what Commissioner McCauley 14 stated about working with Masters and working with these other stakeholders, 15 specifically Masters. I feel optimistic where things are going and appreciate the efforts 16 that you're making and also appreciate the core value of safety. That's something where I 17 do see the idea of shared usage and how that can benefit a lot of different stakeholders, 18 where it allows you to staff it and allows you to have continuation with keeping the pool 19 open. Really appreciate those aims, those goals. Hopefully continue the improvements 20 that we've seen in the pool. 21 Chair McDougall: I'm going to do something unusual. We did start this session a little 22 early. I got one card that was late. I'm going to allow Linda Fletcher to talk for two 23 minutes. Understand, Linda, this isn't a dialog. We won't be answering questions or 24 whatever. 25 Linda Fletcher: I just wanted to take a minute. Thank you so much for doing this. I'm 26 sorry I'm late. I've been going through this process since the beginning and recognize 27 everybody that's worked on this. Appreciate the effort that's gone into it. I just want to 28 make sure that we're checking in. I am a lap swimmer and have been a lap swimmer for 29 my entire life. There needs to be continued conversations about the scheduling because 30 sharing lanes—it sounds great adding hours, but those hours aren't necessarily times 31 when people are able to use the pool. A Masters program is a synchronized program; it's 32 a workout. A lap swimming program is completely different. There needs to be dialog. 33 I appreciate what you said. I agree wholeheartedly that stakeholders need to be in an 34 DRAFT Draft Minutes 16 open conversation. One of the continued comments that's come up through this process 1 has been communication. One person has really helped with the pool, and that's Marla. 2 She has been an outstanding contact person that the lap swimmers have been able to go 3 to. We tell her things, and she is on it immediately. I just want to make sure that she's 4 recognized tonight. Really appreciate that. I'm hoping that the communication continues 5 and the hard work that has gone into this whole process pays off with us being able to 6 continually use this community gem. Thank you for your time. Thank you again for 7 doing that. 8 Chair McDougall: Linda, thank you. I'd like to wrap up with some comments. It seems 9 that as much as any Commission or division within the City we're dealing in what I have 10 described before as a scarce and valuable resource and the allocation and protection of 11 that scarce and valuable resource. I think we've come to learn that when you're doing that 12 you can't make everybody happy. You can do your best to make sure you're using that 13 resource appropriately, and that does involve trust that's been mentioned here. I think 14 real progress has been made in that direction, and I thank you for that. In terms of the 15 report, you've heard all sorts of comments about the granularity, including PASA, 16 including Masters. I would encourage staff and Team Sheeper in making any kind of 17 report or thinking about it to exercise their own curiosity. If you were sitting here or on 18 the City Council, what questions would you ask as opposed to here's the form I'm 19 supposed to fill out and I've filled it out. Of course, everybody has thanked Tim Sheeper 20 for doing this. I'd like to make sure we thank Stephanie for her full participation in this. 21 What's been missing is to thank the Rinconada Masters. They're not here, but they should 22 be thanked for their part of the agreement that was come to and whatever 23 accommodations they made. I'd like to also make sure we thank both Jazmin and 24 Kristen. I think Kristen lost a couple of weeks of her life in working on this. It's 25 important we recognize that City staff and management has worked really hard to make 26 all this work. Good effort on team swim here that involves everybody. Thank you very 27 much. Tim, if you'd like to make a last comment, you can or you can escape. 28 Mr. Sheeper: Can't top that. That was good. 29 3. Pickleball Update 30 Chair McDougall: Speaking of scarce and valuable resources, here's Adam Howard, who 31 is one of our scarce and valuable resources. 32 Adam Howard: Good evening. Adam Howard, Senior Community Services Manager 33 with the Community Services Department. I'm here to obtain some feedback from you 34 about the preliminary design of designated pickleball space. As you are all aware at this 35 point, the City of Palo Alto has seen an increase in the number of pickleball players and 36 requests for pickleball space. The Palo Alto Pickleball Club, formerly Silicon Valley 37 Pickleball Club, has been very active in Palo Alto. The club was using Mitchell Park 38 DRAFT Draft Minutes 17 tennis courts 5, 6, and 7 on a first-come-first-serve basis primarily on weekends but also 1 during the week. At the time they were doing that, that wasn't supported by our Court 2 Use Policy. As staff began to see the increase, we figured it was important to legitimize 3 that play, so we created a new policy we brought to the Commission on August 29th. 4 You all supported it, and it was approved by City Council on October 15th. In that time, 5 we have also made some changes to the small paddleboard courts in Mitchell Park and 6 made them designated pickleball courts, which were actually changes to the height of the 7 net. That area is fenced in, so there's not a lot of changes we could make. The 8 community seems pretty happy with it. The area in the top left was small paddleboard 9 courts that are now designated pickleball courts. They're not official size by some inches, 10 but the net now is a proper height. The pickleball community seems to be enjoying those. 11 We have Mitchell Park tennis courts 1-4; these are 5, 6, and 7. This space up here is the 12 space we'll be talking about in terms of new space. The change to the policy legitimized 13 the pickleball space. It also provided some designated pickleball time as well as tennis 14 time on courts 5, 6, and 7. That's great and has been working pretty well. However, we 15 recognize that there is not enough designated space. As Palo Alto Pickleball Club used 16 that space, volunteers have to bring out their own nets. They have to set up their own 17 nets and tear them down when they're done. They've purchased all of those nets. We feel 18 it's time to put a little bit of resources into this and allow the pickleball community to 19 continue to grow in Palo Alto. When we first made a recommendation, it was to turn 20 Mitchell Park 5, 6, and 7 into designated pickleball courts. We got a pretty big pushback 21 on that primarily around the loss of three lit tennis courts. Staff heard that and took that 22 into consideration and came up with what we think is a good combination of joint-use 23 space, new space, and lit tennis courts. This is our recommendation for dedicated 24 pickleball courts. The proposal would be to turn court 5 into four designated pickleball 25 courts, to leave 6 and 7 as multiuse courts, which would be either two tennis courts or 26 seven pickleball courts, and then bump out the area outside court 5 and put two more 27 designated pickleball courts. We hoped that space would be more, but as we started to 28 look at the dimensions, it just wasn't going to work. This would result in eight designated 29 pickleball courts in Mitchell Park, which includes the two paddleboard courts, four of 30 which would be lit, four designated tennis courts, and two multiuse courts, which could 31 be either two tennis courts or seven pickleball courts. What we do like about the joint-32 use space is the high demand of these two sports don't necessarily happen at the same 33 time. Pickleball is in high demand during the day and in the mornings. The high demand 34 for tennis is in the evenings mostly because we don't have as many lit courts. By using 35 joint-use space, we feel like we've reached a good accommodation. If pickleball 36 continues to grow, we might not have enough designated space. This plan also allows for 37 growth if we need to do that. That's our proposal. It's important to suggest here that this 38 is all great, but it does need to be approved by Santa Clara Valley Water District. We've 39 talked with them. We know our measurements from the creek are okay, but ultimately 40 they have the final say with the permit. Although we think it's a great idea, there's one 41 DRAFT Draft Minutes 18 sticking point that's out of our control. We don't think it'll be a problem, but I do want to 1 put that out there. I'll open it up for comment. 2 Chair McDougall: Before we go to the Commission for comment, we have two cards. 3 The first one is Andie Reed. 4 Andie Reed: Hi. My name is Andie Reed, and I live on Melville Avenue in Palo Alto. 5 Thank you for your service as Park and Rec Commissioners. A friend got me to try 6 pickleball a few years ago, and I actually got the ball over the net, which was a 7 revelation. I have never played ball sports before, but once I got started I never looked 8 back. When I heard there were pickup pickleball games at Mitchell Park a couple of 9 years ago, I ran over there. It was an opportunity to walk on the court. Monica, Eric, 10 Marie, and many others would help us out by giving us pointers and then throw you into 11 a game and see how it goes. If you stuck around long enough, you got to learn how to set 12 up the nets and tear them down. A couple of years have gone by. Pickleball can be 13 learned very quickly, at least enough to have a good time. It's really hard to get good at, 14 which makes it the perfect sport. It's fun and challenging. As the sport has grown, we've 15 continued to buy nets and set them up and tear them down, which is quite an operation. 16 I'm currently on injured reserve, which means I can't play for a while, and I really miss 17 the socializing, the physical exercise, the challenge, and the pure fun. As I'm sure staff 18 has determined—I appreciate your hard work—the sport is already very popular and still 19 growing. Weekday mornings, we're there, as many as 20 or 30 players. On the 20 weekends, it's many more. Monica has even been teaching classes for the City of Palo 21 Alto, so anyone can pop in and learn. It would benefit the City of Palo Alto to provide 22 permanent courts for our pickleball players. Thank you for finding a way to share the 23 courts and consider permanent courts for pickleball. Thanks. 24 Chair McDougall: Thank you, Andie. Monica. 25 Monica Williams: Good evening, Chair McDougall and Commissioners. I'm Monica 26 Williams, President of the Palo Alto Pickleball Club. On behalf of the more than 400 27 members of the club—I'm sure you've heard from many of them because they couldn't 28 come tonight—we strongly encourage you to go ahead with Adam's proposal to install 29 six permanent pickleball courts at Mitchell Park. We appreciate all the hard work and 30 staff time that's gone into this project. Thank you very much. 31 Chair McDougall: Thank you. I would add, by the way, that Monica's correct. My 32 inbox is full. There were well over 20, 25 letters that were supportive of the proposal. 33 To be fair, there was one proposal that simply suggested we stripe and set up to share all 34 the courts as a different proposal. I'll entertain and encourage questions, comments. I 35 think I'll start with Commissioner LaMere this time. 36 DRAFT Draft Minutes 19 Commissioner LaMere: Just a couple of quick questions, Adam. Appreciate all your 1 hard work with this. In regard to the paddleboard courts, what is the difference between 2 the paddleboard court and the pickleball? Is it the size of the net or … 3 Mr. Howard: The height of the net is a difference, and the spacing that they currently 4 have isn't as wide as they would need to be an official court. We went with 6 inches 5 between the two and 6 inches to the fences. Ideally, you would be much further than that. 6 Commissioner LaMere: It's still usable for a paddleball court? I don't know how many 7 paddleball users we have. 8 Mr. Howard: They would still be able to use it. Before we did this, I put signage out for 9 a month and a half, saying if these changes would impact your current use, let us know. 10 No one contacted us. 11 Commissioner LaMere: With putting a permanent space at Mitchell Park and doing new 12 construction, have we studied other parks? Is this something that, through the fact that 13 the pickleball players have been there, this is the best place for them? Is it the best place 14 for the City and the best use of all of our parks to do this new construction and to make 15 these courts permanent at Mitchell Park as opposed to another park? 16 Mr. Howard: Thank you for that because I should have clarified. We started at Mitchell 17 because they were there, but I really opened it to every park. There are some unique 18 factors. One, it is a very social game, and 100 people will show up to play. There are 19 only so many places that we have that could handle the parking for that. It is a little bit 20 noisier than tennis, so keeping it away from residents. I looked at all the parks. I looked 21 at blank spaces. I looked at other tennis courts. We just keep coming back to this as 22 being the best location for the City and for the pickleballers. 23 Commissioner LaMere: I did speak to someone who lives on my street, and he is a tennis 24 player. Previously, he had been very outspoken against the pickleball players. He likes 25 to play in the morning, and apparently he struck up a friendship with someone in the 26 pickleball community. They have figured out how to share the space and get along. I 27 was very heartened by that and thought I would share that with you and with the people 28 here. If people can communicate and talk and figure things out, hopefully we can figure 29 out better ways to use our facilities and to share all of our facilities so that everyone can 30 use them. 31 Commissioner McCauley: To dovetail on Jeff's question just a little bit. I appreciate that 32 you did an audit of all the different parks and places where you might put in pickleball 33 courts. I also totally appreciate your point that this is a very social game and folks want 34 to be together. You want to have critical mass, so you wouldn't necessarily have a 35 pickleball court in every park or every place where you have tennis courts. That said, I 36 DRAFT Draft Minutes 20 think one of our Comprehensive Plan goals is to make sure we have park resources and 1 amenities distributed throughout the park system, not only so that it is convenient for 2 people but also so that we reduce commute trips to different locations and things of that 3 nature. Appreciating that this is the right solution for the moment—I think you're 4 probably right that it is—I would definitely encourage you to continue thinking about 5 other places. If it is the case that you have to have so many pickleball courts in order to 6 have any pickleball courts, that would be self-defeating in a sense for the pickleball 7 community. It would be great if we had neighborhood pickleball communities instead of 8 having just one at Mitchell Park for example. I don't know if you have any thoughts on 9 that. 10 Mr. Howard: I agree with you. I started those conversations because I had the same 11 thought process of should we be spreading our resources around. What I heard is that the 12 social aspect of this game is really important to the pickleball players. Two courts in a 13 park might not get used because ultimately it's a group gathering activity. Maybe it 14 would get used, but it wouldn't get used the way pickleball is designed to be used. That 15 was the feedback I received. 16 Ms. O'Kane: Could I add a little bit to that? There are other factors like noise. 17 Pickleball is a bit of a noisy sport compared to tennis. It requires different things than 18 tennis courts. To put it in a neighborhood park where there are houses around probably 19 would be too disruptive. 20 Commissioner McCauley: With respect to the timeline for converting some of the courts 21 to be dedicated to pickleball and conversion of courts 6 and 7 so that they have the ability 22 for mixed-use and then the expansion into that new area along the creek, what do you 23 have in mind? What is your expected timing? 24 Mr. Howard: We'd have to look into it a little further. The restriping and the designation 25 of court 5 and 5, 6, and 7 and all that work could be done really quickly because we were 26 waiting to resurface the courts to make sure we knew what we were doing. That could 27 happen in weeks, months maybe, because we'd have to schedule it. What we don't know 28 is whether whoever we bid this out to would rather do it all at once or do the three courts 29 separately. If they need to do it altogether, that pushes it out a little bit. I'm not going to 30 say years, six months or something of that nature. We don't know if someone's going to 31 need to bid that together or could do it separately. Our ideal situation would be to move 32 forward with court 5 and do the construction separately, but we don't know if that would 33 be a big hassle for the construction company. If that makes it greatly more expensive, we 34 wouldn't want to do that. 35 Commissioner McCauley: I presume that you already have the funding secured for all of 36 this work. Is that right? 37 DRAFT Draft Minutes 21 Mr. Howard: We actually feel pretty strongly that this basic design could be absorbed 1 into the contract that we already have in place, through savings that we've already 2 incurred and because the other courts were already going to get done. This basic design, 3 we do feel like we would already have the funding. I say basic design because there is 4 conversation with the pickleball community that they'd love to see some bleachers or 5 some storage. The conversation has been that they're willing to fundraise to do those 6 things so we wouldn't necessarily be the one paying for it, but we still have to finalize the 7 plans a little bit. 8 Commissioner Reckdahl: Can you move to the next page on the path forward, the next 9 steps? These all look reasonable. When you have stakeholders involved and create 10 public outreach, that could be real time sinks. You talked about talking with the 11 construction people and figuring out how long to schedule them. How much would those 12 other tasks slow down the process? 13 Mr. Howard: Not much. Two is the finish—that's been done. It just wasn't at the time 14 that I had to turn it in. What we were looking for is in writing that we knew the setback 15 from the creek. Technically, 2 is already completed. One is an ongoing thing. Since we 16 changed the policy, I want to see how that's working. The finished design is pretty basic, 17 the idea of a social gathering spot, storage, what direction they actually want the courts to 18 face, which is more of a preference than anything else. Daren might be able to help me 19 with the Santa Clara Valley Water. I don't know how long that approval would take to 20 get from the District. The outreach would be more about informing what we've done. 21 This plan has come from the outreach we've already done. I don't know that we'd want to 22 be doing a lot more about getting input as much as communicating to the public what 23 we've decided on. 24 Commissioner Reckdahl: When I look at this list, I think there's no way we're doing to 25 get it done in six months. Is there anything that we can do speed up the process? 26 Daren Anderson: To our favor, we've had two recent projects in that same area. I say 27 that relative to the Water District permit requirements, both the Magical Bridge 28 Playground and the bridge replacement in the last three years. There was almost no 29 process where we needed to reach out to them. Wanting to make sure nothing popped up 30 at the last moment, we reached out to the District and they said we'd probably need this 31 permit. It's not guaranteed we need it, but I feel like it'll be a faster process than our 32 normal golf course or other permits that you're thinking about. I do not believe it'll be 33 along those scales; I think it'll go faster. One thing this is missing—unfortunately it adds 34 to the list rather than taking away—is we'll need a Park Improvement Ordinance. We'll 35 have to have drawings to share. The Attorney puts that together; we come back to the 36 Parks and Recreation Commission. They recommend that to Council, and Council adopts 37 that PIO, Park Improvement Ordinance. In that ordinance, it would not only have all the 38 DRAFT Draft Minutes 22 amendments we're making to the courts themselves and that new area but also if we're 1 going to do a little meeting area, that would have to be drawn out and specified exactly 2 what we're putting there since it'd be a change in the use of the park. Typically, the PIO 3 process, since we already have a good deal of this already drawn up, the public process is 4 fairly evolved. I'm thinking if we get fortunate timing with the City Attorney's Office 5 and they're available, we'll probably get a three-month turn-around on that. Maybe six 6 months to nine months on the fast end is viable. 7 Commissioner Reckdahl: When we did the batting cages down at the Baylands, the 8 planning process from the time they submitted it to the Planning Division and had them 9 churn through it—they had some objections and they had to iterate on that—it took 10 forever. 11 Mr. Anderson: That's true. We'll have to check with Planning to see if they foresee an 12 architectural or staff-level review from the ARB, the Architectural Review Board. That 13 one's sort of an unknown. We'll have to do a little more outreach; you're right. It's 14 probably prudent—six to nine months is the fast route and potentially, as you know from 15 prior experience, it can go longer depending on where we get hung up. Both Adam and I 16 and Kristen are savvy now with enough experience that we can help shepherd it through a 17 little faster. At least, we'll give it our best effort. 18 Commissioner Reckdahl: The PIO, we have to vote on, and then it goes to Council. We 19 can't start construction until the second reading. 20 Mr. Anderson: Thirty days after the second reading. 21 Commissioner Reckdahl: Third days after the second reading. 22 Mr. Anderson: That's right. 23 Commissioner Reckdahl: From the time we see it to the time we can start construction is 24 probably three months. 25 Mr. Anderson: Kristen just pulled me aside to say, "Can we get to work on this soon?" 26 We understand that could be a logjam. I'll work with Adam to expedite that process. 27 Commissioner Reckdahl: In particular the stakeholder input, we should try to do as much 28 in parallel because we have a pretty good idea what it is. We certainly could talk to the 29 stakeholders tomorrow for that matter. We don't have to wait for these—the hoops don't 30 have to be a series. 31 Commissioner Reckdahl: That's correct. 32 DRAFT Draft Minutes 23 Mr. Howard: That conversation has actually already started. I've sat down with the 1 pickleballers, and they've seen this plan. We've gone a good distance with that already. 2 We just have some final touches that we want to work out the details to, which we didn't 3 get into because we wanted to move one step at a time. That process can be finished 4 quickly. 5 Commissioner Reckdahl: I trust that you guys can do it, but I've been burned too many 6 times by a long schedule. The last time pickleball was here, there were some questions 7 about the safety on the paddleball courts, about the fence and the posts not being in the 8 optimal position. Are we going to do anything about that or are we going to say good 9 enough? 10 Mr. Howard: When we resurfaced, we relocated the poles. That's no longer an issue. 11 They're still closer to the fence than they'd like to be. By moving the poles, we've 12 alleviated some of that concern. 13 Commissioner Reckdahl: We don't have any plans on moving the fences at all or that's 14 just not … 15 Mr. Howard: There are too many restrictions in the area that wouldn't allow us to do it. 16 There's electrical and something else that runs all along those areas. 17 Vice Chair Greenfield: I want to thank Adam and staff for all the hard work they've done 18 on this. I appreciate the reasonable compromise that you're proposing. It is very viable 19 and is the best choice that we can come up with. I also appreciate the comments and 20 questions from Commissioners LaMere and McCauley. Adam's had practice answering 21 these questions, having spent a lot of time with him in the Park and Facility Use Policy 22 Ad Hoc. We've asked these questions and many more. I want to reassure the 23 Commission that this has been well vetted. I do like the plan for just adding two courts. 24 I know we were trying to squeeze three in. I like the availability of increasing the green 25 space that will be surrounding the courts for a gathering place, potentially for tables or 26 storage as has been discussed. As we reach out to the Water District, I don't know if 27 there's any discussion about tree placement and species. That would be appropriate to 28 discuss with them in that strip, but it'd be nice to shade that. We'd probably want 29 deciduous trees to limit the leaves that go on the courts and into the creek area. It seems 30 like that would be an opportunity. I don't know if it's something that needs to be vetted 31 with the Water District. As we dedicate court 5, take it away from being a tennis court, 32 we need to consider how to renumber the courts to maintain some sanity. Maybe we 33 have a "t" for tennis court and a "p" for pickleball court and "m" for mixed-use court. It's 34 something we should consider, and now is probably the time to be moving on that. I 35 know the pickleball community will be hoping that the contractor will be okay with a 36 two-step process so we can get court 5 converted as quickly as possible. Keep up the 37 great work. 38 DRAFT Draft Minutes 24 Commissioner Moss: I want to echo some of the other Commissioners in saying that this 1 is a great opportunity. I was wondering more specifically what was wrong with the 2 Cubberley tennis courts. Was it because they are too close to the house? You could put 3 up a sound wall on two sides if that was necessary. 4 Mr. Howard: There's a couple of issues with Cubberley. One is it is much closer to the 5 residents, so the noise issue was a concern. I know it's a long way away, but the future of 6 Cubberley is still not perfectly clear. It's hard to push forward with changes and plans 7 like this without going through the Master Plan process, which is taking place. It felt like 8 we might be skipping around a little bit too much. The other issue is ultimately to give 9 them even the space that they have at Mitchell we'd have to provide four tennis courts 10 there, only leaving two, which is a lot less attractive to the tennis community. I think 11 we'd be having a bigger impact on the tennis community by moving them there. Plus the 12 residents and the future of Cubberley. 13 Commissioner Moss: There's plenty of parking. 14 Mr. Howard: That was one of the locations that could handle the parking. 15 Commissioner Moss: I thought the Cubberley Master Plan was not going to disturb the 16 fields. I assumed that the tennis courts were part of the fields. Is that true? 17 Ms. O'Kane: They're part of the outdoor recreation area. Pickleball is something that 18 we've been hearing through the master planning process, so there is a possibility for 19 finding the right space within the Master Plan. It's still being discussed, and it's 20 something we have heard. 21 Commissioner Moss: At the same time, looking at lighting some of those courts, you 22 don't want to do that until you know more about the Master Plan. It certainly would be 23 nice to light every single tennis court in the City. Someday I hope that'll happen. 24 Mr. Howard: Okay with me. 25 Commissioner Moss: This item number 4, approval by Valley Water District, I was also 26 looking—I go by there almost every day. There's room on the right if you move the path 27 over further to the right. You can't see it here. On the picture at the bottom of the last 28 page, there is a path on the right and some eucalyptus trees. You could conceivably put 29 those two courts to the right instead of to the left if there's an issue with the Water 30 District, if you can't come to an agreement. To the right of court 7, there's quite a bit of 31 space there if you move the path. There's nothing really there except for some eucalyptus 32 trees. If push came to shove and you couldn't get an agreement in a timely fashion with 33 the Water District, you might want to look at that to the right of court 7. 34 DRAFT Draft Minutes 25 Mr. Howard: We can keep it in mind, but I don't think any of us have looked at that area. 1 Commissioner Moss: Let's just hope you can get an approval from the Water District 2 quickly. Going back to Jeff's comment about trees, I know that a problem with those 3 three courts, 5, 6, and 7, is the eucalyptus trees raining down a lot of stuff on the courts. 4 If there's any way that those trees could be pruned so that there's not so much stuff—I'd 5 be very wary about using trees to shade the new pickleball courts if they're going to rain 6 down a lot of leaves onto the court and cause maintenance issues. 7 Mr. Howard: I can tell you that those trees were recently cut back, but they are rapidly 8 growing. That is an ongoing challenge with where those trees are. 9 Commissioner Moss: The delay of six to nine months, I'm wondering if there's some way 10 that you could do a trial basis and take over court 5 now and just give it to them 11 permanently, while you're waiting for all of the approvals, to permanently stripe. 12 Couldn't you give it to them while you're waiting instead of waiting to do anything for 13 nine months? 14 Mr. Anderson: That's a very good question. We can look into it. 15 Commissioner Moss: The tennis community really appreciated 5, 6, and 7 because of the 16 lights. How much usage does the pickleballers use at night? If the tennis players had 17 those courts at night—I'm talking about 6 and 7—and the pickleballers didn't need it, 18 really there's no issue for the tennis players. Do the pickleballers play at night? 19 Mr. Howard: Some. It's kind of based on the weather. Basically if no one wants to play, 20 no one's out there. It's not like you'll see one sport and not the other. Giving them the 21 opportunity to play at night, especially when it's warmer, they will. 22 Commissioner Moss: I've never seen them out there at night, but maybe I don't go there 23 enough. 24 Ms. O'Kane: If we do have dedicated courts, it opens those courts up to the entire 25 community not just people who have nets and set up the nets on their own. It provides 26 more of an opportunity for people who are learning the sport or who want to explore it on 27 their own to just show up and start playing. 28 Commissioner Cribbs: I think we're making great progress. Adam, thank you very 29 much. Thanks to everybody on the ad hoc committee, the staff. Has it been 18 months 30 or two years since we've been doing this? For sure, the pickleball community and your 31 leadership and the tennis community as well. I love the story about the pickleball player 32 and the tennis player who are now talking about pickleball and tennis at the same time. 33 That's really encouraging. I am totally dismayed about the number of hours and days it's 34 DRAFT Draft Minutes 26 going to take for us to get dedicated courts and reports back from people. Adam, is it 1 possible that you could—there have been a lot of months bandied around here—do an 2 approximate schedule, like three months for this and four months for this, and put it on 3 that one, two, three, four thing? That would help us to understand. It would also help all 4 of the communities who are interested to understand that we don't have a dedicated court 5 tomorrow. If we could hear that, that would be great. I would definitely encourage 6 everybody to see if we can't get court 5 to be dedicated right away and resurfaced. I think 7 that's the court that has the safety thing or am I—we talked about that a little bit. 8 Mr. Howard: I think the safety concerns were for what was the paddleball courts. 9 Commissioner Cribbs: This was something about the resurfacing. I'll find out. 10 Mr. Howard: There was a pretty big crack right down the middle of those paddleball 11 courts that was not very smooth. We're welcome to hearing if I'm wrong. 12 Commissioner Cribbs: If we could figure out that one court, that would be fabulous. 13 Congrats to everybody because it's a long time coming. We're making some progress. 14 Chair McDougall: The idea of getting 5 in their hands sooner rather than later is worth 15 merit. Commissioner Cribbs' idea of having a schedule printed or published so that we 16 control the expectations is worthwhile. The comment about naming the courts, with all 17 the trouble we have with funding we should consider selling the naming rights and raise 18 money that way. Relative to Cubberley, the group that I was in at the last Cubberley 19 thing was actually quite excited about the idea of putting pickleball courts on the roofs of 20 the buildings there. I know you'll take that into full consideration. This has been long to 21 get to this point. I told you earlier I was going to show up and tell you I had a whole new 22 idea; I just couldn't do that to you. This is great. The recognition that one of the things 23 about pickleball is it's a gathering. I'm all keen on, whether it's water rafting or pickleball 24 players, the idea of gathering is really positive and a real contribution to our City. 25 Commissioner McCauley: Forgive me. I need to depart. Happy holidays to everyone. 26 For all of our friends at Grassroots Ecology, thank you for all the work that you do. 27 Commissioner McCauley left the meeting at approximately 8:37 p.m. 28 4. Presentation from Grassroots Ecology 29 Chair McDougall: Next on the agenda is Grassroots Ecology. I'm sorry that we're later 30 than you might have expected on the agenda. Thank you for your patience. 31 Mr. Anderson: Chair McDougall, if I may introduce my colleagues, longstanding 32 partners, wonderful to work with in Open Space for many, many years, Alex Von Feldt, 33 DRAFT Draft Minutes 27 the Grassroots Ecology Executive Director, and Jerry Hearn, the Board Vice President, 1 and another colleague that I haven't met yet. 2 Alex Von Feldt: This is Kristen Williams; she's our Habitat Restoration Director. If you 3 ask any technical questions, I'll be deferring to her. Thank you very much. What I was 4 planning to do tonight is give you an overview of our relationship with the City of Palo 5 Alto and what we've been doing with your open spaces and creeks and parks and all the 6 different people we've been working with. Grassroots Ecology has been around for a 7 while, but you might have known us under a different name. We were part of Acterra for 8 quite a long time. About three years ago, we spun off and formed our own organization. 9 Basically, all of our staff and all of our projects went with us to form the new 10 organization. We have a new Board, of which Jerry was one of our founding members. 11 You might know Jerry Hearn. He's been a longstanding member of the community and 12 was part of Acterra's Board for a very long time. He knows a lot about these open 13 spaces. Our mission is to involve and educate the public to restore local ecosystems. Our 14 programs are lumped into several categories but are somewhat overlapping. Habitat 15 restoration is mainly what we're known for. We also bring some of those techniques into 16 the urban setting, and we call that urban ecology. We provide a lot of education in the 17 field and in the classroom with a real focus on middle and high schools students. We also 18 have our native plant nursery that grows the plants for our projects as well as a few other 19 partners like the Santa Clara Valley Water District, that you were referring to earlier. 20 Our model is basically engaging the community to do all that. We do have about 27 21 staff, but the staff is mainly there for the technical expertise as well as the volunteer 22 engagement. Most of the labor comes from our volunteers. Part of that model is that, 23 when we're getting people into the community to help do something for your local 24 environment not only are you meeting people and having fun, but you're learning a little 25 bit of something about your open space, and hopefully you can bring some of those 26 behaviors back into your own garden and into your own home. Finally, we can't do what 27 we do without great partnerships. The partnership that we've had with the City of Palo 28 Alto extends back to 1996. We've leveraged that to also get additional funding from 29 other agencies such as the Coastal Conservancy, Santa Clara Valley Water District, and 30 many family foundations that want to support environmental education. I've put up a 31 map of our current sites because we often get that question. We've grown quite a bit over 32 the years. Arastradero was our first open space site that we started to steward. We've 33 now extended so that basically we go from Redwood City down to Los Gatos and from 34 the Baylands up to Skyline. It's a combination of habitation restoration sites as well as 35 some water quality monitoring sites along creeks and even some rain gardens and rain 36 barrel systems that we've installed throughout. An important thing to note is our annual 37 participation. You can see how many volunteers we work with a year. We are able to 38 engage almost 13,000 people. As you can see, most of them are youth and young adults. 39 Whenever people have to get community service hours, usually they're calling us. We 40 also have a lot of partnerships with the Girl Scouts, the Boy Scouts, all sorts of AP 41 DRAFT Draft Minutes 28 environmental science, other community groups. We're very appreciative. I was going 1 to go through the sites that we work in within the City of Palo Alto to explain some 2 history and what we're doing. The first one is Enid Pearson Arastradero Preserve. We've 3 been stewarding it since 1996. We engage about 1,000 people a year at 80 different 4 events. That means more than one volunteer event a week we're running at Arastradero 5 Preserve. It's a 620-acre preserve, so we can't cover all the ground. We prioritize what 6 we do. From an ecological perspective, controlling the invasive species and introducing 7 locally native species to improve biodiversity has been a key strategy of ours. We've 8 been spending a lot of time restoring natural watershed functions. One of the project 9 highlights is Mayfly Creek. That was part of the Bressler property that burned down in 10 the fires of the '80s. When the City took over the land, there was a creek buried in a pipe. 11 We worked with the City and Coastal Conservancy to open up the creek—it's called 12 daylighting—and let it run free. Mayfly Creek is a tributary to Matadero Creek. It was 13 able to recharge the groundwater up there and help with some of the downstream flows. 14 We have another project we call berms and swales. That's doing the same thing as using 15 some permaculture techniques to help slow down the water that was causing some 16 erosion into the creek and sink it into the groundwater while also improving biodiversity. 17 I just wanted to point out one of our afterschool programs, Arastradero Stewards. Local 18 high school students, primarily from Paly but also Gunn, come almost every week and 19 learn about local ecology as well as provide a community service element there. If you're 20 familiar with Lynn Hori [phonetic], she is the retired teacher from Paly. She's been 21 working with us for years there. San Francisquito Creek is the border between Palo Alto 22 and Menlo Park. It's a really important steelhead stream and is one of the few that has 23 not been altered with concrete. It was also one that the community really engaged in. 24 Some of Jerry's early days were helping with that. We continue to help restore the habitat 25 along the creek by controlling invasives and planting trees, doing a lot of trash cleanup. 26 One of the sites we work at is El Palo Alto Park, where the tree is. We have school 27 children come and visit El Palo Alto. We also are partners to remove what's called 28 Bonde weir, which is a fish passage barrier. We do some willow staking there. The San 29 Francisquito Joint Powers Authority is doing their big project downstream, so we 30 coordinate with them to help with debris removal in the creek and to mitigate 31 downstream tree removal. We have been stewarding Foothills Park more recently 32 compared to the other ones, since 2013. That is such a beautiful site I'm sure many of 33 you have visited. Our strategy there is a little different. It's already pretty biodiverse, so 34 it's really about controlling some of the areas where invasives have gotten a foothold and 35 letting the native biodiversity restore itself. We call that passive restoration. One of the 36 important aspects of this site, as you probably know, is the Friends of Foothills, a group 37 that's been taking care of that park for years. When we first started the contract with the 38 City, all of their maps and their projects were passed onto us, and we helped coordinate 39 the volunteers. The Friends remained active in it. We tried to partner with them to bring 40 the volunteer labor to take care of the areas that they were passionate about. There's also 41 the area in the back called the 7.7-acre parcel. I think a working title for it is Buckeye 42 DRAFT Draft Minutes 29 Flats, but I understand that is not set in stone yet. Something about Doe's Meadow is 1 another option. That's where our nursery is. We've been doing a little bit of maintenance 2 on it over time, but we're stepping up some of our restoration work there. We also 3 monitor water quality in all the creeks in Palo Alto. We do that with community 4 volunteers. We actually have a few dedicated volunteers—you might call them 5 streamkeepers—that basically monitor the same sites every month. It's really helpful to 6 have that extra pair of eyes on the local creeks. We also get a lot of Girl Scouts and Boy 7 Scouts that want to come and do. They have a badge for water quality, so this is an 8 important element. We also have this other project, Greening Urban Watersheds. This 9 project was funded almost entirely through a Santa Clara Valley Water District grant. In 10 all the previous projects, the Arastradero Preserve, San Francisquito, Foothills Park, we 11 augmented some of the City money with grants over the years from the Water District 12 and Coastal Conservancy and various foundations, so that we're able to get 2X and 13 oftentimes 3X the City's investment and value. A lot of government agencies really like 14 that combination of public-private partnership as well as engaging volunteers. The 15 Greening Urban Watershed project is installing rain barrels and rain gardens throughout 16 the City of Palo Alto to provide demonstrations for people. In a storm event, rather than 17 having all the water go straight into the storm drains and into our creeks without being 18 cleaned, the idea is to get the rainwater into the ground so that it naturally cleans it before 19 it gets to the creek. We have done a few of these and just last Saturday finished one at 20 Bol Park. Our nursery has been there since 2003. We grow locally native species from 21 seed collected in the watershed. We even grow some rare and endangered species as 22 well. We primarily provide plants for our own projects and Midpeninsula Regional Open 23 Space District and Santa Clara Valley Water District. Once a year, we do a joint plant 24 sale with the California Native Plant Society at Hidden Villa, but that's mainly our one 25 opportunity for people to buy our plants in a retail setting. For the most part, the nursery 26 is more for growing plants. We do have some long-term volunteers, some of which have 27 been there before 2003 when we were in a backyard. Those volunteers have helped us 28 over the years to take care of these plants. If you'd like more information, we have a 29 newsletter. You can sign up for it on our website. Every week we send out a list of all 30 the volunteer opportunities, and they're typically five to ten. It's helpful so people can see 31 what sort of sites you can volunteer at. If you're looking for community service hours, 32 you can get those as well. We have a monthly newsletter that highlights our programs 33 and some of our volunteers. With that, I'll take any questions you have. 34 Chair McDougall: We'll start at your end, Commissioner Cribbs. 35 Commissioner Cribbs: I don't have any questions. I enjoyed the presentation. It's great 36 to know about all this. Thank you very much for everything you're doing. 37 Commissioner Moss: I want to thank your organization for all the decades of work that 38 you've done. Two of my kids were your volunteers in the early 2000s and went on to 39 DRAFT Draft Minutes 30 careers in ecology and teaching. It's a fantastic organization, and I really appreciate your 1 education aspects and the volunteer opportunities for kids. Friends of Foothills Park is 2 very important for us. I want to make sure that your partnership with them continues to 3 grow and you take full advantage of them to help you prioritize projects that you need. 4 You have your own fundraising arm, but I want to make sure they can raise funds as well. 5 I want to make sure they get some credit for some of the things that they work on with 6 you or help you with. Anything you can do to strengthen that partnership would be really 7 advantageous to both. 8 Ms. Von Feldt: I'm always pleased to hear about people that went into a field in ecology. 9 I might ask Kristen, my colleague who works more closely with Friends of Foothills 10 Park, to describe some of the things they've been doing recently. 11 Kristen Williams: We work with the Friends, and they're such a huge wealth of 12 knowledge. We're really fortunate to have them as a resource. We do meet with them 13 monthly. We have scheduled it so that we have volunteers come out on Sunday 14 mornings, which is their normal day. We are able to do it every Sunday, but we try to 15 meet with them before the workday every Sunday and talk about what we're going to 16 work on, what they're going to work on. Often, we'll even work together. For example, a 17 couple of weeks ago they had a patch of French broom that they wanted to get to. We 18 brought our volunteers; they showed us the patch; and we all worked together. Definitely 19 working together. At times, we've had harder times communicating, but recently it's been 20 really strong and great. They have so much knowledge that we're fortunate to get to work 21 with them. 22 Vice Chair Greenfield: I want to thank your organization for all the dedication to our 23 community and the awesome volunteer engagement and the environmental stewardship 24 and education. You're a valued resource within our community, and we appreciate it. 25 Thank you to you and all of your staff. I've had a few opportunities to volunteer with 26 your group including working with some Gunn service days at Cooley Landing and the 27 Baylands. It's always been a great experience for everyone involved. With the opening 28 of the 7.7 acres or Buckeye Flats, I'm very happy that your nursery has been preserved. I 29 know that has been prioritized within all the discussions of the Foothills Park ad hoc and 30 the Commission itself. We value the restorative work you're able to do with the nursery 31 both in Palo Alto and in surrounding communities. As part of the opening of Buckeye 32 Flats—I'm not really fond of the name. I was proposing to call it Dunn Flats in honor of 33 the longest-serving Ranger at Foothills Park. I know you have some restoration plots, 34 some trial plots, in that area. I see this as a great education opportunity. I don't know if 35 you've worked with the Foothills Park summer camps, but it seems like a great 36 opportunity to have some sort of daytrip or a half-day session with Grassroots Ecology to 37 educate the students to the ongoing restoration attempts or trials and general nursery 38 education. You're very careful about management of pests and whatnot in the nursery 39 DRAFT Draft Minutes 31 area. If there's a way to include these summer camps on an ongoing basis, that'd be a 1 great feeder for your organization and education for the community overall. If we can 2 ever get anywhere with the overall Buckeye Creek restoration project and reclaiming 3 some riparian environment, it's a rare and wonderful opportunity for our community. I'm 4 sure you share that view. That would be another way to include education even more 5 dramatically as the process goes over years to share with the summer camp groups and 6 the community at large. Again, I thank you for your contributions and look forward to 7 our continued relationship. Anything the Commission can do to help further your cause, 8 please let us know. 9 Commissioner Reckdahl: Your group does such good work; we really do appreciate it. 10 Especially in tight budgets these days, we can't get by without volunteers, so we 11 appreciate that. Can you talk about the rain gardens? I've not been up to Bol Park to see 12 the rain garden. Are these just mini swales or is there a more complex design than that? 13 Ms. Von Feldt: We use the term rain gardens because they're not technically green 14 stormwater infrastructure, but they're pretty close to it. If you're going to get the permit 15 for a bioswale or things where you have to have the grate raised up a certain amount and 16 certain bioengineered material, most of our gardens have most of that. It depends on 17 where they are. Some are more naturalistic than others. The one at Gamble Garden has 18 this huge cistern that collects all the water from the roof. The overflow goes into this 19 swale area so that the overflow can recharge the groundwater. Gamble Garden can use 20 the rainwater for other things as well. At Bol Park, we just installed it Saturday. You can 21 see how it works there. It's right next to the native garden that the neighbors have done. 22 It's taking some of that water before it gets to the street and infiltrating it in there. There 23 is a big grate in there, but the grate has to be a little bit higher than the plants around it. 24 Commissioner Reckdahl: Are you taking runoff from that back unincorporated area or is 25 it just water that falls on the grass? 26 Ms. Von Feldt: It's basically between the garden and the road where it would puddle. 27 We're trying to help with that situation. 28 Commissioner Reckdahl: I'll take a look. Where in Hoover Park is the rain garden? 29 Ms. Williams: I know where it is, but I don't know how to describe it. 30 Ms. Von Feldt: There are bathrooms near it. We can go back to the picture. The one on 31 the right is Hoover garden. 32 Commissioner Reckdahl: I'll have to check that out. When you have a project, do you 33 end up with too many volunteers or not enough? 34 DRAFT Draft Minutes 32 Ms. Von Feldt: We actually have too many volunteers, more than we have capacity to 1 deliver quality experiences for. Obviously, we have to have an appropriate ratio for 2 safety reasons and for the value. We like to have a 1:10 ratio. Typically, our workdays 3 are about two staff and 20 or so volunteers. We do actually have to turn a lot of groups 4 away. 5 Commissioner Reckdahl: It's a good problem to have. 6 Ms. Von Feldt: At certain times of the year, like when students have to get their 7 community service hours in, December and May can get a little squirrely with people 8 showing up. 9 Commissioner Reckdahl: Do you coordinate with any other nonprofits to help guide 10 volunteers over to them? 11 Ms. Von Feldt: We do a lot with other nonprofits, like joint things, especially Canopy. 12 They're in our building, so we do joint workdays especially in East Palo Alto and on the 13 Bay Trail. We just did one last week in conjunction with the opening of Friendship 14 Bridge. They are in the same boat with more volunteers than they have the capacity to 15 deliver workdays because of the required staffing. We're trying to get some things like 16 having corporate groups donate to help offset the cost so we can continue to offer 17 volunteer days for students and things like that. 18 Commissioner Reckdahl: That's interesting. If you talk about nonnatives at Byxbee, you 19 could spend your life up there. We have too much work to do and too many volunteers, 20 but the problem is we don't have enough staff between that. 21 Ms. Von Feldt: The problem is the cost associated with the staff and the tools to actually 22 deliver those workdays. That's the constrained resource. 23 Commissioner Reckdahl: I wish I had the answer. 24 Ms. Von Feldt: We keep cracking away at it. 25 Commissioner LaMere: Appreciate everything your organization does. It's new to me in 26 terms of learning what you guys do. Could you walk me through, just briefly, your 27 process of identifying projects? Is it mostly municipalities reaching out to you? Do you 28 identify projects and then some of the process of permitting or how you're able to do 29 what you guys do at the different parks and the different places? I was curious about 30 other pain points; you mentioned the staffing. What else ends up being something that 31 stops you from doing more or finishing some projects that you'd like to do? 32 Ms. Von Feldt: I'll take a crack at it, but then I'll ask my colleagues to pitch in. When it 33 comes to how you figure out where to work, we often get that question. There's a 34 DRAFT Draft Minutes 33 philosophical discussion from an ecological perspective of where is the best place to 1 work, like where is the habitat most rich so that you can remove a few of the invasive 2 species and the native habitat comes back. There's also the community aspect. Since half 3 our mission is to engage people because we feel like that will lead to true behavior 4 change, you also want to have something that provides ecological benefit but is close to 5 an engaged volunteer base. The third part of that is resources. For a long time, we were 6 really working just in the City of Palo Alto, and we branched to Los Altos and Los Altos 7 Hills. Those three cities all have something in common, an ability to help fund some of 8 these activities. Over the last five years, we've really made a concerted effort to work in 9 other communities that don't have that ability, such as East Palo Alto and Redwood City, 10 but then the onus is really on us as the organization to get 100 percent of the funding. 11 That's a constant effort and requires some of our time, but we think it's important. There 12 are some really nice parks like Cooley Landing. Anything to add to that, especially from 13 a habitat perspective? Pain points. We were just talking about in the audience our 14 vehicles are breaking down. We've been looking for grants to help get vehicles. They're 15 very hard to find. Another big one that we've been dealing with for years is how do you 16 retain high-quality staff in a very expensive place like this when our salaries are just a 17 fraction of what's around here. Everybody has creative living experiences. They're 18 mission driven, and they really love it, but it's hard to stay here long-term unless you 19 have somebody else supporting you. Anything to add? 20 Jerry Hearn: If I can just add a few things regarding the history of this. Originally, the 21 Watershed Council and Arastradero were things planned by a bunch of people and then 22 brought to the City to ask for support. As you've said, it's the municipalities, the cities, 23 the Midpen, who are coming to us because we have a proven record. As part of our 24 strategic outreach as we're looking at our DEI stuff, we are trying to move into some 25 other areas that don't have the same kind of support, primarily in East Palo Alto. That 26 proves to be challenging in terms of paying for it. Yet, that's where it's needed, and there 27 are a lot of requests out there. As a board member who raises money for that, it hasn't 28 proved lately to be that easy to raise money for those things. Almost all the staff are out 29 in the field, so the high cost of insurance is another thing. About 10 percent of our 30 budget goes to insurance, but that's something you have to have. 31 Commissioner LaMere: Thank you for all the work you guys do. It's very much 32 appreciated. 33 Ms. Von Feldt: Thank you all for supporting this work over the years. Palo Alto was 34 really the leader in this. A lot of times when we're talking to other people in other cities, 35 they'll say, "How does Palo Alto do it? Why are they doing this?" It's helpful to cite 36 your support over the years. Staff's great to work with too. 37 DRAFT Draft Minutes 34 Chair McDougall: It's always nice to have Daren's best friends attend the meeting. 1 Thank you very much for being here, for answering the questions, and for everything you 2 do. We all appreciate it and want to know, as people asked, what else we can do to help. 3 5. Baylands Comprehensive Conservation Plan Update 4 Chair McDougall: Our last major attraction for the evening is an update on the Baylands 5 Comprehensive Plan with Mr. Anderson. 6 Mr. Anderson: Good evening. Daren Anderson, Community Services Department. As 7 you noted, I am here to talk about the Baylands Conservation Plan, specifically to get 8 your feedback on the Byxbee concept plan. That'll be the focus of tonight's presentation, 9 to get your feedback, if we got it right, what are we missing, here are your thoughts. I'll 10 also touch on the former ITT/Emily Renzel Wetlands area. This one you had weighed in 11 on. We made the adjustments, and your staff report should reflect the feedback from 12 both you and the community. I want to make sure we got that right, so I'll walk through 13 the highlights of that and then briefly cover the next steps. Let me walk through the 14 highlights of the Renzel Wetlands plan. Some of the chief or key things were we have 15 two new trail sections. The first is the North Trail. It's towards the top of the screen. 16 The Freshwater Pond Trail in that section. I'm going to pause at that point to talk about 17 one key part. There are a number of other features, but one unique one is this area was 18 limited to just pedestrians and maintenance vehicles. The consultant had added on this 19 end and the other end a maintenance gate with the idea that that would stop bicycles from 20 coming through and/or dogs. That is not my understanding or my belief. Gates don't 21 stop bikes. Anywhere pedestrians can get through, bikes can get through. The gate 22 seems superfluous to me and a hindrance. I put that out for Commission feedback. 23 Frankly, it could be easily achieved by a sign. You'll get the same efficacy in terms of 24 control that you'd get with a gate because it's not going to stop bikes and it certainly 25 wouldn't stop someone from walking with their dog. Putting a sign that says "pedestrians 26 only" is what the stakeholders and, if I understand correctly, the Commission advocated 27 for. We'd only have access to the backside of that freshwater pond and again pedestrian 28 access only. Rather than a gate, I put it to you to weigh in if you think signage would do 29 it. In addition to the two signs, we've also got the restored hydrology, which is a big 30 environmental component of this. Dendritic channels would be enhanced. We have very 31 limited ones. On the map, though it's a little hard to see, you can see there are existing 32 ones. We would enhance it by adding new ones where the tidal flow could come further 33 into the area and essentially restore the habitat by itself. You'll see one of the 34 recommendations is to enhance those areas around the dendritic channels. Another 35 element of the restoration is the remnant marsh connection. Currently, this little area here 36 is isolated entirely from hydrologic connection; though, it was once historically a tidal 37 salt marsh. It hasn't been for many, many years. This concept that we talked about 38 before was connecting it through the Renzel Wetlands and into the flood basin. During 39 DRAFT Draft Minutes 35 our outreach to the community, our stakeholders, there was some interesting feedback on 1 that. I hadn't heard it from anyone else. There was concern that perhaps there'd be too 2 much salinity moving into this isolated area and that perhaps some wildlife might be 3 impacted negatively from that. In talking to the consultant more, their thought was it's 4 already very high salinity and it would only be beneficial to have tidal water flow 5 through. It's still a good point, and the consultant advised that before you could move 6 forward, there would have to be extensive study to see if there'd be any impacts from 7 connecting that area to tidal influence. A couple of other features in this are we've got 8 interpretive signage. There would be three interpretive signs and three park benches, all 9 right next to the interpretive signs. That would be on the Pond Trail, the ITT Trail, and 10 the North Trail. There'd be a dog waste station. I think that covers the highlights of the 11 ITT/Renzel Wetlands plan. Chair, if you'd like me to continue to the Byxbee portion or if 12 you'd like to comment and take questions or comments on this part? 13 Chair McDougall: It would be useful to stop and do questions just on this part. I'll start 14 with Commissioner LaMere. 15 Commissioner LaMere: Daren, I appreciate all the hard work you've put toward this. I 16 agree with you about the gate being superfluous. If someone's on a bike and wanted to 17 go there, they would go there. I also like what's been drawn in terms of the trail system 18 and being able to connect all the way from one side to the other. I do appreciate that. I 19 do not have any questions for you. 20 Commissioner Reckdahl: I agree about the gate. Signage is sufficient. I am not thrilled 21 about the fact that we have a flow through this as opposed to making it tidal. In the long 22 run, I really would like to see flow come in and then go back out that same way. If we 23 had a trench or something at the top right, that would allow the tidal water to come in. 24 Instead of flowing through this and going out, it would go up and back with the tide. 25 That would be much more natural and might be less maintenance in the long run. 26 Mr. Anderson: That would be ideal, and it may be possible. Like most of this, this is 27 very conceptual. As we dig deeper, we flesh out more things like that. There might be 28 even ideas our consultant hasn't thought of yet to maximize hydrologic flow. Maybe 29 even a pump to move more water in, for all I know. More analysis is necessary. The 30 main principle we wanted to make sure we got by him is there's habitat here that's not 31 being maximized, and it can be if we get a better tidal connection. 32 Vice Chair Greenfield: Thank you, Daren, for all of your work and all of the work with 33 the stakeholder group. Echoing the comments of the other Commissioners, it's great to 34 see the loop access trail. Just to confirm, the North Trail does connect to roughly the 35 northwest corner of Byxbee Park. 36 Mr. Anderson: That's correct. 37 DRAFT Draft Minutes 36 Vice Chair Greenfield: That's great. As far as the gate goes, I don't have strong feelings, 1 but it seems like we should be able to remove it. 2 Commissioner Moss: I'm wondering if instead of a gate, that stretch of big rocks that you 3 have right now that keeps bikes out, maybe we could put those rocks so that maintenance 4 vehicles could go over it but bikes not. It might be more effective than gates. I'd like to 5 have something to discourage bikes and dogs, people commuting through there, rather 6 than having it wide open and a sign. If that's a possibility, I'd like you to look at that. 7 Mr. Anderson: I might be able to address some of that. One of the challenges we have is 8 anything we put to block or limit bike access makes it very unfriendly for ADA access 9 for pedestrians, which is rough. Even where I've got gates, where we tried to configure it 10 to limit access that we didn't want, they're really intended to stop vehicle access. 11 Motorcycles can get through the same ADA access that pedestrians can. It happens all 12 the time or had in the past when I worked at the Baylands. It's a real challenge to find 13 that solution. We haven't found it yet, nor have I visited a place that had it and was still 14 accessible to pedestrians. 15 Commissioner Moss: The only example that I know of is at the end of San Antonio Road 16 at Terminal Road, where the bathroom is. There's a gate there. In order to get around the 17 gate, you have to go through this maze. In some places, there's even a step up. There's a 18 piece of wood at the end of Alpine Road when you go up to Windy Hill. All of these 19 things discourage ADA. I'm not sure if you have to make the entire thing ADA. I just 20 don't know what to suggest. I thought we were going to have some kind of an ADA-21 accessible overlook, a place where you could go up and look around, where you didn't 22 have to go on that path but you could get a good look at either of those two endpoints of 23 that road. That way, they don't necessarily have to go all the way. They could still get a 24 nice view and also be close enough to the lake and to the outside of the marsh. It's 25 something to think about. 26 Mr. Anderson: I should point out there is one overlook. I didn't call it out specifically. 27 It's right up at the top near the North Trail. 28 Commissioner Moss: That would be good. I'd like to see an additional one somewhere 29 near the pond, maybe on the 101 side but closer to the bathroom and closer to the marsh 30 so you get it looking both directions. I agree with Commissioner Reckdahl about the 31 enhanced channel to get inflow and outflow. That would be great. It's fantastic if we can 32 also include that remnant marsh. I hadn't even thought about that. That would be a super 33 idea. There was general agreement that the building should go away. I wish it were 34 closer to 101 or someway to preserve it. Having it in the very center of the marsh is not 35 the best place. I would want to make sure there is terrific signage, not just in the middle 36 but perhaps next to 101, next to the bathroom at the bottom of the picture, discussing in-37 depth the historical significance of the building and more importantly the bouncing of the 38 DRAFT Draft Minutes 37 signal off the marsh and all that kind of stuff. I would love to see some of the antennas 1 left up, maybe not as high as they are today, but some symbol of the history. That's a 2 critical part of this marsh. 3 Mr. Anderson: We discussed that at the Commission meeting when we went in-depth on 4 the ITT, and it didn't have support. We got almost unanimous support from the 5 Commissioners that were in attendance that night to remove all the antennas. Most of the 6 stakeholders felt the same way. Their concern for the antennas was largely the impacts as 7 roosting for birds of prey. That was their argument for getting rid of it. By and large, it's 8 the marsh or wetland that has the historical significance, less so the antennas was some of 9 the feedback we got on that topic. 10 Commissioner Moss: I understand. There is one antenna that's lower, that has the 1921 11 on it, if we could keep that one. To have none, I don't know. 12 Commissioner Cribbs: Thank you, Daren. This is great. I appreciate the comments from 13 the stakeholders. Everybody was pretty thoughtful about it. It seems like everything is 14 moving in the right direction. Could you clarify for me how many vehicles go down the 15 pedestrian path on a daily basis or a weekly basis? 16 Mr. Anderson: Perhaps historically is the better one to look at. Commissioner Cribbs, 17 are we talking about the fresh … 18 Commissioner Cribbs: Wherever we're talking about the gate and the signage and 19 maintenance vehicles going down that. 20 Mr. Anderson: Specifically, we're talking about around the freshwater pond. In the past, 21 I would say it was exceedingly rare. Maybe it'll increase now that they've got it built. 22 Their intent is to prevent certain areas from growing in with cattails, which would mean 23 you'd bring up a backhoe and scoop out. You'd only do that once the plant material had 24 grown 4-5 feet. It would be a year kind of thing. Aside from other inspections, I would 25 think it's fairly infrequent, maybe—I can't say for sure because it's not my team doing it. 26 The Rangers will not be regularly driving that. It would be very atypical for Open Space 27 staff to do that. It'd be the Public Works' team who is managing that as a release of 28 treated water. I can ask more specifically, and when I come back have a better answer. 29 Commissioner Cribbs: I'd just be interested to see if that's the right way for them to go or 30 if there's another way they could go. 31 Mr. Anderson: They'll have to at some point. We'll certainly have them take, as much as 32 possible, the route where it's not a trail, the area closest to 101 where we're asking people 33 not to walk. I would guess it would be relatively infrequent. 34 DRAFT Draft Minutes 38 Commissioner Cribbs: It was disconcerting to see that big old whatever it was, 1 machinery, out there doing what it's supposed to be doing. 2 Mr. Anderson: It is. Hopefully we will not have that for a very long time. 3 Commissioner Cribbs: On your list of when things are going to happen and when 4 meetings are going to be held, is it possible for the second part of the list to put some 5 approximate times? 6 Mr. Anderson: Approximate times for … 7 Commissioner Cribbs: Not times of day, but when things are going to happen. Fill out 8 that list. 9 Mr. Anderson: Sure. Let me double check, Commissioner Cribbs. Do you mean in 10 terms of some of the work happening or next meetings? 11 Commissioner Cribbs: Some of the work happening, the next meeting, the stakeholder 12 meetings. If you know at this point, that would be great to fill that out. 13 Chair McDougall: Before we go on, we do have one visitor, who's not paying attention. 14 I know everybody knows who he is. He may have interest in this part or some other part. 15 He may wish to comment. I'm going to give him the opportunity now or later. If you 16 want to comment on this part, you could feel free or you could wait until later. 17 Elliott Wright: I'll jump in a little bit later. 18 Chair McDougall: When I look at the map that we have here, Daren, there's a "p" for 19 parking down at the bottom. At the moment, there's also a space that you could put as 20 many cars where you're putting that "p" right at the very top of the freshwater pond, 21 where the access road now is. I don't know if we want to designate that as parking and 22 properly mark it so that you don't have whatever. I would suggest that we do that. This 23 implies that I could walk along the berm, along the freshwater, and cross over and get 24 onto the path that goes all the way around. Right? 25 Mr. Anderson: Yes. 26 Chair McDougall: That means that the bridge would be updated beyond what it is now? 27 Mr. Anderson: That's correct. 28 Chair McDougall: That's a lot of fun to walk across that bridge today. I like the fact that 29 you tease me by telling me you're going to put signage in. I like the idea of the open 30 trench. I know we've had presentations that worried about how much dog access there 31 DRAFT Draft Minutes 39 was relative to how close you're getting to the marshland that we're trying to rehabilitate 1 and create as an interesting habitat. I don't think I need an answer now. If there's an 2 effort to say "we know there are lots of parks that are not dog parks but have lots of off-3 leash dogs in it," at least discouraging people would be worthwhile. I'm in the group that 4 believes the antennas should come down for ecological purposes. As Commissioner 5 Moss was speaking, it occurred to me that there are portions of this, like the redline that 6 goes directly to the existing building and that is relatively straight, where you could take 7 one of those poles and lay it down and label it and describe it there. It doesn't have to be 8 standing in order to be part of the history of the place. You could actually maintain it. 9 Commissioner Moss: With a picture on a sign. 10 Chair McDougall: I mean describe it in a way that says "here's what this pole was and 11 here's where it came from" and with a note that says "it's not still standing because we 12 don't want raptors to be sitting on it and eating our" … 13 Mr. Anderson: That's a great idea. 14 Chair McDougall: Other than that, thank you. Next. 15 Commissioner Moss: Regarding the raptors, in every shopping mall they put things on 16 the top of places to discourage birds from landing. If there was a chance to keep one of 17 the poles, maybe that 1921 antenna, and have some kind of barrier to keep the raptors off, 18 that would be preferable than having no antennas up. That's my personal comment. I 19 didn't have my glasses on and, when I looked at the bottom left-hand corner where it has 20 the black dot, I thought that was a restroom. It's really parking. I was wondering do we 21 need to have a restroom like we have at the end of Terminal Road. Do we need a 22 restroom either there or over at the end of the road at the top of the pond? It's a long way 23 from there to the single restroom in the entire Baylands at Byxbee Park. Do we need a 24 bathroom? 25 Mr. Anderson: I hadn't heard that from any other stakeholders nor in the time I've 26 worked with the City have I heard anyone request one for that area. The requests are 27 always to enhance the ones we have. We have three, one at the Sailing Station, a portable 28 restroom, one at the duck pond, a portable one, and one at Byxbee that's a permanent 29 structure, and one inside the Nature Center. It hasn't been a request there in the past. It 30 really depends on what kind of use. Aside from hiking through, there's not a lot of sit and 31 stay in this particular design, like a picnic area. We could monitor it and see, but my 32 initial reaction is I probably wouldn't recommend adding one now, at least in my 33 perspective. 34 Commissioner Reckdahl: One possibility would be on East Bayshore, on the southside of 35 Matadero Creek at the Service Center. If you did it on that side of the creek, you could 36 DRAFT Draft Minutes 40 tie into the sewage and water from the Service Center. It would be a lot cheaper. If it 1 was right on that trail, there's a lot of bike traffic that would probably use it. If it was 2 right by Matadero Creek, it would be a two-for. You'd get the people that would be on 3 that end of the wetlands and the traffic going through. If down the road we can get the 4 Matadero Creek underpass to be pedestrian, that would be a third stream of people. 5 Mr. Anderson: The consultant used the feedback from the Commission and the 6 stakeholders to create a conceptual design for Byxbee Park, which includes two options 7 for the parking lot. The plans were reviewed by the stakeholder group at the 8 November 29th community meeting. We've circulated that to a wider stakeholder 9 advisory group via email. I'm going to walk you through some of the key design 10 features. There are proposed vegetation management zones throughout Byxbee. They've 11 got four. There's the coastal scrub, which is the upper part or lighter green. There's the 12 tidal marsh area, the remnant marsh piece, especially once we connect that hydrologically 13 to have more saltwater flowing through. Currently, it already has pickleweed, an 14 indicator that it's pretty heavy in terms of salt content. We've got the coastal prairie in 15 what I call the Phase 2C area, which is this darker green area. Some of that's predicated 16 on the cap. Byxbee, a former landfill, has a clay cap with 2 feet of soil placed on it, 17 largely on this lighter green area. Because of that, they're recommending a certain habitat 18 type for that. The darker green has a different kind of cap, which is 5 feet of engineered 19 soil. It can accommodate different vegetation types because of that depth. The remnant 20 marsh for the tidal one, and another one for the areas on the trail. Some other key 21 features. The consultants looped in some of the trails to create loops to aid walkers, 22 hikers, and bikers. We increased the number of benches. There are 21 existing benches 23 on the perimeter and the top of Byxbee Park. They proposed adding 11 benches, eight of 24 which would be like the ones you see elsewhere in the preserve with a back and three 25 without backs. One of the benefits is you'll have views going both ways, which in certain 26 areas would be really beneficial. Another one that we brought up in the stakeholder 27 meeting is something I'm seeing on top of Byxbee. The backed benches are covered with 28 guano. It's a good sign in that we've got bird life up there and a bad sign in that it makes 29 it less welcoming for people. There are already 21 benches around Byxbee; you can 30 imagine the rest of the 2,000-acre preserve. We have almost 100 more. Right now, I 31 have just one Ranger in the Baylands. I'm working on filling that up. They don't get 32 around to cleaning that on a regular basis. The idea of trying a backless bench at least in 33 a couple places might make sense. In the past when I worked as a Ranger at the 34 Baylands, a lot of people would say, "We need backs. We do not want a bunch of flat 35 ones." Historically that had been the art bench that was placed around the perimeter of 36 Byxbee. When it was first put in as an art park, they put in this ironing-board-shaped 37 bench. This is trying something new. We could see how it goes and go with three 38 backless benches. They added two interpretive signs. There are already five in the park, 39 and only two of them were installed. The other three had to be redesigned, and we 40 should be getting those signs tomorrow. They'll be installed before the end of the 41 DRAFT Draft Minutes 41 calendar year. This would be two additional ones that would come into the preserve. 1 They recommended expanding the vegetative islands, which were very well received 2 from our stakeholders and even our regular park visitors who haven't really weighed in. 3 As the Rangers talk to people coming to the park, they love that. Expanding that makes a 4 lot of sense. At one point, we proposed a shade structure. You will not see it on the 5 design in front of you because it was not cared for by the stakeholder group, which was 6 the same group that proposed it. Over time, apparently they changed their mind. There 7 wasn't a single person who thought that would be appropriate. They wanted it out and 8 recommended wind protection in lieu of shade. We've got ideas in this revised concept 9 that allow for that. The two parking lot layouts. Here are some examples of those plant 10 communities. That's very crude in terms of what you'll see at Byxbee right away. That's 11 not what it'll look like right away. It gives you an idea of some of the plants that fall into 12 those community groups. Here are two concepts, the first of which we call Concept 1. 13 This one allows for 61 parking stalls. The existing parking at Byxbee allows for 20. 14 There's a little overflow area that allows for nine, so a total of 29. We dramatically 15 expand it in both these scenarios. It was almost unanimous in terms of Concept 1 and 16 Concept 2 for our stakeholders to prefer the second concept. One, it's a little more 17 parking. Mainly it was the ease of use, having that roundabout access. One of the 18 Rangers present at the meeting talked about how historically we've had issues with 19 vehicles backing up and hitting things, either bollards or other cars. This makes it a lot 20 easier for users to come in and out. Another bit of feedback we got during that 21 stakeholder meeting is "this looks great, we unanimously support Concept 2, but one 22 thing you're missing is a spot for longer vehicles like a school bus." The consultants and 23 staff agreed that that made good sense. They said they could incorporate it into this 24 design. I'll take every bit of feedback you've got. That'll be one of the elements they also 25 incorporate. We reached out to the community on November 29th. The parking lot was 26 a real clear one. There was a suggestion to leave—some of the comments from our 27 stakeholder group veered back to the Renzel Wetland, so I'll echo something 28 Commissioner Moss mentioned. One stakeholder said it'd be great to leave some of the 29 antenna poles. In fact, they were suggesting that it could be nesting habitat for snowy 30 egrets and the like. Unfortunately, when I talked to the consultant, if you put it for snowy 31 egrets, it'll also be used for those birds of prey and maybe exclusively by them. They 32 countered with there might be a better location for that. In fact, we recently had a 33 heronry by the duck pond. We had three or four different kinds of birds nesting in that 34 area. If we were going to add ones, in their estimation that made the better site. In fact, 35 the habitat around there would be better for them too. Some stakeholders wanted 36 additional seating to what was originally proposed. This area between Byxbee and the 37 Renzel Wetlands is an area where we started with a couple of park benches. They said, 38 "This is a major wildlife corridor, and we would like to limit the amount of prolonged 39 activity in the area. If possible, we'd like you to remove those benches, move them 40 elsewhere in the park, and beef up the vegetation in here, hiding places for these animals 41 that are using it as a corridor." You'll see that reflected on this design, where you've got 42 DRAFT Draft Minutes 42 enhanced planting throughout this area here. Also, there was a request for stairs for 1 exercise, something we discussed during the interim plan for Byxbee so many years ago. 2 Unfortunately, the same answer was it's very difficult to maintain them because of the 3 settlement issue. As a former landfill, you can have a 6-foot drop in some areas. It 4 seems to move around, and it doesn't seem to stop over decades. It's very frustrating. 5 When I reached out to the Public Works staff to make sure, their answer was we could 6 not do it safely. Another bit of feedback was another element from the interim plan, if 7 possible to pile extra soil in certain sections of the preserve that would allow ground 8 squirrels and burrowing owls to thrive. We identified three locations. There are 9 regulatory agencies that govern former landfills, and there are certain rules we must abide 10 by. One is they won't allow burrowing animals on that, so ground squirrels are a no-no. 11 We thought if we got enough soil, they wouldn't hit the clay cap, and we'd protect it, but 12 we have not gotten approval from that regulatory agency. When I talk to the 13 stakeholders, they always want to keep pushing. It's absolutely right, and it belongs on 14 this plan. Eventually, with the right influence and maybe the right person in that 15 regulatory agency, we'll get approval and move forward with this and maybe encourage 16 our owl habitat. 17 Commissioner Reckdahl: Are they worried about the squirrels actually going through the 18 cap or are they worried about them drilling holes that cause erosion and eventually the 19 erosion goes through the cap? 20 Mr. Anderson: That's exactly right. In the areas where we add soil, some ground 21 squirrels can in theory go very deep. That's possible but unlikely if you build it right. 22 More likely is the problem of causing leachate. I think that is one of the predominant 23 concerns of the regulatory agency. 24 Commissioner Reckdahl: That's harder to argue against. 25 Mr. Anderson: I don't think it's insurmountable. We added vegetation islands around the 26 seating areas for shade. Put a mound of earth, and plant it with some native vegetation, 27 and you've got an attractive place to sit that hopefully will shield some of the wind 28 coming through. Again, we added some shrubs on that ecological corridor between 29 Byxbee and the Renzel Wetlands and removed the seating area in that area. We added 30 wayfinding maps to the plan. It's such a big area and not a lot of features that the 31 stakeholders felt it would be beneficial to have more of those wayfinding signs. It's "you 32 are here" maps. That concludes my presentation. I'm available for questions. 33 Commissioner Cribbs: The addition of a place for buses is great. How are the individual 34 stalls for cars marked? When I was out there—I don't remember how long ago it was, but 35 the last six months or something—it just felt like cars parked wherever they wanted to 36 park. 37 DRAFT Draft Minutes 43 Mr. Anderson: That's an excellent question, one that frustrated some of our users to no 1 end and our Rangers. They park wherever they want because it's not striped. It wasn't 2 striped intentionally because our stakeholders when we redid the parking lot did not want 3 stripes. It felt too urban to them. On a bad day, you get somebody that puts it just wrong, 4 and you lose parking. 5 Commissioner Cribbs: Does the consultant have some wonderful idea about how we 6 could do it in keeping with the environmental tone of the park? 7 Mr. Anderson: I think it's the right colors. I would stripe it; that's my recommendation. I 8 think that'll be transportation's recommendation when we reach out to them. You won't 9 see it reflected necessarily on this design or a comment. 10 Commissioner Cribbs: It's the little things. 11 Mr. Anderson: We could certainly pitch it. I feel like you would maximize the spot by 12 putting in identifiable stall markers. As a Ranger, I put the little concrete—forgive me, I 13 don't know the term. I thought that would help, but it did not encourage people to park in 14 straight lines and match up perfect there. I know that's not the solution. I think it would 15 be putting down some sort of marker to show exactly where to park. Maybe with the 16 color, we don't want a glowing white. 17 Commissioner Cribbs: Green? Rust? 18 Mr. Anderson: Yeah, I think so, a muted gray maybe. A Baylands gray that we use 19 elsewhere might be feasible. That'd be my recommendation. 20 Chair McDougall: You're not going to go into the sloping construction in the Baylands 21 itself tonight, are you? 22 Mr. Anderson: The settlement? 23 Chair McDougall: Right. 24 Mr. Anderson: No, I wasn't planning on it. 25 Chair McDougall: Elliott, do you have any comments you'd like to make on what you've 26 heard tonight? 27 Mr. Wright: Thank you, Don. For me, just hearing everything and playing a part in the 28 29th and reading up has been very informative. My name is Elliott Wright. I'm ED of 29 Environmental Volunteers. We've had a couple of great volunteer teams on Byxbee as 30 well as Grassroots Ecology doing some habitat restoration. We look forward to doing 31 more to support our parks. One of the thoughts I had while you were speaking was we're 32 DRAFT Draft Minutes 44 down to one Ranger at the Baylands. It's clear to me how essential that person is to the 1 management of this 2,500-acre preserve. If there's anything that we can do to help with 2 that through our team or through providing a welcoming experience for the public, that 3 would be wonderful. Of course, I see a lot of cars turning right when they get to the end 4 of the "T," like 90 percent. That parking lot that you just described is absolutely full to 5 the brim. If folks turned left and headed to the 300 parking sites to the left, not only 6 could they begin their walk on a nice padded, dirt, beautiful trail, but they have access to 7 bathrooms and fun welcoming people at the EcoCenter. In addition to that, you could 8 pick up a sandbag if you needed to. Thanks so much, Don. That's all I had. 9 Chair McDougall: Thank you. 10 Commissioner Moss: I have one big concern. When I look at this picture, there are so 11 many paths. I'm worried that there's not enough open space. This is supposed to be 12 natural open space. I'm most concerned about burrowing owls because they need a 13 certain amount of open space, especially away from dogs. There are so many paths and 14 so many benches and so many places to congregate and so many circular routes that 15 you're never going to get another burrowing owl. I know that Shani Kleinhaus has made 16 this argument several times with the Emily Renzel Wetlands. I'm worried that you're 17 going to have a similar situation here. I love the surrounding ones, the circular ones that 18 go around. Maybe the one that goes to the very top, that comes from the lower left up to 19 the right to the very top. The rest of them, get rid of half or more. On those that remain, 20 you have your benches. I'm a little bit worried about that. The burrowing owls are most 21 successful near Permanente Creek near Google. There's a huge hill there. The other 22 place that they're most successful is on the south side of Shoreline near the Shoreline 23 overflow parking lot. That whole area behind there is where they are. They're not near 24 paths. They're certainly not near dogs. 25 Mr. Anderson: Can I address that one before you move on if you don't mind? 26 Commissioner Moss: Yes. 27 Mr. Anderson: Excuse me. I forgot to mention that in anticipation of that feedback—I've 28 heard that too for many years, the will of a lot of stakeholders not to bifurcate habitat too 29 much. In lieu of that, we said two of these areas, this area and this one here, would be 30 maintenance only. It would not be an open trail. However, every trail you see on there is 31 a maintenance trail. We couldn't take anything out. You could label it "not a trail" if you 32 want. Everything on there is necessary for the Public Works team to service the leachate 33 wells that are part of having a former landfill. They'll need those areas. We haven't had 34 any superfluous trails; these are all dual-purpose maintenance roads. We certainly can 35 and have proposed at least in these two right here to label them as not a trail. It doesn't 36 mean people won't sometimes use them, but maybe it limits it. 37 DRAFT Draft Minutes 45 Commissioner Moss: Concentrate the benches in areas that we want people to focus on, 1 like the perimeter, and maybe one at the top of the hill and not everywhere. I think that's 2 important. As far as seniors, if there are a few benches in strategic places, that's great. 3 They don't need a bench every 100 feet. Your comment about the burrowing owl and the 4 ground squirrels and putting mounds of dirt. You should be able to put a concrete cap 5 over certain areas of the hill that you could put dirt on top so that when the ground 6 squirrels go down 5 feet and reach the concrete cap, they won't go any further down, but 7 they'll go out. If the cap is in such a way that it's sloped down, then any water or leaching 8 won't go through the cap but will go down the hill somewhere else. The leaching may be 9 less. If there's some way we could find out how other people have done it, I would do 10 anything we can to encourage the ground squirrels and the burrowing owls. 11 Vice Chair Greenfield: Daren, I want to thank you for all the thoughtful work you've 12 spearheaded with staff and the stakeholder group in arriving at the plan that's in front of 13 us. I definitely agree with Concept 2, the roundabout parking idea. It seems like a no-14 brainer in adding the bus parking. It's certainly necessary and straightforward. Thank 15 you for the continued push for the burrowing areas. I know you appreciate the need for 16 that. It sounds like if push comes to shove, we'll get there one of these days. Other than 17 that, I have no specific comments. Great stuff. 18 Commissioner Reckdahl: I am pro squirrel, so anything we can do—except in my 19 backyard. In Byxbee, I love the squirrels. Anything we can do to get more ground 20 squirrel area is going to be helpful for the habitat and helpful for the owls. I think it's a 21 good thing. When Byxbee was first laid out, they had trails going by every leachate 22 pump, so there were twice as many trails. Deirdre just hated that, so we worked. They 23 had to work very hard to minimize these trails. They're stretching it because sometimes 24 they have to move off the trail. They'll park the truck and walk out there 20 or 30 feet or 25 so. They really have stretched just to get to this point. I think I mentioned this to Daren. 26 Sunnyvale has a Byxbee-type park that, I think, is ten years older. They recently put in 27 stairs. It'll be interesting to see. Looking at the settling we have at Byxbee, I don't see 28 how we can have stairs right now. We'll find out if the stairs break down in Sunnyvale. 29 If it works in Sunnyvale, then maybe ten years from now we can start thinking about 30 stairs at Byxbee. When I go up there, I get disoriented. It's just a flat moonscape. 31 Having a group meeting area helps it, gives one landmark. It would be nice to have more 32 landmarks in there. Could you have a big rock pile or big wood pile that would double as 33 habitat and landmark? That would at least give you something to put on the map and 34 something to guide yourself. 35 Mr. Anderson: Would something like additional foraging islands help? It's not 36 humongous. 37 DRAFT Draft Minutes 46 Commissioner Reckdahl: I would want something vertical so you could see it from a 1 ways away. That would give you a reference point. Anything that would get a little 2 elevation and have some type of habitat might be a good double duty. 3 Commissioner LaMere: With the loops, I see you have mileage listed. Is that something 4 you'd normally do at the start of different trails or in the parking lot? Would you put a 5 legend so people would know distances of the different trails? 6 Mr. Anderson: Not typically. We accomplish it in two ways, one is on our trail maps. 7 It'll show markers and the distance between the two so you can piece together your own 8 route. Sometimes we have 6x6 redwood posts that say x number of miles to the Nature 9 Center and x number to Byxbee. One concept the consultant was pitching for those loops 10 was perhaps color coding something on the park bench itself. I'm not quite sure how 11 that's going to work yet. They're just kicking around ideas. It may be only reflected in 12 the map, but we might find something more creative and interesting. 13 Commissioner LaMere: As far as parking goes, I've not driven my car out there. I've run 14 out there and been on a bike. The parking is quite impacted. 15 Mr. Anderson: Every day in the mornings and in the afternoons and all day on weekends. 16 Commissioner LaMere: Will they make places for bike racks and so forth? Is that in the 17 plans? 18 Mr. Anderson: I don't know if it's on this plan. I think we have one small one existing, 19 and it needs to be expanded. 20 Chair McDougall: If it's all about exercise with the stairs, you could make an 21 incremental path that is relatively steep. One already exists, as you know, from the 22 parking lot. It's a user-made path to get the exercise running up. I'm in favor of segment 23 distances, so you can figure out how to go 20 miles or 1 mile. There's a limited number 24 of loops, and they're not short enough to identify the loops. Let's make sure we make a 25 big point of bike racks right from the start. Your interaction and involvement with the 26 stakeholder group and the quality of that interaction is really impressive. Thank you for 27 that. If there are no other questions, we can go on to one of the final items on the agenda. 28 Mr. Anderson: Chair McDougall, I had one other comment. I forgot to mention that the 29 existing habitat islands are irrigated in a very unique way. We put in-ground tanks and 30 bring recycled water up by truck to fill those up, which was great when we had one or 31 two or three small ones. To properly vegetate Byxbee, that will not suffice. What I 32 propose and what you'll see reflected in the action plan is that we do a recycled water line 33 from the back side of the treatment plant to the top of Byxbee. That's the only way we're 34 DRAFT Draft Minutes 47 going to viably establish healthy native vegetation. I just want you to know that's part of 1 the plan too. 2 Chair McDougall: That was a great addition. Thank you. 3 6. Other Ad Hoc Committee and Liaison Updates 4 Chair McDougall: Item 6 would be Other Ad Hoc Committee and Liaison Updates. 5 Commissioner LaMere, do you have anything you want to add? Commissioner 6 Reckdahl? 7 Commissioner Reckdahl: David will want to say a few words about two things that we 8 went to this week. 9 Commissioner Moss: This past week has been a busy week for biking in the Baylands. 10 We had a completion ceremony for the bike path that goes from the Baylands Athletic 11 Center to East Palo Alto across the Friendship Bridge. The Friendship Bridge has been 12 doubled in length with this San Francisquito Creek flood control project completion. 13 This is Phase I. It's a monumental achievement. It's about nine years' worth of work. 14 Our part of it is really that it goes through the Baylands. It'll continue through the 15 Baylands to the north, and that's Phase II. Phase II will include some of the bridges 16 upstream from San Francisquito Creek. The part that involves us is the part that is 17 adjacent to the marshes. It turns out that the marsh just north of San Francisquito Creek 18 has the highest population of Ridgway rails in the whole South Bay area. It's very 19 important that we play our role to make sure bike accessibility is enhanced but we also 20 protect the marsh. Yesterday, they kicked off the 101 bike bridge project over Lefkowitz 21 underpass. Google paid a significant amount of the project. We've talked about that at 22 length in this Commission. That kickoff is a big deal. That will take several years to 23 complete. 24 Chair McDougall: Commissioner Cribbs, do you have anything? 25 Commissioner Cribbs: Only the pickleball moving forward for our ad hoc meeting a 26 couple of weeks ago. That was all good. There was to be a conversation with Peter 27 Jensen about the grass in our new dog park that is not doing well. They're trying to 28 achieve some sort of solution. He was ill, so that didn't happen. Ryan and I were going 29 to go to that and listen to potential solutions. I guess they knew that was going to happen 30 because of the trees, but it's happening more quickly than it should be happening. 31 Something to watch. I had one final question; I don't know if it's appropriate now. I 32 wondered how we were doing with the new vendor with our park maintenance and the 33 trash in the parks on the weekends. 34 DRAFT Draft Minutes 48 Chair McDougall: That was also a question that Commissioner McCauley kept asking. 1 Why don't we make sure that isn't agendized but asked for in the staff report for the next 2 meeting? 3 Commissioner Cribbs: Thank you. However, we need to do it would be great. 4 Vice Chair Greenfield: The bike bridge ceremony was well attended by the Parks and 5 Rec Commission with four Commissioners there. That was great. The Lefkowitz family 6 was present at the ceremony. I'm wondering if the Lefkowitz name will be maintained 7 with the new bike bridge. The underpass is going away. I wonder if Council or staff has 8 any recommendations. 9 Ms. O'Kane: I don't know the answer, but I can find out tomorrow. 10 Vice Chair Greenfield: On the park dedication front, the ad hoc met. We're working to 11 research public benefit park-like spaces to understand where they exist and how to better 12 publicize these spaces for use within the community. We haven't made much progress on 13 dedication. Staff has communicated the staff resources issues in various departments, 14 which is one of the inhibiting factors, but we continue to consider how to proceed 15 productively. On the turf management front, I've been out at the Cubberley turf field 16 refereeing some soccer games. The seasonal lights, which Palo Alto Soccer Club has in 17 place for practicing, look great. It's another win-win on the win-win project, where the 18 positioning is not obtrusive. The full track is now accessible for joggers. The Palo Alto 19 Soccer Club is happy with it as well. On community gardens, we're still waiting for the 20 green light as this ripples through various departments. I understand that we have legal 21 approval, and it's now in planning. It's not clear if it will need to go to the Council, but 22 we're continuing to push forward in opening a new community garden. A few months 23 back, I talked about updates to the rules and regulations for the community gardens. It's 24 become more complex than initially perceived. There are individualized plans or 25 variances being worked out for each garden. I think we'll have a general set of guidelines 26 and specific variances as appropriate for the various gardens. That's something we can 27 look forward to sometime next year. In the discussion of pickleball, I meant to say we 28 don't want to have deciduous trees nearby; we want to have evergreen trees. 29 Chair McDougall: It's interesting that you said it's become more complex. Isn't that the 30 line they attach to everything we get involved in? If there aren't any other updates on ad 31 hocs … 32 Commissioner Moss: One more thing. Can you give an update on the Cubberley Master 33 Plan? When was the last meeting that we had? 34 Ms. O'Kane: The last meeting was November 1st. The next meeting is Thursday, 35 January 24th or 23rd. It'll be at 7:00 p.m. again at Cubberley. A little bit more time 36 DRAFT Draft Minutes 49 between the two meetings this time to give the consultant an opportunity to process and 1 digest everything that we've heard from the community and put something together that's 2 substantive. The final meeting will be in May. 3 Commissioner Moss: Can we have the offsite planned earlier than last year? 4 Chair McDougall: I was going to go to agenda items next. On the Cubberley thing, I 5 really like the progress and the structure that the consultant is using. It's another case of 6 getting strong community engagement. That's been really effective. 7 Commissioner Reckdahl: Congratulations goes out to Commissioners Cribbs, Moss, and 8 Greenfield, who have been reappointed. They will be with us for a while. 9 Chair McDougall: Thank you for doing that. It never occurred to me that anything had 10 changed. 11 VI. TENTATIVE AGENDA FOR JANUARY 22, 2019 MEETING 12 Chair McDougall: In terms of tentative agenda items, I would like to suggest that relative 13 to a retreat we should have a discussion of the topics and the planning at the next 14 meeting. Kristen, maybe you and Commissioner Greenfield and I could get together as 15 the executive and come back with some proposed dates and proposed content and 16 proposed approaches. The idea that we should hold it sooner rather than later is useful. 17 We still have outstanding a meeting with the Council representatives or Mayor and Vice 18 Mayor. We should try and plan that. We had our guest speaker, Monique, on the 19 original agenda for tonight to talk about the Palo Alto Dialog report. I'd like to make sure 20 that we're not just talking about parks all the time, but we're also talking about 21 Community Services activities. I'd like to see that. Are there any other suggestions for 22 topics for the next meeting? 23 Vice Chair Greenfield: CIP. 24 Chair McDougall: An update on the CIP and the analysis and discussions the ad hoc has 25 had would be useful. 26 Ms. O'Kane: That's planned for January. It was supposed to be tonight, but it got 27 bumped. We may have something on pickleball in January. If possible, we would have 28 the PIO. 29 Chair McDougall: That would be really nice if we could move that fast. 30 Commissioner Cribbs: That would be really nice if we could move that along. In the 31 same vein, I would like to see once a quarter for the next year some sort of quick report 32 DRAFT Draft Minutes 50 on how the aquatics situation is doing and how the communication is going. It doesn't 1 have to be a long staff report, but just a quick mention. 2 Ms. O'Kane: Sure. With respect to the retreat, maybe Natalie could poll everyone on 3 potential dates to get that on the calendar. The only downside to that is we don't have our 4 Council liaison assigned yet. We can't factor in that person's schedule, but we should 5 start scheduling that anyway. 6 Vice Chair Greenfield: I'd like to suggest that we make the trek up to Foothills Park for 7 the next retreat. We haven't done that since I've been on the Commission. 8 Chair McDougall: Any other comments, questions? Jeff, you and I will meet with 9 Kristen to come up with the full agenda. I think we've got some good input relative to the 10 agenda. If that's it, I would like to ask if there are any other comments, announcements 11 from staff. 12 VII. COMMENTS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS 13 Ms. O'Kane: I have one. We've produced our calendar again. This serves two functions. 14 It's our annual report. The end of the calendar shows what we've accomplished this past 15 year as a department. It also highlights everything that our department provides to the 16 community. The calendar lists our special events, theatre productions, important Enjoy! 17 catalog registration dates. This is our third year producing this. I love it, so I hope you 18 all do to. In the age where people use electronic calendars, I hope you all still find it 19 useful. 20 Chair McDougall: If we give these away, can we get more? 21 Ms. O'Kane: You can. There are more here if you'd like to take more now. 22 Commissioner Moss: We're famous. The San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge 23 has a quarterly newsletter, and we're on page 11 where they talk about the Baylands 24 Conservation Committee. It's written by Emily Renzel and talks about Byxbee Park and 25 the Renzel Wetlands. There are six other cities that are represented in that view. 26 VIII. ADJOURNMENT 27 Meeting adjourned on motion by Commissioner Cribbs and second by Commissioner 28 Moss at 10:16 p.m. 29 1 TO: PARKS AND RECREATION COMMISSION FROM: PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT DATE: January 22, 2019 SUBJECT: SECOND UPDATE ON THE GREEN STORMWATER INFRASTRUCTURE PLAN (85% DRAFT) RECOMMENDATION This informational report is intended to provide additional background to Commission members regarding the City of Palo Alto’s (City) Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI) Plan (Plan), currently an 85% DRAFT version, that must be accepted by City Council by June 2019 as required by the Water Board. There is no staff recommendation at this time. BACKGROUND Per the first update provided on November 27, 2018 provided to Parks and Recreation Commission (Commission) members, GSI uses vegetation, soils and natural processes to manage stormwater runoff. The City plans to, where feasible, gradually integrate GSI features into its urban landscape and stormwater conveyance systems over several decades. The City is subject to the requirements of the Municipal Regional Stormwater National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Permit in the San Francisco Bay Area (Order R2-2015- 0049,) also known as the Municipal Regional Permit (MRP), which became effective on January 1, 2016. The MRP applies to 76 municipalities and flood control agencies that discharge stormwater to the San Francisco Bay (Bay). One of the requirements of the current Permit is to create a long-term GSI Plan that identifies public (and potentially) private opportunities to integrate GSI measures on streets, roads, parking lots, roofs, and other elements beyond the current threshold requirements. The (85%) GSI Plan contains certain mandatory elements (per the MRP) as well as other elements desired by the City. The GSI Plan elements are briefly listed below. • Project Identification and Prioritization Process for planned and proposed projects • Impervious Surface Targets • Project Tracking System • Construction Guidelines and Specifications • Integration with Current and Future Plans • Evaluation of Funding Options • Implementation Plan & Schedule • Outreach and Education Internal and external collaboration and outreach during the Plan development process continues with the staff-based a GSI Workgroup, as well as updates presented to the Stormwater Management Oversight Committee, and the Parks and Recreation (Nov. 2018 and Jan. 2019) and Planning and Transportation Commissions (Jan. 2019). The 85% will be posted on the City’s webpage (www.cityofpaloalto.org/gsi). 2 DISCUSSION At the Nov. 27, 2018 presentation to the Commission, the staff summarized general challenges to long-term successful implementation that had been identified during the GSI Plan development process. In addition, proposed solutions were provided to address some of the primary challenges. This presentation continues that discussion and provides further details through its summary of the 85% DRAFT version of the GSI Plan. The following briefly describes some of the key items that were addressed in the Plan as implementation actions to meet Permit requirements. 1. Updates to City Plan and Policies a. Per the MRP, the City must update or modify all of its planning document to incorporate GSI requirements, particularly those that affect the future of any impervious surfaces on City property, in the right-of-way, and storm drain infrastructure, by the end of the Permit term (end of calendar year 2020). b. City staff identified several City plans that will need to be updated in order to fully incorporate GSI requirements; staff will coordinate with the appropriate departments to amend any plans and documents. c. Action: Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation Plan (BPTP) i. The City’s BPTP successfully supported various goals and requirements, including those of the Comprehensive Plan, the Climate Action Plan, and the state Complete Streets Act and regional Sustainable Communities Initiative. When last adopted, the BPTP recommended that work began on another update five years later (in 2017). While a complete update will take longer than two years (the Permit deadline), an interim policy will be drafted in the short term to guide future Department of Transportation (DOT) projects. A subsequent phase would involve a comprehensive BPTP update to be led by the DOT, which would establish street design standards that not only consider pedestrian, bike and school safety, but also provide the benefits of GSI and provide multiple benefits to highly-used transporation routes. d. Action: Storm Drain Master Plan (SDMP) i. The next update to the SDMP will include an analysis of how the integration of both traditional and green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) can be designed to provide adequate capacity for all size storms, while considering the varying water table depths throughout the City. The analysis will consider using GSI in areas that experience ponding as well as in combination with larger pipe infrastructure (designed to treat 10-year storms). As with the BPTP, an interim policy will be drafted to ensure GSI is considered when storm drain infrastructure system improvements occur. When the SDMP is updated, GSI language and the feasibility of GSI integration into the City’s storm drain system will be included. 3 e. Action: Street and Sidewalk Improvements Program i. Since streets and associated impervious surfaces are direct stormwater runoff conduits, and there is a major focus to continuously provide City streets at excellent condition, it is a clear fit to integrate GSI into this program. This will not only meet MRP requirements, but also support meeting multiple Departmental goals. Although streets may sometimes be improved at the surface (some types of GSI are installed below the ground surface), it is important to nevertheless establish a standard that each project will be assessed using GSI feasibility tools. Although a plan is not in place for this Program, a policy will be established to guide how all future improvements are constructed and designed. This policy will be adjusted over time as-needed and as funding becomes available. f. Action: Capital Improvement Projects (CIPs) i. As required by the MRP, staff that manages CIPs, including construction, facility, infrastructure and utility upgrades (when feasible), in addition to O&M activities, must evaluate them for GSI opportunities. An internal policy will be established to direct staff to follow this process to ensure full staff participation. 2. Details and Specifications Manual a. The City does not have standard engineering specifications for GSI features that can be used consistently for public and private projects. b. Action: i. The City will contract with a consultant to create City-specific engineering designs that will be vetted by all Departments. Watershed Protection Group (WPG) staff met with City staff in October 2018 to develop a list of criteria that will inform a Scope of Work for the Request for Proposals. 3. Maintenance and Monitoring Plan a. Current features at City facilities and right-of-way areas may not be maintained using best practices and, thus, may not be as effective as the intention of design. b. Action: i. The City will contract with a consultant to create a Maintenance & Monitoring Plan. ii. Coordinate the development and regular implementation of maintenance agreements for each public site. Responsibilities and best practices will be clearly identified and revisited on a yearly basis. 4 4. Internal Procedures a. Standardized processes need to be in place for staff to determine feasibility of the addition of GSI to a project, including physical constraints, and to avoid missed opportunities. b. Action: i. Establish a map-based and tracking process to vet future projects planned by the City to be evaluated for the opportunity to include GSI measures. ii. Conduct regular coordination meetings led by the Stormwater Program. 5. Education and Outreach a. Need for increased understanding of community-wide benefits of GSI (e.g., stormwater capture and reuse). b. Action: i. The City will contract with a consultant to create an outreach strategy and plan with adequate tools to increase support for the implementation of the GSI Plan. 6. Funding a. Although the City’s residents have demonstrated their high level of commitment to stormwater issues by voting to implement a stormwater management fee to fund stormwater projects in the City, a limited proportion is allocated for GSI. b. Action: Short-Term Funding Needs and Opportunity Analysis (Phase 1) i. WPG staff have a current contract with a consultant to conduct a short- term analysis by late spring of 2019. This analysis will identify several methods that may serve as best-fit, feasible options for the City. This analysis will also identify lessons-learned and questions to be further explored during the long-term funding needs and opportunity analysis. c. Action: Long-Term Funding Needs and Opportunity Analysis (Phase 2) i. The City will contract with a consultant to expand upon the short-term analysis in fiscal years 20-21. These funding options would ultimately be used in combination to help fund both construction and maintenance of GSI features. 7. Private Property Opportunities a. GSI implementation is limited to public property in the 85% GSI Plan. b. Action: i. In order to increase the impact of GSI throughout the entire City, it is imperative to consider the establishment of additional requirements for private property, as well as creation of incentives that will reward property owners for installing and maintaining GSI beyond requirements. Through the update of Chapter 16.11 of the Municipal Code, all new and 5 redeveloped sites (both public and private) are required to install on-site LID, leading to a greater number of small-scale GSI throughout the City. This type of GSI will keep stormwater runoff on-site, while providing more affordable options to engineered treatment measures. However, the benefits of LID will decrease in non-residential areas where stormwater treatment may necessitate pollutant removal. Therefore, in FY2020, following the acceptance of this Plan, it would be a logical step to investigate other options to increase private property GSI such as: 1. Decreasing the size threshold trigger for stormwater treatment; 2. Setting performance-based standards, such as water quality improvement, with a specific timeframe, instead of focusing on the size of the GSI feature; 3. Providing incentives, such as expedited permitting and/or reduced permit fees, for projects that install measures beyond the requirement; and 4. Requiring new development projects of a certain size threshold, and that are already required to construct new right-of-way features, to also install GSI features. 8. Rating and Performance Tools a. The design, construction, and maintenance of current GSI features is not evaluated in a way that provides transparency to the use of public funds or effectiveness. b. Action: i. City staff will evaluate the integration of a rating and performance tool in FY2021, following the approval of the GSI Plan. In order to holistically manage complex projects that can meet multiple objectives of various departments, support the City’s Comprehensive and Sustainability Plans (among others), and provide accurate, data-supported results to the public, rating and performance tools will be evaluated. Such a tool can be integrated into the GSI evaluation process and follow projects through the design, construction and maintenance phases. further explore in FY2021. ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW This is a planning study and therefore does not require California Environmental Quality Act review, because the Plan does not meet the definition of a project under Public Resources Code 21065. An environmental assessment in accordance with CEQA will be prepared for each constructed project. NEXT STEPS The GSI Plan must be adopted by City Council by June 30, 2019. Prior to Plan development, the Permit required the approval of the Green (Stormwater) Infrastructure Plan Framework (outline 6 document) by June 30, 2017. The Framework document was signed by the City Manager and timely submitted to the Regional Water Quality Control Board (Water Board) by September 30, 2017 as an attachment to the City’s Regulatory Annual Report. The following is a brief schedule of the development and adoption of the GSI Plan. Table 1. GSI Plan Adoption Timeline Task Due Date (50%) DRAFT GSI Plan June 2018 1st Parks and Recreation Commission presentation November 2018 (85%) DRAFT GSI Plan January 2018 2nd Parks and Recreation Commission presentation January 2018 Planning and Transportation Commission presentation January 2018 FINAL DRAFT GSI Plan (100%) March 2019 Final GSI Plan for CITY COUNCIL Adoption April 2019 CITY COUNCIL Approval of GSI Plan June 2019 PREPARED BY:__________________________________________________________ PAM BOYLE RODRIGUEZ Stormwater Program Manager, Public Works Environmental Services Div. 1 TO: PARKS AND RECREATION COMMISSION FROM: KRISTEN O’KANE, COMMUNITY SERVICES DEPARTMENT DATE: JANUARY 22, 2019 SUBJECT: CUBBERLEY COMMUNITY CENTER MASTER PLAN UPDATE Recommendation Staff, with support from master plan consultant Concordia will provide an update on the Cubberley Community Center master planning effort by the City of Palo Alto and Palo Alto Unified School District. No action is required. Background The Cubberley Community Center is located on a 35-acre site in south Palo Alto that was previously home to Cubberley High School until 1979. Of the 35 acres, the Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) owns 27 acres and the City of Palo Alto owns 8 acres. The City leases PAUSD’s 27 acres and operates the community center on the combined 35-acre site. The lease has since been amended multiple times and the current amendment will expire in December 2019. The lease amendment includes a condition that the City and PAUSD will jointly develop a master plan for the entire site by December 31, 2019. A Cubberley Citizens Advisory Committee (CCAC) representing a cross-section of Cubberley tenants, city-wide neighborhoods, schools and city-wide representatives, and other relevant organizations, was formed in 2012 to cooperatively explore all practical joint uses of the Cubberley campus for both educational and community service needs. The result of the CCAC process was the recommendation that the site be designed for shared City/School District use and for the City and the School District to work cooperatively toward a phased development to support both school and community needs. The final report of the CCAC can be found at http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/civicax/filebank/documents/33455. On March 9, 2016, City Manager Jim Keene and PAUSD Superintendent Max McGee signed a Cubberley Futures Compact to demonstrate the commitment between the City and the School District to collaboratively plan for the future of the 35-acre Cubberley site. A professional services agreement with Concordia, LLC was approved by City Council on June 18, 2018 to assist with engaging the community to develop a vision and master plan and for the 35-acre site. The City and PAUSD are sharing equally in the cost of the master planning effort. On December 17, 2018 City Council approved the addition of the adjacent PAUSD properties Greendell School and 525 San Antonio Road to the project area and scope of the master plan. Support to include these two properties into 2 the study area for the master plan was expressed by community members who attended the first two community meetings, as well as members of the Parks and Recreation Commission. Members of the City-School Liaison Committee also showed support for inclusion of these two properties at their November 15, 2018 meeting. The June 18th and December 17th City Council Staff Reports can be found at: https://cityofpaloalto.org/civicax/filebank/documents/65435 https://www.cityofpaloalto.org/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx?t=63453.06&BlobID=68173 Discussion The Cubberley community co-design process began with two community meetings at the Cubberley Pavilion on September 27, 2018 and November 1, 2018. At the first meetings, participants engaged in activities that would help define additional or expanded programs to complement the existing uses at Cubberley and allow for a future school at the site. This activity, along with a review of existing uses at Cubberley and nearby assets provided the basis for a “needs assessment” evaluation. It is important to note that the needs assessment provides valuable information on what exists and what additional programming needs are identified today. The design of Cubberley will be based on spatial flexibility and adaptability so that needs that are not yet identified can be accommodated in the future. Participants also participated in activities to gage the community’s preferences toward building size, parking and amount of green space. Results of the first two meetings including program recommendations, preferred building height and site layout, and future shared uses is presented in the Cubberley Co-design Program Document https://www.pausd.org/sites/default/files/Cubberley%20Program%20Document_final.pdf This document, along with all project information and deliverables is available on the project website at www.pausd.org/cubberleycodesign Next Steps Concordia has engaged the expertise of Fehr and Peers, a transportation consultation to assist with developing a site circulation plan for bicycles, pedestrians, and vehicles, including an analysis of site ingress and egress. The third community meeting will be on Thursday, January 24th at the Cubberley Pavilion. At this meeting, participants will evaluate a draft design concept and provide their preferences for design direction and aesthetics. The fourth and final meeting will be May 9, 2019 and will collect feedback from participants on the draft master plan. 3 A City Council Study Session is scheduled for Monday, February 11, 2019 and will be followed by a PAUSD Board of Education study session on Tuesday, February 12, 2019. Attachments: A: Cubberley Co-Design Program Document https://www.pausd.org/sites/default/files/Cubberley%20Program%20Document_final.pdf     Bridging Capital: New Directions for Learning,  Innovation and Community    A Report of the  Palo Alto Dialogue on Libraries and Community Services            Joaquin Alvarado and Sarah Carpenter  Rapporteurs      September 13, 2018  Palo Alto, California            2 This report is written from the perspective of informed observers at the Palo Alto Dialogue on  Libraries and Community Services. Unless attributed to a particular person, none of the  comments, ideas or recommendations contain in this report should be taken as embodying the  views of carrying the endorsement of any specific participant or affiliated organizations or  employers at the Dialogue.     Copyright © 2018 by The Aspen Institute  The Aspen Institute  2300 N Street, NW, Suite 700  Washington, DC 20037  www.aspeninstitute.org    Amy K. Garmer  Director  Aspen Institute Dialogue on Public Libraries  www.LibraryVision.org    Monique le Conge Ziesenhenne  Director of Library and Community Services  City of Palo Alto, California  http://library.cityofpaloalto.org   www.cityofpaloalto.org/gov/depts/csd/     Published in the United States of America in 2018  By The Aspen Institute  All rights reserved.  This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution‐Noncommercial 4.0 United  States license (CC BY‐NC 4.0).     This publication was supported in whole or in part by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library  Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act, administered in  California by the State Librarian.    The opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the U.S.  Institute of Museum and Library Services or the California State Library, and no official  endorsement by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services or the California State  Library should be inferred. 3 Palo Alto Dialogue on Libraries and Community Services    Table of Contents    Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ 4  List of Participants .......................................................................................................................... 5  Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 7  The Palo Alto Context .................................................................................................................... 8  Learning, Innovation and Community ........................................................................................ 11  The New Information Environment ............................................................................................. 14  Creative Collisions .......................................................................................................................... 19  Lifelong Learning Working Group ....................................................................................................  20  Citizenship and Civic Engagement Working Group ......................................................................... 21  Health and Wellness Working Group  ...............................................................................................  23  Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 24     4 Acknowledgements    Conferences by their very nature are collaborative affairs. The Aspen Institute Dialogue on  Public Libraries would like to acknowledge and thank the people and organizations whose  partnership and support made the Palo Alto Dialogue on Libraries and Community Services  and this report possible. We first wish to thank our partners at the Palo Alto City Library and  the Community Services Department.  Key personnel are included in the participant list below.     The California State Library under the direction of Greg Lucas, state librarian, and his state  library colleagues, Janet Coles and Beverly Schwartzberg, provided funding and expertise to  guide our work in California, and the Southern California Library Cooperative (Diane  Satchwell, executive director) has managed the grant.     We appreciate the time and energy of Steering Committee members who helped us think  through critical issues and plan all aspects of the Dialogue: Becky Beacom, Palo Alto Medical  Foundation; Cyrus Cary, Office of Emergency Services; Sheena Chin, Library Advisory  Commission; Rob de Geus, Deputy City Manager; Preeti Hehmeyer, Bill Lane Center for the  American West, Stanford University; Jonathan Iiyama, Palo Alto Family YMCA; Nigel Jones,  Friends of the Palo Alto Library; Lydia Kou, Palo Alto City Council; Mel Matsumoto, Channing  House Retirement Center; Don McDougall, Parks & Recreation Commission, Palo Alto; Kristen  O’Kane, Community Services Department; Anand Venkatamaran, Foothill College; Monique le  Conge Ziesenhenne, Director of Library and Community Services; Gayathri Kanth and Diane  Lai, Palo Alto City Library.    We thank our consultants and rapporteurs at Studiotobe, Joaquin Alvarado, Kristin Belden and  Sarah Carpenter for their partnership and assistance in planning the dialogue and for preparing  this report.  Finally, we thank the individuals named below whose generous contributions of  time and expertise as Dialogue participants have made this report possible.  Titles reflect  positions held on September 13, 2018.  5 Palo Alto Dialogue on Libraries and Community Services  List of Participants    Richard Adler  Fellow  Institute for the Future    Joaquin Alvarado      Founding Partner   Studiotobe    Nancy Brown  Education Division Manager   Palo Alto Medical Foundation    Mimi Calter  Deputy University Librarian  Stanford Libraries    Sheena Chin  Chair 2014‐2016  Library Advisory Commission    Nancy Cohen  Incoming President and Board Member  Friends of the Palo Alto Library    Patty Doolittle  Communications & Development Director  Palo Alto Family YMCA    Kenneth Dueker  Director, Emergency Services  Chief, Office of Emergency Services   City of Palo Alto    Emily Farber  Social Worker  Avenidas Care Partners        Joyce Friedrichs  Immediate Past Board Chair  Environmental Volunteers    Chantal Cotton Gaines  Assistant to the City Manager  City of Palo Alto    Amy Garmer   Director  Dialogue on Public Libraries  The Aspen Institute    Doug Hagan  Chair  Library Advisory Commission    Jennifer Chang Hetterly  Editor  Palo Alto Matters    Susan Hildreth   Interim Director  Sonoma County Library    and   Communications and Society Fellow  Aspen Institute     Sandra Hirsh  Director and Professor, School of Information  San José State University    and  Member, Palo Alto Library Bond Oversight  Committee    Lydia Kou  Council Member  Palo Alto City Council    6 Don McDougall   Chair, Parks & Recreation Commission  City of Palo Alto    Maureen O’Connor  President  Palo Alto University     Kristen OʹKane   Chief Operating Officer  Community Services Department   City of Palo Alto    Marcia Pugsley  Board Member  Palo Alto Art Center Foundation    and  Member, Board of Trustees  Channing House    Beverly Schwartzberg     Library Programs Consultant   Library Development Services  California State Library     Valerie Stinger  Chair  Human Relations Commission    Anand Venkataraman  Computer Science Instructor  Foothill College              Paula Wolfson  Manager  Avenidas Care Partners  Cubberley Community Center     Elliott Wright  Executive Director  Environmental Volunteers    Monique le Conge Ziesenhenne  Director of Library and Community  Services  City of Palo Alto    Rapporteur:    Sarah Carpenter  Studiotobe      Observers and Staff:    Gayathri Kanth  Assistant Director, Public Services  Palo Alto City Library    Tricia Kelly  Managing Director  Communications and Society Program  The Aspen Institute    Diane Lai  Division Head for   Information Technology & Collections  Palo Alto City Library        7 Bridging Capital: New Directions for   Learning, Innovation and Community    Introduction    The Aspen Institute Dialogue on Public Libraries creates unique opportunities for  community leaders, innovators and institutional partners to collaborate on developing  next generation initiatives for libraries across the country.  Libraries play an important  role in areas that are priorities for communities, like civic engagement, workforce  development, education and democratic discourse.  As the nation continues to confront  intense polarization, libraries are increasingly serving as third spaces, where diverse  populations can coalesce, connect and confront the challenges in their community  through open and trusted channels and relationships.      The Aspen Institute in partnership with the Palo Alto City Library and Community  Services Department convened community leaders from diverse constituencies.  The  day‐long roundtable in Palo Alto, California on September 13, 2018 focused on the key  themes of learning, innovation and community.  Participants examined how to align  goals for service to residents of Palo Alto and consider creative and innovative  pathways toward pursuing them.  The Palo Alto City Library and the Community  Services Department are two important service providers in Palo Alto and their future  alignment will impact how and why the community invests in them.       The participants represented diverse and intergenerational stakeholders whose  experience reflected different angles on the core themes of the day.  A number of long  established relationships, as well as an important combination of potential new  partners, were represented in the room.  The discussions during the Dialogue tended  8 more towards the Library, a familiar place, and less toward the Community Services  Department, which oversees a wide array of programs designed for improving  community wellness and the quality of life for people in Palo Alto. While the programs  and services of the Community Services Department are well‐known and widely used,  its entire portfolio of services is less recognized as one brand.  This outcome of the  dialogue highlights the need for opportunities for the Community Services Department  to increase the visibility of the entire department as a community partner.      The Palo Alto Context    Palo Alto is a city with strong educational values, a rich cultural history and exceptional  community assets.  The people who live, work, study and play in Palo Alto have many  different relationships with the city.  In a city with a census population of just under  67,000, the daily influx of workers and students brings the daily population to 158,000  people.  Participants embraced this and considered the workforce population as part of  the “whole community.”  They also acknowledged some challenges with building  cohesion with such an incredible flow of people in and out every day.  Participants  described the city as economically and culturally diverse and said that diversity is  valued and celebrated.  Despite this, there are undercurrents suggesting work to be  done.  The National Citizen Survey found a decline in the sense of well‐being and  belonging in the community, along with concerns about where the community is  heading.  Some suggested that it is home to a population of people highly invested in  the whole community while disengaged with certain critical parts of it.  Participants  were sensitive to these impressions.  This was reflected in the participants’ commitment  to building a sense of community as they worked through strategic questions.      9 The library and community services connection. The library system in Palo Alto was  once a part of the Community Services Department.  This department includes parks,  recreation, community theater, art center, children’s museum and zoo, human services,  and other programs and classes designed to enhance the quality of life and community  wellness for residents.  Monique le Conge Ziesenhenne currently serves as Director of  both Libraries and Community Services for the City of Palo Alto.  Key indicators show  library usage is going strong, with year over year gains in circulation, facilities usage  and online activity.  City leaders present at the roundtable were eager to explore  synergies between the libraries, Community Services Department and community  partners to improve their services.  Both departments have a vested interest in the  wellness of the community and stand to benefit from increased collaboration.    Redefining success: “health not wealth.”  Participants expressed the need to redefine  what success means for a young person in Palo Alto: physical and mental health, not  wealth, should anchor the new definition.  Participants shared a vision for a more  connected and engaged community of diverse and well‐rounded people.  This was not  in reaction to the pervasive technology in the community, but in recognition that it was  not all encompassing.  Participants who work with youth said they often see young  students channeled into academia and tech—two highly competitive fields.  They  suggested that vocational schools and skilled trades be encouraged and available for  young people, as they can lead to sustainable, fulfilling careers.  Participants wanted to  find ways to encourage more of the local community to move into these careers and  have a way to stay in the community itself. (It was noted, for example, that public safety  workers in Palo Alto rarely live in the city.)  They saw this as providing a healthy  balance to tech and academia.      10 Alignment.  Community leaders and stakeholders participating in the roundtable  discussed the issue of disconnects between organizations whose goals may be aligned.   They asked how libraries can bring the residents of Palo Alto together to inform each  other about what various sectors are accomplishing and aspiring toward, and how the  library can serve as an onramp to seeding collaboration between different actors.  The  roundtable discussed the need for a more robust environment for civic engagement,  which participants agreed is complex and tricky to navigate.  Palo Alto is home to so  many highly educated and deeply experienced citizens that it can often become a drag  on forward progress as different experts engage in long running debates.  The  consensus was that more creative and frequent collaborations could unlock greater  alignment.    A varied and changing community.  The entire Bay Area struggles with growing  economic disparity and its impact on housing.  Palo Alto is a diverse community, where  diversity finds its greatest expression in cultural diversity, including a growing number  of immigrant residents.  Palo Alto also benefits from a population of longtime residents  entering retirement and families with young students. Economic diversity is becoming  more problematic as the cost of living in Palo Alto is pricing people out of the  community.  For some, the wealth disparities were a concern for insuring a balanced  and open civic leadership.  The roundtable discussed common goals for the community  as a whole, while considering the specific and varied needs of individual populations in  order to accomplish those goals.    Framing the dialogue.  Ziesenhenne identified a key question to lead the roundtable  discussion: How can the strengths of the Palo Alto City Library and the Community  Services Department be leveraged to build resources for communities that are better  than what Palo Alto has now?  To answer this question participants had at their  11 disposal the considerable assets of the community.  They also had to negotiate the  acknowledged “Palo Alto Process” which they recognized can stall broad participation  as a highly committed core of people often dominate some key civic issues. If the  participants were to make progress towards answers they would have to apply the  considerable assets of the community while negotiating the acknowledged “Palo Alto  Process.”    Learning, Innovation and Community  “Innovation is usually a group effort, involving collaboration between  visionaries and engineers, and that creativity comes from drawing on  many sources.  Only in storybooks do inventions come like a thunderbolt,  or a lightbulb popping out of the head of a lone individual in a basement  or garret or garage.”    ‐ Walter Isaacson, The Innovators    Doug Hagan, chair of the Palo Alto Library Advisory Commission, helped open the  dialogue by reflecting on Palo Alto’s values and their alignment with those of the  library.  He identified those values as belonging to three tent poles: Learning,  Innovation, and Community.  Palo Alto places extraordinary value on learning and is  committed to developing literacies in both academic and social environments.  Palo  Alto also breathes innovation and has been driving incredible market shifts through its  research and technology leadership for generations. Finally, Palo Alto is also passionate  about community.  Hagan asked that participants think about how to address each of  the strategic questions through these three filters.  The roles of the Libraries and the  Community Services Department are fundamental and intersecting.  They exist to  preserve the health and vitality of Palo Alto and their evolution should reflect its  values.      12 At the epicenter of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto libraries embrace new technologies.   Recognizing this unique advantage, participants deepened the question beyond taking  advantage of its location to engage new modes of information and new communities.   Participants explored how the library should stay current, and best deploy emerging  technologies to continue to be a learning library for their communities in an age  struggling with polarization and anxiety.  The commitment to its core values makes  Palo Alto unique; Hagan’s lead‐off remarks challenged the group to incorporate them  in thinking through the big questions confronting the community, including questions  of health, civic engagement and education.    New Approaches to Problem Solving.  Technology innovation is central to Palo Alto’s  culture.  Importantly, participants highlighted other forms of innovation that can be  applied to generate a broader sense of collaboration and creative thinking around  public services.  First among these would be establishing a non‐consumer‐driven  culture of creative problem‐solving.  Design Thinking is another transformational force  to emerge from Palo Alto, with the d.school at Stanford University lighting the way.   Applied in this context, its user centered approach to problem solving could capture  insights and requirements for where to begin and how to proceed in transforming the  role of libraries.  Participants asked how the library in Palo Alto can harness innovative  models, develop meaningful and lasting partnerships in the community, and ensure the  relevancy of library services in the city well into the 21st century and beyond.  Libraries  have already evolved to meet the demands of their role as information access provider  and convener for community.  By diversifying their approach to innovation, they can  integrate more fully with other important partners.     Human Capital.  Palo Alto is rich in human capital.  Many of the city’s aging  population remain invested in Palo Alto and give back to their community either by  13 donating or volunteering.  They could be incredible allies for sharing knowledge and  information with young people in the community.  This generational force was seen by  the participants as an ongoing engine of progress requiring new relationships in more  diverse parts of the city.  Emerging communities of color were also seen as sources for  new leadership and energy in the civic life of Palo Alto.  Home to many immigrants, the  participants were invested in finding ways to bring them into the social scaffolding by  offering new ways to participate on public boards, commissions and working groups.   Participants also shared examples from adjacent communities that might provide  additional resources and space for new civic engagement.    Library Strengths. Public libraries have key assets that could be leveraged in the  community to advance innovation: people, place and platform.      People.  Human capital remains the critical resource in communities and is the  gating factor in considering how to move forward in the era of ubiquitous  digitization and dawning AI economic transformation.   Developing and  supporting the pathways for local residents to participate in expanding economic  and cultural opportunities is essential for libraries to deliver within their  missions.    Place.  Libraries provide physical infrastructure and human capital in a  community.  They represent investments made over generations that bring  people together and help to build community at a time when virtual experience  and interactions (often solitary) are ascendant.  Libraries exist within deeply local  relationships and histories rooted in their geographies.  They reflect the  dynamics of their communities and they also struggle with the same issues  confronting the regions they serve.  They are also reflections of the strengths and  14 peculiar assets of their locations.  For libraries, place is not abstract.  It defines  their conditions for success.    Platform.  It is often assumed that platforms are inherently technology based.  In  the age of social media, this is easily a safe assumption.  This trend does not  exclude the possibility that civil society institutions can also perform the role of a  platform for enabling connections and programming that otherwise would not  exist.  Libraries are this kind of platform and more.  They provide an essential  layer of trust that is required to bridge many of the divides that challenge  community development.    The New Information Environment    Learning, innovation and community are deeply impacted by communications  infrastructure and culture.  The rise of mobile technologies has changed the calculus for  understanding how people learn and innovate.  Community adoption of these  technologies and practices acts on the community itself, expanding possibilities and  complexity.  Setting a baseline of understanding is critical for considering how society is  evolving in a community like Palo Alto.  To help frame this context, Richard Adler,  fellow at the Institute for the Future, delivered a PowerPoint presentation titled  “Building Blocks for New Civic Ecologies,” in which he invoked the contours of a  changing technological landscape.  He listed the building blocks shaping the  environment as follows:    1. Personal mobile computing – Two‐thirds of the entire population of the world  carries at least one cell phone, a powerful computer in a handheld device.  15 2. Ubiquitous connectivity ‐ The world is more connected than ever before through  online social networks and other internet platforms.  3. High resolution sensors ‐ The Internet of Things is requiring new levels of  awareness and understanding of the world around us.   4. Orchestrated hardware ‐ All connected devices in our environment will be sending  data back and forth, allowing conversations between one another.  5. Abundant supercomputing ‐ A vast amount of computing can be embedded in a  single program or application, like Google Maps.  An unlimited amount of  computing goes into the “cloud” every day.   6. Augmented reality ‐ Immersive technologies allow layers of information to overlay  reality.    Adler then asked, “What does it mean to be a smart city?”  He used Rio de Janeiro,  Brazil as an example of one kind of smart city, whose model was top‐down.  Rio de  Janeiro manages and monitors the city from an operations center, where data from  municipal and state departments and essential services are aggregated in one  headquarters.  This version of total surveillance and data‐driven municipal  management benefits from network efficiencies, but does not necessarily build  community trust and engagement.  Adler went on to provide a different approach.    An alternative model Adler presented was described as bottom‐up, in which all of us as  individuals are empowered with technology to make connections and navigate the  environment.  He noted two kinds of social capital that help to strengthen  communities—bonding capital, occurring in relationships among existing friends,  family and associates, and bridging capital, which brings together people from  disparate groups.  Palo Alto is rich in bonding capital, while the National Citizen  Survey and other indicators suggest it is lacking bridging capital.  The question then  16 follows, how can the Library and Community Services Department work with  community partners to become a bottom‐up smart city that leverages technology to  build bridging capital for learning, innovation and community?    Bridging capital. Libraries have been a repository of information since their inception,  and the way information is obtained, consumed, shared and secured has evolved over  time.  Libraries have maintained their role as a trusted information source by  continuously adapting to these new modes of information access through books, the  internet and the community.  Libraries have deployed their often limited resources in  strategic ways to capture new opportunities to serve their communities and boost  literacies, often introducing new innovations earlier than other agencies.  This trend is  now challenged by the accelerating pace of change in the marketplace of competition  for people’s attention.  It is also reinforced by the platform libraries provide to develop  the capacity and network to build bridging capital.    Libraries as places of access and discovery.  Library services have always been  expansive and formed around the needs of communities, yet books remain a core  feature of libraries.  This essential function ranges from introducing young readers to  the power of reading to empowering users to stay connected to literature throughout  their lifetimes, regardless of income.  Whether you are a low‐income parent finding  your way to great children’s literature or a senior on a fixed income, the rewards of  reading can be experienced across all walks of life through public libraries in Palo Alto.  They are places of access and discovery.  While technology evolves and information is  more accessible and more contested, the joy of reading does not require innovation.  It  merely requires engagement.  With the themes of learning, innovation and community  in mind, new forms of engagement offer pathways for both the Library and Community  Services Department.  17   Libraries as resource navigators.  Participants highlighted the opportunity for libraries  to serve as an information access point for community and social services resources. The  government and nonprofit sectors have information to share and libraries have trained  and trusted staff ready to assist.  The library is a public space equipped with restrooms  and temperature control. They also typically have charging stations, computers and Wi‐ Fi. All of these resources are crucial to lower income users who need support in  developing workforce skills and access to networks.  There are also many nonprofits in  Palo Alto who need a platform for reaching constituents.  Libraries are a platform,  broker and catalyst for these kinds of connections.  A rotating desk for nonprofits to  engage visitors inside libraries was proposed to increase awareness for available  programming and services.    Information curation.  The internet has become such a basic research tool that people  are expected to be proficient in gathering information this way.  The library can offer  access to technologies that are already embedded in modern society as well as new  technologies to help the community keep up with a rapidly changing digital  environment and workforce.  Participants also identified tensions with the internet in  the age of social media.  Although it is an incredibly useful research tool, the internet is  overloaded with information, some of which is not factual and purposely misleading.  This leads to the internet being, in some instances, an obstacle to information. Libraries  are increasingly required to support users in finding credible sources and reliable  networks for critically consuming information. This new domain of information literacy  has major implications for libraries in our democratic society.  Even in a community  with the intellectual resources of Palo Alto, there was shared concern with the problems  of misinformation and polarizing filter bubbles.    18 Libraries as platforms for the sharing of information.  There has never been more  information available than today, with ubiquitous connectivity driving a glut of data  into every available channel.  There was a shared sense of frustration with finding the  right civic and community information at the right time.  To make this information  available for everyone requires connection and multiple channels of communication.  In  Palo Alto, the library acts as a key facilitator for the sharing of information.  Its physical  space allows for community gatherings and fosters awareness of new opportunities to  learn and engage.  Libraries host classes, meetups, community activities and more.  Library branches are in diverse parts of each community, providing an equitable  opportunity for participation.    New services.  The library can serve as hosts for new services.  The ongoing exploration  of universal pre‐K in California is a critical opportunity for libraries to consider an  expanded set of services.  Low‐income families could benefit greatly from such an  expansion and libraries in Palo Alto would be natural platforms for connecting them to  new services.  The library’s role as a convener could also benefit local business leaders  by hosting innovation meetups where entrepreneurs can talk, network and learn from  each other simply through convening or hackathons.  The same model could extend to  other sectors like art, education or nonprofits.     Alignment with Community Goals.   “As a Library, we value: Providing free and open access to collections,  resources and services to all.  Learning and being a learning organization.   Embracing differences and diversity.  Challenging the norm.  Fostering an  engaged community and staff.  Our relationships with one another and  with our community.”   —The Palo Alto City Library 2018‐2021 Strategic Plan    19 Those at the roundtable were tasked with identifying goals that span various sectors of  the community.  Participants shared a vision of a Palo Alto that has a strong sense of  community across social and economic demographics, a broad worldview and  understanding outside of the Silicon Valley bubble, and a balance between historical  preservation and advancement.  They asked how they can ease barriers to deeper civic  engagement, identify and better serve underserved populations in the city, and  contribute to the social well‐being of youth.  All of these are areas that the library  pursues in its mission to support learning, innovation and community.     While the roundtable agreed that embracing technology is necessary for meaningful  progress, they also valued the nostalgia for both historical Palo Alto and dependable,  familiar library services.  They asked how libraries and other organizations could  capture the memories and history of the community while offering new services to keep  pace with changing modes of information access, and teaching its residents how to  deploy tech purposefully, wisely and efficiently.  This mix of lived experience,  relationship driven insight, and openness to new ideas was an essential part of the  dialogue.      Creative Collisions    Participants were assigned to one of three working groups: Lifelong Learning,  Citizenship and Civic Engagement, and Health and Wellness.  Some were placed in  areas of their expertise, and others assigned to provide diverse perspectives in each  priority area.  The groups examined the goals, aspirations and priorities identified  during the morning sessions.  Considering the assets and strengths of the library and  the community, they developed frameworks to articulate and advance the goals for  20 Palo Alto in each area, and identified potential partnerships across community sectors.   The working groups documented their findings and presented them to the entire group  at the end of the day.      Lifelong Learning Working Group    The Library and the Community Services Department engage with residents and have  an impact at various points across a person’s lifetime.  The working group envisioned a  community where lifelong learning is supported, encouraged, and available to all.  The  group recognized the importance of understanding learning needs across the  continuum of learning, and cataloging opportunities available in the community.  The  group focused on gathering information, mapping opportunities and resources,  marketing services and engaging community.    Get the word out. Palo Alto already has spaces for lifelong learners, like the Palo Alto  Adult School and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Santa Clara University.  The  working group suggested better marketing and advertising for these services.  In line  with the expressed concern for supporting diversity, the group agreed that any new  push in advertising should focus on non‐English outreach to ensure equitable  knowledge of and access to lifelong learning opportunities.    Offer a lifelong learning card.  The working group conceptualized a marketing plan in  the form of a “lifelong learning card.”  This card would create a “marketplace”  surrounding learning, expressing the intrinsic value of each opportunity for learning.   The group suggested that the library could partner with local businesses, schools or  nonprofits to offer skill‐building workshops or classes.  A person’s library card could be  21 loaded with “lifelong learning credits” that are redeemable for these workshops or  classes.      Survey the community.  To better plan for additional library programs surrounding  lifelong learning, participants encouraged continuous interactions with the community  about their needs and aspirations.  This could be in the form of relationships with  various nonprofits or other organizations or consistent surveys of the public.  Once  specific needs are assessed, the library can offer programs like speaker series on  popularly requested topics or classes teaching skills that are in demand.  The group  expressed a desired outcome of increasing cross‐cultural connection and inclusivity.     Through collaborations with other organizations, the library can better understand and  map the services being provided throughout the city.  This would prevent duplications  in services, and avoid competition between organizations.  Instead, the group imagined  that the library could connect organizations in order to better plan for gaps in service,  and to build up the success of each individual effort toward city goals.     Citizenship and Civic Engagement Working Group    This working group focused on an interdisciplinary approach to its charge.  First, it  reflected on the strengths and contradictions of the community.  Participants recognized  Palo Alto as a dynamic place where high civic engagement concentrates with a narrow  constituency.  This was identified as the “Palo Alto process,” where deep debate and  consideration was given to certain issues by a relatively small group of highly  committed people.  While providing clear benefits, this characteristic was also seen as  closing off participation for many.  The working group worked towards strategies for  22 broadening participation through capacity building and more open channels for  engagement.      Develop and host Civic Bootcamps.  The vision took shape as a series of Civic  Bootcamps developed and hosted at libraries to invite, train and empower new  members of the community to step forward and receive support for participating on  boards, commissions and organizing opportunities in their own neighborhoods.     The working group acknowledged the need for a leveling up in the architecture for the  Civic Bootcamps.  This means easier entry and lower demand activities to introduce  community members initially.  As their interest and capacity increased, there would be  more complex and time intensive roles for participants to take on.  This ultimately  would lead to an ecosystem of exposure, engagement and empowerment that would  better represent the entire community of Palo Alto in its formal civic infrastructure.   There is already a wealth of retired experts who may be tapped to volunteer their  guidance for such a program, advancing the goals shared earlier in the day for  intergenerational collaboration and building bridging capital.    Members of the community were careful to describe the pressures of housing prices and  affordability for people who work in Palo Alto.  Many members of the library staff  cannot afford to live in Palo Alto.  The filter bubble effect was a concern for the working  group as it wrestled with how to ensure that issues local to Palo Alto reflected larger  forces operating regionally, statewide and across the country.    Do outreach to maximize inclusivity.  Education and diversity are well indexed in Palo  Alto. These strengths were seen as key assets in launching the Civic Bootcamp.  The  Bootcamps can launch quickly by bringing stakeholders in to participate and facilitate  23 training and capacity building.  The group also proposed inviting community‐based  organizations to have a physical presence at libraries to connect the Bootcamps to day‐ to‐day resources available to residents.  A desk, kiosk or other space within the library  could host a rotating series of representatives from these organizations.  This in‐house  retail presence for community resources is a novel approach to space and networking.    The group acknowledged that outreach is key in developing civic engagement.  The  voices missing in local government are frequently of those with language barriers,  young people or families struggling economically.  The working group suggested that  libraries and organizations that successfully serve any of these groups be engaged to  participate in the Civics Bootcamp, with the goal of lifting the voices of those who need  more support from their city.  The group was firm in its belief that learning, innovation  and community in the civic life of Palo Alto should be equally distributed.    Health and Wellness Working Group    This working group envisioned a community that provides accessible opportunities for  all people in the community to be well physically, emotionally, spiritually and socially.   They recognized that some aspects of self‐care come with harmful stigmas, and asked  how libraries can partner with other organizations to ease barriers—social and  otherwise—to health and wellness information.     Be a clearinghouse for health and wellness information.  The working group  considered the library’s role as an information access point, and suggested that libraries  act as a clearinghouse for up‐to‐date health and wellness information, as well as a space  to facilitate human engagement.  The library can partner with outside organizations to  consolidate health data, survey the community to assess needs, and communicate the  availability of services to those they would benefit.   24   Create a safe space for all.  The group acknowledged that the library’s unique role as a  nonpolitical convener and trusted source for the navigation of information could be of  great value to outside organizations with aligned goals for the community.  Libraries  already attract a diverse intersection of the population in Palo Alto, making it a natural  space to provide health and wellness information and data.  The working group  emphasized a need to be inclusive of vulnerable populations, to make sure that  everyone in Palo Alto has equitable access to accurate health information.     They suggested partnerships with legal resources to navigate the sharing of health  information as the library is not a licensed health provider.  The library, in its  clearinghouse role, would be able to access the many existing resources for health data  and connect library visitors to those trusted resources.  A key model for bringing this  service to the library could be Project Safety Net, an organization centered around  resources for fostering youth health and wellness in Palo Alto.  This organization  already partners with mental health organizations, nonprofits, youth organizations,  faith organizations, individuals, Palo Alto Unified School District and the City of Palo  Alto staff.  A partnership with Project Safety Net could bring access to the services  offered throughout the city inside the walls of the libraries, where visitors from all  walks of life may connect to those resources.     Conclusion    Palo Alto is home to a community living at the epicenter of Silicon Valley.  It is a city  with strong educational values, rich cultural history and tens of thousands of  commuting tech workers during the week.  Participants at the Dialogue discussed some  25 of the contrasting values of Silicon Valley and Palo Alto.  While Palo Alto embraces the  new technologies and the resources that Silicon Valley offers, those at the Dialogue  agreed that they want to build an environment for their youth that fosters well‐ roundedness, civic engagement and a value system that defines success around the  health and development of the whole person, which includes physical and mental  health as well as academic and financial prosperity.   The Palo Alto Dialogue on Libraries and Community Services yielded many insights for  further discussion and exploration.  Some are simple and easy to test, while others will  require increased collaboration across the community.  There was a consistent  commitment to leveraging both the Library and Community Services Department to  play a guiding role in accelerating new ideas and programs.  Core to the missions of  these city departments, each of these ideas were also developed to fundamentally  increase access to information and resources for the entire community.  Working groups  established bold ideas for thinking about the service frameworks necessary to make  libraries critical partners for success across the continuum of a person’s life.  Maslow’s  hierarchy of needs was suggested as a reference to imagine the scaling of services for  different stages of people’s needs.    The Dialogue on Public Libraries gives communities a chance to consider the  responsibilities of the library in an era where the foundations of civil society are suspect  and trust in institutions continues to decline.  Participants agreed on the urgent need to  reinforce the role of the 21st century library in rebuilding trust and achieving those  dreams.  The assets of Palo Alto are many and have accrued over many generations of  learning, innovation, and community building.  Now this community is poised to  develop new pathways for building community and understanding what a “smart” city  looks like and how it acts, by embracing new technologies, insights and connections.   This report, full of progressive ideas and potential partnerships, was generated from a  26 convening that lasted one day.  Palo Alto has the people it needs to grow a culture of  commitment to its library as a platform to not only reach the goals outlined in this  dialogue, but to continue to develop and achieve transformative and equitable goals in  the future.