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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2019-07-23 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 July 23rd, 2019 AGENDA City Hall Chambers 250 Hamilton 7pm *In accordance with SB 343 materials related to an item on this Agenda submitted to the Commission after distribution of the agenda packet are available for public inspection 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 time restriction may be imposed at the discretion of the Chair. The Commission reserves the right to limit oral communications period to 3 minutes. IV.DEPARTMENT REPORT V.BUSINESS1.Approval of Draft Minutes from the May 28th, 2019 Parks and Recreation Commission Meeting – PRC Chair McDougall – Action (5 min) ATTACHMENT 2.Dog Parks and Park Restrooms – Daren Anderson – Discussion (45 min) ATTACHMENT 3.Access to Foothills Park – Foothills Park Ad Hoc Committee – Discussion (45 min) ATTACHMENT MEMO #1 MEMO #2 4.Other Ad Hoc Committee and Liaison Updates – Chair – Discussion (15 min) ATTACHMENT VI.TENTATIVE AGENDA FOR AUGUST 27th, 2019 MEETING VII.COMMENTS AND ANNOUCEMENTS VIII.ADJOURNMENT PUBLIC LETTERS DRAFT Draft Minutes 1 1 2 3 4 MINUTES 5 PARKS & RECREATION COMMISSION 6 REGULAR MEETING 7 May 28, 2019 8 CITY HALL 9 250 Hamilton Avenue 10 Palo Alto, California 11 12 Commissioners Present: Anne Cribbs, Jeff Greenfield, Jeff LaMere, Ryan McCauley, David 13 Moss, and Keith Reckdahl 14 Commissioners Absent: Don McDougall 15 Others Present: Council Member Cormack 16 Staff Present: Daren Anderson, Kristen O'Kane, Natalie Khwaja 17 I. ROLL CALL 18 II. AGENDA CHANGES, REQUESTS, and DELETIONS 19 Vice Chair Greenfield: Do we have any agenda changes, requests, or deletions that are 20 not in the agenda as provided? If not, we'll proceed with oral communications. 21 III. ORAL COMMUNICATIONS 22 Vice Chair Greenfield: Is there anyone who would like to comment on anything that's 23 not on the agenda? Let's proceed to the staff report please. 24 IV. DEPARTMENT REPORT 25 Vice Chair Greenfield: Kristen. 26 Daren Anderson: Good evening. Daren Anderson with the Community Services 27 Department. We just have a very brief Department Report for you. Just a heads up that 28 we'll be installing two table tennis tables that were donated thanks to Commissioner 29 Cribbs, who negotiated this donation. A big thanks to her. We purchased some paddles 30 and balls and are planning to install them at Lytton Plaza this week. It'll be a starter kit 31 that we're going to put out there with the balls and paddles. We have a sign that will say 32 "please bring your own" once this supply wears out. There might be possible donations 33 DRAFT Draft Minutes 2 coming in where we'll get more and maybe an arrangement with Pizza My Heart where 1 they'd be willing to perhaps hand out extra paddles and balls. Yet to be determined on 2 that but for sure we're going to get the tables in soon. Once it's up, I'll send a photo in an 3 email to the Commission so you can come out and play. Hopefully we'll set up a day of 4 celebration to come out and celebrate getting these new tables in, perhaps with an 5 Olympian to come break it in, an Olympic table tennis player. Perhaps on Olympic Day, 6 June 23, it'd be a really special day to celebrate all the Olympians in our area. Anything 7 else to add? 8 Commissioner Cribbs: Only to thank you, Daren and the staff, for shepherding this 9 process and putting it through and making sure it was all okay with everybody. The 10 tables are heavy, so thank you for that as well. I'm excited to get them installed and hope 11 we can have a great celebration. Thanks for all you've done. I appreciate it. 12 Mr. Anderson: You're welcome. 13 Commissioner Reckdahl: The tables, are they made out of concrete or steel or … 14 Mr. Anderson: These are made for the outside. They are heavy steel. 15 Commissioner Moss: Where is this? 16 Mr. Anderson: At Lytton Plaza. That concludes the Department Report. 17 Vice Chair Greenfield: That's great. Thank you. Before we proceed, I'd like to, on 18 behalf of Chair McDougall, congratulate both Kristen and Daren for their new roles 19 within the City. Kristen is Director of Community Services, congratulations, and Daren 20 is Interim Assistant Director of Community Services overseeing Parks, Open Space, 21 Golf, and JMZ. I hope you have a two-sided card for that. I wholeheartedly congratulate 22 both of you for all your efforts supporting the community, working with the Commission, 23 and all the awesome things that you do and go beyond the service to our community. 24 Thank you very much. I know the Commissioners share my sentiments. I also want to 25 thank Monique for her time with us as the Director overseeing Community Services as 26 well as Libraries. I guess she's going back to Libraries now. 27 Kristen O'Kane: Thank you very much for recognizing both Daren and I. On behalf of 28 both of us, we really enjoy working with this Commission. All the things you're 29 promoting and moving forward together, it's always a pleasure. When we get our wins 30 and get things moving forward, it feels really good to do that for the community. I 31 personally look forward to continuing the relationship with all of you and working with 32 the Commission moving forward. I also want to say that Monique is going back to 33 Libraries, but she also has a new role, which is Interim Assistant City Manager. She got 34 rid of us and is taking on something bigger. Good luck to her. 35 DRAFT Draft Minutes 3 Vice Chair Greenfield: Thank you for the clarification. 1 V. BUSINESS 2 1. Approval of Draft Minutes from the April 23, 2019 Parks and Recreation 3 Commission meeting. 4 Approval of the draft April 23, 2019 Minutes was moved by Commissioner Moss and 5 seconded by Commissioner Reckdahl. Passed 6-0, McDougall absent 6 2. Draft Baylands Comprehensive Conservation Plan 7 Vice Chair Greenfield: Next item on the agenda is the draft Baylands Comprehensive 8 Conservation Plan or BCCP. Daren, please. 9 Mr. Anderson: Good evening. Daren Anderson, Community Services Department. 10 Thank you very much. It's my pleasure to introduce two colleagues from our consultant 11 team, AECOM. This is Petra Unger and Diana Edwards. They've been working on the 12 BCCP for quite some time now. We're very pleased to present the draft Plan to you 13 tonight. Petra and Diana will walk you through that process. 14 Petra Unger: Good evening, and thank you very much for having us. Some of you might 15 recall we gave a presentational update halfway through the process almost a year ago. 16 Glad to be back and give a further update on the new completion here. This is the 17 Baylands Comprehensive Conservation Plan. On today's agenda we'll give you a brief 18 overview of what it is and what we've been doing, the planning process that we went 19 through to get to today's draft Plan that is in front of you, some of the stakeholder and 20 public outreach processes we've been doing, how the Plan was developed, and then also 21 the next steps on what will happen after this meeting. The BCCP is a comprehensive 22 plan for the holistic management of the Baylands into the future. It is an ecosystem-23 based approach that takes into consideration resource protection but also the 24 environmental education and recreational uses out there in the Baylands. We also looked 25 at future planned projects and trends that are affecting the Baylands, such as climate 26 change and sea level rise. We also had some site-specific planning aspects for both 27 Byxbee Park and the former ITT property/Renzel Wetlands. The planning process builds 28 on the 2008 Baylands Master Plan, but it also takes into account new data and trends. It 29 was very important to the City that this be developed in cooperation with the stakeholders 30 and users of the Baylands. Our scope included 12 distinct tasks that we're developing on 31 different chapters of the Plan and then also a public art overlay. For the public art 32 overlay, this was part of the original scope. We knew from the very beginning that public 33 art is very important to the City. We did this in close cooperation with Elise DeMarzo 34 from the City and also with artists doing the overlay once they were selected. Much like 35 anything in the Baylands, it was very important that the selection of the artists was based 36 DRAFT Draft Minutes 4 on their connection with the natural resources and the ecology of the Baylands. You'll 1 hear a little bit more about that in a bit here. We started with developing a work plan on 2 how we would complete the Baylands Plan. That included a graphic template for the 3 Plan and what we wanted our graphics to look like. Because we knew we would develop 4 these different elements of the Plan over time and to ensure they would have a consistent 5 look and feel and reflect what the Baylands is all about, that was one of the first steps we 6 did. We documented the existing conditions out in the Baylands, anything from existing 7 communities, wildlife, waterways, users, art, anything that is out there. We wrote that 8 existing conditions chapter to familiarize everybody with the Baylands. We had our first 9 stakeholder meeting in October 2017. That was a "get to know you" and also the initial 10 process and feel. We did some brainstorming with the stakeholders on the vision, goals, 11 objectives, what they like to hear. From the very beginning, it became clear to us that the 12 Baylands to a lot of the stakeholders is all about nature and resources. It's very important 13 to them. We had a second stakeholder meeting in December 2017. That focused on the 14 ITT property, which wasn't originally intended to come until later in the process. 15 However, at the time the City was about to embark on a pretty big project on that 16 property. To coordinate those planning efforts and make sure everybody knew what that 17 project was about in relation to the long-term plans for the property, we had a stakeholder 18 site tour out there. We shortly after had a stakeholder meeting that focused on some of 19 the concepts we were to develop out there. We also developed the project website where 20 we deposited all the different materials and chapters of the Plan we developed over time. 21 If somebody wanted to follow the process but couldn't maybe come to one of the 22 meetings, they could always see the results of the chapters and so on up there. We had 23 another stakeholder meeting in February 2018 where we focused on the objectives of the 24 Plan and the goals. At that point, we heard from some of the stakeholders and maybe 25 also the Commission that it would be good to get some additional feedback on the users 26 of the Baylands. Based on that, we conducted a user survey in April and May of last 27 year. That was administered onsite by the Rangers to gain some direct input on what 28 people like about the Baylands, what they would like to see from the people out there in 29 the Baylands. That was administered over a couple of days out there by the Rangers. We 30 got very good feedback. We had about 70 respondents or so. We developed the vision, 31 goals, and objectives and came here to present where we were in the planning process last 32 year at this time. After that, we developed the concepts for future use of the ITT 33 property/Renzel Wetlands. Originally, we developed four different concepts of what 34 those uses might look like, and they included everything from a fairly developed 35 spectrum to something that is much more nature-based and focused on restoration and 36 removing structures out there. As part of that, we also got an architectural historian 37 involved in doing an updated assessment of the site. We looked at the historic conditions 38 out there. We developed some elements and cost estimates. All of that is included in the 39 appendix of the draft Plan. From all that and feedback from the stakeholders and the 40 Commission, we developed a preferred concept for future use of the ITT that is currently 41 included in the Plan. Then we developed the opportunities and challenges and best 42 DRAFT Draft Minutes 5 management practices for the resources that would become a chapter of the Plan. We 1 also completed a climate change and sea level rise assessment. That is the most technical 2 chapter of the overall Plan for those of you that have read that in detail. It's the only one 3 that has its own summary that explains what the chapter is all about. This is where we 4 got some of the engineers involved. That is also where we worked closely with the 5 integrated resource management folks from the City and other stakeholders. We had our 6 final stakeholder outreach meeting in November 2018. That was before developing the 7 next two chapters, the draft Action Plan, and the draft Byxbee Design Plan. At that 8 stakeholder meeting, we presented annotated outlines of what those chapters would look 9 like and got feedback and refined them further before we developed the full draft and 10 circulated this. Any of those chapters that we developed, as they became available, we 11 would provide them to Daren, who would circulate them to the stakeholders, and they 12 would provide feedback in written format or sometimes in conversation with Daren. 13 Daren would relay them. All of those comments, to the degree that we could, were 14 incorporated into the various chapters. Finally we compiled all those chapters into the 15 draft BCCP that's in front of you today. To summarize it, in terms of stakeholder and 16 community outreach, we had those four focused meetings. We had the project website. 17 We had a site tour, the user surveys, and also review of the draft deliverables. In between 18 all of that, Daren would give regular updates to the Parks and Recreation Commission 19 along the way. Diana will walk you through a little more of the detailed plan 20 development. 21 Diana Edwards: Hi everyone. I'm Diana Edwards, the deputy project manager who has 22 been working on this project with AECOM. To give an idea of how we got to the themes 23 and the organization of the document, it became clear in our first stakeholder meeting 24 that there were certain themes that people wanted to focus on in addition to what had 25 already been in the RFP, what the City wanted to be in the project. Five main themes 26 started to emerge, and that was natural resources, public access and facilities, public 27 engagement, public art, and operations and management. These became our five guiding 28 topics throughout the document in addition to the two key areas that were already 29 identified, Byxbee Park and the former ITT/Renzel Wetland sites. To give you an 30 example of how we took these themes that emerged in these meetings and put them into 31 the Plan and how that got taken from a germination of an idea into actions, we'll take 32 natural resources, which is one of the biggest topics that we have here. It was, once 33 again, identified pretty early on in the RFP. It was based on the 2008 Master Plan, which 34 has a lot of natural resources, policies as well. That was identified in the RFP and 35 identified very early. I think probably the first words out of anybody's mouth in the 36 stakeholder meetings was about natural resource management. We took all of that 37 information. We described that in the existing conditions. You can see there's a lot of 38 information in there about everything that's out there. We have developed a vision, goals 39 and objectives for natural resources and natural resource management. That got pushed 40 forward as a main topic in the opportunities and challenges as well. Taking all of that 41 DRAFT Draft Minutes 6 information, understanding where the natural resources are, what our goals and objectives 1 are, we pushed that forward into some of our more technical things. Habitat was 2 specifically addressed in the climate change analysis in addition to the built environment 3 and structures that are out at the Baylands, but looking at how the natural resources out 4 there may change in the future and coming up with different solutions for these futures 5 that are likely to happen. Moving into the action plan, where there's the actionable things 6 that can be taken. There are two plans that specifically address natural resources. There's 7 the Habitat Conservation and Restoration Plan, and that's all about exactly what it says. 8 In Climate Change and Sea Level Rise Plan, because habitat was specifically addressed 9 in the assessment, this action plan specifically addresses habitat, actions, timelines, and 10 things that can be done. We had five themes that all pass through the same process, just 11 using natural resources as an example. Even moving forward into our other key areas, 12 the Byxbee Park Master Plan specifically addresses natural resources and habitat and 13 habitat establishment. In the ITT concepts, like Petra said, we had four concepts ranging 14 from a more urban feel to a much more natural feel, and that ended up being the preferred 15 alternative. You can see in natural resources many of these topics were brought forward 16 in different ways. As Petra talked about, the art overlay has a very ecology, natural 17 resources, and environment focus as well. Looking into other examples of how we 18 utilized our stakeholder process. It was so important to us to make sure that the feedback 19 we got was incorporated and was pulled through to the end of the Plan. Just to give one 20 example. In looking at the ITT plan, we had a recommendation for the remnant slough to 21 be restored. This actually was a project that had also been identified in the 2008 Master 22 Plan, so we included it in this Plan. Some of the stakeholders had raised concern that 23 there is existing good habitat there and that no action should be taken until we know a 24 little bit more about that. In hearing this feedback, we revised the Plan so that there are 25 now recommendations to conduct these studies to see what habitat is out there, what the 26 feasibility of the restoration might be, and what impacts our recommended actions may 27 have so that we can move forward in a really smart way with some of these 28 recommendations. We think restoration is going to be awesome, but we want to make 29 sure we're doing things methodically. That's one example of how we incorporated some 30 of the stakeholder feedback. We received feedback almost every step of the way, either 31 in meetings or in sending out the draft deliverables and getting written feedback. We 32 incorporated, I would say, as much as we could, probably 90 percent of the feedback we 33 got back. What we weren't able to incorporate was likely because it was out of scope for 34 this project or was maybe at odds with some of the City directives that we had gotten or 35 was in conflict with the majority opinion. When we could, we absolutely did incorporate 36 stakeholder and community feedback throughout this entire process. We'll move on and 37 talk about the public art and how that was incorporated as well. As you can look outside 38 and see the blue trees, we know that public art is very important to the City of Palo Alto 39 and was included in the RFP early on. With this, we were able to work very closely with 40 Elise and Daren to envision what the public art overlay might look like. In helping to 41 choose the artists, we reviewed their artist statements, we met with them numerous times. 42 DRAFT Draft Minutes 7 They came to this meeting and listened to us. They received our stakeholder summaries. 1 In doing that, we were able to complement the Baylands Plan with our overlay and get 2 that ecological and environmental focus with art and incorporate that here as well. Some 3 of the next steps. This 173-page document has been circulated to the stakeholders. We're 4 still receiving feedback on that. The next steps are the City Council meeting and Public 5 Art Commission. Once we've received all of the feedback, we're going to incorporate it 6 into a final draft. There will be CEQA done on it, which Daren and Kristen can answer 7 more questions about. Following CEQA, the final adoption of the Plan. Thank you. 8 Vice Chair Greenfield: Thank you, Petra and Diana, for the presentation and for your 9 consistent work on this. It's been a long-term project. Do any Commissioners have any 10 clarifying questions before we hear from one speaker of the public? I'd like to invite 11 Jerry Hearn to speak, please. 12 Jerry Hearn: Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak today. I was one of the 13 stakeholders. It was a long, very involved, and very thorough process. I want to thank 14 Petra and Diana and the rest of the crew and Daren for doing such a great job. I didn't 15 think it was going to actually wind up being as long as it turned out to be. It's extremely 16 thorough. I read most of it and looked at some of the details. I thought they were very 17 excellent. The process I wanted to comment on, and then I wanted to comment on the 18 outcome. The reason I was involved in it is I was very involved in the EV Eco Center 19 and I also work a lot with the Joint Powers Authority on San Francisquito Creek, both of 20 which are in the Baylands. Plus, I like going out there. It was a natural for me to be 21 involved. Thank you, Daren, for inviting me. The process, I felt, as a stakeholder 22 process was one of the better ones I've been involved in. One of the things that was 23 apparent to me was how perfect the timing was. We would always be presented with 24 something to work on, not just to have a meeting because it was time to have a meeting. 25 When I took the time to go to those meetings, when I came back I felt like it had been 26 worth my while because of the involvement that happened and the conversations we had. 27 The tabletop exercises were really great. I love having maps and being able to play with 28 things. I thought that was excellent. Mainly it was just the idea that each time you went 29 to one of these, it was meaningful, it was well constructed, and the outcomes obviously 30 then got incorporated into the ongoing process, which was really good. As far as the 31 outcomes or concerns, it's a very comprehensive plan. It's in a geographical area in 32 which there is a lot of uncertainty. I sit in several different places up and down the 33 Peninsula, in San Mateo County, and Palo Alto in meetings where we're talking about sea 34 level rise and all the ifs, ands, and buts. I listen to a lot of people at Stanford who are 35 experts in this. There's just such a great deal of uncertainty about it. The one thing we 36 are certain about is something's going to happen and we aren't going to be able to stop it. 37 It's going to happen. Like the fellow from SFEI said, eventually it will overwhelm us, 38 one way or the other. We have to be thinking that way. As we move forward, I like that 39 the Plan is constructed with a process around it where you try something and then you 40 DRAFT Draft Minutes 8 look and see whether the outcome was what you wanted. The other thing to remember is 1 that maybe the outcome isn't what you wanted, and then maybe you don't try something 2 else. Maybe you just let nature take its course in a certain area. You don't always try to 3 manage it. This is an area where our management—I really appreciate that we want to 4 start out trying to do things, particularly remove non-native species and things like that. 5 The management of this area is going to be really challenging over the years just because 6 of what's going to happen, which we don't know what it is at this point. I appreciate that 7 that leads to having to put in a lot more possibilities and options and flexibility, which 8 makes the Plan longer. I think it's much more realistic. The one thing we need to 9 remember is it's only a plan. It's like a budget. If you don't make the budget or the Plan 10 doesn't turn out the way you want, there are other circumstances. In this case, climate 11 change is a circumstance that we don't know what we're going to be dealing with. I really 12 appreciate the fact that we're trying to do what we can do the best we can out there. 13 Thank you very much. Obviously, I'm totally in support of this Plan. 14 Vice Chair Greenfield: Thank you for your comments. 15 Commissioner LaMere: I just want to thank everyone for all their work on this project. I 16 can see how involved it was from the work you've produced. With such a valuable 17 resource and how important that is for our community but also for the Bay Area as a 18 whole, it's very exciting. To see you outline different opportunities where there are 19 certainly a lot of challenges to continue to make the Baylands both a great place to visit 20 and to recreate but also it serves as a buffer to some of what's happening with our climate 21 is important. Looking at things like the horizontal levees and how you guys mentioned 22 that is very exciting. We've had a presentation about that. There are amazing 23 opportunities. I just want to compliment everyone involved for the thorough job they 24 have done with this report. Thank you very much. 25 Commissioner McCauley: I will echo that. Daren or Petra, do you know how many 26 unique individuals either attended a stakeholder meeting or otherwise provided some 27 input to the BCCP draft? 28 Mr. Anderson: It's a pretty broad group that we invited. The core group of stakeholders 29 is about 25. They voiced their opinions. Per the Commission's recommendations, we 30 didn't have a lot of youth on that stakeholder group, so we asked the Rangers to go out 31 and visit with them, to go to Save the Bay volunteer events where there were classes of 32 kids and say, "What's important to you here?" That kind of outreach was not the clientele 33 that came to those stakeholder meetings. We didn't have a lot of kids. I think there was 34 one or two that showed up just for one meeting, but that was atypical. We tried these 35 other techniques to reach out to them. 36 Ms. Unger: In terms of the attendance at the stakeholder meetings, we got similar 37 numbers at all of them, but not necessarily always the same people. We experimented a 38 DRAFT Draft Minutes 9 little bit. The first one was a daytime meeting, and we heard some feedback that maybe 1 it's difficult for some people to attend because of their daytime jobs and aren't doing this 2 as part of their regular jobs. We tried to vary the times a little bit and experimented with 3 early evening meetings. That was very well received. People came based on their 4 interest in a certain topic sometimes as well. We definitely had a good group of people 5 that commented on every single chapter and stayed with it throughout the whole Plan. 6 We also, aside from those stakeholder meetings, had some focused interviews and things 7 with Save the Bay and some of the nonprofit groups out there. We frequently talked with 8 the Rangers. It was very clear that this was an involved community, and people were 9 happy to participate. I so appreciate the comment that there was always something to 10 work on because we put a lot of effort into not doing the same meeting again. We 11 experimented a little bit with marking up maps or doing brainstorming or feedback so the 12 meetings would stay interesting throughout time as well. 13 Mr. Anderson: One other thought that I just remembered. Our stakeholder group, which 14 was filled with brilliant people like Jerry Hearn, said, "You know what you should do? I 15 appreciate that you've invited us," this core group that comes to the Baylands all the time 16 and cares so much and is so passionate, "but what about the other 600,000 people that 17 come to the Baylands every year? How do we get them?" We said, "You're right. We 18 should make these open community meetings." We put flyers up through the preserve, 19 on our social media, and invited everyone. That did lead to some slightly different 20 opinions, folks that maybe weren't part of Save the Bay or restoration groups, and they 21 did voice some different opinions that were helpful. Some of them, for example, were a 22 little more bike-centric at that particular time. They weren't necessarily engaged in the 23 whole process, but they had the opportunity to come, and they did share some thoughts. 24 Commissioner Reckdahl: We had our ad hoc meeting a couple of weeks ago. The three 25 of us and Daren went through it. We had a lot of comments. I was looking back at the 26 list Daren sent out after the meeting; they're all really tiny comments. There were no 27 major gaps. Overall, it was a very mature Plan, and we're quite happy with it. Thank you 28 for your work. It was very good. Echoing what Commissioner LaMere said, it's sad that 29 sea level rise is going to affect the Baylands, and it could be ugly. I guess we're very 30 lucky that it's a park there and not many, many houses. In that sense, we're very lucky. 31 Thanks again. 32 Commissioner Cribbs: Thank you very much for your work and for all of the thought 33 that's been put into this. I'm wondering if, as we go forward with this Plan, there's an 34 opportunity for gathering other insights along the way. I'm thinking about five years 35 from now if people's perceptions of the Baylands change given the uncertainty of what's 36 going on and if it would be fun to keep in touch with all of these people and then try to 37 generate some others. I don't know if there was an idea that that's not very practical or 38 whatever. People care so much about the Baylands, I feel like people would want to be 39 DRAFT Draft Minutes 10 involved in something like that if they knew that it was important to all of us to know 1 how people are feeling about the Baylands. I'm not so sure exactly how to say this. In 2 the past when we've tried to do something with a park, there's been sometimes a public 3 art feature that has made it impossible to do anything with the park, to make any changes. 4 I'm hopeful in the art part—I don't know very much about it, so I'm just talking right 5 now. If there's a way, given the uncertainty that was talked about earlier, to have a lot of 6 flexibility and not too many rules in how we're going to use the public art feature. 7 Mr. Anderson: I can help answer the first and second, I think. It is one of those Plans 8 that you revisit and adapt continually. One example might be the everchanging 9 ecosystem in terms of invasive plants that come in or changes in different wildlife 10 patterns. Things like that cause a ripple effect on how we manage it and how our users 11 interact with the park. One example that you might recall is this Commission came to me 12 and said, "We're hearing the news about this weed stinkwort. What are we going to do 13 about that? Do we have a plan?" It was all over the papers. We had been working on it 14 for five or six years already, and it kind of exploded in terms of the media exposure to it. 15 When new things like that pop up and it grabs attention, it's a good opportunity to pull 16 people in and say, "It is a big problem. We're working on it, but we could sure use your 17 help." It's an opportunity to engage with those stakeholders and frankly reevaluate. 18 Some of our techniques weren't working. We did not control it very well. It is time to 19 reassess. I think that will happen continually. Another example would be—you saw it in 20 the Plan—we had an infestation in the flood basin, 22 acres approximately, of an invasive 21 weed called phragmites. We got a grant and treated it with the best technique of the day, 22 and it didn't work. It knocked it back slightly, and it all came back and is still there. 23 With the consultation of our experts, Petra and Diana and some outside experts, we have 24 a new plan for how to address it. You'll see it in our BCCP. I have much more 25 confidence that it's going to be effective. Even with that, we've learned our lesson and 26 said, "Let's build in a step. Let's try phase one and not just keep going with this thing 27 until we're positive there's some sort of efficacy." I think that piece of reevaluating, 28 maybe not necessarily on a five-year increment but more regularly, is going to happen. 29 To the point of whether the stakeholders will be involved, a certain percentage of them 30 definitely. They're involved all the time. I get emails from a core group weekly. The 31 public art piece. We've got a wonderful colleague within CSD, Elise DeMarzo, who's the 32 Director of the Public Art Program. She's really sensitive to that issue. We've talked 33 about this issue with her. She and I have dealt with some of the challenges of Byxbee, 34 which was originally an art park. It had some art features that were very difficult to 35 sustain. She helped negotiate the closing of some of those elements that could no longer 36 be sustained even though there are parts of the rules that require them to be. We 37 negotiated and worked it out, so I think she really gets it. She helped guide this process 38 to make sure we've got flexibility, to make sure what goes in is environmentally 39 sensitive. In fact, even more than just being sensitive to it, it benefits the habitat like the 40 piece we did with the two artists. This was on top of Byxbee where we put in the—it was 41 DRAFT Draft Minutes 11 habitat for prey species. The day they put it in burrowing owls show up. That's the kind 1 of art that could go away at the end of the year if we wanted to or we could add more like 2 that. There's flexibility around it. 3 Commissioner Moss: As one of the Parks and Rec Commissioners on the subcommittee 4 for the Baylands and also going to the stakeholder group meetings, I want to echo what 5 Jerry said about how well this process has worked. I really thank both the consultants 6 and Daren for moving us fairly quickly through this very complicated process. This Plan 7 is 150 pages long. We have well over two dozen stakeholder groups, so the 25 that are 8 on the stakeholder group are most of the stakeholders, but there are additional ones that 9 Daren has talked about. A number of those stakeholders have opposing interests that you 10 have to come to a compromise. It's been a fairly complex process to come up with a 11 solution that's best for everyone. To give you an example, one of the things is the ITT 12 property and the Renzel marsh. There are historians, there are environmentalists, there 13 are bike commuters, there are dog owners, there are walkers, hikers. Many people have 14 their eye on this one piece of real estate and what is the best solution long term for this. 15 We've been working through all of this and how do we get this going. I want to thank 16 you again for shepherding us through this process. We're definitely going to be better off 17 with this Plan than we were before. Thank you. 18 Vice Chair Greenfield: I want to start by conveying some comments from Chair 19 McDougall. He asked me to offer his support for everything in the BCC Plan, having 20 served as a member of the ad hoc, and a thank you to Daren for all the great work. I 21 certainly applaud the thoughtful and truly comprehensive effort by Daren and staff and 22 the consultants and everybody who's been involved, the community stakeholders, the 23 partner organizations, the ad hoc. It's heartening to see natural resource management is 24 appropriately the priority for one of our open space jewels. I couldn't prioritize it better. 25 Climate change and the sea level rise assessment have been really important work that 26 has served very well to raise our community awareness about this issue. It's obviously 27 something that's coming. There have been some excellent public meetings about this, 28 and it's really heightened the awareness and broadened the awareness amongst the 29 community. It's a great start to have the word trickle out. It's also really nice that we've 30 found ways for natural art to enhance our open space by nurturing natural resources and 31 finding a symbiosis and also potentially an additional revenue source for supporting our 32 natural resources coming from another department. That's something that we shouldn't 33 overlook. That's excellent work. Looking forward to the CEQA process, are there any 34 specific challenge that we envision? 35 Mr. Anderson: One is probably around the former ITT area. I think we discussed this a 36 little bit. There's a little difference between our two conceptual plans. We have Byxbee. 37 This is important to me, how we're going to negotiate this issue. Byxbee is ready to be a 38 project. We've got a CIP in place; we've got a design now. The next step would be 39 DRAFT Draft Minutes 12 construction drawings, and then we'd go out and build these remaining elements. It's not 1 a substantial change. The trail system is in place. There are already benches. There is 2 already some signage. It's more supplementing and enhancing the habitat and some of 3 those amenities. The ITT area is really a different story. It's more conceptual. It will 4 require more study, and it will not be project ready. That's one's going to probably 5 require some sort of additional CEQA, maybe an EIR. Now, I'm over my head, and I'm 6 going to turn it over to Petra to fix everything I said that was wrong. 7 Ms. Unger: I don't know how your CEQA scope was written, but you can do CEQA at 8 different levels. When you're ready to implement something, you do a project-specific 9 analysis, and you come up with your mitigation measures. You go ahead and implement 10 and build it. There's the program level that says before going into further detail, here are 11 the steps you need to go through. You can do that in a way where you set the framework 12 so when you're ready to implement the next one, you can look at those measures and see 13 this one has hit all those potential impacts or not. If it does, then you can make findings 14 and say I can go forward under that, or you can make the decision to do further project-15 specific ones. How you do that best depends on the circumstances and sometimes the 16 level of controversy and also the level of impact that is associated with it as you go to 17 design. In the case of the ITT, you have some pretty sensitive resources there. You have 18 the saltmarsh harvest mouse, and you have the coastal saltmarsh, which is where those 19 concerns come up. I think you might want to do program-level for that at this point and 20 project-specific later. 21 Commissioner Moss: Besides all of the other stakeholders, we have maybe six or seven 22 or eight government agencies. It's not like a public park, and it's not like the Cubberley 23 Community Center. You've got many more agencies, including the airport and the 24 wastewater treatment and all those things. That makes it doubly complex and why it's so 25 important to have these CEQA and other things as well. I just wanted to make sure 26 people understood that. 27 Vice Chair Greenfield: Is there anything at this point in the project that the Commission 28 can do to be of assistance? 29 Mr. Anderson: (inaudible) in the whole process, and I just want to keep them engaged 30 during the CEQA element. There might be small changes here or there. It's great to have 31 a group I can meet with quickly and say, "This is what's coming about from the CEQA. 32 What do you think?" That would be tremendously helpful. 33 Vice Chair Greenfield: As always, we're very happy that Council Member Cormack has 34 joined us and wonder if you have comments you'd like to add? 35 Council Member Cormack: Thank you, Interim Chair. Always happy to be here. I 36 confess that with the time we've been spending on the budget, I just received the draft 37 DRAFT Draft Minutes 13 Plan this afternoon. I have not had time to review it in my usual level of detail, which I 1 will before it comes to Council. I will note a few things. I'm happy to hear about the sea 2 level rise inclusion. I think that will be on many people's minds as we think about what 3 to do here. I'll also note that during the budget hearings, as we looked at the possibility 4 of the opportunity to acquire the extra park at Boulware, one of the options I brought up 5 for staff to look at—they returned with the information today, so don't freak out yet—was 6 that, given our limited funds in this area, if we should repurpose the money that we 7 potentially set aside for Byxbee Park to work on Boulware Park. Based on what the staff 8 brought back today, it may all be possible but, full disclosure for anyone who wasn't busy 9 watching our hours and hours of finance meetings, that's something that's always on my 10 mind. No matter what's on our Infrastructure Plan from 2014, making sure that we're 11 balancing tradeoffs and incorporating new information. I know there have been some 12 concerns that members of the public had shared with me about the art overlay. I hope 13 those have been addressed in the stakeholder process as we've gone through that. I will 14 be looking at that pretty carefully. Thank you all. I know it's always so much work to 15 put these things together. I look forward to reading it in detail. 16 Vice Chair Greenfield: Any other comments? Thank you very much. I appreciate your 17 time and effort. 18 3. Rinconada Park – Park Improvement Ordinance 19 Vice Chair Greenfield: Next up is Rinconada Park, Park Improvement Ordinance, Peter 20 Jensen. Welcome. 21 Ms. O'Kane: Peter Jensen from Public Works will be coming up for that presentation. 22 Peter Jensen: Good evening, Commissioners. Thank you for having me. Peter Jensen, 23 Landscape Architect, City of Palo Alto, here to present our second meeting of Rinconada 24 improvement projects. I'm also bringing to you a Park Improvement Ordinance 25 requesting a recommendation to adopt for the Council when that comes around. I want to 26 go through a quick presentation, talk a little bit about what has changed or been revised 27 from our previous plan that we looked at, talk about the process that I went through. We 28 had another community meeting. There were a few youth group meetings as well that 29 were brought up by the Commission before, getting more feedback from youth, which we 30 did that actively. As you know, we have a capital improvement project that's coming up, 31 the funding, in July. We're doing this a little faster than normal. Normally we would 32 wait until the actual funding for the project has come through for that fiscal year to start 33 the design aspect, but currently there's a project adjacent, the Junior Museum and Zoo, 34 that we would like to have the work coincide with. Once the Junior Museum and Zoo is 35 completed, this park renovation project would be completed as well. We won't have to 36 prolong the construction that's happening out there right now. We've had prolonged 37 rains, so the JMZ is going a little bit slower than it had hoped to. They are still on 38 DRAFT Draft Minutes 14 schedule for opening the facility a year from now. They're going to try to be done in 1 March of next year. Then, of course, you have to move into it. Sometime this winter or 2 in the early spring, we want to be working on it, so they can finish at the same time. As 3 we've discussed before, the work is going to be confined to the west end of the park, 4 mostly down by the Girl Scout House. That limited work line is the same from what we 5 looked at before. The scope of the project is we have $1.7 million for the renovations. 6 We're mostly looking at pathway renovations and the playground. They will eat up the 7 majority of that budget, along with fixing the irrigation, planting, and site furnishings. 8 We're also going to look at having another picnic area, fixing the picnic area that's 9 currently the only group picnic area in the park that is rentable, bring that up to a better 10 quality of use. Expand the main turf area by reconfiguring some of the pathways. As 11 I've touched on before, renovating the planting and adding a habitat garden or 12 native/pollinator garden that is associated with the Junior Museum and Zoo. All of those 13 things are going to be incorporated into the planting that is around the playground and 14 around the edge of the school and the back of the Junior Museum and Zoo wall. There 15 were a few more bid alternates from our first meeting. Due to the budget and the need or 16 request to have this as a priority, we're going to have the restroom as the only bid 17 alternate item. As we've discussed with budgets before, we hope we can get all the 18 elements into the plan and built. Definitely the restroom has a higher price tag than most 19 of the elements out there. The playgrounds and the pathways definitely need to be 20 addressed, so we're going to focus on those things. I'm going to hope that we can get a 21 design put together and a solid bid that will allow us to do the restroom as well. Items 22 that were reconfigured or eliminated from the original plan. We had proposed as a bid 23 alternate item a decomposed granite secondary pathway around the loop path that went 24 around the turf area. That's been eliminated mostly for cost purposes. That's something 25 we could look at in the future if there is a need or want to do so. We've also started to 26 reconfigure the playground equipment a little bit more. The first rendition that we saw 27 had it configured differently, mostly the larger structure in this area. As I spoke before 28 about the playground, we want to align it more with the ideas of inclusiveness that 29 Magical Bridge Playground has. Of course, we don't have a budget that large to build a 30 playground of that magnitude, but there are techniques that we can use. Mostly that's 31 relying on off-the-shelf equipment that's already been manufactured. Instead of creating 32 a slide mount and a berm and all those things, we can start to use equipment that is 33 already manufactured to achieve those things, the same access or inclusivity as well. 34 That's the configuration of this ramping system to a slide mount, again very similar to 35 Magical Bridge but using a ramping system to allow access. The playground does, as we 36 spoke before, combine the two playgrounds out there currently into one space, again just 37 easier for caregivers to watch children of different ages at the same time. The existing 38 playground is under the oak, so we're going to help that oak tree out and remove the 39 playground and let it rest for a while. It's been used a lot. The one major thing besides 40 the playground and the pathways is the addition of the picnic area at the back of the 41 Junior Museum and the restoration of the existing group. Just to clarify, our restroom 42 DRAFT Draft Minutes 15 facility sits very close to that group picnic area and is in close enough proximity to have 1 all the utilities hooked into it. Here are some updated renderings of the playground 2 equipment. As it starts to use the structure to get up there, we're bringing on elements 3 from it so that as you progress up the ramping system you can access and use. We heard 4 a lot from the parents in community meetings that they do like the monkey bars and being 5 able to climb on those. We did add some of those elements into the playground structure. 6 The amount of slides is more than what's out there now. We get to keep the same amount 7 of swings that is there except they'll be more inclusive. The bucket swings will have 8 some of those options as part of the playground design. It does incorporate the tot area 9 within the design. It's all one confined space that does have a continuous fence around it. 10 It is a pretty good amount of rubberized material. These two images are the swing zone 11 sitting here and the spin zone, very similar to what is happening at Magical Bridge, and 12 incorporating those into group play areas. In the previous meeting, we discussed having 13 adult fitness equipment incorporated into the playground. Comments received from the 14 Commission and the community was they felt it would be nicer to have that outside the 15 playground area, as a separate space. That has been moved outside, closer to the picnic 16 area out here, adjacent to the playground. The images there are some workout equipment 17 that was selected by the gentleman doing the 3-D rendering. I'll show you some slides 18 later on of what can be proposed for that space. We looked at this slide last time, images 19 of the rubberized surfacing, the native planting, the fencing around the playground, and 20 the ideas of the enhanced pathways through the park to link all the amenities around the 21 park. Here is some proposed fitness equipment. We tried to look at equipment that 22 multiple users could use at one time. Some of those things aren't possible, like the 23 bottom-middle bench press. They only make one of those. They do allow multiple users 24 in some of these things that expands the usability of it and allows more users to use it. 25 This particular line of equipment seems to be the most durable as far outside while 26 providing a good physical activity. Some of them don't provide much resistance, which 27 these do and are pretty good pieces of equipment. The restroom building, hopefully we 28 can have one. It'll be two stalls. You can see the structure right here. We will be going 29 to the Architectural Review Board to talk about what it should look like and the 30 aesthetics of it and what color it should be painted. This is their generic image of it, but 31 there are a lot of things that can be done. Before we had talked about the existing wood 32 screen fence that shields the group picnic area. That fence could extend along the back 33 side of the restroom structure and make it blend into what is there and not be noticeable 34 from the street. This particular restroom has a lot of nice amenities that make it a little bit 35 more durable. It has an inset sink, which is nice. All the pieces are stainless steel, and it 36 has an easily accessible area in the middle that you can get to the back side. It's very 37 tough, durable. It has locking and lighting mechanisms and all those things that make it 38 more safe and secure, always something the community is concerned about. If there are 39 questions on the design? 40 DRAFT Draft Minutes 16 Commissioner Moss: Thank you for that. I'm so glad that you were able to move the 1 needle a little bit forward with the restroom since we couldn't make it work inside the 2 Junior Museum. I hope we can continue to work on that. You said that the Junior 3 Museum is slightly delayed. Does that mean that some of the elements of your plan can 4 be spread out a little bit to coincide with that delay, maybe even to the next budget cycle? 5 I don't know how that works. 6 Mr. Jensen: No, it's not delayed that much. It's only delayed a couple of months in its 7 construction due to the rain. They're still planning on finishing the structure in the early 8 part of next year, which is when we'd want to finish our park area. 9 Commissioner Moss: I'm really glad that you were able to move the needle forward on 10 more of the Magical Bridge-type facilities in the playground. I encourage you to do as 11 much as you can in that respect. One other thing that we mentioned before—maybe I 12 didn't see it—is behind the Zoo there was going to possibly be some kind of a public 13 display area where maybe the Zoo could bring animals out or some kind of small 14 performance space. Is that still in the plan or not? 15 Mr. Jensen: It was felt that the picnic area provided the space for that. It was going to a 16 small gathering for mostly the flying of the eagle around the park. The actual wall that's 17 behind the Zoo, that faces the park, or that you see, there's further discussion about 18 having art placed on it. We didn't develop any more of something that was built next to 19 it. There was no further development of that. 20 Commissioner Cribbs: Thank you. Are we trading the bathroom that's going in 21 Rinconada Park with something else in another park? Are we taking something away or 22 it's just an addition? Good. Thank you very much. I wanted to make sure we didn't give 23 up that one bathroom. 24 Mr. Jensen: We're starting to look at either Ramos or Robles. I think it's Ramos that 25 we're going to install a bathroom, that is part of the CIP. We didn't take the CIP money 26 for the restrooms and apply it to this. We're just going to use the budget that we have to 27 build the restroom. 28 Commissioner Cribbs: Are we being affected by the high cost as construction costs are 29 escalating so quickly? Everybody seems to be working up north. Are you noticing that? 30 Mr. Jensen: Definitely, yes. It's impacting construction quite a bit. I would say it's gone 31 up—if we had built this playground in 2015, it would cost us probably 25-30 percent less 32 than it's going to now. 33 Commissioner Cribbs: I've been hearing 30 percent. 34 DRAFT Draft Minutes 17 Mr. Jensen: We've work that into the cost estimate to figure out what we could actually 1 build out there. It definitely is a lot higher. Of course, we try to stretch the money as far 2 as possible for these things. Yes, it's definitely a limiting factor at this point that the 3 construction market is very lucrative. 4 Commissioner Cribbs: Thank you for that. My last comment or question is about the 5 Junior Museum. I'm sure we're all going to be very excited when it's open in a year. I 6 just want to make sure that the Commission really commends the Junior Museum for 7 what they've done and for the money they've raised. It's a great model for a civic project 8 and a community project and certainly one in the tradition of Palo Alto. I'm hopeful that 9 your team is starting on some sort of celebration. I'm sure it is. It will be great to have 10 that open. 11 Commissioner Reckdahl: I echo that. I'm really looking forward to the Zoo. This will 12 be a big event. If we don't get the money—it's a bid option for the bathroom. If we don't 13 have enough money for the bathroom, what happens to the bathroom at Rinconada? 14 Does it just get in line in the CIP or are there hopes for other money down the road? 15 Mr. Jensen: This is the first phase of a multiphase process for the improvements at 16 Rinconada Park. We would look at adding it to the next phase and adding enough budget 17 in there to cover what we want to do in the next phase and the restroom. 18 Commissioner Reckdahl: When is that next phase? 19 Mr. Jensen: We have not decided that yet, but I would say it's going to be in the next 20 four years probably. 21 Commissioner Reckdahl: Can you go back to Slide 7? I want to look at the paths. 22 What's the biggest path through the park, particularly kids that are going to Walter Hays? 23 Mr. Jensen: That's two different questions. 24 Commissioner Reckdahl: Okay. Answer them separately then. 25 Mr. Jensen: The main artery or pathway that links the Art Center to Lucie Stern is the 26 pathway that runs right here. That will eventually run all the way through the park. Once 27 the bathroom has been removed and rebuilt out of the line of sight, you'll have a 28 continuous line of sight down the pathway to see from one end to the other. This is the 29 main walkway that has enhancements as far as color. It is also wider and meant to be 30 used as the main maintenance route for trucks through the park, which also includes some 31 access to the back of the Zoo. The secondary pathway that runs along the Hopkins—32 depending on where students are coming from, from the Hopkins neighborhood to the 33 north of there, you get to the intersection here where this new roundabout comes off the 34 DRAFT Draft Minutes 18 street at a crosswalk. You have this more direct pathway that gets you to the back of the 1 school. Right now a lot of kids ride across the grass to this point over here, which can be 2 problematic when it's raining and muddy. This will give them not a completely perfect 3 direct path but more direct than what they have now. These pathways are for both 4 pedestrian and bike use. The secondary pathway is 8 feet wide while the major one is 12. 5 Commissioner Reckdahl: Is the top one, the 11, concrete? 6 Mr. Jensen: That is concrete as well. 7 Commissioner Reckdahl: The other one is DG? 8 Mr. Jensen: No. The other one is a colored concrete. They're both concrete. One just 9 has color in it that denotes it as the major pathway. 10 Commissioner Reckdahl: At El Camino Park, we have concrete that's porous. 11 Mr. Jensen: Yes, we do. 12 Commissioner Reckdahl: Are we considering that at all, and is that a big cost impact? Is 13 that (crosstalk) any better? 14 Mr. Jensen: It is more expensive. In pathways like this, set within the park area, even 15 though they aren't made out of a permeable material, I consider them permeable because 16 they're sheet flowing right into the landscape area. For that purpose, it's fine. We use 17 more of the permeable concrete for parking lot areas where the expanse of paving is 18 larger and we want to start to reduce the amount of flow or sheet flow into the gutter off 19 those surfaces. 20 Commissioner Reckdahl: In El Camino, that's because that sidewalk is right next to El 21 Camino? Is that why? 22 Mr. Jensen: I think it's part of the—that's a good question. I'm not exactly sure why that 23 one was made to be permeable concrete because it does sheet flow into the trees planted 24 there. 25 Mr. Anderson: I worked on the El Camino Park project. The reason we did that is when 26 we replaced the natural grass field that had been there with synthetic, the roots from those 27 trees were impacted, and they no longer had access to all that rainwater. They put in the 28 permeable pathway there. 29 Commissioner Reckdahl: That makes sense. The fact that it's all concrete, that was done 30 for primarily a cost of maintenance issue? 31 DRAFT Draft Minutes 19 Mr. Jensen: It just has a lot longer lifespan. 1 Commissioner Reckdahl: I do like DG paths better. Here, especially with the bicycles 2 coming through, I would be concerned of rotting and things like that. Concrete is 3 probably the right choice. In a perfect world, it'd be DG, but we don't have that luxury. 4 Commissioner McCauley: Peter, well done. You took a good design, which you worked 5 up initially, and improved upon it even better. The slightest little thing, which is the 6 coloring of the rubberized surfaces in the playground. What you were showing, is that 7 just for contrast purposes or what would be those colors? 8 Mr. Jensen: Blue is the only real color that we all see in the same tone, so that's why it's 9 denoted in shades of blue. If you are color blind, you still see the color. The colors are in 10 different tones of blue. That's to represent the play area, the swing area, the spin area, all 11 of those things. Most of the time we do—I'm not a big fan of the big giant mono-color of 12 blue out there. It's looks a little harsh and too rubbery for me. We try to mix it with 13 some type of tan or white to break it up and make it look a little bit more natural. The 14 colors are denoting what they'll be. It is a good amount of rubberized material. 15 Commissioner McCauley: This is just aesthetic from my perspective. Making it as 16 consistent with the rest of the park area as possible, so using natural tones as much as 17 possible would be best. 18 Commissioner LaMere: Peter, thanks for all of your work on this. A quick question on 19 adult exercise equipment. How much have we seen it used in other parks? I don't know 20 if we have much in Palo Alto. What's your thought on what we see used? I know you 21 did mention things will have a little more resistance. What's some of the ideas with that? 22 Mr. Jensen: From what I've seen, it's most successful when it's grouped together like in 23 an area. The old-school bar course that still exists around town at Greer Park and a few 24 of them around the Cubberley field, because they're separate in that way and you have to 25 do this pathway, they don't seem to be used that much. Grouping it together is beneficial. 26 The equipment is actually pretty good. Once people figure out that it's there, then it does 27 usually get used. Equipment like this that we have in the City, we have some in Magical 28 Bridge, and it is used quite a bit. That is not as well designed as the equipment we're 29 going to be putting out there. This manufacturer makes a little bit better equipment. 30 Commissioner LaMere: As far as construction goes, how much of the park is closed 31 down at one time or is the entire park closed down as this is going on? How is that done? 32 Mr. Jensen: We don't like to close the whole park at one time. Mostly it'll be done in 33 phases. This has some pathway work that is bigger and will have to be cordoned off and 34 impede traffic through the park. Usually we can do the pathway installation fairly 35 DRAFT Draft Minutes 20 quickly. It's like a week. I would say we'll be looking at fencing off areas that we're 1 working on and leaving the park open as much as possible. The playground area and 2 where that new group picnic area is going to be will probably be fenced off for the 3 duration of the project because that will take a lot longer to build. Right now there is no 4 connection from the path from the parking lot to behind the school because that's been 5 removed because of the Zoo construction. Because that has happened, we've lucked out 6 that people are aware they can't walk through that space to get to the other side, which 7 will help in our construction. Most of the time we would like to leave the majority of the 8 big turf area open for people to use. 9 Vice Chair Greenfield: Peter, I want to thank you for responding to the previous Parks 10 and Rec input. I appreciate all the effort and detail you put into this. Particularly 11 appreciate the bus stop considerations, the improvements to bike and pedestrian 12 thoroughfares, and efforts to have environmental conservation upgrades such as reducing 13 turf where appropriate. There's lots of requests throughout the community to build 14 another Magical Bridge Playground. I think we want to emphasize what we're focusing 15 on now is inclusive playgrounds. There is only one Magical Bridge Playground in the 16 community, but that doesn't mean all the playgrounds that we upgrade in the future will 17 not be inclusive. 18 Mr. Jensen: The idea of inclusiveness is what we want to promote. The design and 19 whatever the playground turns out to be is mostly based on budget. We are going to 20 embark on Boulware Park pretty soon, so we can look at that playground. Before there 21 wasn't an option of doing an inclusive playground with the existing equipment. Now we 22 have that option, so I think we can make that playground more inclusive as well and 23 every one we do after that. 24 Vice Chair Greenfield: Reading through the comments from students on the student 25 cards, I saw a number of requests for water bottle filling stations at all fountains. I 26 assume this is standard for all the water fountains we're putting in now. That's great. 27 Anything we can do to reduce the plastic water bottles and get people to refill the bottles 28 they have is awesome. The restroom, I presume, is the same design as is proposed for the 29 Cubberley stadium area? It looks similar. 30 Mr. Jensen: Yes. 31 Vice Chair Greenfield: I'm not quite sure how to phrase this. Would we want to consider 32 a mural or something on the outside of that restroom to make it fun? 33 Mr. Jensen: It's always a possibility. The image I showed of it was in its raw form. The 34 manufacturer produces image panels that can be put on there. Definitely some type of 35 mural for art. Our 1 percent of art will be incorporated into the design somehow. We 36 were looking at the back of the JMZ wall as being a mural. We can look at the restroom 37 DRAFT Draft Minutes 21 as well. For the restroom, I would rather make it blend in as much as possible so it 1 doesn't look like it's there. 2 Vice Chair Greenfield: Make it disappear. I can appreciate that. 3 Mr. Jensen: The fencing thing could be viable, but we can also look at the associated 4 colors out there. The Girl Scout House is very close by. Its color may not be overly 5 pretty, but we could paint it very similar. It would look like an auxiliary building to the 6 Girl Scout House and blend right in. There are things we can look at. 7 Vice Chair Greenfield: I noticed there are some plans to remove trees. Do you have 8 rough numbers on net trees added versus removed? 9 Mr. Jensen: The trees that were removed have been removed as part of the JMZ project. 10 I think there's maybe one by the entry that was supposed to be removed but was not. 11 That would be the only tree we would think about removing for this project. We've 12 worked around all the trees and were able to maintain them onsite. Nothing is being 13 removed. 14 Vice Chair Greenfield: Are we adding more trees in other places to compensate for the 15 loss of trees? 16 Mr. Jensen: The Junior Museum plan for the parking lot and the adjoining landscape area 17 addresses all the mitigation for the trees that were removed. We're still in some 18 conservations about which tree we'd like to have in the parking lot of the Junior Museum 19 and Zoo. Right now, I think we have cork oak and gingko, which would be pretty nice. 20 Since we've cleaned out the existing oak stand adjacent to it, we're thinking of putting the 21 native oak trees back and letting them establish the stand again. Either way, they'll be big 22 and will cover most of the parking lot with shade once they get mature. 23 Vice Chair Greenfield: Can you report to the Commission at some point on the plans, 24 perhaps through a staff report? I'm interested in hearing more on that. 25 Mr. Jensen: Yes. 26 Vice Chair Greenfield: What is the next project phase after this first phase? When is it? 27 Mr. Jensen: We're going to draw the construction documents. Because the funding 28 doesn't become available for another two months, we're going to do most of the drawing 29 inhouse. Myself and an intern are going to produce that plan package. I'm hoping we 30 can bid it at the end of August or September and get a contractor onboard to start work in 31 the November timeframe. Construction will probably take about 90 days. Hopefully it'll 32 end in January or February. 33 DRAFT Draft Minutes 22 Vice Chair Greenfield: That's helpful information. Maybe I didn't phrase my question 1 clearly. I was actually interested in when is Phase II. 2 Mr. Jensen: That's something we will have a conversation with the Commission about, 3 what that phase is going to be and when we want it to be a capital improvement project. 4 We did not have that as an option this year, but it will be an option next year that we can 5 consider proposing as the next phase of Rinconada. We can decide on which year that 6 one is to be too. If we want it to be five years out, then it can be the standard process. If 7 we want that to happen sooner, it's all just a discussion about that. We should get it on 8 the books to do soon. The rest of the pathway through the park needs to be addressed, 9 and I don't think we want it out there too long. 10 Vice Chair Greenfield: If I understand correctly, the default plan is five years out? 11 Mr. Jensen: Usually in our process, you plan for the next fifth year. If we consider or we 12 want to move that forward a little bit, then we can consider that as well. 13 Council Member Cormack: This looks as nice as it did last time. It seems like pretty 14 minor changes. Thanks for coming back with it. I did want to touch on accessibility a bit 15 and the Magical Bridge part. I assure you the School District is keeping track, and they 16 are now implementing their second Magical Bridge Playground. I hope this counts as 17 ours so we'll still be tied. You should know there are other jurisdictions that are 18 considering ordinances that would address this. While I'm pleased with where we're 19 going, it's possible that we'll be asked to do more. From an accessibility standpoint, I 20 would imagine—we were talking about the trail earlier—the one you're proposing is 21 more accessible for people of all ages and abilities. That seems like a perfectly 22 reasonable reason to do that. I look forward to seeing this come forward. Again, I echo 23 Commissioner Cribbs' statements about a restroom. As much as it would be wonderful to 24 have one here, there are restrooms available already in this park and nearby, and not all of 25 our parks have that. Hopefully, it will be in there. Everyone should be prepared for the 26 construction costs. All of the ones we've seen this year have been substantially higher. 27 There's been value-engineering work done on a lot. Thanks. 28 Vice Chair Greenfield: Thank you. Any final questions or comments from 29 Commissioners? 30 Commissioner McCauley: Do you need a motion to adopt this Park Improvement 31 Ordinance? 32 Vice Chair Greenfield: Yes. 33 Mr. Jensen: The motion is to recommend to the Council to adopt the Park Improvement 34 Ordinance. 35 DRAFT Draft Minutes 23 Commissioner McCauley: I'd like to make that motion. 1 Vice Chair Greenfield: Thank you. Do we have a second? 2 Commissioner LaMere: Sure. I'll second it. 3 Vice Chair Greenfield: Thank you. All in favor? Any opposed? Thank you the motion 4 carries unanimously. Thank you very much for your efforts. 5 Motion to recommend the City Council approve the Park Improvement Ordinance for 6 Rinconada Park was moved by Commissioner McCauley and seconded by Commissioner 7 LaMere. Passed 6-0, McDougall absent. 8 4. Cubberley Master Plan Update 9 Vice Chair Greenfield: The next item on the agenda is the Cubberley Master Plan update 10 from Kristen. 11 Ms. O'Kane: Kristen O'Kane, Community Services. I'm going to provide an update on 12 where we are with the Cubberley Master Plan and our next steps. There is no action on 13 this item from the Commission. It's just to get an update, and I'll take any comments or 14 questions you have at the end. Just a reminder that the goal of the Cubberley co-design 15 process and master plan process is to collaboratively develop a community vision and 16 master plan for the Cubberley site that is innovative, flexible, and adaptable. Also just a 17 reminder, this is a collaborative process with the community but also with the City and 18 the Palo Alto Unified School District. Where are we right now? We just completed our 19 fourth and final co-design meeting. It was on May 9th at the Cubberley Community 20 Center. We had 179 participants at that meeting for a total of 727 participants. Some of 21 those are repeated. We had 462 unique participants across the four meetings. Some of 22 these slides were the attachment in the staff report, and you have those in 11x17 in front 23 of you. There's a lot of information on them. They were actually designed for the 24 community meeting. They were large, 3 feet by 6 feet, posters. I'm not going to go into a 25 lot of detail on these but just walk through them rather quickly. The first poster board we 26 had at the community meeting was how did we get here. We had four meetings. The 27 first was to start gauging community preferences towards things like building height, 28 amount of green space, parking, and also program activities that people would like to see 29 either enhanced or added to Cubberley. The second meeting built on what we heard from 30 the first meeting and started to prioritize those programs as well as look at how could 31 facilities be potentially shared on the site between the School District and the City. In 32 Meeting 3, we presented a very conceptual site layout of the whole Cubberley site, which 33 includes facilities that would be only for the community, those that would be only for 34 school, and those that could potentially be shared. We started to also look at the 35 aesthetics of the facility. Meeting 4 took what we heard from the first three meetings and 36 DRAFT Draft Minutes 24 refined that into a draft master plan concept, which had some variations depending on 1 how much housing was included in the concepts. I'm going to stop there and keep 2 moving on because I'll get into more detail on what those concepts are. Since Meeting 3 3—I'm pointing this out because there were changes between Meeting 3 and Meeting 4 4 that were the result of community feedback. We also continued to work with the 5 consultants around sustainability, traffic and transportation, and phasing. The City is in 6 the process of hiring a CEQA consultant because, even though this is a master plan and 7 not a complete design, we still have to do CEQA. Remember that from the Parks Master 8 Plan. That should be starting hopefully in June. After the third meeting, we presented to 9 the City Council and the School Board of Education. We came here to the Parks and Rec 10 Commission and also went to the Planning and Transportation Commission. At those 11 meetings, we heard from not the full Council or the full Board of Education or Planning 12 Commission, but from some members of those different bodies, that they would like to 13 see what if we put housing here, what would that look like, how much could we put there, 14 and what would that mean for the whole master plan. We took that task and created some 15 different options that show different levels of housing on the entire site. This is what we 16 presented at Meeting 3. This is something you have seen before. I'd like to point out 17 these are changes that happened after Meeting 3. For example, the garage that was 35 18 feet tall, a four-story building where Greendell is now, was reduced to a 9-foot, one-story 19 building in this scenario. The pool, if you remember, was behind some houses. That's 20 been moved to the center of the site now. The bike path is now two-way; before, it was 21 one-way. If you recall, we also had access into the site from San Antonio. That has been 22 removed except there would be access into Greendell School and whatever happens at 23 525 San Antonio. There would still be access through there, but you wouldn't be able to 24 get into the full site. Meeting 4, like I said, was May 9. We had large boards that people 25 were able to comment on, hear a short presentation. We had different comment cards 26 with specific questions we wanted people to answer, but then also give them the 27 opportunity to provide additional comments that weren't represented in the questions. 28 Our boards included site organization, site circulation, look and feel, sustainability, 29 housing, and phasing. Phasing is how can we rebuild the site with the least amount of 30 disruption to the services and programs that are provided there now. For example, we 31 could remove one building and move whoever is in that building to another location. It's 32 very much like a puzzle game where you're shifting people around. Mostly to make sure 33 the community services there are still in place and still providing those as much as 34 possible. Site organization was one of the boards. Some of the key things to point out 35 here is with the proposal that we have for the full site, it would increase the green space 36 by almost 60 percent. It would double the amount of usable building space and just 37 barely increase the building footprint. Right now, you know Cubberley is very concrete. 38 There's not a lot of green space. By adding more stories to the buildings and being very 39 smart about site circulation and how people get through the site, we were able to increase 40 the green space, increase building space, and decrease overall hardscape. Some of the 41 comments that we heard were—if you look at the graphs here, this is how people 42 DRAFT Draft Minutes 25 responded to the specific questions we gave them. The first was asking does the 1 organization of the outdoor spaces work well. On all of these cards, one is the least 2 positive answer by being the most positive answer. We also asked does the organization 3 of the indoor spaces work well. Some of the specific comments we heard were related to 4 green space, making sure that outdoor play areas were safe for children and secure, 5 concern about drop-off areas, which we're still really looking into, and then also there are 6 comments about separating Greendell School from adult education, keeping those 7 separate, and also concerns about privacy for neighbors and the sizes of indoor spaces, 8 wanting to ensure that the programs and services we have now are getting adequate space 9 in the future. The next was site circulation. This is referring to circulation within the site 10 itself and how people enter and exit the site. It's not necessarily referring to traffic 11 outside of that. That will be addressed through the CEQA process. The questions we 12 asked were about specifically pedestrians, a question about bicyclists, and then a question 13 about cars being able to navigate through the site safe and easy. People, of course, had a 14 lot of questions about parking, traffic, making sure that conflicts between bikes, 15 pedestrians, and cars are limited and minimized as much as possible. Something we're 16 also very interested in and still addressing is impacts to the Greenmeadow neighborhood, 17 Nelson Drive, and Fern Avenue. Those are things we're still diving into a little bit 18 deeper, that is on our radar but isn't necessarily addressed at this level right now. Look 19 and feel. At our Meeting 3, we asked people what do they want it to look like in general, 20 modern, mid-century modern, which is similar to the neighborhood there; something 21 maybe more like Lucie Stern; or some of the other common themes we see throughout 22 Palo Alto. The majority of people liked the more modern look, which would be similar 23 to Mitchell Park Community Center and Library. That's where we geared this graphic 24 towards, looking at what other buildings and facilities in the community have a similar 25 look. We asked people to put dots on the board telling us what they liked and didn't like. 26 Specifically, we asked people what they liked about the landscaping, what they liked 27 about the buildings and green space, and the specific site elements. In a lot of these 28 categories we would start to get comments that aren't necessarily related. For some 29 reason we got a lot of comments about the pool on this question. It could be they didn't 30 quite know where to put those comments, and they wanted to get them. One comment 31 that I thought was interesting or we heard a few times is that people wanted the pool and 32 the playground to be unique and something that isn't replicated at another facility. If you 33 put a pool there, don't have it be exactly like Rinconada. I don't know what that would 34 be, but that would bring something different to the community. The same with the 35 playground, maybe it'd be for older kids so that younger kids go to Magical Bridge and 36 older kids could go here. Just trying to look at them as destinations that provide a unique 37 feature that we don't already have. We also are looking at sustainability targets for this 38 facility and what that might look like, working closely with Public Works on the green 39 stormwater infrastructure plan and how we can incorporate those features into the site. 40 We didn't have real specific questions, more what would people like us to focus on. As 41 you can see, it was covered pretty much, anything associated with sustainability, which is 42 DRAFT Draft Minutes 26 great. People are looking closely at this and are very informed as to what sorts of things 1 could be available for this site. We're going to continue to work with our Sustainability 2 Office and also Public Works on making sure that we're doing something that's 3 sustainable but also we can maintain appropriately. These are the four housing options 4 that we presented at the meeting. These were new to the community. The other pieces 5 were things they had seen before; these four were not. One way to look at it is in 6 previous meetings we provided options say for look and feel. Did you want modern or 7 mid-century modern or something else? We were asking for input at that time. Because 8 this was a new concept, we were asked to add this at this point in the process. This is 9 asking for that feedback now. What I mean to say is the housing piece is getting the 10 same information just at a later point in the process, if that makes sense. It's just delayed 11 as far as the process is going along. We had these four options that we presented. Option 12 1 includes School District workforce housing at 525 San Antonio. That would be 32 13 units. Option 2 adds additional School District workforce housing in a location that's on 14 School District property that's more towards where Greendell is now. That would be a 15 total of 64 units with those two different areas. Option 3 adds housing to the City's 16 property, the City's 8 acres. That would be in the—this is impossible to see, but you do 17 have it in front of you. It's a four-story building in the—someone help me with 18 directions. I'm not very good at … 19 Vice Chair Greenfield: North central. 20 Ms. O'Kane: The north central part of the site. That is right here. 21 Vice Chair Greenfield: Someone said it looks like a chimney. 22 Ms. O'Kane: Yeah. The City hasn't decided who this housing would be for. There are 23 definitely ideas, but it's just a "what would it look like to put housing on City property." 24 We then added a fourth option that would actually increase it more. That would put two 25 stories of housing on top of the two-story community center for part of it. If you add up 26 these four, you have 164 units on the entire Cubberley site, some for School District 27 workforce housing and some to be determined. Affordable senior housing is an option 28 that we've heard. There's City workforce housing that we've heard, but I don't think that's 29 something that's necessarily moving forward on someone's radar right now. There are 30 also other options like just affordable housing or a mix of affordable and market-rate 31 housing. Those would all be potential options. This was a summary of the comments 32 that we heard. The question was among the housing options, which is your preference. 33 We put only Options 1, 2, 3, and 4. We instructed people if they didn't want any of those 34 options to write no housing, which 27 of the respondents didn't check 1-4 and just wrote 35 no housing. The majority of respondents preferred Option 1, which is just 525 San 36 Antonio. Fewer chose Options 2, 3, and 4. Not all 179 meeting participants provided 37 comments on this. We have all of the comments that people wrote. I didn't summarize 38 DRAFT Draft Minutes 27 them here because they're what you expect. They're from one end of the spectrum to the 1 other and everything in between. We did ask people if they wanted—Option 4 includes 2 Option 3 and the additional two stories on the two-story community center. We did ask 3 people if they had a choice between just Option 3 or just those two stories, which would 4 they choose. Is that clear? Just the second part of Option 4 or Option 3. We did ask 5 people that question as well. There wasn't a strong indication either way which people 6 would prefer. Moving to phasing. What we're trying to do here is map out what would 7 be demolished first, where would those tenants go. We would build that piece and then 8 move them back in and continue that motion around. I do have something more animated 9 in another presentation I can bring up if you're all interested. If I just click through, you 10 can see what's happening. Let me know, and Natalie can bring that up if anyone's 11 interested. Comments on this phase. A lot of people just worried about is the temporary 12 space we would be moving into going to be adequate. For example dancing, a temporary 13 trailer probably isn't going to work for some of the tenants there. There might be options 14 for the gym or the pavilion, but other people maybe a temporary trailer would work. 15 People are concerned about where would we go and what would that facility be and 16 would it work for us. Some people also are just concerned about during construction 17 what are the impacts to the neighborhood related to traffic, noise, dust, things like that. 18 Like I said, Meeting 4 had 179 meeting participants. We always ask at the end of these 19 meetings for an after-action review, which is an evaluation of that meeting. This time we 20 asked people what were three positive outcomes, things they would suggest for 21 improvements. Again, it really ranged. This meeting was probably the most challenging 22 for us because we wanted to get a lot of information out to a lot of people and doing that 23 in a PowerPoint wasn't going to do it. We had two large boards for each of the elements, 24 and people were supposed to rotate through. I don't know if it worked as well as I would 25 have liked. Some people said in the after-action review that they really liked it, that it 26 worked for them. They were able to look at things in detail. Other people said it was too 27 much information to take in. Knowing what we know now, we probably would have 28 tried to find a different way to do it, but I'm not sure what that would have been. When 29 we go to Council on June 3, we're going to have the boards for the Council. We'll do a 30 presentation, and we'll have the boards up. Council will be able to rotate through them to 31 get as much information as they can because trying to present all this in a PowerPoint 32 doesn't work. Hopefully we'll have success at the Council meeting with that process. 33 Next steps. We go to City Council on June 3. I believe the School District is going to the 34 Board of Education on June 11 or 12, the following week on Tuesday. We're going to be 35 starting CEQA very soon. We're also in the process of developing a scope of work for a 36 consultant to begin a business plan and pro forma. I almost think the hard part is just 37 beginning. We have two property owners trying to develop a site for community benefit 38 who are on different timelines. Some of the shared-use facilities will be on School 39 District property. Some of those shared-use facilities will be on City property. How do 40 we do it all? Do we really need the assistance of someone who has expertise in funding 41 and financing and operational agreements, developing the site, what are our different 42 DRAFT Draft Minutes 28 options and so forth. When we go to Council on Jun 3, we'll be asking for direction for 1 Council to proceed with that. We'll also be asking them which level of housing they 2 would like us to include in the CEQA document. We want to assess impacts for the 3 largest possible scenario, but we don't want to exceed that if we don't have to. We're 4 asking Council for guidance on what would you like the CEQA project description to 5 include with respect to housing. That's the end of my presentation. I'm here for 6 questions, comments. 7 Vice Chair Greenfield: Thank you, Kristen. Would any Commissioners like to see the 8 phasing presentation separately? 9 Commissioner McCauley: If it's possible to send that around by email, that'd be 10 interesting to see, if it's something we could open ourselves. If not, then no worries. 11 Ms. O'Kane: I can do that. 12 Vice Chair Greenfield: Does anyone have any questions for Kristen before we hear from 13 the public? We have five speakers. 14 Commissioner Cribbs: I do. Maybe I should wait. 15 Vice Chair Greenfield: If it's a clarifying question … 16 Ms. O'Kane: I'm sorry. I think you should do the public comment now. 17 Vice Chair Greenfield: I was just asking if she had a clarifying question about something 18 you'd said as opposed to comments. 19 Commissioner Cribbs: I'm confused about the shape of the fields now. Maybe that's not 20 a clarifying question. Maybe that's a question that needs to be later. I'd love to know 21 how many soccer fields we have, what size they are, what are the other fields there, and 22 especially what that thing is in the fourth design that kind of sticks out. I don't know 23 what you could play there. 24 Ms. O'Kane: At one point we had a dog park. I haven't been able to find the fate of the 25 dog park. It's no longer included. Part of this was going to be a dog park; although, I 26 think it was down here. This is existing. This would likely be for younger kids to play or 27 for practice, for warmup. 28 Commissioner Cribbs: The fields that are meant to be soccer fields, how big are they? 29 Ms. O'Kane: I don't know the answer to that, but I can find out. 30 DRAFT Draft Minutes 29 Commissioner Cribbs: The field that's in the middle of the track, is that meant to be a 1 football field still? 2 Ms. O'Kane: That will not change. 3 Commissioner Cribbs: The size of the pool, what size is the pool? How many yards is 4 the pool? 5 Ms. O'Kane: Twenty-five. I'll double check. 6 Vice Chair Greenfield: Why don't we move on to public comments, and then you can 7 comment further. The first speaker is Heidi Voltmer followed by Penny Ellson. You'll 8 have three minutes. 9 Heidi Voltmer: Thank you very much. I am a parent. I live in Greenmeadow. I've lived 10 in Palo Alto for about 20 years. I have two kids. We've used Cubberley extensively from 11 preschool to Palo Alto soccer to little league, even my son's live action role-playing 12 group. Have you ever seen them at Mitchell Park? They rent rooms sometimes in the 13 winter and evenings to have festivals. We're big Cubberley fans. I unfortunately haven't 14 been as involved. I didn't get to go to the meetings. The end of the school year is crazy. 15 I wanted to speak in support of maximizing the recreation and facilities at Cubberley and 16 not including housing. I think it's a bad thing to mix that in. I'd love to keep Cubberley 17 the way it is. If we bring back a school, that's great, but not mixing in all of this housing. 18 If any of you live in South Palo Alto, you know how bad the traffic is. The 525 site that's 19 off to the side, maybe that's a possibility, but not a fan of mixing in the housing all over 20 it. Continuing to make this as a great recreation space, maybe a school space is great. 21 Having lived here for 20 years, I remember we used to have more classes at Fairmeadow 22 Elementary School, and now it's gone down. Even one of my son's middle school 23 teachers apparently is not getting a contract, so we have ups and downs. We are going to 24 need to have the flexibility. That's how we should do it, to maintain it as a recreation 25 facility, as a public use facility, and not mix in any of these different housing options. 26 Thank you very much. 27 Vice Chair Greenfield: Thank you. Penny Ellson followed by Winter Dellenbach. 28 Penny Ellson: Good evening. I'm Penny Ellson. I'm a former member of the 2012 29 Cubberley Community Advisory Committee. This year I served as a Cubberley Co-30 Design Community Fellow with the Concordia consultants. Like a lot of people, I was 31 surprised by the late introduction of housing to the PF-zoned portion of the project 32 concepts in Meeting 4 of the community process. I was further surprised to learn that the 33 majority of the proposed housing would be built in Phase I of the project. It's 34 disappointing that someone who's been so engaged with this project since before 2012 35 would be surprised by anything related to it, but I was. I think that says something about 36 DRAFT Draft Minutes 30 this process. After the final Cubberley meeting, I was surprised again to read in the 1 newspaper that two housing projects totaling 118 units of housing on San Antonio Road 2 in close proximity to Cubberley are being reviewed for approval and Council is directing 3 staff to also up-zone other parcels on San Antonio Road for housing. While I support the 4 idea of up-zoning on San Antonio, this is probably not a good idea for housing. It 5 presents some good reasons not to support building housing on nearby land that has been 6 carefully preserved for public use. Higher-density housing creates greater demand for 7 denser public facilities. This kind of housing does not have yards and large spaces for 8 recreation, so its residents depend more on facilities like Cubberley, creating higher 9 demand for community center and school space. Because I support higher-density 10 housing, I question the wisdom of building housing on PF-zoned land that is perfectly 11 located for community center and school use. It's right on our existing school routes. As 12 higher-density housing gets built around the City and close to Cubberley, preservation of 13 limited PF-zoned space becomes increasingly important. Accessible, affordable housing 14 is a very important community need and a high priority, as it should be. In our zeal to 15 meet that pressing need, I hope we will be careful not to carelessly sacrifice PF-zoned 16 space that will be more needed than ever to maintain a balance of land uses that provide 17 long-term, high quality of life for future Palo Alto residents as our community grows. I 18 want to thank Commissioners Greenfield, McDougall and Moss for your thoughtful 19 Colleagues' Memo, which I support. I hope this Commission will unanimously approve 20 it as a recommendation to our City Council. What will the CEQA process be? 21 Throughout this entire process, I was trying—I live in the Greenmeadow neighborhood 22 also. I'm very concerned about traffic impacts, particularly on Nelson Drive, which is a 23 school commute route but also Creekside, Scripps, and Fern, which affects another 24 neighborhood, not my own. What we know from when Cubberley was a high school 25 there, these streets were used then as offsite parking for the high school just as today 26 Green Acres and Barron Park are used as offsite parking for Gunn High School. In fact, 27 on working on Safe Routes to School, one of the things that we've had to work very 28 carefully on is traffic calming in those neighborhoods. I need to know that that's going to 29 be considered in the CEQA process. Thank you. 30 Vice Chair Greenfield: Winter Dellenbach followed by Karen Holman. 31 Winter Dellenbach: I support all City-owned land at Cubberley as either designated or 32 dedicated—better dedicated if possible—for public use facilities. It's extremely ill 33 advised to build housing on City land including on upper stories, thereby limiting options 34 in the future. The future is a long road, we all hope. Given the growth that Palo Alto will 35 inevitably face due to housing policies recently adopted by the City Council, the looming 36 Stanford housing development, and pressures from the State, the resource that is 37 Cubberley will be needed more than ever soon and by future generations. The City 38 should not convert or share the property for other uses. The concern over badly needed 39 housing seems to have clouded judgment. It reminds me of Gunn High School when we 40 DRAFT Draft Minutes 31 were very near closing and ridding ourselves of it, being told it was not needed. It would 1 have been a debacle had residents not stopped that—residents stopped that—and will be a 2 similar debacle should it happen here. By the way, as I remember, the Planning 3 Commission in its study session expressed a whole variety of thoughts about housing on 4 City land there. They were across the board. It wasn't as if there was unanimity or a lot 5 of enthusiasm. A couple of people were interested in housing. I just thought I'd throw 6 that in. I was struck, however, by this slide that was put up, this one graph that showed a 7 whopping 75 percent of people at the May 9 meeting—I think it was the May 9 8 meeting—indicated they wanted no housing on City land. They either preferred Option 9 1, which was 525 San Antonio, the 32 units not at Cubberley, or no housing. That is a 10 major message to the City and to you folks. Commissioners should honor that as should 11 the City Council. You and they have a duty to Palo Alto and its residents to preserve and 12 protect our resources. We expect you to take that duty seriously and support you for 13 doing so. We must not sacrifice Cubberley to housing or we cut off our nose to spite our 14 face or, more elegantly, we must not burn down the cathedral to warm ourselves. 15 Vice Chair Greenfield: Thank you. Former Mayor Karen Holman followed by Deirdre 16 Crommie. 17 Karen Holman: Good evening, and thank you. Thank you for your service. Good to see 18 all of you. Some of you I've known for some time. One is a procedural thing. I'm kind 19 of a process nerd, as Kristen knows and some of you know. I'm always troubled when 20 meetings like this about such significant matters are no action required, they're study 21 sessions, they're here to get your feedback. What goes forward is a staff interpretation, a 22 Council interpretation of what your goals are, what your views are on this. I encourage 23 you to make your comments exceedingly clear. Maybe that will happen as a result of the 24 next item on the agenda about the Colleagues' Memo. Thank you all for the Colleagues' 25 Memo. Generally speaking, I encourage you to ask for action items on things like this. 26 The goal of the Cubberley process was on the front page of this. It's to collaboratively 27 develop a community vision and master plan for the Cubberley site that is innovative, 28 flexible, and adaptable. Collaboratively. That's what's been going on for all this time. 29 Now, we have a late interjection, which the community seems not to support. We all 30 know that housing is a need, but there are many things that the City can do that are 31 untouched to this point in time to create opportunities for more housing. Some of the 32 commercial, a percentage of the commercial space in the mixed-use areas could be 33 converted to housing instead of commercial. We could have a no net housing loss policy 34 adopted. We could incorporate the Palmer fix, which means that BMR housing would 35 once again be required as a part of rental housing projects. We could increase the impact 36 fees as the prior Council had approved. Any number of things we can do. This isn't 37 where we do it. This isn't just a quality of life matter. This is a health issue. Palo Alto 38 adopted some years ago a Healthy City Healthy Community Priority, and we held that 39 Priority for three if not four years. Having places to recreate, socialize, de-stress is a 40 DRAFT Draft Minutes 32 health issue. We cannot afford to give over this land, this particular land that's zoned PF 1 for housing or any other non-public facility. We just can't afford to do that. Where else 2 if not here? We just don't have the land to this anywhere else. I've been having 3 conversations with a friend lately about faith, trusting that things are going to be okay no 4 matter who's president for instance. Things are going to be okay. If you look at our local 5 community, the Citizen Survey numbers about having faith in our local government, 6 having faith in our processes, having faith that it matters what the public says, having 7 faith that their input matters, those numbers are declining every year. I daresay when the 8 response to the housing scenarios have been not supported by the community, I'm asking 9 you to help restore the faith of our community in our City processes. Thank you. 10 Vice Chair Greenfield: Thank you. Former Parks and Rec Commissioner Deirdre 11 Crommie. 12 Deirdre Crommie: Hi everyone. It's a pleasure to be here tonight. I sat on the Parks and 13 Rec Commission for ten, almost 11 years, from around 2006 to 2016, which included the 14 beginning of this whole process that went on at Cubberley Center through this very 15 intricate planning process to try to bring together the interests of City residents and the 16 School District. It was a very, very complex process. Never once was housing 17 discussed. It was complex enough without that interjected. All seven of you have this 18 amazing ability to speak to City Council on the behalf of our parks, open space, and 19 recreation facilities. It's a huge honor that you get to do that because no one else can do it 20 as well as you. You know the goals of our recreation division within the City is to 21 provide resources for all age groups to recreate, continue learning, and embrace as 22 healthy a lifestyle and as balanced a lifestyle as possible. You get to protect those 23 facilities. You get to advocate for them. You get to make sure they're distributed across 24 the City. You get to make sure people have access to them. You even get to protect the 25 wildlife and the trees and the birds and the bees in this City. It's a great honor. I'm here 26 today because I want to have all of you embrace this honor and unanimously ask for 27 housing not to encroach upon our recreational areas. There's enough need for those 28 spaces. We would never say we don't need housing. I live near the intersection of 29 Arastradero and El Camino, very close to the San Antonio corridor, so I see what's 30 happening, and I believe in it. We need that densification because we need the housing, 31 but we also need our parks, open space, School District space for future expansion. The 32 major reason you should not support this is it's irreversible. Once we lose it, we never get 33 it back. The reason we're in such great shape now is because of the vision of all the 34 people in this City who came before us, many of whom filled positions just like all of 35 you. You're a part of this great tradition, even the new people on the Commission. You 36 settle into that tradition over time, but that's why you're here. I hope I can be proud of all 37 of you to stand up for the facilities that we need to recreate. Thank you. 38 DRAFT Draft Minutes 33 Vice Chair Greenfield: Thank you to all the speakers. Next up is Commissioner 1 comments. 2 Commissioner Cribbs: I was interested in the sizes of the fields and what fields there 3 were and the size of the pool … 4 Ms. O'Kane: I have the answer. 5 Commissioner Cribbs: … and the size of the gym. I'm sure you do. I didn't see it 6 anyplace. 7 Ms. O'Kane: The soccer fields would include three full-size fields, one smaller one 75 8 yards by 47 yards, and that little bump out which we're calling a development field for 9 drills and small kids to play on. 10 Vice Chair Greenfield: That's including the Cubberley stadium field as well? 11 Ms. O'Kane: Yes. 12 Vice Chair Greenfield: It's no change net from what we currently have. 13 Commissioner Cribbs: It's four fields and the little squibbly thing at the end. 14 Vice Chair Greenfield: That's what Cubberley supports right now as far as soccer 15 capacity. 16 Commissioner Cribbs: You're sure that the field is the right size from your soccer 17 experience? 18 Vice Chair Greenfield: You can be sure I'll be on that one. 19 Commissioner Cribbs: There is a baseball field. One of the fields is multiuse. Is there 20 softball as well? 21 Ms. O'Kane: Yes. We will make sure there is softball as well. 22 Commissioner Cribbs: Yes, because it's girls' softball. The pool is 25 yards. 23 Ms. O'Kane: I believe so, but I will confirm that. 24 Commissioner Cribbs: Do you happen to know how many lanes might fit in there? 25 Ms. O'Kane: No, I do not. I will get all this information and send it to you. 26 DRAFT Draft Minutes 34 Commissioner Cribbs: The gym, we have right now essentially three gyms. Is that the 1 some comparison or is it bigger or is it less gym space or … 2 Ms. O'Kane: It would be increased gym space. There would be a gym on City property, 3 which the City currently doesn't have any gyms on our own property. All our gyms are 4 leased from the School District. We would have one gym, likely two stories, on the City 5 property, and then there'd be also gyms on the School District property, which would be 6 shared use. We'd have more gym space. 7 Commissioner Cribbs: I appreciate that. What is the age range of the people who were 8 participants? Do we have any idea if they … 9 Ms. O'Kane: We do. We collected ZIP Code data, and we collected age data. The 10 majority of the participants are older adults. What we've been doing is—because we 11 realized that parents of school-age children are unlikely to be able to attend a meeting; 12 although we did have participation from all age ranges even kids. Instead of expecting 13 them to come to us, we did do some outreach directly to parents. At Cubberley Day, 14 which is our community day to share everything we do at Cubberley, we were getting 15 feedback there. I went to Fletcher Middle School's spring social and tried to get feedback 16 there. The May Fete Fair, we tried to get feedback there from school-age parents. From 17 the high school students, the Community Fellows that we have and that are actually high 18 school students conducted their own sessions at Paly and Gunn to try and get the high 19 school kids more involved. We really tried to expand outreach knowing that we can't 20 expect everyone to come to us. 21 Commissioner Cribbs: Thanks for all of this. It's an incredibly complicated project. It's 22 come with all sorts of perspectives and backgrounds and observations and bad feelings 23 and good feelings and all of that. It's obviously really important that we finally get it to 24 go this time. I'll be interested in the rest of it. 25 Commissioner Moss: We have another agenda item about the housing specifically. Is it 26 possible that for this round we talk about everything except housing or is that not 27 appropriate? 28 Ms. O'Kane: You can speak to housing as it was presented because it's part of the whole 29 Master Plan. The Colleagues' Memo is a separate item. Anything specific to that Memo 30 should be during that action item. 31 Vice Chair Greenfield: If you want to make some general comments about housing, it's 32 appropriate within this item. More detailed comments you may want to save for the next 33 item. 34 DRAFT Draft Minutes 35 Commissioner LaMere: Thank you for your efforts in doing this. It was great to have 1 Concordia and get a lot of people together. I do like the idea of a gym on City property 2 to finally be able to have that. As this proceeds, what are the other steps in terms of—do 3 you have to bring in a consultant for the financing? It seems like we have this dream, but 4 we're very far off from achieving it even if a plan was approved. What are some of the 5 next steps concerning that? 6 Ms. O'Kane: Our first next step is to try and get someone onboard who can help us think 7 about how we can realize this entire vision. We're just getting our cost estimates 8 finalized. We have a local firm who's providing cost estimates for us. We need to 9 understand what different funding options there are. I expect it would require multiple 10 funding sources to realize this entire project. We need to look at what will the costs be 11 and how can we still provide under-market rents for the nonprofits who are at Cubberley 12 because that's really important for us and for them. Most of them have said, "If it weren't 13 for Cubberley, we would be priced out of Palo Alto." It's important for us to be able to 14 allow them to still be here. An agreement between the School District, we would need to 15 look at that. All those things, like you said, are very complicated. We don't necessarily 16 have the full expertise inhouse to look at all those things, so we're looking for a 17 consultant or a combination of consultants who might be able to advise us and put 18 together a report that gives us all those different options. 19 Commissioner LaMere: What is the status going forward beyond 2019 in terms of our 20 joint use of Cubberley with the School District? 21 Ms. O'Kane: Our current lease with the School District expires at the end of this calendar 22 year. We anticipate that we will extend the lease. There might be some new language 23 that needs to be added in the event that X, Y, Z happens, then this will happen. We 24 anticipate continuing that lease. 25 Commissioner LaMere: It's such a community resource for us, so this plan takes on such 26 great importance as our community grows. Thank you for your work on this. 27 Commissioner McCauley: Kristen, thank you again. This has obviously been a lot of 28 work. It's very well done. Forgive me for going to the housing topic, but it's obviously 29 the hot one tonight. I figure we might as well get a few things clarified. One of the 30 speakers said that 75 percent of participants voiced that they wanted no housing or only 31 Option 1. I think that's incorrect. I think these are actual numbers rather than 32 percentages. This is number of respondents. Can you clarify that for me? Am I reading 33 the chart correctly? 34 Ms. O'Kane: That's right. It's number of respondents. 35 DRAFT Draft Minutes 36 Vice Chair Greenfield: I think the 75 percent might have been the aggregate for Options 1 0, 1 and 2, which are the options that do not include housing on City land. 2 Commissioner McCauley: I have to admit to everyone that I feel as though we're a little 3 bit out of our lane in some regards because we're talking about zoning and whatnot rather 4 than issues more specific or germane to park and recreation spaces. What's the current 5 zoning for this property? It's public facilities; is that right? What does that mean? 6 Ms. O'Kane: It is public facilities with the exception of 525 San Antonio, which is 7 currently zoned R-1, which is single-family residential. 8 Commissioner McCauley: It's not dedicated as parkland presently, the City's portion? 9 Ms. O'Kane: That's correct, it's not. 10 Commissioner McCauley: It's the same as City Hall essentially. It's a public facility. Is 11 that right? Am I understanding that generally? 12 Ms. O'Kane: That's correct. I'm assuming this is zoned public facility. 13 Commissioner McCauley: You kind of alluded to this. It seems there could be an Option 14 0 in addition to Options 1-4, which is no housing at all anywhere on this site. There 15 could be an Option 5, which is housing only above the community center, not a separate 16 facility on City land. That suggests that the City Council could determine to do almost 17 anything within the realm of possibility. These are the four options that are being 18 presented to the Council or how do we understand what the realm of possibility is as it 19 concerns the City Council's considerations for this? 20 Ms. O'Kane: You're right. There are Options 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. It could be any variation 21 of housing. It could be more; it could be something in between. This is a scale of 22 housing that could be on this site just to show Council and the School District and the 23 community this is what it would look like for this much housing. If Council decided—24 just throwing this out there—it wanted twice as much, two more stories on top of that one 25 for more housing, that could certainly be direction from them. It's really what four 26 different scenarios might look like to give them a scale and an order of magnitude of 27 what that would look like at this site and how it might fit in. 28 Commissioner McCauley: Do you have any understanding of what direction the School 29 District is leaning? Are they planning to have housing in all events? 30 Ms. O'Kane: They took an action—I want to say it was a few months ago—that 31 identified their priorities for Cubberley. Workforce housing was one of them as was 32 reserving space for a future school. I believe the other one was moving their 33 DRAFT Draft Minutes 37 administrative offices to Cubberley. They haven't directed staff to pursue a certain 1 amount. They just identified it as a priority. 2 Commissioner Reckdahl: I'll touch on housing just because it dovetails with my other 3 comments. In some ways this is a very difficult decision because we all know housing is 4 very short. We also know that attracting young teachers to PAUSD is a problem, and this 5 would help with that. That makes it difficult. Overall, I think it is an easy problem 6 because right now we're tight for public space. In 20 years, we're going to have 30 7 percent more people, and we probably will not get 30 percent more public space. What 8 we have right now, we have to do the best to conserve. Even though I see the advantage 9 to putting housing on it, I don't think this is the appropriate spot. That's my thoughts on 10 housing. If we go back to Slide 7, the overall picture. The thought that in 20 years we 11 have 30 percent more people that want to use this probably means in a perfect world we'd 12 have 30 percent more buildings. We probably would have to do some infill here. I don't 13 think this right now, especially with two-story buildings, provides enough opportunity for 14 infill. I'd like to see instead more open space in this design and go up to three stories at 15 least for parts of it. You always have to worry about blending with the neighborhood and 16 not making a big wall. If you could have more green space here and higher elevations, 17 that would give us more options down the road when we will have to add additional 18 space to this. Not only do I think we shouldn't use that third story for housing, I think we 19 should have it but we should be using it for the community center and save open space 20 for additional community recreation possibilities. Slide 11, you mentioned one of the 21 things about post Design 3 was that we eliminated access from San Antonio. Is that car 22 access or bike access? 23 Ms. O'Kane: It's car access. 24 Commissioner Reckdahl: I'm happy with that. I'm not happy if we didn't allow bike 25 access. We did preschool family over at Greendell, and the ability for people coming 26 from San Antonio and accessing that site would make it much easier. I want to see bike 27 access through the facility all the way to San Antonio. That's all. 28 Commissioner Moss: When you talked about the fourth meeting that has to do with the 29 boards and you have to present all this information to City Council, at that meeting I 30 noticed that there was really no problem understanding the boards in 15 minutes. You 31 had six boards, that's an hour and a half with some walking between. It's almost a two-32 hour process. I'm not sure that City Council has that time. If there were any way that 33 you could put those boards online so they could study them ahead of time. The majority 34 of the problem was that people had opinions and wanted some discussion and even some 35 arguing and some pros and cons, and there was absolutely no time for that. It really 36 wasn't appropriate, but it really got a lot of creative juices flowing in the audience. It's 37 DRAFT Draft Minutes 38 wasn't the boards but the content sparked the desire to discuss. I'm sure the City Council 1 will have the same situation. Is there some way that you could prepare for that? 2 Ms. O'Kane: It's an excellent comment. We might hone in on a few boards as opposed 3 to all of them. Council's probably less interested for this meeting in how much more 4 martial art space are we providing and things like that. We're going to be selective as to 5 which boards we show. They already have the 11x17 in their packets and can look at 6 them. We're still choreographing the whole Council meeting, but we're going to make 7 sure that it fits into the space. Usually study sessions are an hour; this one I think is an 8 hour and 20 minutes or so. 9 Commissioner Moss: That fourth meeting was a powerful meeting. It was also the fact 10 that you had three meetings. It's sort of peeling the onion back. As you get deeper and 11 deeper, there's more and more detail about each and every item. You start out simple, 12 and that's pretty quick to discuss. By the fourth layer, you've got a lot of details and a lot 13 of stuff. I take my hat off to how you organized it and presented so much information in 14 that fourth meeting. I do feel that if there was some way in that upper north corner to put 15 a dog park, that would be good as long as it doesn't reduce the amount of field space 16 below what we have already. Right now, that corner is not really used because there's a 17 very wide street there. If you could work on that. You have to have a buffer between 18 Middlefield and the first buildings. Normally you would have a park setting with 19 benches or picnic tables or something like that. Since you have to have a buffer anyway, 20 could we put a dog park between Middlefield and the buildings? You could still have 21 your benches. If you could look at that, I'd appreciate it. 22 Ms. O'Kane: We can look into where a dog park might fit in. 23 Vice Chair Greenfield: I want to thank Kristen and all the staff and the consultants for 24 the overall process of the Cubberley Co-Design. I've been fortunate to be able to attend 25 all four meetings. It's been overall an excellent process on a very challenging project. I 26 agree with Kristen's assessment that the last meeting had some difficult aspects to it and 27 I'd probably do some things differently, but live and learn. I strongly encourage pursuing 28 lighting for the tennis and pickleball courts with directional lighting. I encourage 29 considering how to include a screen of appropriate vegetation around the court perimeters 30 to help block the light and noise. We should consider not including pickleball at 31 Cubberley and potentially increasing pickleball at Mitchell Park. I don't think this is a 32 decision we need to make right away. We're allocating court space, and down the road 33 we can consider would we want to have a concentration of pickleball at Courts 5, 6 and 7 34 at Mitchell Park, dedicated given the social aspects of the sport. It might make sense to 35 do that. That's something we can consider down the road. I do agree with Commissioner 36 Moss that we should pursue finding space for a dog park. As a Commission, we know 37 it's difficult to find an infill dog park, if you will. Once land is dedicated or serving a 38 DRAFT Draft Minutes 39 purpose, it's hard to change. This is a drawing board opportunity that we should 1 consider. Perhaps something along the southeast corner of Middlefield would be a 2 potential option. I do appreciate the comments that the public's made previously 3 regarding separating the adult ed from the preschool area. One potential option that 4 could address this would be to move the district office into the area envisioned for the 5 adult education. That would be a safer group to accommodate the same area in proximity 6 to the preschool. I appreciate that there may be a phasing issue associated with this since 7 the district office move was probably intended to move at a later date. I think that's 8 something worth consideration. I encourage looking for an outdoor pool as opposed to 9 an indoor pool that some of the options were considering. On the subject of housing, I 10 appreciate that this is a difficult and sensitive issue. As Kristen stated, currently 525 San 11 Antonio is zoned R-1. The rest of the Cubberley sites are zoned PF. Any change for 12 multifamily housing will require a zoning change. I appreciate the difficulty of PAUSD 13 in finding housing locations for teachers. Former Mayor Holman articulated very well 14 the variety of options that the City has for incentivizing housing within the community. 15 The School District is more limited. They have land basically. 525 San Antonio could 16 be a reasonable place for teacher housing. I am not in favor of Option 2 teacher housing 17 in addition to that, but if that is the option that was pursued, it would be considering how 18 to cluster all of the teacher housing towards San Antonio rather than including the teacher 19 housing more in the middle of campus. It doesn't make intuitive sense to include housing 20 in the middle of campus, especially teacher housing. It doesn't sound like the wisest 21 choice. While I'm not in favor of that option, if it were pursued down the line, I hope 22 there would be consideration to cluster it all towards San Antonio. As a member of the 23 Cubberley ad hoc where we've penned a Colleagues' Memo, I've already shown where I 24 stand on housing in general. 25 Council Member Cormack: Kristen's heard me say this a thousand times, but thank you 26 so much for everything. I know that you personally are the person working on this. I'm 27 so grateful for that. I want to take just a little bit of time, if you'll indulge me, because 28 we'll be talking about this in great detail on Monday night. I'm doing a fair amount of 29 preparation. I want to talk a little bit about where this whole project came from. Frankly, 30 it started when I attended the City/School Liaison meeting, having read the report that the 31 community group had done. I felt that the City and the School District had done nothing, 32 and that was the truth. I attended that meeting for a number of years. Former Mayor 33 Holman was the Chair of it last year, and now I serve on it. I honestly don't believe that 34 much would have happened if I as a member of the community had not stepped forward 35 and asked people to start working on this again. I'm delighted that it's gotten started 36 again. I'm not going to address the incredible opportunity we have here because I don't 37 want to belabor it and we'll be talking about it again on Monday night. I think you of all 38 people are pretty familiar with it. I want to make two points on that before we discuss 39 housing in particular. If you could go to the site organization, would that be possible 40 Ms. O'Kane? We've gotten a lot of comments here and in email about needing more 41 DRAFT Draft Minutes 40 space. I want everyone to understand that this proposal in front of you has 57 percent 1 more green space. We are already making an incredible increase in what's available to 2 people. We are more than doubling the programming space. I don't believe any housing 3 that ends up on this site is going to be taking away from the opportunities that people 4 have today. Given the numbers we talk about in terms of the potential increase in 5 population, I believe this will support that. I want us oriented around that, around green 6 space, and about program space. I don't think people should be surprised about senior 7 affordable housing being here. I say that because I mentioned it at the debate at 8 Cubberley. I can't recall if that was September or October, but it was last fall. I've had a 9 number of conversations in my office hours with people who live in Greenmeadow. I'm 10 certainly not surprised that many people I know who live in Greenmeadow are opposed 11 to housing. That's normal when we have a housing project come forward. I don't believe 12 that this is a careless request of staff. A lot has changed in the past couple of years in our 13 community. I think it's perfectly appropriate to consider senior affordable housing here. 14 That's what I'll be discussing on Monday. I don't think there's any surprise there at all. 15 There's a whole variety of reasons why I think that'd be appropriate here. We're looking 16 at 48 units. Option 3 is one that I'll definitely be supporting on Monday night. I'm really 17 grateful for everyone's input. I always think we get a better process if everyone has their 18 say. I'm glad that members of the Parks and Rec Commission are thinking hard about the 19 recreation opportunities that will be available to us now and in the future. That's one 20 input that City Council will have. I'm really glad that people are coming and talking 21 about zoning. That's certainly one input that people will have. That's where I am on this. 22 I look forward to the discussion on Monday night. I'll refrain from commenting on the 23 next item. 24 Vice Chair Greenfield: Any further comment from Commissioners on this item? 25 5. Colleagues Memo from Commissioners McDougall, Greenfield, and Moss 26 Regarding Housing at Cubberley 27 Vice Chair Greenfield: The next item on the agenda is the Colleagues' Memo from 28 Commissioners McDougall, Greenfield and Moss regarding housing at Cubberley. These 29 are the members of the Cubberley ad hoc, and I will be speaking to this. You all received 30 the Colleagues' Memo along with the draft letter to Council, which is the 31 recommendation of the ad hoc committee that we support unanimously and pass onto 32 Council with our recommendation to prioritize recreation programs and services over 33 housing on City property. The fundamental argument here is we should maintain PF 34 zoning for public facilities. This is fundamentally critical as we grow. We've heard 35 public support for this in the last Cubberley meeting. About three-quarters of the meeting 36 attendees did not vote for an option that included housing on public land. We received 37 letters in our packet, six very articulate letters, against housing on Cubberley including a 38 very persuasive letter signed by three former Parks and Rec Chairs as well as three 39 DRAFT Draft Minutes 41 Cubberley committee former members. There's another letter from a former Mayor and 1 CAC subcommittee chair and housing advocate. All of these people were advocating 2 against including housing on public land at Cubberley. We also heard from members of 3 the community this evening. I appreciate their support very articulately and passionately 4 offered. I appreciate your coming out. We know recreation programs and services are 5 highly prized by our community, and we're concerned about the amount and diversity of 6 recreation opportunities. We have an acute need for housing in our community, and our 7 resident population will increase substantially over the years to come. Our recreation 8 assets, in the words of Chair McDougall, are scarce and valuable. They'll become even 9 more scarce and valuable and important to our community as we grow. Over the lifetime 10 of the new Cubberley Center, which is Palo Alto's largest hub for recreation programs 11 and services, continuing to meet our community's increasing recreation needs is going to 12 be a challenge. We're tasked with that as stewards of our public recreation resources. As 13 an ad hoc, we recommend that all building space on City land should be designated as 14 public recreation resource to meet our evolving needs over the lifetime of a new 15 Cubberley Community Center. We recognize that you can add more buildings on the 16 land that we have, but if we do add land now, that should be dedicated for recreation 17 resources. There are other places we can add housing. The recommendation of the ad 18 hoc is we focus and draw a hard line that the PF-zoned land should remain public. It's 19 public facilities. We shouldn't be putting housing on public facilities. The direct 20 consequence of including housing on City land is we'll lose this land or building as an 21 opportunity for future recreation use. The need for this recreation land is going to 22 become more acute as we grow. In summary, as stewards of our recreation and open 23 space resources, it's incumbent upon us as Parks and Recreation Commissioners to 24 strongly advocate for maximizing our recreation facilities and programs at Cubberley and 25 not including any housing on the City property. We have also drafted a specific letter to 26 City Council, which you're looking at now. It's our hope that we will garnish [sic] 27 unanimous support within the Commission for this letter to Council. We do have one 28 public speaker on this issue. I will let Winter Dellenbach speak, and then the 29 Commissioners can have their comments. I will be making a motion that the draft letter 30 be forwarded to City Council from the full Commission. 31 Winter Dellenbach: Because I didn't do it before, I just wanted to express my strong 32 support and delight that the three of you that took your time and your thought to put this 33 together. I think it's really very good. Particularly, Points 4 and 7 elegantly express 34 important points. On Point Number 8, we recommend all building space on City land at 35 Cubberley should be designated as public recreation resources, etc. I don't know enough 36 legally if you can dedicate as oppose to designate as a public recreation resource, these 37 kinds of functions there. Dedication is a term in the law that's very strong. We dedicate 38 parks. We have undedicated parkland. We have dedicated parkland. If you have 39 dedicated parkland, that's very strong. It takes a vote of the public to undedicate 40 parkland. I don't know if you can dedicate these uses. If you can, it would be fantastic. 41 DRAFT Draft Minutes 42 It's just one thought about this. I didn't want to say anything more. I really appreciate 1 your leadership, the two of you that are here and Mr. McDougall, for doing this. I would 2 urge the rest of you to support it. I hope this succeeds and sends a very, very strong 3 message because from that survey—I'm sorry there was confusion. It was Option 1 and 4 the others that indicated no housing added together that was 75 percent. I'm sorry that 5 was my mistake for not making myself clear. Thank you. 6 Vice Chair Greenfield: Thank you, Winter. Now, we'll have Commissioner comments. 7 First, I'll start off with comments that Chair McDougall shared with me. He wanted to 8 offer his full support for the ad hoc committee's position of no housing at Cubberley. 9 Commissioner Moss: As one of the members of the ad hoc, there are several things to 10 ponder with this note. It isn't designated as recreation today. It is designated for the 11 public benefit. The only thing I can think of where housing would be of the public 12 benefit is very similar to what the School District has said, which is education will be 13 severely impacted if we can't attract teachers to our area to teach in our schools. I would 14 use the same argument in the public domain. Right now, firefighters live in the fire house 15 and are available in case of emergency response. We could use the same argument for 16 other public safety workers, police, utilities, City Hall people. If there are people in the 17 City who are required to be here in an emergency, then maybe we could have a couple of 18 housing units in this facility that would support public. There's a huge utility yard in the 19 Baylands. Would you put utility worker mini housing out there to house emergency 20 response utility people? Would you put housing for a minimum staff of police officers in 21 the new police headquarters to support emergency response by police? You could use the 22 same argument for this facility as well. Note that these housing units are not for growing 23 families. These are mini housing units, very small, for one, maybe two people. You're 24 not going to get senior public employees who are going to want to live in these small 25 units. You'll get young, single people. You have to be very careful when you talk about 26 48 units and 116 units. These are not three-bedroom, two-bath condos. I want to make 27 that clear as well. One comment was that we've added 57 percent more facilities for 28 public, we just add a third story on top of that without taking anything away. To echo 29 what Commissioner Reckdahl said, I would rather put more classrooms or things like that 30 on the third story. If you have to do housing, I would want to make sure half or a quarter 31 of what was recommended would be put there, and the other three-quarters of that third 32 story would be more facilities. In other words, not 100 percent one way or the other. 33 Commissioner Cribbs: I would be in support of the Colleagues' Memo and also sending 34 the letter to the Council for no housing on Cubberley even though I certainly support 35 housing for people in Palo Alto. We need to be creative in zoning about how we do that 36 in the future. This is just not the place for me to put it. Is it conceivable because we have 37 two different property owners that the School District could choose to do workforce 38 housing on the property going forward? 39 DRAFT Draft Minutes 43 Ms. O'Kane: They can certainly pursue that. It would require a zoning change for them 1 as well. 2 Commissioner Reckdahl: As I mentioned earlier, I'm really concerned about public space 3 down the road. If you look at the 30 percent more people that we'll have in 20 years, 4 there not only will be more people, but they'll be in higher-density households. Those 5 higher-density applications rely much more on public space as Penny mentioned. I 6 support the Colleagues' Memo. There's a second issue. Co-locating residents with the 7 community center is just bad practice. We have constraints right now. Neighbors 8 complain about things going on in the park. If in the middle of this community center 9 you have housing, that will put more constraints and more limitations on both the 10 programming and activity that you have there. It's just not a good idea. Even though 11 housing is a really good idea, particularly for the School District and the City, I'm not in 12 favor of it here. 13 Commissioner McCauley: Let me echo the comment Jeff made, that we had a lot of 14 folks who provided some eloquent commentary. It's much appreciated. Also some 15 eloquent written commentary. Let me express a number of concerns I have about the 16 Colleagues' Memo. I hope we might be able to come up with some revisions to it that 17 would make it palatable to me. I'm concerned that we're viewing it, notwithstanding the 18 fact that we're saying we're not, as an all or nothing issue, whether there's housing or no 19 housing with nothing in between. I don't see the inherent conflict between having a 20 reasonable number of housing units in that space and the recreation purposes that we all 21 are dedicated to. Perhaps after I'm done speaking, if someone wants to take that up. I 22 just don't see that inherent conflict from my perspective. It sounds as though, without 23 knowing exactly what PAUSD will do, they're going to have housing at that space 24 anyway, somewhere in that area. One of their priorities is housing. The concern that 25 Keith just mentioned, which is residents onsite will complain about activities going on, 26 may be a concern anyway. Having additional units of housing, I don't know that there's 27 much of a dramatic impact from that, for example. 28 Commissioner Reckdahl: Along San Antonio, those will be equidistant to existing 29 neighborhoods. I don't think that has any additional constraints on it. If you have it more 30 towards the center, then it's problematic. 31 Commissioner McCauley: Option 2 or whatever. I understand. Maybe I'm misreading 32 the tea leaves, but it seems as though PAUSD is fairly intent on having some housing at 33 this location. For whatever that's worth. Maybe again I'm misunderstanding the play of 34 things, but it seems as though the City is the junior partner in this collaboration because 35 we have the much smaller piece of the acreage. Frankly, I think the City gets more out of 36 that relationship, at least it has for many years now, than PAUSD has. I don't mean to 37 say that we have to be completely deferential to the needs of the School District, but I 38 DRAFT Draft Minutes 44 don't think we can ignore them. We have to be thoughtful about that. I have an 1 institutional concern for this Commission, and it's what I mentioned before, which is 2 we're driving a little bit out of our lane or perhaps far out of our lane. I'm concerned that 3 this is coming to us as a proxy battle, to add one more voice in the raging debate in Palo 4 Alto about housing. I frankly don't know that it serves us well to step into debates like 5 that, that we don't need to step into. I appreciate that the general uses of Cubberley are 6 intended to be recreational, and I would have no issue at all expressing that to the City 7 Council. When we start talking about building heights and zoning considerations and 8 noise restrictions and all the rest, I worry that we're starting to do the work of other 9 Commissions or we're starting to do the work of the City Council without the right 10 information before us, which is the full set of information that would go into balancing 11 these different considerations around housing needs and other sorts of needs that go into 12 the larger equation. I do have an institutional concern about us weighing in and saying 13 no more housing on a particular property. Last, I see a number of precedents where 14 housing has worked really well hand-in-hand or as part of a community center 15 development. The Taube Koret Campus is a great example very close to Cubberley 16 where you have both a great housing development and community there that is integrated 17 with the JCC. It's very well integrated. I'm always apprehensive and a bit skeptical about 18 an argument that we can't walk and chew gum, that we can't think hard about and work 19 on problems in a way that solves those problems or at least gets us further down the path. 20 There could be a way or at least I have the sense there could be a way to achieve some of 21 our housing goals as well as maintain our recreation goals in this property. I would 22 suggest—I'm more than willing to hear folks' reactions to what I just said—we revise this 23 statement to express that we strongly advocate for ensuring that recreation space is 24 protected or maintained in the Cubberley site. For example the last clause of the last 25 sentence of this draft letter to the City Council, just strike it. We do not say "not 26 including any housing on City property at Cubberley." We simply express that the City 27 Council should keep in mind that the primary dedicated purpose for this property should 28 be public recreation opportunities. 29 Commissioner LaMere: To follow up what Anne was mentioning about the property of 30 the City versus the School District, is there a way to show on the map what belongs to the 31 City and what belongs to the School District? 32 Ms. O'Kane: Yes, we just have to bring the presentation back up. The City's 8 acres are 33 approximately this area. Right now, it starts from Middlefield and includes the tennis 34 courts and then up to the property line by Piazza's and then extends over. Because the 35 property was divided after Cubberley was built, it's an odd shape. On the other side, it 36 goes around the existing buildings. It would include these purple buildings. It would be 37 roughly this area. 38 DRAFT Draft Minutes 45 Commissioner LaMere: It just helps to visualize what property is where. Obviously it's 1 very complicated when there are two parties to this project and this decision. I agree with 2 a lot of sentiments that Commissioner McCauley mentioned and agree with his edit on 3 the last line. 4 Vice Chair Greenfield: Fundamentally, what we're suggesting is advocacy for public 5 land to remain public. I do not believe as a Commission we are out of our lane. I believe 6 we need to be stewards of community recreation and open space resources. Advocating 7 for recreation resources on public-zoned land is core to our responsibility to the 8 community. I don't believe we're saying no more housing on Cubberley. There is 9 currently no housing on Cubberley. It's zoned PF; it's not zoned for housing. The City 10 has the lesser parcel size at Cubberley, and that's all the more reason to maintain that 11 limited resource for future recreation needs. I am hopeful that we can come up with a 12 unanimous recommendation for Council, but we're going to need to have some discussion 13 on that. I do believe we should be as a Commission clear cut on our message regarding 14 housing on City land. As far as commenting on housing on School District land, that's 15 somewhat out of our purview as a Commission. It does require a zoning change from 16 City Council, so there's some gray area there. As I previously stated and as the draft 17 letter and Colleagues' Memo state, we're not specifically opposing PAUSD housing on 18 the 525 property for that reason. It is fundamentally out of our purview. Just to repeat, I 19 believe it's our core responsibility as stewards of open space and recreation resources in 20 our community to do just that, to do everything in our power to maintain it. 21 Commissioner McCauley: May I try to put a slightly finer point on my questions? I'd be 22 interested to hear people's thoughts in response to this. As I look at Options 3 and 4, I 23 appreciate that there is with Option 3 an additional housing building and there's a shift of 24 the pool to be an indoor pool as an additional floor to the gymnasium. What I'm 25 struggling to see and understand is how those two options actually decrease recreation 26 space and recreation opportunities. I don't think they do. I think they've been carefully 27 designed to ensure that it isn't taking away from recreation opportunities, but it's housing 28 an addition to the recreation opportunities that would be there anyway. 29 Vice Chair Greenfield: I have two different answers that. The community has weighed 30 in on massing of the building sites. Some of the initial plans from the process were four-31 story buildings. Based on community input, that's been scaled back. There's a 32 community desire, but fundamentally I believe we're going to have a shortage of 33 recreation resources as we grow in the future. If we do make the decision to increase the 34 massing at the Cubberley site on City land, that increased massing and building should be 35 dedicated to recreation programs and services rather than housing. There's a lot of other 36 locations where we can push for housing. I think the Council is already on the way to 37 doing so. I fundamentally do not believe that the City land at Cubberley as its zoned PF 38 is the right place to add housing. I don't know if I'm answering your question or not. 39 DRAFT Draft Minutes 46 Commissioner McCauley: Perhaps not quite, but you don't need to. 1 Commissioner Moss: In that last sentence of the letter, where it says "we advocate the 2 maximizing of recreational facilities and programs at Cubberley," I might change the 3 remaining thing to say "and minimizing the inclusion of housing on City property." 4 You're maximizing the recreation facilities and programs and minimizing the inclusion of 5 any housing. As Commissioner McCauley said, maybe we don't know the whole picture. 6 Maybe there's a desperate need for the City to provide certain housing for the public. To 7 say "not include any housing" is I think what you're objecting to. If you say "minimizing 8 the inclusion of any housing and maximizing the recreation facilities and programs," we 9 say what is within our purview. 10 Vice Chair Greenfield: It's sounds like we're getting into discussing potential 11 amendments to a motion that hasn't been made yet. I'll ask Council Member Cormack if 12 she'd like to comment. She is declining the opportunity. I would like to move that the 13 Parks and Rec Commission forward the submitted draft letter to City Council regarding 14 housing at Cubberley. 15 Commissioner McCauley: As a procedural matter, I don't think you can move as the 16 Chair. I think you have to request that a motion be made by one of the other members of 17 the Commission. 18 Vice Chair Greenfield: I don't believe that's the case. Kristen? 19 Ms. O'Kane: I know we talked about this right before the meeting, but I'm actually not 20 sure of the answer. 21 Commissioner McCauley: Just for purposes of making sure there's not a procedural 22 defect, I would ask one of your colleagues who are supportive to make the motion. 23 That's all. 24 Vice Chair Greenfield: I have seen on many occasions the Mayor make motions directly. 25 Commissioner McCauley: Fair enough. If you're comfortable, that's fine. 26 Vice Chair Greenfield: Also, I would like to be the maker of the motion to be able to 27 answer to any potential amendments to the motion as a member of the ad hoc that 28 forwarded the letter. Procedurally, we do not need a second for the motion since this is 29 coming out of a committee recommendation. Given that, we're open to discussion. 30 Commissioner McCauley: Are you looking for an amendment to be proposed? What I 31 would propose would be to strike the first sentence and in the final paragraph to strike the 32 words "and not including any housing on City property at Cubberley," so that sentence 33 would end at "recreation facilities and programs at Cubberley." 34 DRAFT Draft Minutes 47 Vice Chair Greenfield: As the maker of this motion, I believe those changes dilute the 1 message we're attempting to send to a greater degree to be unacceptable. I'm going to 2 reject that amendment motion. 3 Commissioner Moss: Whether we take this out or leave it in, it's really incumbent upon 4 Councilperson Cormack to interpret what we said and the feeling behind this letter. We 5 cannot know all of the things that the City Council is weighing, but we can weigh in on 6 our part and be very strong about that. If we take this out, they're going to do what 7 they're going to do anyway. If we leave it in, they're going to do whatever they're going 8 to do anyway. 9 Vice Chair Greenfield: That's the argument I would make. If we leave it in, they're 10 going to do what they're going to do. Our recommendation is clear rather than gray. 11 Commissioner Reckdahl: I'm concerned about diluting the message to the point where 12 we're not saying anything. We are stewards of the recreation facilities. If you dilute it 13 too much, you're basically saying we're stewards of the recreation facilities. Well, that 14 was obvious. Declaring that we don't want housing there explicitly is the purpose of this 15 letter. I would want to keep it in. 16 Vice Chair Greenfield: Any further discussion? 17 Commissioner Cribbs: Commissioner McCauley, is there something else that you would 18 suggest that would make you feel more comfortable? What is it that you really … 19 Commissioner McCauley: I've been trying to think of that. I welcome any suggestions. 20 The edit that I proposed was trying to go for elegance and simplicity. Rather than 21 rewriting this in any significant way, take off that last part. I am comfortable expressing 22 to the City Council that we think public spaces, dedicated recreation and park spaces, 23 need to be protected and we shouldn't prioritize other uses of the property over 24 maintaining the integrity of those spaces. To then say that it is completely incompatible 25 for there to be any housing at that site with the purpose of protecting those public spaces 26 doesn't compute for me. I don't think there's a "one plus two equals three" scenario there. 27 For me to support it, we need to remove the line that says no housing and rather say the 28 priority should be protection and maintenance of the public recreation spaces. 29 Vice Chair Greenfield: Other comments? 30 Commissioner LaMere: If the letter were to go forward, are you making yourself clear 31 when you say "not including any housing on City property at Cubberley" when the City 32 property is only 8 acres? 33 DRAFT Draft Minutes 48 Vice Chair Greenfield: Yes. I think it is specifically the City property that we're 1 speaking to City Council about. This is the land that they have specific jurisdiction over. 2 I appreciate the concerns about stepping out of our lane potentially and about specifically 3 tying up land for one purpose versus another. The key to me is this is public land. The 4 JCC is a great example of a mixed-use property, but it's private land. It's not in the public 5 domain, and that's the fundamental difference to me. With Cubberley, this is public 6 space. It's public facility zoned. It's in the public domain. By allowing any housing 7 there, we're breaching the public trust in allowing private use of public land, private use 8 for residences on public land. I respect that we may have a fundamental difference here 9 that we might not be able to bridge. This is the sentiment that we've heard from a number 10 of previous Parks and Rec Commissioners supporting this and advocating that we 11 continue to be stewards of the public land for recreation purposes. This is our place in 12 the lineage of the community to continue to maintain that support. The line I draw is 13 public land versus private land. 14 Commissioner McCauley: This gets to my disconnect. It's not like the City is selling 15 part of the property to someone. We're talking about adding an additional story perhaps 16 to a building that may house either senior affordable housing or public employees who 17 work for the City who would otherwise have to commute hours to get to the place where 18 they work. Debating who might be in that public housing frankly is not important to me. 19 I don't understand the privatization argument. It's not privatizing any space. It's the 20 City's space that they're going to use for what they determine to be a public purpose. 21 Commissioner Moss: I would love to see another JCC-like private facility put before the 22 Planning Commission and approved for El Camino or San Antonio. That would be on 23 private land, but it would be for the benefit for the community to have senior housing. I 24 really wanted senior housing at Maybell. I thought it was ridiculous that they didn't 25 approve that. There are opportunities all along El Camino and San Antonio to build 26 another JCC-like facility that's on private land and privately funded rather than public 27 land. 28 Commissioner McCauley: I don't want to belabor the discussion unnecessarily. 29 Something that occurs to me—we'll probably need Kristen to weigh in on this as well—30 we really are talking about land use planning here. I have no idea what the answer to this 31 question is. I feel out of my depth, as I've mentioned before, on this topic to some degree 32 generally because we're operating sort of in the blind. Typically, on land use issues there 33 are some restrictions on what members of the Commission, for example the zoning 34 commission or the City Council, may participate in, if they're living in neighboring 35 properties and things like that. I have no idea where those lines are drawn. Are there any 36 guidelines on that sort of thing for purposes of this vote? 37 DRAFT Draft Minutes 49 Commissioner Reckdahl: I don't think there is because this is not binding. This is just 1 expressing our opinion. I don't think there'd be any constraints. 2 Ms. O'Kane: I don't think there would be any restrictions. 3 Vice Chair Greenfield: Procedurally, I think we're at the point where we should vote on 4 the amendment. To be safe, I'm going to request a second to my motion before we do so. 5 Is there a second to the motion? 6 Commissioner Reckdahl: I second. 7 Vice Chair Greenfield: We'll now vote on the amendment proposed, which is striking the 8 text in red on the screen. All in favor? Commissioner McCauley is proposing an 9 amendment based on the red changes on the screen. We need a second to the amendment 10 before we are able to vote on that. Is there a second for that amendment? Without a 11 second, the amendment proposal will die. There is no second for the proposed 12 amendment. Now, we'll go back to the original motion. Do we want to entertain any 13 further discussion on that motion before voting on it? Without further discussion then, 14 we will vote on the original motion to forward this letter of recommendation to City 15 Council. All in favor of the motion raise your hand and say aye please. All opposed. 16 The motion carries by a vote of 5-1 with Commissioner McCauley opposing. 17 Motion to submit the draft letter, as written, regarding housing proposals for the 18 Cubberley Community Center site to the City Council was made by Vice Chair 19 Greenfield and seconded by Commissioner Reckdahl. Passed 5-1, Commissioner 20 McCauley no, Chair McDougall absent 21 6. Other Ad Hoc Committee and Liaison Updates 22 Vice Chair Greenfield: The item on the agenda is ad hoc committee and liaison updates. 23 We seem to be moving towards a good place with the Commissioners forwarding their ad 24 hoc status. I'm going to ask that the ad hoc and liaison statuses be included in the 25 monthly minutes as part of the public record. Does anyone have any comments or 26 questions regarding the ad hoc updates that were included in our packet. 27 Commissioner McCauley: My only question is a logistics one. I didn't see them at the 28 back table this evening. In the future, if possible we should probably include copies of 29 them for the public. Maybe I just missed them. 30 Vice Chair Greenfield: Can we include the reports within the meeting agenda that's 31 publicly accessible before the meetings moving forward? 32 Ms. O'Kane: You mean the packet that gets posted in advance? I think so. 33 DRAFT Draft Minutes 50 Vice Chair Greenfield: That would be ideal. The information reports would be in the 1 minutes by default then. 2 Commissioner McCauley: Just as Natalie did when she distributed them, but in addition 3 to that having them publicly available. 4 Commissioner Moss: I have a question about the Foothills Park discussion about 5 additional access to Foothills Park. If I have suggestions, do I wait for it to be presented 6 to the entire PRC or do I send my comments to the one of the subcommittee members 7 privately? What would you suggest? 8 Ms. O'Kane: To ensure that we're not having a serial meeting because there are three 9 people already on the ad hoc, and if you were involved, that would be four people. You 10 should wait until this comes to the full Commission. You're not on the ad hoc, correct? 11 Commissioner Moss: No. 12 Commissioner McCauley: David, I don't know if you think you could convey it briefly 13 now. Just so you know, the next step for the ad hoc is to think about a number of options 14 and then present those options at the Commission meeting next month. That way we 15 might be able to incorporate it into those options that we're thinking about for next 16 month. 17 Commissioner Moss: Going back to what Leland Levy said last meeting, I want to make 18 sure that there's some quantitative information about how you would measure impact in 19 terms of the number of people on a day that would impact the environmental integrity of 20 the park. I don't know how you're going to do. I don't know when you're going to do it. 21 It would be nice to have that when you present and not after. Once you've got that, say 22 500 people, then you can present some of the options of how you would staff up or 23 charge more or whatever to mitigate that impact. That's all I wanted to say. 24 Commissioner McCauley: That's very well taken. The good news is that we have a lot 25 of data on visitation and historic numbers and everything else. Daren is very much on 26 top of all of that, and he'll be talking about it whenever this is before the Commission. 27 He'll be providing an overview of all that historical information. 28 Vice Chair Greenfield: Any other comments on ad hocs? Regarding the PAUSD 29 programs ad hoc that we formulated at the last meeting, Don and I were on that and 30 decided that it'd be better served as a liaison role than an ad hoc. Upon reflecting further 31 since Keith is already the City/PAUSD liaison, we're suggesting that Keith be on that 32 dual liaison role. I've already discussed this with Don, and Don is going to step down 33 from that, so it'll be Keith and me moving forward in that role. I've been talking about 34 community gardens. It's been coming for months on end. If you read the ad hoc report, 35 DRAFT Draft Minutes 51 you'll see that staff has announced that we have closed the deal on the new community 1 garden on Arastradero. It doesn't have a name yet. The Arastradero Gardens is an odds-2 on choice if you're betting. 3 Commissioner Reckdahl: We're signing a lease? Is that how we're doing it? 4 Vice Chair Greenfield: We have a five-year lease agreement signed with hopes for 5 another five-year lease after that. It's in the ad hoc report. The ad hoc report is 6 summarizing the report that I got from Daren. I want to thank staff for their persistent 7 efforts to make this new garden happen. This is a tremendous example of the valuable 8 community partnership that we're seeking. I want to thank the Palo Alto Christian 9 Reform Church for helping make this happen as a community partner. I'd like to know 10 what we can do to thank the Palo Alto Christian Reform Church, maybe a plaque and 11 commendation of some sort. I'd like to work with staff in the near future to come up with 12 something on that. This is absolutely the kind of community partnership that we want to 13 thank and encourage. 14 Ms. O'Kane: That would be a very nice gesture. I'll work with Daren on how we might 15 do that. 16 Vice Chair Greenfield: Thank you. 17 VI. TENTATIVE AGENDA FOR JUNE 25, 2019 MEETING 18 Vice Chair Greenfield: Next on the agenda is tentative agenda for the June 25 meeting. 19 Kristen, do you want to review proposed … 20 Ms. O'Kane: We have Boulware Park. I closed my computer for the other ones. What 21 else was on there, Commissioner Greenfield? Do you know? I know Boulware Park for 22 sure. 23 Vice Chair Greenfield: We talked about Boulware Park, summary and discussion of 24 results from the joint study session, which would have been covered this evening. Given 25 the time projections for this evening, we moved it to next month. I know that Foothills 26 Park access and rules and regulation updates are working towards coming to the 27 Commission. It's not clear if they'll make it in June or perhaps July. I guess we can 28 pencil them in for June and see if it gets there. 29 Ms. O'Kane: I talked to Daren about the park rules and regulations, whether he thought 30 June or July. He's still trying for June, but we'll see. 31 Vice Chair Greenfield: I know that we need some legal review before we get there. 32 That's always a question mark. 33 DRAFT Draft Minutes 52 Ms. O'Kane: That's all we have right now, but it's likely that something might come up 1 for the June meeting. 2 Vice Chair Greenfield: Any other requests from Commission members for the agenda 3 either next month or coming up? 4 Commissioner Cribbs: I'm not sure where we are on anything to do with fundraising. 5 Vice Chair Greenfield: I think we have a fundraising ad hoc, and we'd be looking for 6 something to come out of the ad hoc to the full Commission. Not being part of that ad 7 hoc, I can't speak to that. 8 VII. COMMENTS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS 9 Commissioner Moss: Will we be announcing the grand opening of the Boardwalk 10 anytime? 11 Ms. O'Kane: We don't have a new date. I don't know what the status is. 12 Vice Chair Greenfield: I'm glad it wasn't last weekend. 13 Ms. O'Kane: Exactly. 14 Commissioner McCauley: Natalie, I'm curious about what our process is for emails that 15 the Commission receives. I noticed tonight this is printed out at the back of the room. 16 We've got some stuff coming to us in hardcopy. Anne and I have received a whole bunch 17 of emails about dog parks in the past two weeks both for and against and everything else 18 you could imagine. People having dogs run at them and other things, crazy sorts of 19 emails. There was the whole flurry of emails we got today about the Cubberley issue. Is 20 there a common way that we receive this correspondence and what's the process? 21 Natalie Khwaja: The ones that are included in the agenda are ones I have received when 22 I do the agenda. A lot of the comments about tonight were received yesterday and today, 23 so I can't include them. I can include in the following if you would like to have a larger 24 packet of the previous month's received emails. I can do that. If you're receiving any 25 emails, I was told by the Clerk's Office it's best to forward them to the PRC Commission 26 inbox. My role here might change, and it's not best practice to send them to me. It's 27 better to send them to the inbox of the Commission, so there's always a permanent record 28 of them there. I always forward things from there, so it will be forwarded eventually by 29 me. That way, if anyone ever wanted to go back, there's a record there. 30 Commissioner McCauley: Would it be better to receive emails on a weekly basis rather 31 than just once a month, more or less as correspondence comes in? 32 DRAFT Draft Minutes 53 Vice Chair Greenfield: My experience is staff has used some discretion and forwarded 1 bundles of emails as they come in. Often this is after the agenda is posted, and it's 2 associated with the agenda. Sometimes a community initiative gets a bunch of emails 3 clustering on a subject, and they're forwarded to us out of cadence with our meetings. Is 4 that correct, Kristen? 5 Ms. O'Kane: That's correct. What might be helpful if there's a hot topic where you might 6 not want to wait a whole month to get news that the community is trying to reach out 7 about something, we can try to use our discretion on sending those. Ones that may be 8 one-offs or not related to something that's happening right now, we could include those in 9 the packet. It's just a suggestion. There were comments in the past about the number of 10 emails people were receiving. 11 Commissioner McCauley: That's a totally fair comment. That's why I was wondering 12 whether on a regular basis, once every two weeks or once a week or something. I don't 13 know if anyone has seen these. These are the official comments that came into the 14 Commission. They're both about Foothills Park, and they're from May 1 and May 7, 15 which was probably a more timely public conversation topic three weeks ago, four weeks 16 ago. I certainly would have appreciated having heard that a little bit earlier. I'm just 17 curious as to what others have a preference for. I totally understand if you want less 18 email. That's fine. I also appreciate that sometimes it's nice to have things on a more 19 timely basis. 20 Commissioner Reckdahl: Independent of other people's work, ideally I'd like to get once 21 a week a summary of all the things that came in. If that's every two weeks, that's fine too. 22 I'm not sure what the staff would prefer. I don't want to make work for the staff. Waiting 23 a whole month might be getting stale information. 24 Commissioner Cribbs: I really appreciate Daren in terms of the dog park, that we were 25 able to respond to everybody with our plan going forward, so people know that we're 26 listening. That's good. 27 Ms. O'Kane: How about we try once a week and see? We can check in next month and 28 see how that was for everyone. We can always change it. 29 Commissioner McCauley: That makes perfect sense if you're all up for it. 30 Vice Chair Greenfield: Once a week sounds fine. I think there will be many weeks when 31 there are no letters to forward. 32 Commissioner LaMere: As these come in, are these archived or posted someplace for 33 view or are they only distributed through email and that's the only way to receive them? 34 DRAFT Draft Minutes 54 Ms. Khwaja: They're documented in the Commission email inbox. Nothing is deleted 1 from there. They can always be pulled from the inbox. Other than that, they're just 2 posted on the agenda. 3 Council Member Cormack: I just want to share from the budget hearings that Vice 4 Mayor Fine referred to dog parks as his pet project today. I asked questions about it last 5 week and this week, which Daren Anderson capably answered. I want you to know that's 6 not in your emails, but you should know another Council Member has got that on his 7 particular list of hot topics. 8 Commissioner McCauley: I misspoke when I said Anne and I received all these emails. 9 The City Council, Allison also received all these emails about the dog parks. 10 Council Member Cormack: I read them all. 11 Vice Chair Greenfield: Any other comments or announcements? 12 Commissioner Cribbs: I only have one final comment. I hope everybody will come and 13 play ping pong or table tennis, whatever you like, and join us at whatever celebration we 14 do because it's incredibly good exercise, it's good for young people and old people, and it 15 keeps your brain working. It's a very good thing, so hopefully it will be received in 16 downtown. 17 Vice Chair Greenfield: Thank you. I look forward to it. 18 VIII. ADJOURNMENT 19 Meeting adjourned on motion by Commissioner Reckdahl and second by Commissioner 20 Moss at 10:38 p.m. 21 1 TO: PARKS AND RECREATION COMMISSION FROM: DAREN ANDERSON DEPARTMENT: COMMUNITY SERVICES DATE: JULY 23, 2019 SUBJECT: DOG PARKS AND PARK RESTROOMS RECOMMENDATION Staff recommends that the Parks and Recreation Commission (Commission) discuss dog parks and park restrooms and provide guidance to the Commission Ad Hoc Committee working on identifying dog off-leash opportunities and appropriate locations for park restrooms. BACKGROUND Dog Parks Palo Alto has four dog parks located within: Greer Park (.12 acres), Hoover Park (.14 acres), Mitchell Park (.56 acres), and Peers Park (.7 acres). The Peers Dog Park was opened in June 2018. The City’s five-year Capital Improvement Program includes a Capital Improvement Project (PG-18001), which provides funding ($150,000) for dog parks in Fiscal Years 2020, 2022, and 2024. The Parks, Trails, Natural Open Space and Recreation Master Plan (Parks Master Plan), adopted by Council in 2017, provided guidance on dog parks. The Plan noted that all Palo Alto’s dog parks, except Peers Dog Park, are all located south of Oregon Expressway. Since dog owners prefer to use dog parks near their residences, adding dog parks in north Palo Alto parks will improve residents’ dog exercise opportunities. Parks Master Plan—Dog Park Policy and Program Policy 2.D Actively pursue adding dedicated, fenced dog parks in multiple neighborhoods, equitably distributed between north and south Palo Alto. The size of the dog parks will vary, but should strive to be at least .25 acres. Dog parks should not be placed in Open Space Preserves. Program 2.D.1 The City will evaluate and select at least six dedicated, fenced dog parks, equitably distributed across north and south Palo Alto, from the following list of potential locations: • Eleanor Pardee Park (North, .41 Acres) • Bowden Park (North, .37 Acres) • Greer Park (Improve existing) (South, .87 Acres) • Peers Park (North, .73 Acres) • Hoover Park (Improve existing) (South, 1 Acre) • Robles Park (South, .47 Acres) • Mitchell Park (Expand existing) (South, 1.2 Acres) 2 • Kingsley Island Park (North, .27 Acres) • Werry Park (North, .31 Acres) • Juana Briones Park (South, .47 Acres) • Heritage Park (North, .27 Acres) Locations with at least .25 acres that are not currently used for active or programmed recreation were prioritized. Eleven sites have been identified as potential locations for dedicated dog parks. Six of the locations are in north Palo Alto, and five are in south Palo Alto. Three of these sites have existing dog parks, although there are recommended changes to improve those areas. The dog park at Mitchell Park would be expanded. The dog parks at Hoover Park and Greer Park could be expanded or relocated to larger areas within those parks. Park Restrooms The Parks Master Plan illustrated that residents strongly support improved and additional restrooms in parks that have amenities that draw people, especially children and seniors, and encourage them stay at the park for a span of time. The community highlighted the need to include security measures such as automatic locking mechanisms and lighting, which have helped address some of the concerns related to restrooms in parks. Parks Master Plan--Park Restroom Policy and Program Policy 2.E The City will actively pursue adding park restrooms in parks that are approximately 2 acres or larger, have amenities that encourage visitors to stay in the park, have a high level of use and have no nearby restrooms. Program 2.E.1 Develop a restroom standard, in collaboration with the Architectural Review Board, for neighborhood parks. 2.E.2 The City will actively pursue adding park restrooms at the following potential locations: • Bol Park • Bowden Park • Eleanor Pardee Park • Johnson Park • Ramos Park • Robles Park • Terman Park Fifteen of Palo Alto’s thirty-seven parks and open space preserves have restrooms. Attachment A includes photos of three park restrooms. The Master Plan recommends adding park restrooms in seven other parks, although community outreach for each site needs to be completed before taking any action (Attachment B). The City’s five-year Capital Improvement Program includes a Capital Improvement Project (PG-19000), which provides funding ($350,000) for park restrooms in Fiscal Years 2020, 2021, and 2023. DISCUSSION 3 Dog Parks The Commission Ad Hoc Committee and staff are working to identify the best use for the Dog Park CIP funding available in FY 2020 and FY 2022. The Ad Hoc Committee recommends using the FY 2020 CIP funds to expand the existing dog parks at Greer Park and Mitchell Park. The Ad Hoc Committee will continue analyzing potential dog park locations, particularly in north Palo Alto. Staff would conduct community outreach prior to making a formal recommendation to the Commission regarding dog park locations. In addition to adding dedicated, fenced dog parks, dog owners have expressed an interest in having the City consider other dog off-leash opportunities, such as the unfenced dog off-leash area model used by the City of Mountain View. In this model a non-fenced section of a park is used as a dog park for a limited number of hours of a day. The Ad Hoc Committee and staff would like feedback from the Commission regarding pursuing this option as a pilot program. Park Restrooms The Commission Ad Hoc Committee and staff are working to identify locations for adding park restrooms with the Park Restroom CIP funding available in FY 2020 and FY 2021. The Ad Hoc Committee recommends Ramos Park be considered as the site for the FY 2020 park restroom project. Ramos Park, which is identified in the Parks Master Plan as a potential site for a park restroom, is scheduled for a capital improvement project in FY 2020. The Ramos Park CIP will replace the existing park playground, benches, and drinking fountain, as well as resurface the basketball court playing surface. Community outreach for the Ramos Park CIP is tentatively scheduled for August 2019. The construction would likely start in February 2020 and be completed in approximately three months. ATTACHMENTS Attachment A: Photos of Park Restrooms at Briones, El Camino, and Peers Parks Attachment B: Park Restroom Analysis 1 Memo To: Palo Alto Parks & Recreation Commission From: PRC Foothills Park Ad Hoc Committee Re: Discussion of Foothills Park Admission Policy and Potential Pilot Program Overview The PRC’s Foothills Park Ad Hoc Committee (the “Committee”) has discussed and, with staff’s assistance, studied several potential proposals to update the Foothills Park admission policy, which has largely remained the same since its implementation in 1969. This memo lays out several potential, non-exclusive options for the PRC’s consideration and input. The Committee recommends that any changes to the current policy be studied through a pilot program to obtain direct observational feedback on implications from any policy change. Following PRC discussion and feedback, the Committee may further develop a proposal which the PRC could elect to forward on to the City Council for consideration. Background The land comprising Foothills Park was acquired by the City in a favorably-priced acquisition from the Lee family in the late 1950s. Los Altos and Los Altos Hills were asked to contribute to the purchase but declined. Palo Alto residents voted to approve the purchase (5/12/59) shortly after the Palo Alto City Council voted to limit Park access to Palo Alto residents if purchased. The Park opened to Palo Alto residents in the 1965-66 fiscal year. Visitation when the Park opened was significantly higher than it has been in the past 30 years. In 1969, four years after opening, approximately 292,000 persons visited the Park.1 The current Palo Alto residency requirement was added to the Municipal Code in 1969. The Code makes it a misdemeanor for any non-resident to enter the Park unless they are a guest of a City resident or employee, or are traversing the Bay-to-Foothills Trail on foot. (PAMC § 22.04.150 (a)-(b).) Visitation continued to increase after implementation of the residency requirement, with peak visitation of approximately 372,000 for two consecutive years in the early 1970s, before dropping considerably throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The steady decrease in visitation bottomed out at approximately 29,000 annual visits in 1998. This decline coincided, at least in part, with the implementation of a user fee to fund certain infrastructure work in and around the Park’s Boronda Lake, which fee was removed in 2001. Visitation crept back up after the low in 1998. In the past 17 years, visitation has been steady at approximately 152,000 persons visiting each year. One recent exception was 2011-2012 1 All visitation numbers are estimates drawn from the use of a vehicle “counter” during weekdays and actual in- person observation by ranger staff on summer weekends. The weekday and non-summer weekend estimates are derived from historic information that presumes 2.85 visitors per vehicle on weekends and 1.5 visitors per vehicle on weekdays. Historic visitation records from earlier than 2002 have been provided by former Palo Alto Councilwoman and Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge LaDoris Cordell. Judge Cordell worked with former Community Services Department Director Greg Betts to compile the historic information. 2 when the Park saw 202,000 visitors. Based on staff observation, the park was a bit busier in 2011- 2012, but that number of visitors did not negatively impact the Park’s resources and infrastructure. During most weekends and holidays, the single point of entry on Page Mill Road is staffed regularly and persons not able to demonstrate Palo Alto residency are turned away from the Park. The exception is that during winter weekends and holidays, when staff is constrained and park visitation rates are lower, entry gate enforcement of the residency requirement is done less frequently. In the last five years, approximately 2,800 non-residents have been turned away each year, which is an increase from the last decade. As written, the Municipal Code provides no discretion for the City Manager or staff to allow unaccompanied non-residents, including school or volunteer groups. In addition to the residency restriction, the Municipal Code imposes a cap of 1,000 persons in the Park at any time. (P.A.M.C. § 22.04.150.) This limit, which has not been approached except in the case of special events, would remain in place.2 This 1,000 person cap also corresponds to the number of available parking spaces within the park – approximately 380. Guiding Principles: In considering changes to the Park’s admission policy, the Committee has been guided by several principles that we believe reflect key community values. These are set forth as goals in the Palo Alto Parks, Trails, Open Space and Recreation Master Plan and include “providing high- quality facilities and services that are accessible [and] inclusive,” “creating environments that encourage regular active and passive activities to support health, wellness, and social connections,” and “preserving and integrating nature, natural systems, and ecological principles” for the benefit of current and future park users. Menu of Potential Options: The Committee has received input on a range of potential options for updating the Foothills Park admission policy, including from current and former staff members who have provided invaluable insight. The following is a list of non-exclusive options for updating the 1969 Municipal Code provisions concerning access to Foothills Park. All options anticipate maintaining the 1,000 person cap with access prioritized for Palo Alto residents. Potential impacts of each option are discussed very briefly for context, but these are not intended to suggest an exhaustive assessment: 1.Update the Municipal Code to Match Current Practice: access limited to residents onweekends and holidays, with the residency restriction lifted at other times. o This option would essentially formalize the status quo. 2.Student-focused Program: extend access for school-age children in communities neighboring Palo Alto (e.g., PAUSD students residing outside City limits and RavenswoodElementary School District students). o This is designed to target both socioeconomically disadvantaged students that we particularly want to reach3 and all Palo Alto public school students. Based on 2 Dates of highest visitation are typically summer weekends – particularly Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day – when overall daily visitation approaches 1,000 visitors (though not at one time). 3 Access to nature preserves like Foothills Park is particularly important for students from socioeconomically disadvantaged communities. Longstanding research has chronicled both (1) the importance of outdoor opportunities for 3 average visitation rates, this option is estimated to generate approximately 8,000- 10,000 additional persons visiting the Park over the course of a year. In light of visitation trends, staff does not expect this level of additional visitation to significantly impact the Park. o In addition to a potential student-access program, the Committee has discussed formalizing a policy for weekday school field trips. 3.Dynamic Advance Reservation Program: extend access to a variable number of non- residents each weekend who obtain a pass to visit the Park using the City’s existing online reservation system and/or by allowing passes to be checked out from local libraries. o Provides very effective control on total visitation. The number of available passes would be driven by extensive data on visitation trends. For example, to prioritize resident access, peak weekends would have fewer passes available than off-peak weekends. o Presents ability to collect user fees to support Park programs without creating delayat entry gate related to handling of transactions. o Feedback from retired and current staff is that this model would be easiest to implement. 4.A Combination of the Concepts Above, or Others Not Listed Above: the Committee recognizes that there are additional ideas that they may not be captured above and isinterested to hear from the PRC and the public on other concepts. In addition, the Committee has discussed two concepts and has determined that they should not be pursued at this time based on logistical considerations: o Shuttle Program: extend access for persons who ride a shuttle to the Park during peak weekends. For example, a shuttle would stop at several local libraries (and young people as formative experiences that they carry throughout their lives, and (2) how access to outdoor recreational and educational opportunities are significantly limited for students from impoverished families. One recent analysis concluded that “[t]he reality is that poorer Americans face formidable barriers and constraints” to accessing public recreation opportunities. (Scott, infra.) Two keys to addressing this problem are (a) “improving access” and (b)“creating formative experiences” in early childhood. (See David Scott, “Economic Inequality, Poverty, and Park and Recreation Delivery,” JOURNAL OF PARK AND RECREATION ADMINISTRATION, Vol. 31, No. 4, at 2-3, 5-7 (Winter2013) (“Economic well-being likewise shapes Americans’ access to a wide range of [recreational opportunities] . . .Studies have since documented that poorer Americans are less likely than others to . . . participate in outdoor recreation activities, and exercise during leisure time. Poorer Americans are also less likely to use publicly funded park andrecreation resources. A recent study reported that affluent Americans are three times more likely to visit national parkscompared to poor Americans. Other studies have documented similar patterns for state, regional, and local parks.” (internal citations omitted)). This research is confirmed in numerous studies. A 2005 analysis by California State Parksnotes the significant benefits from outdoor recreation programs in “develop[ing] youth,” “enhanc[ing] education” and“deter[ring] negative behaviors,” including decreased drug and alcohol use and crime prevention. (See “The Health and Social Benefits of Recreation,” at 30-35, Cal. State Parks (2005); see also Ardoin, Nicole, et al., Environmental Education Research Bulletin, Iss. 10 at 12-13, 23, 35-36 (2017), available at https://naaee.org/ eepro/resources. This type of pilot, while focused on improved access, also reinforces the creation of formative childhood experiences. CSD and its longstanding partners would have the ability to work with student populations targeted by this pilot program, including Ravenswood students. According to California Department of Education figures, more than 94% of students in the neighboring Ravenswood City Elementary School District come from “socioeconomically disadvantaged” backgrounds. 4 potentially Stanford’s campus as part of a collaboration with Stanford) in order to facilitate broader community access to the Park while also reducing vehicle trips. Like some other options, this one has a direct means of limiting the number of additional visitors (i.e., there are a limited number of seats on the shuttle vans) and has the benefit that it may decrease vehicle trips and would not impact parking within the Park. However, identifying funding and/or partners to support such a program are major hurdles that need to be overcome. o Conservation-focused Park Orientation Program: extend access for non-residents who go through an “orientation” to the Park with a docent or ranger. The drivingprinciple behind this option is to focus on educating park visitors to be conservation- minded. Such a program could be capped, but would provide less ability to regulate visitation during busy summer weekends. Resources to staff docent program and curriculum have not been identified. With all potential options, a one-year pilot is suggested to provide feedback that will directly inform an impact assessment. As noted above, the 1,000 person visitation cap would remain in place in all events. Current restrictions on reservation of group spaces would remain in place (i.e., restricted to residents). Potential Risks The principal risk is that additional visitation will negatively impact Foothills Park’s natural resources and improvements, or otherwise tax park resources. Preliminarily, this risk is viewed as a limited one in light of past experience with significantly higher visitation than is anticipated in connection with a pilot program. For a pilot program, no capital expenditure is immediately anticipated. Incremental costs are likely to be incurred, including CSD and Foothills Park staff time which may result in reduced staff attention to other projects. There are certain existing infrastructure needs within the Park (e.g., restrooms that need to be replaced in the next five years), but staff views those as pre-existing needs regardless of a visitation pilot program. For any pilot program, staff would monitor both overall visitation and pilot-specific visitation to Foothills Park and prepare a report and recommendation concerning the pilot program and associated impacts after one year. Next Steps Based on the PRC’s feedback, the Committee will further analyze this issue and return in the next several months with a recommendation to be presented to the PRC, and if approved, to be forwarded to the City Council for consideration. ATTACHMENT A: Parks of Palo Alto Excerpt – Foothills Park From:David Moss To:Khwaja, Natalie; Anderson, Daren Subject:Comments on Foothills Park Access discussion July 23rd PRC meeting Date:Friday, July 26, 2019 8:40:09 PM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautiousof opening attachments and clicking on links. After hearing the immense amount of work from the PRC Foothills subcommittee in the July 23rd PRC meeting, I am convinced that this issue is quite complex and cannot be tackled withone swift move. Below, I will describe some of the issues as I heard them. But the bottom line is that we should probably do as the subcommittee suggests and open the park up piecemeal,addressing the inherent issues with each subset of the public as they are invited in. That said, I would like to see each proposal separately introduce, fleshed out, and voted on one at a time. I am guided by the Parks Master Plan which shapes my vision for the park, an open space, aplace that is respected for its natural beauty, its wildlife, its vast views, its peace and quiet. A place to relax with family and friends in a natural setting away from cars, jobs, traffic,shopping, electronic devices, and noise. A place to learn and explore nature and think about how to preserve this natural setting for others to come. A place of diversity, availableequitably to all regardless of age, race, gender, culture or ethnicity. The big problem is how to do this and not hurt what we are trying to preserve by subjecting the park to too many people at once. First, though, let's say what we should NOT be concerning ourselves with. I fully agree with the comment by one speaker that in 1959 there were far fewer public open space choices for families than we have today thanks to POST and MidPeninsula Open Space Preserves. They are a treasure. If this whole debate is because people can't find open space to visit, I can't agree with that. If this is about addressing past discrimination, I feel we need to just stick to our vision of providing open space for all. And, in fact, we should be pushing for asdiverse a set of visitors as possible, but not at the expense of hurting the park with too many people.I don't care about the argument that other cities didn't want to pay 50 years ago. That is so far in the past and the world has changed dramatically. What it IS about: Focus on preserving the environment and peace and quiet, while not taxing theresources for fire protection, rangers, maintenance, etc. If the park seems under utilized and under appreciated by Palo Altans, even whilepreserving its delicate natural ecosystem and its peace and quiet, maybe marketing should first be the focus to the growing Palo Alto population of 70,000 andmore. If each resident can bring in 15 friends and relatives, that would quickly overwhelm the park. So, finding the correct mix of quotas, by day of the week andholidays, will need to fluctuate every few years. And, it can't keep requiring a vote by the public. It has to be managed by staff alone. Focus on educating young people, especially young people who, as Parks Commissioner McDougall said, are the conservation leaders of the future. The several proposals mentioned include inviting in: 1) PAUSD & Ravenswood students and their families. I agree, but I actually prefer the nextproposal, school groups. We need more young people to learn to love and appreciate the outdoors and share that with their friends and family. But, when and how many? What about weekends and holidays? Does this include 15 extended family members and friends with each student? Or can we limit that. Canthe reservation system handle this? How do you prove you are a student and related to the student? Remember that all students, resident and non-resident, already haveaccess via summer camps and Grassroots Ecology student volunteer work parties. Maybe we need more publicity. 2) School groups including PAUSD, Ravenswood, private schools, and even Stanford students midweek. I agree. I prefer this option. Can I ask that they and their ch be accompanied by a volunteer or docent at all times who leads them on a hike, coordinates a group activity, or talks about nature orconservation? 3) Volunteer group work parties and ecology classes. I agree. We have this today via Environment Volunteers(EV) and Grassroots Ecology...anyone can join. Publicize this more. Follow it up with a docent led thank-you talk, hike, and picnic. 4) Update the municipal code regarding anyone entering during the week. I DO NOT agree,yet. Needs more study. As Herb Borock said, it might require a referendum from the public. The midweek peace and quiet is essential. It also gives nature and wildlife time to recover from the weekend crowds, not to mention time for rangers and maintenancepeople to put things back in order. The limit of 1000 visitors is NOT reasonable, and reducing that to a meaningful number requires research. It was originally there forspecial events all on the big lawn with shuttle buses, not stretching into every corner of the park and every picnic table. Think of the negative impact of just 100 peoplewalking and picnicking and fishing around small Boronda Lake. Or 300 people in the main picnic areas. Or hundreds of people on the trails on a busy Saturday afternoon...that seems like way too much! As Karen Holman said, wide open Rancho San Antonio gets 700,000 visitors while we get 150,000. That is a huge difference andrequires more study! 4) Reservation system. Great idea, but needs more study. Many issues with the 1000 person limit, and the mix of quotas between residents and non residents. Quotas should be dynamic. It takes significant study as to the rightnumber and mix, and it will change over time, as Palo Alto population changes. And we should be publicizing the park to residents to raise awareness, and that will changeto mix. An increase in sheer volume of BBQ's and picnickers raises many issues to fix first.Note that Mid Peninsula OSP's do not have picnic areas, trash bins, or BBQ's to contend with. We want to maintain the integrity of the park, while also encouraging families and friends to picnic, but it can never be intended to look like Mitchell Parkor the other urban parks with regard to sheer numbers of visitors, corporate parties, birthday parties with bouncy castles and mylar balloons and music.Some issues already raised by subcommittee plus more: too many BBQ's in unmanageable places(significantly reduce these), too little fire protection, too fewpicnic tables in manageable places, too much maintenance required to keep heavy-use areas clean and ecologically thriving, too few bathrooms, too few rangers, too fewparking places, more noise&loud music&partying&fireworks to regulate (they occur today but in lesser numbers), policing people wanting to bring dogs, policing peoplewanting to bring bikes, keeping tourist busloads out, determining quotas and fees and dynamic pricing, managing that reservation system and fee collection). More Studyand park funding needed. 5) Conservation Focused Park Orientation program. Great idea. A Docent Training program is a great idea. Give it to Grassroots Ecology and Environmental Volunteers to manage. Mid Peninsula Open Space District does thissuccessfully with docent training programs to allow college students and seniors and others to learn about conservation and then teach others by leading walks through thepreserve. In conclusion: We should do a scaled approach as recommended by the subcommittee, butstart with docent-led school groups, conservation volunteer groups, and docent training groups, all with residents and non-residents. After that, a reservation system is possible, butfirst try it to manage a Los Altos Day or East Palo Alto Day or Stanford Day, where we can have all hands on deck(rangers, commissioners, conservation volunteers, and newly minteddocents and volunteers) to lead various walks and talks, in a controlled and managed fashion. Commissioner Moss Foothills Park Access Discussion – PRC 7/23/19 • Introduction o Thanks to Ryan and Daren for efforts o I’ve spent a number of hours researching, discussing, and assessing ideas to increase FHP access o Very complex, multi-faceted issue – conundrum o Clearly many residents support increased access o Other residents have reservations about increasing access o Share thoughts on various aspects and nuances of the process & potential pilot plan – gone back & forth • Goals (Quick Re-Summary) o Clarify what problem we’re trying to solve o Identify a straightforward, palatable, ideally non-controversial pilot plan o Minimize financial impact, including staff time o Minimize environmental impact o Maintain a quality visitor experience o Potentially develop a compelling plan to recommend to City Council for consideration • Problem analysis (important) o Decide and articulate what problem are we trying to solve? o >> This would ultimately drive a policy change recommendation  Social justice issue?  Increased access to natural environments for underserved communities?  Equitable access to PA resources for PA school children?  Common sense “good neighbor” to surrounding communities? o Can multiple problems be addressed without confusing the focus and diluting the solution? • Pilot Program (Considerations) o Identify a plan to address the prioritized problem o >> This would ultimately become an implementation recommendation of a proposed policy change o Keep things as simple as possible  Easy for the public to understand  Easy to implement and manage, including entrance-gate staff  Easy to monitor and assess impacts o Risk and impact assessment  Strive for zero net-cost impact (likely required for near-term acceptance)  Consider requirements to Maintain and Protect natural environment and park improvements • Pilot Program Options – Pros & Cons (here’s where it gets complicated for me) o Formally permit non-residents on non-holiday weekdays  Pro: formalizes the de-facto current practice  Pro: removes typically unenforced misdemeanor  Con: potentially compromises future compensation from neighboring cities  Con: removes a potentially useful code enforcement mechanism  Recognize this would likely result in gradually increased weekday visitors, as word gets around… o Allow access to PAUSD & Ravenswood students  Pro: provide access to students & families from local underserved communities & PA school dist.  Pro: consistent with normal CSD policy, treating PAUSD students the same as PA residents • E.g. for recreation program enrollment • If we remain consistent with CSD policy, no entrance fee would be charged  Con: operational complexities – student verification is complicated (not all schools issue IDs) • This becomes a problematic at the entrance station – quick throughput is desired • Passes at libraries is another possibility, but also complicated and not simple  Con: excludes private schools in EPA & PA: Eastside College Prep, Chan Primary School • Also, multiple Palo Alto private schools o Online reservation system  Pro: easiest from operational standpoint • Adjustable reservation system, simple at entrance station, with no cash involved  Pro: easy for strong trial program data collection  Con: permitting access to all communities is not well-aligned with the goal of increasing access to underserved communities • Likely to be more highly utilized by affluent neighboring communities • Online reservation set an access bar which may be an issue for some  Con: potentially complicates offering free admission to PAUSD & Ravenswood (not simple) • Potential Impact o Incremental costs for CSD and Foothills Park staff time will be incurred  Overall impact depends on a pilot program scope  New associated staff work may include: • Studying, developing, monitoring, and reporting on program & impacts • Developing and training for new entrance station procedures • Increased patrol, visibility, parking management, & maintenance  Impact summary: • Either additional staff resources will be required • Or staff focus on other projects will be reduced o Potential capital expenses include:  New entrance and/or exit gate monitoring equipment  Improved marking / securing parking spots and limiting off-road access  Secure fencing and gate for the maintenance shop  Interpretive Center hardening o Natural resources impact  Habitat – Potentially significant  Wildlife – sightings may decrease  Trails – increased issues with bikes on trails, otherwise minimal o Overall Experience – I’m not sure we want 1,000 visitors in the park very often (we need to be careful…)  Parking management for large crowds is difficult • Parking is spread out throughout the park, and not necessarily where people want to be  We want to avoid turning away cars, resulting in parking on Page Mill Road  Increased operational, maintenance, and environmental stress SUMMARY • Big Picture Financial Considerations o We’re all aware that neighboring communities did not contribute to the purchase of Foothills Park  That’s contributed to how we got to where we are today o If or when Palo Alto increases access to FHP, it’s an opportunity for our neighbors to contribute to FHP  Lots of different ways this could play out – e.g. unfunded $10M Buckeye Creek restoration plan  This certainly will not be lost on City Council  We need to make sure we do not compromise our position • Timing is an issue o City Council is busy, but one could observe they’re always busy, so this is not a primary concern o For me, providing access to PAUSD families is a core goal  I was surprised to learn they do not currently have access to FHP  Stanford families are likely to be the largest group to take advantage of allowing PAUSD access  I am concerned about our timing with the Stanford GUP currently under negotiation  The City is on record, disagreeing with the GUPs impact assessment on: • Open Space Preserves, including Foothills Park • Parks and recreational facilities  Offering increased access to Stanford during the GUP negotiation is highly problematic • Master Plan Guiding Principles o No question that we support high quality, accessible facilities & services, preserve and integrate nature… o MP does not include any specific delineation to is target scope – i.e. PA residents or all local communities o We have a new 20-yr Master Plan  I know that increasing access to FHP was considered by PRC for inclusion  Noteworthy: increased FHP access was not included as MP goal, policy, or program o Part of this discussion comes down to priorities  Realistically, pursuing a plan to increase access to FHP will consume significant political capital  We must decide as a commission that this is a top priority to pursue, outside our MP • I appreciate the public’s interest in increasing access and also appreciate concerns about the impacts of doing so o Interested in identifying how 2 incrementally increase access w/out creating more problems than we solve o We have lots of ideas, but I am struggling in finding a properly balanced solution to pursue o Whether it’s a hybrid or alternative pilot plan, or another approach altogether… o I look forward to hearing from my PRC colleagues