HomeMy WebLinkAboutStaff Report 403-10TO: HONORABLE CITY COUNCIL
FROM: CITY MANAGER
DATE: NOVEMBER 8, 2010
REPORT: REPORT OF OFFICIALS
DEPARTMENT: PLANNING AND
COMMUNITY ENVIRONMENT
CMR: 403:10
SUBJECT: Adoption of two Ordinances: (1) Amending Title 16 of the PAMC to Add a
New Chapter 16.14 (CA Green Building Standards Code) and (2) Amending
Certain Sections Of Title 5 (Health And Sanitation), Title 12 (Public Works
And Utilities), Title 16 (Building Regulations), And Title 18 (Zoning), And
Repealing Chapter 9.06, To Promote Consistency With State Green Building
Standards And Add Criteria For Sustainable Neighborhood Development.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The California Green Building Code, known as CALGreen, will go into effect statewide on
January 1, 2011. In order to harmonize the City's existing green building regulations with the
new State law, staff is proposing two ordinances that will relocate a majority of the green
building regulations from Palo Alto Municipal Code (PAMC) Title 18, Zoning Regulations, to
Title 16, where all other Building Regulations are located. The first ordinance adopts CalGreen
and local amendments, which are intended to make the CalGreen code requirements equivalent
to the requirements in the City's existing green building regulations. The existing green building
regulations (PAMC Chapter 18.44) are proposed to be amended to refer to the new green
building requirements in Chapter 16.14 and provide detail on necessary documentation for
planning review, as well as to establish a pilot program for review of certain developments in
reference to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Neighborhood Development
(LEED-ND). The second ordinance proposes amendments to existing PAMC provisions to
promote consistency and eliminate redundancies between CalGreen and the PAMC. These
amendments include adding a reference to the new Chapter 16.14, in Chapters 5.24, 12.32, 16.11
and 16.12, and to repealing Chapter 9.06, since the regulations therein would be covered under
the proposed Chapter 16.14. Sections of Chapter 18.76, setting forth sustainability criteria for
ARB review, and Chapter 18.77, requiring submittal of green building checklists with planning
entitlement applications in accordance with Council sustainability policies, will remain
, unchanged.
RECOMMENDATION
Staff and the Planning and Transportation Commission (P&TC) recommend that the City
Council adopt Attachment A, an Ordinance adopting CALGreen and local amendments and
Attachment B, an Ordinance adopting amendments to existing sections of the P AMC (Chapters
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5.24, 12.32, 16.11 and 16.12) that either complement or conflict with CALGreen, repealing
Chapter 9.06, and replacing the existing green building regulations in Chapter 18.44 with new
criteria for sustainable neighborhood developments.
BACKGROUND
Study sessions to discuss these proposals were held by the Architectural Review Board (ARB) on
July 29~ 2010, the P&TC and Utilities Advisory Commission (UAC) on September 1,2010, and
the City Council on September 27, 2010. Suggestions received during the study sessions were
considered and incorporated as appropriate into two ordinances. The P&TC conducted a public
hearing on October 13, 2010, and recommended the second ordinance (Attachment B), with
sev~ral recommendations for amendments to the staff recommendations as described under the
Board and Commission Review section of this report. Attachment A did not require P&TC
recommendation as it amends the Building Code, not zoning codes.
The September 27, 2010 r~ort to Council provided background information on Palo Alto's
existing Green Building Program established by Chapter 18.44 and on the California Green
Building Code. Information on the City's existing green building program can be found at ..
http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/depts/plnlgreen building/default.asp and the entire CALGreen
code can be downloaded at http://www.bsc.ca.gov/CALGreenldefault.htm.
PROJECT DESCRIPTIONIDISCUSSION
The Planning and Transportation Commission's unanimous recommendations are described in
the Board and Commission Review section of this report. The P &TC recommendation for the
new P AMC Chapter 16.14 (Green Building Regulations) included anlendments that are generally
supported by staff; therefore, the draft ordinance for Green Building Regulations (Attachnlent A)
includes the P &TC amendments. The P &TC recommendation differs from staff s
recommendation only with respect to the criteria thresholds for the proposed LEED ND pilot
program in the new PAMC Chapter 18.44. Staffs recommendation is reframed in this r~ort
section and set forth in the associated draft ordinance (Attachment B).
Adoption of CALGreen and Local Amendments (Attachnlent A)
The implementation of CALGreen requires California cities to reexamine their existing green
building programs, because the building requirements in CALGreen will apply statewide
beginning in January. Palo Alto has been focused on integrating the existing green building
regulations in Chapter 18.44, with the new CALGreen regulations. Using CALGreen provides
the opportunity to promote consistency and predictability for building professionals by
incorporating the City's green building requirements with the rest of the standard building codes.
The proposed PAMC Chapter 16.14 (Attachment A) provides integrated green building
regulations as local amendments to CALGreen. The local amendments will be adopted along
with other building code amendments on the Council's agenda.
The proposed local amendments to CALGreen are designed to ensure equivalency with the
City's current green building regulations in Zoning Chapter 18.44, provide consistency and
reduce redundancy across City sustainability policies, in a cost effective and efficient manner.
Thus, staff, the ARB, UAC and P&TC recommend local amendments for residential projects and
nonresidential projects with the following components:
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Residential Proj ects
For residential projects, the proposed ordinance includes continued use of Build It Green (BIG)
as opposed to CALGreen. The local amendments to CALGreen acknowledge equivalency and
use of BIG. The reasons to continue with BIG are as follows:
• BIG is able to easily adapt to regulatory changes since it is a California based program that
focuses solely on homes. BIG has updated its Green Point Rated rating system effective
January 1, 2011 to include all mandatory measures in CALGreen. This makes it simple for
local jurisdictions to continue to use BIG.
• The City of Palo Alto building COtnnlUnity over the last two years has become accustomed to
using BIG, and there is a well established GreenPoint Rater community which aids in the
success of completing green home projects throughout the City.
• GreenPoint Raters provide effective, on-site, and personal assistance throughout the project
at a reasonable cost.
• Using GreenPoint Raters reduces the need for additional staff in the building department to
cover green building review for the large volume of residential projects the City oversees
with green requirements (60% residential and 40% nonresidential).
• BIG has a system that encourages and recognizes projects to go beyond the minimum
required performance.
In addition to the local amendments related to BIG standards, the following are substantive
changes to the residential requirements:
• The definition of a "Rebuild" has been incorporated into the definition of new construction.
The proposed definition of new construction includes "remodeled buildings or structures
when the remodel includes exposure of insulation, or removal of exterior sheathing of 50%
or more of the exterior walls for a nonresidential project, or 25% or more of the exterior
walls for a residential project." The minimum point level required is discussed further below.
• "Rebuilds" under the City's existing requirements, are required to meet BIG at the 50 point
level. A project nlay claim points by implementing a variety of "green" measures. Staff
recommends these projects now be held accountable to the same level of green building as
new construction (70+ points) due to the extensive nature of the renovation.
• Newly constructed homes will now be required to achieve 15 of their minimum points
required from the landscape category, if landscape is in the project's scope. This requirement
was influenced by the regional and county recommended Water Efficient Landscape
Ordinance, and as an alternative to adopting a separate Water Efficient Landscape Ordinance
for the City.
Non-Residential Proj ects
For nonresidential projects, both private .and public, the new Chapter 16.14 would use
CALGreen and its enhanced measures that the City will adopt as mandatory, as opposed to the
LEED system, for the reasons described below:
• Using CALGreen with amendments will be less complicated for applicants to understand
than asking them to comply with both LEED and CALGreen, or trying to amend LEED to
reach our sustainability goals. CALGreen contains mandatory green building provisions that
are required across the State, regardless of any local green building policy. Unlike BIG,
LEED has not established standards that meet all requirements of CALGreen.
• Palo Alto has a manageable volume of nonresidential proj ects to allow staff to provide a high
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quality of enforcement locally.
• Palo Alto has staff dedicated to enforcing green building requirements for nonresidential
proj ects, and that has gained experience doing so for the last two years.
• CALGreen is an opportunity to bring together many City ordinances and objectives in one
simplified code.
• CALGreen can be easily amended to reflect local requirements.
• Applicants have expressed concerns over the amount of review time and the expense of using
LEED when a local option is available.
• CALGreen compliance would not preclude applicants from seeking recognition directly with
LEED if they desired, and compliance with some of CALGreen's mandatory measures may
overlap with some LEED credits claimed.
• The future of green building regulation is to embody appropriate requirements in building
codes. The sooner cities embrace green building locally, as typical methods of building, the
less reliance will be necessary on outside rating systems.
Comparing CALGreen and LEED
It is difficult to make a comparison between LEED and CALGreen since there· are mandatory
measures in CALGreen that are not in LEED, or that may be chosen voluntarily in LEED. For
example, reduction of light pollution and installing bicycle racks are optional measures in LEED
allowing a project to earn points, whereas they are mandatory measures in CALGreen. In
addition, measures may be defined or applied differently between the two standards.
Both standards share a similar structure. They have mandatory measures that every project must
meet, called pre-requisites in LEED. They both also have voluntary measures: "credits" in LEED
where points may be earned to achieve a recognition level of certified, silver, gold or platinum;
"electives" in CALGreen where a recognition level of Tier 1 or Tier 2 may be achieved.
The Green Building Codes Educational Collaborative, including the AlA California Council,
AIA-SF, StopWaste, City of San Francisco, Simon and Associates, and Build it Green, have
provided a summary comparison of CALGreen, LEED and GreenPoint Rated which can be
viewed or downloaded at:
http://www.usgbc-ncc.orglindex.php?option==com content&task==view&id==401&Itemid=90
Locally, staff performed an exercise to determine rough equivalency between CALGreen
including the City's proposed local anlendments and LEED (Attachment C). The scorecard
concludes that if a project meets CALGreen Tier 2 and chooses measures that were most cost
effective to the owner, it could achieve the LEED Silver level for new construction. Thus
adopting CALGreen Tier 2 achieves equivalency with the City's current regulations. Meeting
the mandatory requirements of CALGreen alone would not meet the City's current level of green
building regulations. Staff has included requirements to comply with Tier 2 criteria in the
amendments in Attachment A.
CALGreen Local Amendments Related to Other Sustainability Ordinances
There are a few existing sustainability regulations that staff proposes as more stringent local
amendments in CALGreen than currently exist in the PAMC or state regulation. They are as
follows:
• The construction and demolition debris diversion requirement of 75% is proposed to increase
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to 80% to be consistent with the levels offered in CALGreen. CALGreen's levels are set at
50%, 65% and 80%.
• Equivalent landscape requirements have been included as amendments in CALGreen to
incorporate elements of the State mandated (2006, AB1881) Model Water Efficient
Landscape Ordinance and current City Water Efficient Landscape Ordinance. The Bay Area
Water Supply & Conservation Agency (BAWSCA) and Santa Clara County Cities
Association have provided recommended regulations that increase requirements for
nonresidential projects and extend outdoor water reduction requirements to residential
projects, which staff is recommending as follows:
o A site's water use is limited to no more than 60% or 55% of reference evapo-transpiration
(ETo) for the total landscape area, as opposed to 70% under the current regulations. This
places limitations on using high water plants such as grass.
o Residential projects would be required to use the BIG rating system to achieve the
desired level of outdoor water savings, as opposed to adopting separate water efficiency
requirements for residential projects. This includes requiring projects to achieve a certain
number of points, or water efficiency measures, in the landscaping section of the rating
system to achieve an equivalent level of water efficiency.
• The City has limited sustainability requirements for the operation of existing buildings and
sites. Staff proposes to amend the code to provide the City with the authority to require
performance reviews, not more frequently than once every five years, on the energy use of
existing buildings greater than 10,000 square feet constructed after January 2009, and the
water use of sites greater than one acre to ensure they comply with their energy and/or water
budgets. An energy budget is calculated, or modeled, under the State Energy Code, and a
water budget is calculated under the State Model Water Efficient Landscape Ordinance.
Performance reviews will be conducted in accordance with an administrative schedule to
ensure that buildings and sites operate as their designs intended and the energy and water
savings continue over the life of the project. Water performance reviews are already required
by the California Department of Water Resources; however, the energy review requirement
will be unique to Palo Alto. The P&TC recommendation included allowing for energy audits
before the end of five years for any buildings that failed the previous audit. This
recommendation has been incorporated into the attached ordinance.
Clean Up of Other PAMC Provisions
Additional amendments were made to incorporate the City's Water Efficient Landscape,
Stormwater, Construction and Demolition Debris, Recycled Water, and Energy Efficiency
Ordinances into one code, the new PAMC Chapter 16.14. Attachment B reflects proposed code
amendments to refer to the new Chapter 16.14, eliminate redundancy and allow for greater
coordination between all building and landscape requirements, and greater ease ofunderstanding
for both customers (residential and business) and their contractors. Other amendments provide
appropriate minor revisions and references to existing regulations.
Sustainable Neighborhood Developments (Chapter 18.44)
Staff and the P&TC recommend replacing Zoning Chapter 18.44, the current Green Building
Regulations, with a pilot program promoting sustainable neighborhood developments by
requiring the submittal of LEED for Neighborhood Development (LEED-ND) checklists with
applicable project applications. Categories, locations, parcel sizes, compliance levels and other
criteria for review as recommended by staff are provided in Table 1 below. The P&TC's
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proposed criteria are provided in the Board and Commission Review and the Alternatives section
of this report. The City's current green building regulations were focused on characteristics
within a project's site boundary. LEED-ND checklists will assist reviewers in analyzing how
individual projects can together fonn a sustainable community, particularly focused on how a
project can contribute to a well connected, mixed use and walk-able neighborhood. LEED-ND
concepts will also be used to evaluate area plans as part of the Comprehensive Plan update.
Both the P&TC and Council provided extensive comments regarding LEED-ND requirenlents
during study sessions on September 1,2010 and September 27,2010. Commissioners expressed
interest in a lower trigger point for parcel size, and asked staff to explore a location or zoning
trigger point as well. Council members expressed concerns about the applicability of size and
location trigger points for historic projects, existing buildings, and phased projects, and for
projects located near and distant from public transportation. Staff presented a revised proposal to
the P&TC as shown in Table 1 below to address these concerns. As described in the following
report section, the P&TC recommended lowering the parcel size in Table 1 to "14 acre or three or
more dwelling units" for all threshold types, and increasing the Compliance Level for Evaluation
to 30 points. During the P&TC hearing, staff proposed the addition of "not categorically exempt
from CEQA" in all columns as the discussion indicated a preference for lowering the parcel size
in all type categories; staff supports the insertion of "not CEQA exempt" in the table as reflected
in this section. Requiring CEQA exempt projects on any size parcel to submit LEED ND
checklists is unnecessary, however. CEQA exempt projects include a plethora of minor projects
such as new signs, fa~ade remodels, landscape changes and minor commercial construction up to
10,000 square feet, and construction of up to three homes, if no other significant impacts are
determined. The construction of four new homes is not exempt from CEQA.
Staff does not concur with the P&TC with respect to the use of the 14 acre parcel size, three
dwelling units and 30-point compliance level for the pilot program in the coming year, and the
table in the draft ordinance reflects this. As previously noted, staff recommends use of the parcel
sizes and 25-point requirement as referenced in Table 1. After the first year, the P&TC and
Council may adjust these levels based on lessons learned from the compiled data. It will be
significantly more difficult for development located considerable distances from fixed rail or El
Camino Real to comply with the 25-point level unless the parcel size of such developments is
large enough to make other sustainability measures more reasonable.
Palo Alto will be one of the first cities nationally with a LEED-ND requirement. Therefore, in
order to provide ample time to provide education and outreach to applicants, and better
understand the feasibility of the new requirements, staff proposes requiring LEED-ND checklist
submittals from January 1,2011 to December 31, 2011 as a pilot program. During the pilot year
applicants for certain projects would be required to submit LEED-ND docunlentation for
informational purposes only, for staff's consideration during discretionary reviews. At the end of
the pilot year, staff proposes to return to the P&TC and City Council with an evaluation as to
whether or not the thresholds of compliance were appropriate, to allow for any necessary
adjustments prior to considering adoption of mandatory LEED-ND compliance. The
recommended implementation of a pilot program is a similar process as was used leading up to
adoption of the City's original green building ordinance.
Projects meeting the thresholds listed in Table 1 would be subject to the pilot program. Adopting
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LEED-ND criteria would allow the City greater authority to review and comment on a project's
parking location and configuration, walk-ability and community connections.
Table 1 -LEED-ND Pilot Program Requirement Thresholds
Threshold Fixed Rail (University, Traffic Corridor Neighborhood All Other Sites
California Ave., and San EI Camino Real Center
Antonio)
Type All new construction not All new All new All projects including an
categorically exempt from construction not construction not application for one of
CEQA. categorically categorically the following:
exempt from exempt from • rezoning
CEQA. CEQA. • planned community
• site and design
review for a mixed
use project
• conditional use
permit for change of
use from commercial
to residential
Location within Yz mile within Y4 mile n/a nJa
Parcel Size Y4 acre minimum Yz acre minimum Yz acre minimum 2 acres minimum
Compliance All pre-requisites, and achieve 25 points in the Smart Location and Linkage (SLL) and
Level for Neighborhood Pattern and Design (NPD) sections ofLEED-ND. Projects retaining and
Evaluation rehabilitating an existing historic building(s) shall receive a 5 point credit towards the minimum
25 points required.
Special Considerations:
If a project includes more than one parcel that are adjacent to one another, and have the same owner or developer,
they will be considered together under LEED-ND review.
The requirements apply to cumulative or phased projects under review within a five year period.
Single family residences in R-l and R-2 districts that fall below the thresholds above, and are not included in a
planned community zone project, are exempt.
Regional Reconunendations
The Bay Area Climate Collaborative (BACC) released recommendations for localities regarding
CAL Green at:
http://builditgreen.org/ files/GovRellBACC/BACC Cal Green Recommendations.PDF
In summary their recommendations are the following:
• Prioritize education and enforcement of CALGreen mandatory provisions.
• Where a local leadership standard is desired, continue to apply GreenPoint Rated and the
LEED rating systems.
• Should a local government adopt a CALGreen Tier, also accept third-party certified LEED or
GreenPoint Rated in lieu of the Tier requirements.
Staff believes concerns over adoption of CALGreen's Tiers are rooted in both their newness, and
local jurisdictions ability to enforce them. With Palo Alto's experience enforcing green building
regulations, and manageable volume of nonresidential c'onstruction, staff recommended using
CALGreen for nonresidential projects, and BIG for residential projects. This approach is being
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considered by many other neighboring jurisdictions of similar size as well.
COUNCIL, BOARD AND COMMISSION REVIEW
'Council Study Session
The September 27,2010 City Council study session report included comments from the various
study sessions and the July 30,2010 public stakeholders' meeting. The minutes from the Council
session are not yet available, however, the Council's comments focused on the following three
main areas:
• LEED-ND Trigger Points -Many Council Members asked how the size and location
requirements might apply to historic projects, existing buildings, and phased projects. In
addition, some nlelubers asked how the size and location requirements could be tiered for
projects near and distant from public transportation. Staff's new proposal attempts to
address these concerns in the special considerations section of Table 1 and by lowering the
level of requirements for historic projects.
• Performance Reviews There were several Council Members who supported the idea of
energy and water performance reviews, and would like to see them extended from just an
audit, to a regular reporting requirement every few years, or required as disclosure at point
of-sale of a property. Other Council Members felt the proposed auditing approach was
overly burdensome and unnecessary, particularly for residences that may fall under the
10,000 s.f. or one acre trigger points. In response, a point-of-sale requirement was not
considered in this effort, as it is generally out of the scope of the Planning and Community
Environment Pepartment's purviews. The Department does not receive data as to when a
property is sold. In consultation with the Utilities Department, both feel that it would be
difficult to implement either a point of sale or regular reporting requirement without
significant resources to monitor property sales and existing buildings, retain and analyze
the data, and enforce non-compliance. In addition, the State of California has an energy
performance reporting requirement going into effect for nonresidential buildings over
10,000 s.f. that are sold after January 1,2011. The proposed ordinance requires audits
every 5 years for all buildings over 10,000 s.f.
• CALGreen / LEED - A question was posed as to whether the City should have more
stringent requirements than LEED Silver, or the locally amended CALGreen Tier 2 for
nonresidential buildings, and whether CALGreen would offer the City and developers the
same level of attainment and recognition. In this report staff provided additional
information on how the proposed requirements achieve a similar level of attainment as
LEED. Staff did not review requiring a higher level of green building at this time since
using CALGreen in general would be new to the building community. Staff believes most
other communities in the State will only require basic compliance with CALGreen, rather
than the Tier Two requirements and local amendments proposed here. The code would
also allow for the City or a developer to obtain LEED certification as well as CalGreen
compliance.
Planning and Transportation Commission
On October 13,2010, the P&TC unanimously recommended the adoption of revisions to PAMC
Chapter 18.44 to revise and move the City's green building regulations to PAMC Title 16 and
add criteria for SustB:inable neighborhood developments. The P&TC also noted their support of
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the other PAMC amendments in their motions. Meeting minutes from the October 13,2010
P&TC hearing are provided as Attachment E to this report. The P&TC voted unanimously to
include amendments to Table 1, to set: (1) the Parcel Size for all columns at Y4 acre OR three or
more housing units, (2) a requirement for LEED ND checklist submittal for all planning permits
submitted on January 1, 2011 and thereafter (meeting the ''type'' and "parcel size" thresholds),
(3) the Compliance Level for Evaluation at 30 points in the Smart Location and Linkage and
Neighborhood Pattern and Design sections ofLEED ND, and (4) the addition of "non-CEQA
exempt" in the "type" sections (as recommended by staff), and (5) the carrying across of the
bulleted items in column four to the other three columns in the "type" sections. The P&TC's
amendment #2 was already stated in proposed section 18.44.010 so staff did not need to change
the draft ordinance. With the incorporation of amendment #4 into Table 1 of the draft ordinance,
P&TC's anlendment #5 is redundant since the bulleted items are all non-CEQA exempt and
therefore are covered under that statement.
The P &TC also recommended in favor of the "clean up" items contained in the ordinance,
offered a modification of the "addition" definition with respect to non-habitable area, and a
suggestion to allow the City to conduct energy audits before the five year mark if a building has
failed the previous energy audit. In addition, the P&TC requested to have a study session on
Electric Vehicle (EY) charging stations, perhaps in a joint meeting with the Utilities
Commission, to study adding a requirement for the provision of EV stations in new developnlent
into the City'S Zoning Code.
Other Boards and Commissions
The Utility Advisory Commission focused discussion on the water and energy efficiency
requirements, and recommended approval of the proposal on September 1,2010, as reported to
the City Council during the September 27,2010 study session. Staff presented to the ARB and
HRB during study sessions during the summer and feedback was incorporated as appropriate.
RESOURCE IMPACT
The training of Building Division staff to ensure CALGreen compliance will entail some cost to
the division budget; however, as CALGreen implementation is mandatory beginning January 1,
2011, such cost is not optional. If the P &TC recommended thresholds are incorporated, staff is
of the opinion that work product may be marginalized and workloads would be increased beyond
the existing staffing that was recently reduced due to budget cuts.
POLICY IMPLICATIONS
As noted, adoption of CALGreen is not optional, it is required by State law. The City may adopt
local amendments to CALGreen that will ensure that the high levels of greenbui1dh~g in Palo
Alto (LEED Silver equivalency and BIG levels previously approved by Council) will continue.
The pilot program approach to Sustainable Neighborhood Development, requiring submittal of
LEED ND checklists, gathering data to allow for ARB, P&TC and Council evaluation of the
initial thresholds and compliance levels prior to establishing a program for mandatory
compliance is consistent with the approach taken with the City's existing green building policies
and regulations.
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NEXT STEPS
A second reading will be scheduled following Council adoption of the attached draft ordinances
as presented or as may be modified by Council. When the CALGreen Ordinance is adopted it
will be sent to the California Building Standards Commission for filing. Both ordinances would
become effective January 1,2011.
PREPARED BY:
DEPARTMENT HEAD REVIEW:
CITY MANAGER APPROVAL:
ATTACHMENTS
~~eJ::J
Sustainability Planner
CURTIS WILLIAMS, Director
Planning and Community Environment
Attachment A: Ordinance Adopting New PAMC 16.14 (CALGreen and Local Amendments)
AttachmentB: Ordinance Repealing PAMC 9.06 and revising Chapters 5.24, 12.32, 16.11 and
18.44
Attachment C: CALGreen Application to the LEED-NC Checklist
Attachment D: LEED ND Checklist
Attachment E: October 13, 2010 Planning and Transportation Commission Draft Minutes
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ATTACHMENT A
***NOT YET APPROVED***
Ordinance No. ---
Ordinance of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Adopting a
New Chapter 16.14 of the Palo Alto Municipal Code,
California Green Building Standards Code, 2010 Edition, and
Local Amendments and Related Findings
WHEREAS, the City of Palo Alto's (City) Comprehensive Plan sets forth goals for
preserving and improving the City's natural and built environment, protecting the health of its
residents and visitors, conserving water and energy, and fostering its economy; and
WHEREAS, the City Council of the City of Palo Alto has identified Environmental
Protection as one of its top five goals, and green building is a key component of Environmental
Protection; and
WHEREAS, green building design, construction, restoration,. operation, and
maintenance can have a significant positive effect on energy, water, and resource conservation,
waste management and pollution reduction, and the health and productivity of a property's
residents, workers, and visitors over the life of a building and/or site; and
WHEREAS, green building regulations comprise an important component of a
whole systems approach to the City's sustainability program related to building and land
development, other components of which include but are not limited to requirements for:
disposal of construction and demolition debris, storm water quality and flood protection, tree
protection, water conservation, recyclable materials storage, parking lot landscaping, and
transportation demand management; and
WHEREAS, the City has already adopted several ordinances to promote green
building, sustainability, and environmental protection, including a green buildfng ordinance
(adopted 2008), a construction and demolition debris recycling ordinance (adopted 2004,
amended 2009), a recycled water ordinance (adopted 2008), a storm water pollution prevention
ordinance (adopted 2003,. amended 2005 & 2006) and water use regulations (adopted 1989,
amended 1990, 1991, 1993); and
WHEREAS, the State of California has adopted new mandatory green building
regulations, known as the California Green Building Standards Code "CAL Green" that will take
effect on January 1, 2011 for all new construction in the state and covers many of the same
matters contained in the City's green building and sustainability ordinances; and
WHEREAS, adoption of the California Green Building Standards Code promotes
statewide consistency and predictability for building professionals; and
WHEREAS, to maintain the City's existing level of green building requirements and
to harmonize the City's various sustainability standards and regulations with the provisions of
CALGreen, the City intends to adopt local amendments to CALGreen, make certain enhanced
measures of CAL Green mandatory, and repeal and amend existing provisions of the City's green
101026 sh 8261465
***NOT YET APPROVED***
building and sustainability ordinances, with the goal of providing a comprehensive, yet
straightforward approach to green building in the City.
Now, therefore the Council of the City of Palo Alto does ORDAIN as follows:
SECTION 1. Title 16 of the Palo Alto Municipal Code is amended to adopt a
new Chapter 16.14 to read as follows:
16.14.010 2010 California Green Building Standards Code adopted.
The California Green Building Standards Code, 2010 Edition, Title 24, Part 11 of the California
Code of Regulations, together with those omissions, amendments, exceptions and additions
thereto, is adopted and hereby incorporated in this Chapter by reference and made a part hereof the
same as if fully set forth herein. One copy of the California Green Building Standards Code, 2010
Edition, has been filed for use and examination of the public in the Office of the Building Official
of the City of Palo Alto.
Whenever the phrases "California Green Building Standards Code," "California Green Building
Code," or "CALGreen" appear in this code or in any ordinance of the City, such phrases shall
be deemed and construed to refer and· apply to the "2010 California Green Building Standards
Code" as adopted in the California Code of Regulations, Title 24, Part 11 and this chapter.
16.14.020 2010 California Green Building Standards Code Appendix Chapters
adopted.
The following Appendix Chapters of the California Green Building Standards Code, 2010 Edition,
are adopted and hereby incorporated in this Chapter by reference and made a part hereof the same
as if fully set forth herein:
A.
B.
16.14.030
Appendix A4 -Residential Voluntary Measures
Appendix A5 - Nonresidential Voluntary Measures
Cross -References to California Green Building Standards Code.·
The provisions of this Chapter contain cross-references to the provisions of the California Green
Building Standards Code, 2010 Edition, in order to facilitate reference and comparison to those
provisions.
16.14.040 Enforcement --Citation authority.
The employee positions designated in this section may enforce the provisions of this chapter by
the issuance of citations; persons employed in such positions are authorized to exercise the
authority provided in Penal Code section 836.5 and are authorized to issue citations for
violations of this chapter. The designated employee positions are: (1) chief building official; (2)
assistant building official; (3) building inspection supervisor; (4) director of planning and
community environment, and (5) code enforcement officer.
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16.14.050 Local Amendments.
The provisions of this Chapter shall constitute local amendments to the cross-referenced provisions
of the California Green Building Standards Code, 2010 Edition, and shall be deemed to replace the
cross-referenced sections of said Code with the respective provisions set forth in this Chapter.
16.14.060 Section 101.3 amended -Scope.
Section 101.3 of the California Green Building Standards Code is amended to read:
101.3 Scope. The provisions of this code shall apply to the planning, design,
operation, construction, use and occupancy of every building or structure unless
otherwise indicated in this code, throughout the City of Palo Alto.
16.14.070 Section 101.3.1 amended -State-regulated buildings, structures and applications.
Section 101.3.1 of the California Green Building Standards Code is amended to read:
101.3.1 State-regulated buildings, structures and applications. Provisions of
this code shall apply to the following buildings, structures, and applications
regulated by state agencies as referenced in the Matrix Adoption Tables and as
specified in Sections 103 through 106, except where modified by local ordinance
pursuant to Section 101. 7. When adopted by a state agency, the provisions of this
code shall be enforced by the appropriate enforcing agency, but only to the extent
of authority granted to such agency by statute.
'1. State-owned buildings, including buildings constructed by the Trustees of the
California State University, and to the extent permitted by California laws,
buildings designed and constructed by the Regents of the University of
California and regulated by the Building Standards Commission. See Section
103 for additional scoping provisions.
2. Energy efficiency standards regulated by the California Energy Commission
3. Residential buildings, whether low-rise or high-rise, constructed throughout
the City of Palo Alto, including but not limited to, hotels, motels, lodging
houses, apartment houses, dwellings, dormitories, condominiums, shelters for
homeless persons, congregate residences, employee housing, factory-built
housing and other types of dwellings containing sleeping accommodations
with or without common toilets or cooking facilities regulated by the
Department of Housing and Community Development. See Section 104 for
additional scoping provisions.
4. Public and private elementary and secondary schools, and community college
buildings, whether or not regulated by the Division of the State Architect. See
Section 105 for additional scope provisions.
5. Qualified historical buildings and structures and their associated sites
regulated by the State Historical Building Safety Board within the Division of
the State Architect.
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6. General acute care hospitals, acute psychiatric hospitals, skilled nursing
and/or intermediate care facilities, clinics licensed by the Department of
Public Health and correctional treatment centers regulated by the Office of
Statewide Health Planning and Development. See Section 106 for additional
scoping provisions.
7. Graywater systems regulated by the Department of Water Resources and the
Department of Housing and Community Development.
16.14.080 Section 101.4 amended -Appendices.
Section 101.4 of the California Green Building Standards Code is amended to read:
101.4 Appendices. Certain voluntary measures contained in the appendices of
this code are mandatory in the City of Palo Alto pursuant to Palo Alto Municipal
Code section 16.14.020. Refer to Sections 101.10, 304, Chapters 4, 5 and
Appendix A5.
16.14.090 Section 101.10 amended -Mandatory requirements.
Section 101.10 of the California Green Building Standards Code is amended to read:
101.10 Mandatory requirements. This code contains both .mandatory and
voluntary green building measures. Mandatory and voluntary measures are
identified at the beginning of Chapters 4 and 5 and in the appropriate application
checklists contained in this code, when modified and applied to specific projects.
16.14.100 Section 202 amended -Definitions added.
Section 202 of the California Green Building Standards Code is amended to add the following
defmitions:
ADDITION. For application of green building requirements, this term means new
floor area added to an existing building or structure.
BUILD IT GREEN, GREENPOINT RATED. Build It Green means a non-profit
organization that administers the GreenPoint Rated program for the design and
construction of environmentally responsive and healthy homes. The. program
includes a rating system that is third-party verified and includes recognition.
ENERGY STAR PORFOLIO MANAGER. Energy STAR Portfolio Manager
(Portfolio Manager) shall mean the program managed by the u.s. Environmental
Protection Agency that offers an energy management tool allowing applicants to
track and .assess energy and water consumption of a building project. Tracked
projects receive an energy performance rating on a scale of 1-100 relative to
similar buildings nationwide. Applicants are is not required to achieve a set
rating. ,
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HERS II. HERS shall mean the California Home Energy Rating System, a
statewide program for residential dwellings administered by the California Energy
Commission and defined in the 2008 California Building Energy Efficiency
Standards. HERS Phase I provides field verification and diagnostic testing to
show compliance with Title 24, Part 6, of the 2008 California Building Energy
Efficiency Standards. HERS Phase II includes whole-house home energy
efficiency ratings for existing and newly constructed homes. Applicants are not
required to achieve a set rating.
HIGH-RISE RESIDENTIAL BUILDING. A building that is of Occupancy
Group R and is not a low-rise residential building.
MULTI-FAMILY RESIDENTIAL. Any low-or high-rise residential building or
structure with three or more attached units.
INVASIVE PLANTS. Invasive plants are both indigenous and non-indigenous
species with growth habits that are characteristically aggressive. Invasive plants
that are of concern and may be prohibited by this code are defined as such by
WUCOLS (UCCE). http://ucce.ucdavis.eduljilesljilelibrary/1726/15359.pdf
REBUILD. For application of green building requirements, this term means any
remodeled building or structure where the remodel includes exposure of
insulation, or the removal of exterior sheathing on 25% or more of the exterior
walls for a residential project, or 50% or more of the exterior walls lor a
nonresidential project.
RENOVATION. Means any rehabilitation, repair, remodel, change, or
modification to an existing building, where changes to floor area and the footprint
of the building are negligible. The valuation of renovation improvements shall be
determined by the Director of Planning and Community Environment, upon
recommendation of the Building Official. The Building Official may exclude from
such valuation the cost of (a) seismic upgrades, (b) accessibility upgrades, or (c)
photovoltaic panels or other solar energy or similar devices exterior to the
building. Renovation valuation thresholds identified in Chapters 4 and 5 shall be
adjusted to reflect changes in the City's valuation per square foot for new
construction, using valuations in effect as of July 1, 2008, as the base index.
RESIDENTIAL BUILDING. (See "low-rise residential building" and "high-rise
residential building. ")
SQUARE FOOTAGE. For application of green building requirements, square
footage means all new and replacement square footage, including basement areas
(7 feet or greater in height) and garages, except that unconditioned garage space
shall only count as 50%. Areas demolished shall not be deducted from the total
new construction square footage. Square footage may also apply to landscapes, in
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which case it is the total surface area of the site not covered by impervious
surfaces.
16.14.110 Section 303.1.2 added -Cumulative construction.
Section 303.1.2 is added to the California Green Building Standards Code to read:
303.1.2 Cumulative construction. Cumulative construction over any two-year
period, or a project completed in phases, shall be considered as a single project,
subject to the highest level of green building requirements for that project, unless
exempted by the Building Official as impractical for compliance.
16.14.120 Section 304 amended -Voluntary Tiers.
Section 304 of the California Green Building Standards Code is amended to read:
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304.1 Purpose. Voluntary tiers are intended to further encourage building
practices that improve public health, safety and general welfare by promoting the
use of building concepts which minimize the building's impact on the environment
and promote a more sustainable design. Use of the voluntary tiers is required in
the City of Palo Alto for certain non-residential projects (see Chapter 5 for
specific requirements).
304.1.1 Tiers. The provisions of Appendices A4 and A5 outline means of
achieving enhanced construction levels by incorporating additional measures.
Buildings complying with tiers specified for each occupancy contain additional
prerequisite and elective green building measures necessary to meet the threshold
of each tier.
Where there are practical difficulties involved in complying with the threshold
levels of a tier, the enforcing agency may grant modifications for individual
cases.. The enforcing agency shall first find that a special individual reason
makes the strict letter of the tier impractical and that modification is in
conformance with the intent and purpose of the measure. The details of any
action granting modification shall be recorded and entered in the files of the
enforcing agency. Projects with an unusual scope or with unique circumstances
may qualify for an exemption to the requirements either in whole or in part.
Examples of such projects include cemeteries, ecological restoration projects,
community gardens, commercial cultivation of agricultural products, and antenna
installations.
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16.14.130 Chapter 4 Preface added -Green Building Requirements for Project Type and
Scope.
A Preface is added to Chapter 4 of the California Green Building Standards Code to read:
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II
II
II
II
II
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Preface -Green Building Requirements for Project Type and Scope
The City of Palo Alto has expanded the types and scopes of projects covered by
this code and established mandatory compliance requirements to address all
aspects of a building's life cycle. For design and construction of residential
projects, the City requires use of the Build It Green, GreenPoint Rated program
to comply with the mandatory measures of Chapter 4 and Appendix A 4. The
following table prescribes the mandatory green building compliance
requirements for residential projects:
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Project Type Project Scope Green Building Requirements
Design and 1. All new construction Build It Green, GreenPoint Rated (BIG GPR)
Construction and rebuilds. minimum requirements and achieve 70 points.
of Multi-Renovations or • Additional measures that must be claimed Family alterations > 50% of an under BIG GPR: Residential existing unit's square • A. SITE 2. c. Divert 100% of Asphalt and footage, and that also Concrete and 80% (by weight) of Remaining include replacement or Materials. alteration of at least two
of the following: HVAC • C. LANDSCAPE -For new or renovated
system, building landscaped areas greater than 2,500 SF, the
envelope, hot water project must claim 15 points in this category.
system, or lighting
system.
Design and 2. All new construction, • BIG GP R minimum requirements and achieve
Construction rebuilds, and additions > 70 points + 1 point per additional 70 SF over
of Single and 1,250 SF. 2,550 SF (150 points maximum) for new
Two-Family construction and rebuilds, and 50 points for
Residential additions.
• Additional measures that must be claimed
under BIG GPR:
• A. SITE 2. c. Divert 100% of Asphalt and
Concrete and 80% (by weight) of Remaining
Materials.
• C. LANDSCAPE -When the landscaped area
is greater than 2,500 SF, the project must
claim 15 points in this category if landscape
is included in project scope.
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Design and 3. Any project not • Compliance with the following CALGreen non-
Construction covered under project residential mandatory and voluntary measures is
olAl1 scopes 1 and 2 above > required based on project scope:
Residential $25,000 valuation AND • 5.106.2 Local storm water pollution physical site changes prevention. that require major or
minor Architectural • 5.303.5.1 Recycled water infrastructure.
Review. • 5.304 OUTDOOR WATER USE when a
landscape area greater than 1,000 SF is
included in the project scope, and A5.304.4
Potable Water Reduction when a landscaped
area greater than 1,500 SF is included in the
project scope.
• A5.408.3.1Enhanced construction waste
reduction. 80% required for all projects
regardless of scope.
• If the project is over $100,000 in valuation:
• Complete an existing home green
remodeling checklist.
Ii Complete a HERS II Rating.
Operations 4. Buildings over 10,000 • The City reserves the right to conduct a
SF performance review, no more frequently than
*effective only for those
once every five years unless a project fails
review, to evaluate the building's energy use to projects for which a ensure that resources used at the building and/or building permit is issued site do not exceed the maximum allowance set after 01/01/2009. forth in the rehabilitation or new construction
design. Energy use reviews may be initiated by
the Building Division or as a coordinated effort
between the City's Utilities Department and/or
its designated contractors. Following the
findings and recommendations of the review, the
City may require adjustments to the energy
usage or energy-using equipment or systems if
the building is no longer compliant with the
original design. Renovation or rehabilitation
resulting from such audit activity shall be
considered a project, and shall be subject to
applicable documentation submittal
requirements of the City.
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5. Sites greater than one • The City reserves the right to conduct
acre performance reviews, no more frequently than
once every five years unless a project fails
review, to evaluate water use to ensure that
resources used at the building andlor site do
not exceed a maximum allowance set forth in
the rehabilitation or new construction design.
Water use reviews may be initiated by the
Building Division, or as a coordinated effort
between the City's Utilities Department and the
Santa Clara Valley.Water District (SCVWD), or
as part ofSCVWD 's established water
conservation programs. Following the findings
and recommendations of the review, the City
may require adjustments to irrigation usage,
irrigation hardware, and/or landscape
materials to reduce consumption and improve
efficiency. Renovation or rehabilitation
resultingfrom such audit activity shall be
considered a project, and shall be subject to
applicable documentation submittal
requirements of the City.
Demolitions 6. Demolitions • Compliance with the following CALGreen non-
residential voluntary measures is required basea
on project scope:
• A5.l05.1.3 Salvage.
• A5.40B.3.I Enhanced Construction Waste
Reduction. 80%.
16.14.140 Chapter 5 Preface added -Green Building Requirements for Project Type and
Scope.
A Preface is added to Chapter 5 of the California Green Building Standards Code to read:
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Preface -Green Building Requirements for Project Type and Scope
The City of Palo Alto has expanded the types and scopes of projects
covered by this code and established mandatory compliance requirements
to address all aspects of a building'S life cycle. For design and
construction of non-residential projects, the City requires compliance with
the mandatory mea~ures of Chapter 5 and Appendix A5, in addition to use
of the Voluntary Tiers as prescribed in the following table:
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Design and
Construction
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1. All new construction
and rebuilds > 1,000 SF,
and additions > 1,000
SF that include a new
HVAC system.
2. Tenant improvements,
renovations, or
alterations > 5,000 SF
that include replacement
or alteration of at least
two of the following:
HVAC system, building
envelope, hot water
system, or lighting
system.
3. Any project not
covered under project
scopes 1 and 2 above >
$25,000 valuation AND
physical site changes
that require major or
minor Architectural
Review.
:-........••••....•..•.•..•.... :-' ...... :<,.<:.,:>'.:"; .. ;.--.·(;ree"!Ju,ilding.~equitem~iJts;~· .')':. ..... . ""::'/
, _, ',,' .• -. '. _ ", _ .' -0, .• _ ,._..... '.. . .•...• r.~ ...• , ',' ,,:. '0 I
. ........... ,: ..
• CALGreen Mandatory Measures.
• CALGreen Tier 2.
• CALGreen Mandatory Measures as applicable to
project scope.
• CALGreen Tier 1 as applicable to project scope.
• Compliance with the following CAL Green non
residential mandatory and voluntary measures is
required based on project scope:
• 5.106.2 Local storm water pollution
prevention.
• 5.303.5.1 Recycled water infrastructure.
• 5.304 OUTDOOR WATER USE when a
landscape area greater than 1,000 SF is included
in the project scope, and A5.304.4 Potable Water
Reduction when a landscaped area greater than
1,500 SF is included in the 'project scope.
• A5.408.3.1Enhanced construction waste
reduction. 80% required for all projects
regardless of scope.
• If the project is over $100,000 in valuation:
• Energy STAR Portfolio Manager Rating
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Operations 4. Buildings > 10,000 • The City reserves the right to conduct a
SF performance review, no more frequently than
*effective only for those once every five years unless a project fails review,
to evaluate the building's energy use to ensure , projects for which a that resources used at the building andlor site do
building permit is issued not exceed the maximum allowance set forth in after 01/0112009. the rehabilitation or new construction design.
Energy use reviews may be initiated by the
Building Division or as a coordinated effort
between the City's Utilities Department and/or its
designated contractors. Following the findings
and recommendations of the review, the City may
require adjustments to the energy usage or
energy-using equipment or systems if the bUilding
is no longer compliant with the original design.
Renovation or rehabilitation resulting from such
audit activity shall be considered a project, and
shall be subject to applicable documentation
.submittal requirements o/the City .
5. Sites greater than one • The City reserves the right to conduct
acre performance reviews, no more frequently than
once every five years unless a project fails
review, to evaluate water use to ensure that
resources used at the building and/or site do not
exceed a maximum allowance set forth in the
rehabilitation or new construction design.
Water use reviews may be initiated by the
Building Division, or as a coordinated effort
between the City's Utilities Department and the
Santa Clara Valley Water District (SCVWD), or
as part ofSCVWD's established water
conservation programs. Following tht! findings
and recommendations of the review, the City
may require adjustments to irrigation usage,
irrigation hardware, and/or landscape materials
to reduce consumption and improve efficiency.
Renovation or rehabilitation resulting from such
audit activity shall be considered a project, and
shall be subject to applicable documentation
submittal requirements of the City.
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Demolitions
***NOT YET APPROVED***
6. Demolitions • Compliance with the following CALGreen non
residential voluntary measures is required based
on project scope:
• A5.105.1.3 Salvage.
• A5.40B.3.1 Enhanced Construction Waste
Reduction. 80%.
16.14.150 Section 5.106.2 added -Local storm water pollution prevention.
Section 5.106.2 is added to the California Green Building Standards Code to read:
5.106.2 Local storm water pollution prevention. Comply with additional storm
water pollution prevention measures as applicable. (See Chapter 16.11,
Stormwater Pollution Prevention, of the Palo Alto Municipal Code.)
16.14~160 Section 5.302 amended -Definitions added.
Section 5.302 of the California Green Building Standards Code is amended to include the
following definitions:
DEDICATED IRRIGATION METER. A dedicated irrigation meter is a water
meter that exclusively meters water used for outdoor watering and irrigation, and
is completely independent from the meter used for indoor water use.
PROCESS WATER. Process water means untreated wastewater,
uncontaminated by toilet discharge or an unhealthy bodily waste, which is not a
threat from unhealthful processing, manufacturing or operating wastes.
SUBMETER. A meter installed subordinate to a site mete, usually used to
measure water intended for one purpose, such as landscape irrigation. For the
purposes of this section, a Dedicated Meter may be considered a submeter,
however a submeter may not be considered a D~dicated Meter.
16.14.170 Section 5.303.5.1 added -Recycled Water Infrastructure.
Section 5.303.5.1 is added to the California Green Building Standards Code to read:
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5.303.5.1 Recycled Water Infrastructure. Install infrastructure for and/or use
recycled water for irrigation and/or interior plumbing, as applicable. (See
Recycled Water Ordinance No. 5002, Chapter 16.12 of the Palo Alto Municipal
Code.)
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16.14.180 Section 5.304.2 amended -Outdoor water use.
Section 5.304.2 of the California Green Building Standards Code is amended to read:
5.304.2 Outdoor water use. For new water service for landscaped areas greater
than 1,000 square feet, a dedicated meter or submeter shall be installed for
outdoor water use. Bacliflow prevention devices shall be installed on each water
line serving the property as required.
16.14.190 Section 5.304.3 amended -Irrigation design.
Section 5.304.3 of the California Green Building Standards Code is amended to read:
5.304.3 Irrigation design. In new non-residential construction with greater than
1,000 square feet of landscaped area, design the system and install irrigation
hardware (i.e. controllers and sensors) which include the following criteria,and
meet manufacturer's recommendations.
16.14.200 Section 5.304.3.2 added -Irrigation efficiency.
Section 5.304.3.3 added -Water waste.
Sections 5.304.3.2 and 5.304.3.3 are added to the California Green Building Standards Code to
read:
5.304.3.2 Irrigation efficiency. The irrigation system must meet an efficiency
level of 70%, and subsurface and/or low volume irrigation must be used in all
areas that exhibit any of these characteristics: less than 8 foet in width, with a
slope gfeater than 25%, setback area within 24 inches of a non-permeable
surface.
5.304.3.3 Water waste. The irrigation system must be designed and installed to
prevent water waste due to overspray, low head drainage, or other conditions
where water flows onto adjacent property, non-irrigated areas, walks, roadways,
parking lots, or structures.
16.14.210
recycling.
Section 5.408 amended -Construction waste reduction, disposal and
Section 5.408 (Sections 5.408.1 through 5.408.4) of the California Green Building Standards Code
is amended to read:
5.408.1 Construction waste diversion. Establish a construction waste
management plan for the diverted materials, All debris generated by a project
that is not salvaged for reuse must be delivered to an Approved Facility as
defined in Chapter 5.24 of the Palo Alto Municipal Code.
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5.408.2 Construction waste management plan. Where a local jurisdiction does
not have a construction and demolition waste management ordinance, submit a
construction waste management plan for approval by the enforcement agency
that:
1. Identifies the materials to be diverted from disposal by efficient usage,
recycling, reuse on the project, or salvage for future use or sale.
2. Determines if materials will be sorted on-site or mixed.
3. Identifies approved diversion facilities where material collected will be taken.
4. Identifies waste hauling company. Hauling of debris is subject to provisions
of Chapter 5.20 of the Palo Alto Municipal Code.
5. Specifies that the amount of materials diverted shall be calculated by weight.
5.408.2.1 Documentation. Documentation shall be provided to the enforcing
agency which demonstrates compliance with Section 5.408.2 items 1 thru 5. The
waste management plan shall be updated as necessary and shall be accessible
during construction for examination by the enforcing agency, and upon
completion of the project shall be revised to show actual debris tonnage
diverted. Supporting documentation shall be· provided, consisting of original
receipts and weight tags or other records of measurement from the approved
facility, which document the address of the project or project permit number and
documentation of how the material was processed. Photocopies will be accepted
if the permit number and/or project address is recorded on the receipts provided
by an approved facility. In the case of reuse or salvage of material, a
description of reused or salvaged materials and an estimate of the weight or
volume of material reused or salvaged shall be provided.
Exception: Jobsites in areas where there is no mixed construction and
demolition debris (C &D) processor or recycling facilities within a feasible haul
distance shall meet the requirements as follows:
1. The enforcement agency having jurisdiction shall at its discretion,
enforce the waste management plan and make exceptions as deemed
necessary.
Exception: Jobsites where immediate or emergency demolition is required to
protect the public health, safety, or welfare, as determined by the chief building
official; or on the ground of impracticability or impossibility, including but not
limited to, where the scope of the covered project is unusual (i. e. large
mechanical equipment installation), and/or the amount of reusable material or
recyclable debris is negligible.
5.408.2.2 Isolated jobsites. The enforcing agency may make exceptions to the
requirements of this section when jobsites are located in areas beyond the haul
boundaries of the diversion facility.
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Notes:
1. Sample forms found in Chapter 8 may be used to assist in
documenting compliance with the waste management plan.
2. A list of approved construction and demolition debris diversion
facilities can be located at www. cityo(paloalto. org/ greenbuilding.
5.408.3 Construction waste reduction of at least 80%. Recycle and/or salvage
for reuse a minimum of 80% of the non-hazardous construction and demolition
debris. Calculate the amount of materials diverted by weight.
Exceptions:
1. Excavated soil, land-clearing debris and inert solids.
2. Alternate waste reduction methods developed by working with local
agencies if diversion or recycle facilities capable of compliance with
this item do not exist.
5.408.4 Excavated soil and land clearing debris. 100% of trees, stumps, rocks
and associated vegetation and soils resulting primarily from land clearing, and
inert solids such as concrete and asphalt, shall be reused or recycled. For a
phased project, such material may be stockpiled on site until the storage site is
developed.
16.14.220 Section A5.105.1.3 amended -Salvage.
Section AS.l 05. 1.3 of the California Green Building Standards Code is amended to read:
A5.105.1.3 Salvage. Salvage structural and non-structural I items in good
condition such as wood, light fixtures, plumbing fixtures, and doors as follows.
Document the weight and number of the items salvaged.
1. Salvage for reuse on the project items that conform to other provisions of Title
24 in an onsite storage area.
2. Nonconforming items may be salvaged in dedicated collection bins for exempt
projects or other uses.
16.14.230 Section A5.203.1.2 amended -Tier 2 Energy efficiency -:-15% above
Title 24, Part 6.
Section AS.203.1.2 of the California Green Building Standards Code is amended to read:
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A5.203.1.2 Tier 2 Energy efficiency -15% above Title 24, Part 6 IDSA-SSJ
Exceed California Energy Code requirements, based on the 2008 Energy
Efficiency Standards, by 15% and meet the requirements of Division AS. 6.
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16.14.240 Section A5.302 amended -Definitions.
The following definitions in Section AS.302 of the California Green Building Standards Code are
amended to read:
MODEL WATER EFFICIENT LANDSCAPE ORDINANCE. The California
ordinance regulating landscape design, installation and maintenance practices
that will ensure commercial, multifamily and other developer installed
landscapes greater than 2,500 square feet meet an irrigation water budget
developed based on landscaped area, and climatological parameters. The City of
Palo Alto has adopted more stringent requirements in this code than the Model
Water Efficient Landscape Ordinance, however the Model Ordinance is
referenced as the method for determining the water budget associated with a
project.
SUBMETER. Refer to Section 5.302.
16.14.250 Section A5.304.4 amended -Potable water reduction.
Section AS.304.4 of the California Green Building Standards Code is amended to read:
AS.304.4 Potable water reduction. Provide water efficient landscape irrigation
design that reduces the use of potable water beyond the initial requirements for
plant installation and establishment in accordance with Section A5. 304. 4. 1 or
A5.304.4.2. Calculations for the reduction shall be based on the water budget
developed pursuant to section 5.304.1. Do not install invasive plant species.
16.14.260 Section A5.40S.3.1 amended -Enhanced construction waste reduction.
Section A5.40S.3.1.1 amended -Verification of compliance.
Sections AS.408.3.1 andAS.408.3.1.1 of the California Green Building Standards Code are amended
to read:
A S. 40B. 3. 1 Enhanced construction waste reduction. Divert to recycle or salvage
non-hazardous construction and demolition debris generated at the site in
compliance with one of the following:
Tier 1. At least an 80% reduction.
Tier 2. At least an 80% reduction.
AS.40B.3.1.1 Verification of compliance. A copy of the completed waste
management report shall be provided, and upon completion of the project shall
be revised to show actual debris tonnage diverted Supporting documentation
shall be provided, consisting of original receipts and weight tags or other
records of measurement from the approved facility, which document the address
of the project or project permit number and documentation of how the material
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was processed Photocopies will be accepted if the permit number and/or
project address is recorded on the receipts provided by an approved facility. In
the case of reuse or salvage of material, a description of reused or salvaged
materials and an estimate of the weight or volume of material reused or salvaged
shall be provided
16.14.270 Section AS.601.2.4 amended -Voluntary measures for CALGreen Tier 1.
Sub-section 3 of Section AS.601.2.4 of the California Green Building Standards Code is amended
to read:
3. From Division A5. 4,
a) Comply with recycled content of 10% of materials based on
estimated total cost in Section A5. 405. 4.
b) Comply with the BO% reduction in construction waste in Section
A5. 40B. 3. 1
c) Comply with one elective measure selected from this division.
16.14.280 Section AS.601.3.3 amended -Tier 2.
Section AS.601.3.3 of the California Green Building Standards Code is amended to read:
A5.601.3.3 Tier 2. Exceed California Energy Code requirements, based on the
200B Energy Efficiency Standards, by 15%. Field verify and document the
measures and calculations used to reach the desired level of efficiency following
the requirements specified in the Title 24 Nonresidential Alternative Calculation
Method Manual. For each additional 5% the California Energy Code is exceeded
beyond the 15% minimum required, the project can decrease one elective
measure r.equired under any section under A5.601.3.4 below (e.g. a project that
exceeds the California Energy Code by 25% can decrease the required elective
measures by two).
16.14.290 Section AS.601.3.4 amended -Voluntary measures for CALGreen Tier 2.
Sub-section 4 of Section AS.601.3.4 of the California Green Building Standards Code is amended
to read:
4. From Division A5.5,
a) Comply with resilient flooring systems for 90% of resilient flooring
in Section A5. 504. 4. 7.1.
b) Comply with thermal insulation meeting 2009 CHPS low-emitting
materials list and no added formaldehyde in Section A5. 504.4. B.1.
c) Comply with four elective measures selected from this division.
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SECTION 2. The Council adopts the findings for local amendments to the
California Green Building Standards Code, 2010 Edition, attached hereto as Exhibit "A" and
incorporated herein by reference.
SECTION 3. The Council finds that this project is exempt from the provisions of
the California Environmental Quality Act ("CEQA"), pursuant to Section 15061 of the CEQ A
Guidelines, because it can be seen with certainty that there is no pOSSIbility that the amendments
herein adopted will have a significant effect on the environment.
SECTION 4.
date of its adoption.
INTRODUCED:
PASSED:
AYES:
NOES:
ABSENT:
ABSTENTIONS:
ATTEST:
City Clerk
APPROVED AS TO FORM:
Senior Deputy City Attorney
101102 sh 8261465
This ordinance shall be effective on the thirty-first day after the
19
Mayor
APPROVED:
City Manager
Director of Planning & Community
Environment
***NOT YET APPROVED***
EXHIBIT "A"
Findings
Adoption of California Green Building Standards Code
and Related Amendments
In adopting the ordinance adding Chapter 16.14 to the Palo Alto Municipal Code, the City
Council finds as follows: .
Section 17958 of the California Health and Safety Code provides that the City nlay make
changes to the provisions of the California Building Standards Code. Sections 17958.5 and
17958.7 of the Health and Safety Code require that for each proposed local change to those
provisions of the California Building Standards Code, including green building standards, which
regulate buildings used for human habitation, the City Council must make findings supporting its
determination that each such local change is reasonably necessary because of local climatic,
geological, or topographical conditions.
A. General Findings Related to Green Building and Sustainability Requirements in
City of Palo Alto
1. Green building enhances the public health and welfare by promoting the environmental and
economic health of the City through the design, construction, maintenance, operation and
deconstruction of buildings and sites by incorporating green practices into all development. The
green provisions in this Chapter are designed to achieve the following goals:
(a) Increase energy efficiency in buildings;
(b) Increase water and resource conservation;
(c) Reduce waste generated by construction and demolition projects;
(d) Provide durable buildings that are efficient and economical to own and operate;
(e) Promote the health and productivity of residents, workers, and visitors to the city;
(f) Recognize and conserve the energy embodied in existing buildings;
(g) Encourage alternative transportation; and
(h) Reduce disturbance of natural ecosystems.
2. The City of Palo Alto's (City) Comprehensive Plan sets forth goals for preserving and
improving the City's natural and built environment, protecting the health of its residents and
visitors, conserving water and energy, and fostering its economy;
3. The Council identified Environmental Protection as one of its top five goals and green
building is a key component of environmental protection;
4. Green building design, construction, restoration, operation, and maintenance can have a
significant positive effect on energy, water, and resource conservation, waste management and
pollution generation, and the health and productivity of a property's residents, workers, and
visitors over the life of a building and/or site;
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5. Green building regulations comprise an important component of a whole systems
approach to the City's sustainability program related to building and land development, other
components of which include but are not limited to requirements for: disposal of construction
and demolition debris, storm. water quality and flood protection, tree protection, water
conservation, recyclable materials storage, parking lot landscaping, and transportation demand
management.
B. Findings for Local Amendments to 2010 California Green Building Standards
Code (PAMC 16.14.020)
1. The City Council adopted a local Green Building Ordinance in 2008. In adopting that
Ordinance, the Council recognized that a green building program supports the following
principles important to the City of Palo Alto and found that:
(a) The City of Palo Alto's (City) Comprehensive Plan sets forth goals for preserving and
improving the City's natural and built environment, protecting the health of its residents and
visitors, conserving water and energy, and fostering its economy;
(b) The Council identified Environmental Protection as one of its top four goals for 2008,
and green building is a key component of environmental protection;
(c) Green building design, construction, restoration, operation, and maintenance can have a
significant positive ,effect on energy, water, and resource conservation, waste management and
pollution generatio!l, and the health and productivity of a property's residents, workers, and
visitors over the life of a building and/or site;
(d) The provisions of California Assembly Bill 32 (Global Warming Solutions Act) require
actions on the part of State and local governments to significantly reduce greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions such that statewide GHG emissions in 2020 are lowered to 1990 levels;
(e) Failure to address and significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions'could result in rises
in sea level, including'in San Francisco Bay, that could put at risk Palo Alto homes and
businesses, public facilities, and Highway 101 (Bay shore Freeway), particularly the mapped
Flood Hazard areas of the City;
(f) Green building regulations comprise an important component of a whole systems
approach to the City's sustainability program related to building and land development, other
components of which include but are not limited to requirements for: disposal of construction
and demolition debris, storm water quality and flood protection, tree protection, water
conservation, recyclable materials storage, parking lot landscaping, and transportation demand
management;
(g) The City's Climate Protection Plan (CPP), adopted by the City Council on December 3,
2007, identifies green building as an important approach to reducing greenhouse gases generated
in the Palo Alto community. The CPP notes that building construction and maintenance accounts
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for approximately 38% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions (U.S. Department of Energy) and
approximately 40% of the energy use in the Palo Alto community. Buildings also account for
much of the 14% of emissions that are generated by waste materials;
(h) Green building and landscape design, construction,. operations and maintenance
techniques are increasingly widespread in residential and commercial building construction, and
green building benefits can be spread throughout the systems and features of a building such that
green buildings can include: the use of certified sustainable wood products and high-recycled
content products; reuse of existing facilities and recycling and salvage; reduced demands on
heating and cooling systems; increased energy efficiency; enhancement of indoor air quality;
reduced per capita demand on water resources and infrastructure; and the installation of
alternative and renewable energy systems;
(i) At the state level, Build It Green has taken the lead in promoting and defining residential
green building by developing the GreenPoint Rated Rating System TM; and .
(j) Because the design, restoration, construction, and maintenance of buildings and
structures within the City can have a significant impact on the City's environment, greenhouse
gas emissions, resource usage, energy efficiency, waste management and the health and
productivity of residents, work~rs and visitors over the life of the building, requiring
commercial and residential projects to incorporate green building measures is necessary and
appropriate to achieve the public health and welfare benefits of green building.
2. The local amendments to the California Green Building Standards Code make that code
consistent with the City's previously adopted Green Building Ordinance and are reasonably
necessary because of the following local climatic, geological, topographical or environmental
.conditions:
(a) The principles articulated and restated in Section 1 of this exhibit remain as relevant to the
City today as they were when the City's original Green Building Ordinance was adopted in
2008;
(b) Green building and landscape design, construction, operations and maintenance techniques
are increasingly widespread in residential and commercial building construction in Palo Alto,
and green building benefits can be spread throughout the systems and features of a building,
such that green buildings can include: the use of certified sustainable wood products and high
recycled content products; reuse· of existing facilities and recycling and salvage; reduced
demands on heating and cooling systems; increased energy efficiency; enhancement of indoor
air quality; reduced per capita demand on water resources and infrastructure; and the installation
of alternative and renewable energy systems·;
(c) The design, restoration, construction, and maintenance of buildings and structures within the
City can have a significant positive impact on the City's environment by reducing greenhouse
gas emissions and resource usage, and promoting energy efficiency and sustainable waste
management. These impacts improve the health and productivity of residents, workers and
visitors over the life of a green building. As such, requiring commercial and residential projects
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to incorporate green building measures is necessary and appropriate to achieve the public health
and welfare benefits of green building;
(d) The City of Palo Alto's (City) Comprehensive Plan sets forth goals for preserving and
improving the City's natural and built environment, protecting the health of its residents and
visitors, conserving water and energy, and fostering its economy;
(e) Energy efficiency is a key component in reducing GHG emissions, and construction of more
energy efficient buildings can help Palo Alto reduce its share of the GHG emissions that
contribute to climate change;
(f) The City of Palo Alto Utilities (CPAU) is the only municipal utility in California that
operates City-owned-utility services including electric, fiber optic, natural gas, water and
wastewater services, and as such, the City Council is uniquely concerned that CPAU be able to
provide reliable power to Palo Alto residents and businesses, especially in periods of peak
energy demand;
(g) Summer ambient temperatures in the City during the nlonths of June, July and August can
reach over 100 degrees, creating peak energy load demands that can cause power outages,
affecting public safety and causing adverse local economic impacts;
(h) The total square footage of conditioned habitable space within residential and nonresidential
buildings in the City is increasing and using more energy and resources than in the past;
(i) The burning of fossil fuels used in the generation of electric power and heating of buildings
contributes to climate change, which could result in rises in sea level, including in San
Francisco Bay, that could put at risk Palo Alto homes and businesses, public facilities, and
{ Highway 101;
G) Reduction of total and peak energy use as a result of incremental energy efficiency measures
will have local and regional benefits in the cost-effective reduction of energy costs for building
owners, additional available system energy capacity, and a reduction in greenhouse gas
emissions;
(k) The provisions of California Assembly Bill 32 (Global Warming Solutions Act) require
actions on the part of State and local governments to significantly reduce greenhouse gas
(GHG) emissions such that statewide GHG emissions in 2020 are lowered to 1990 levels;
Failure to address and significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions could result in rises in sea
level, including in San Francisco Bay, that could put at risk Palo Alto homes and businesses,
public facilities, and Highway 101 (Bayshore Freeway);
(1) The City's local Green Building Ordinance has already resulted in considerable local
environmental· benefits to the City, including but not limited to, benefits to the local
environmental conditions addressed in the CPP. Specifically, for calendar year 2009, staff
calculated that the Green Building Ordinance resulted in the following benefits to the City:
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(i) 74,021 square feet of green construction;
(ii) More than 900 City residents or employees now housed in green facilities;
(iii) Energy efficiency savings beyond the requirements of the California State Energy Code
averaging twenty one percent;
(iv) Annual electricity savings of21,526 kwh;
(v) Annual natural gas savings of 535 therms;
(vi) Annual indoor water use savings of286,389 gallons;
(vii) Annual outdoor water use savings of 50,000 gallons;
(viii) 16,122 tons of waste diverted from landfills; and
(ix) Avoidance of 5,800 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions (from energy, water and
waste).
(ni) At the· state level, Build It Green has taken the lead in promoting and defining residential
green huilding by developing the . GreenPoint Rated Rating System TM, and the City of Palo Alto
finds that meeting the minimum requirements of Build It Green, GreenPoint Rated system to be
equivalent to the mandatory provisions of the California Green Building Standards Code.
c. Findings Related to Enhanced Green Building Measures (PAMC§§ 16.14.080-
.140, 16.14.270-.290):
1. The California Green Building Standards Code appendices include voluntary tiers to
provide cities, counties, building professionals, and the general public with a range of
prerequisite and elective green building measures for builders to choose from when constructing
homes in California.
2. The California Green Building Standards Code appendices benefited from extensive
input from cities, counties, building professionals, state agencies, and recognized green building
. professionals, and the practices contained in these guidelines were selected for their viability in
today' smarket and their ability to promote sustainable buildings and communities.
3. Adoption of the California Green Building Standards Code appendices promotes
statewide consistency and predictability for building professionals, while ensuring that the level
of green building standards established by the City of Palo Alto in its 2008 Green Building
Ordinance is not diminished.
D. Findings Related to Construction and Demolition Debris Amendments (P AMC §§
16.14.210-.220):
1. The State of California through its California Integrated Waste Management Act of 1989,
Assembly Bill 939 (AB 939), requires that each local jurisdiction in the state divert 50% of
discarded materials (base year 1990) from landfills.
2. The City Council adopted a Zero Waste Strategic Plan in 2005 that sets a goal of zero waste
by 2021 and provides that 900/0 or more of waste materials should be diverted from landfills
through waste reduction, reuse, and recycling efforts.
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3. There are facilities both within the City and in nearby surrounding areas that can effectively
reuse, recycle or otherwise recover the constituent elements of the waste materials generated by
construction and demolition activity and thereby divert such materials from landfills.
4. Construction and demolition debris recovery programs reduce the amount of materials
generated and hauled to landfills.
E. Findings Related to Water Efficiency Amendments (PAMC § 16.14.160-.200;
16.14.240-.260):
1. The . outdoor water use requirements set forth in the California Green Building Standards
Code (CALGreen) meet or exceed the minimum requirements of the Department of Water
Resources' (DWR) Model Water Efficient Landscape Ordinance, mandated by state law (AB
1881 (2006), and are at least as effective in redudng landscape water use as the DWR Model
Ordinance, for the following reasons:
(a) CALGreen applies to more projects than the DWR Model Ordinance;
(b) CALGreen is linked to projects requiring building permits, which undergo review
through the City's Planning and Community Environment Department, whereas the DWR
Ordinance applies only to projects that require landscape permits. Because the City does not
issue landscape permits, more projects will be captured by the CALGreen requirements and
subjected to the landscape water use standards contained therein;
(c) CALGreen sets forth maximum limits for evapotranspiration, an important element in
water use calculations, which are more effective in reducing landscape water use than what is
required in the DWR Model Ordinance;
(d) Planting specifications under CALGreen reduce the area and amount of high water use
plants allowed for landscape projects, which exceed DWR requirements;
(e) Under CAL Green, landscape submetering is required for both residential and
nonresidential projects with landscape areas smaller than what is recommended in the DWR
Model Ordinance. Landscape submetering has been shown in many cases to reduce overall site
water use.
101102 sh 8261465 25
All ACHMENT B
** NOT YET APPROVED **
Ordinance No. ---Ordin~nce of the City Council of the City of Palo Alto
Amending Certain Sections of Title 5 (Health and Sanitation),
Title 12 (Public Works and Utilities), Title 16 (Building
Regulations), and Title 18 (Zoning), and Repealing Chapter
9.06 t~ Promote Consistency with State Green Building
Standards and Add Criteria for Sustainable
Neighborhood Development
WHEREAS, the City of Palo Alto's (City) Comprehensive Plan sets forth goals for
preserving and improving the City's natural and built environment, protecting the health of its
residents and visitors, conserving water and energy, and fostering its economy; and
WHEREAS, the City. Council of the City of Palo Alto has identified Environmental
Protection as one of its top five goals, and green building is a key component of Environmental
Protection; and
WHEREAS, sustainable neighborhoods can have a significant positive effect on
energy, water, and resource conservation, waste management and pollution generation, and the
health and productivity of a property's residents, workers, and visitors over the life of the site
and surrounding community; and
WHEREAS, the State of California has adopted new mandatory green building
regulations, known as the "CALGREEN Code," that will take effect on January 1, 2011 for all
new construction in the State, which the City is adopting with local amendments; and
WHEREAS, the City has already adopted several ordinances to promote green
building, sustainability, and environmental protection, including a green building ordinance
(adopted 2008), a construction and demolition debris recycling ordinance (adopted 2004,
amended 2009), a recycled water ordinance (adopted 2008), a stormwater pollution prevention
ordinance (adopted 2003, amended 2005 & 2006) and water use regulations (adopted 1989,
amended 1990,1991, 1993), and many of the City'S local requirements overlap with the
requirements of CALGREEN; and
WHEREAS, adoption of CAL GREEN promotes statewide consistency and
predictability for building professionals; and
WHEREAS, as part of providing a comprehensive, easy-to-use approach to green
building in the City with CALGREEN, the City'S local green building and sustainability
ordinances must be amended and/or repealed in order harmonize the City's various existing rules
with the provisions of CALGREEN.
NOW, THEREFORE, the Council of the City of Palo Alto does ORDAIN as
follows:
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SECTION 1. Amendments to Chapter 5.24-Construction and Demolition Debris
Diversion Requirements. Chapter 5.24 (Requirement to Divert Construction and Demolition
Debris from Landfill) of Title 5 (Health and Sanitation) of the Palo Alto Municipal Code is
hereby repealed in its entirety, and a new Chapter 5.24 is added to read as follows:
Chapter 5.24
CONSTRUCTION AND DEMOLTION DEBRIS DIVERSION FACILITIES
Sections:
5.24.010
5.24.020
5.24.030
5.24.040
Purpose
Definitions
Applicability and Standards for Compliance
Debris Collection and Approved Facilities
5.24.010 Purpose.
The accumulation, collection, removal and disposal of waste associated with construction and
demolition activities must be controlled by the City for the protection of the public health, safety
and welfare and the natural environment. Pursuant to the California Integrated Waste
Management Act of 1989 and the California Green Building Code, which requires local
governments to require 50% of construction and debris be diverted from the landfill, and Senate
Bill 1374, which requires annual reporting to the state on progress made in the diversion of C&D
waste materials, including information on progranls and ordinances inlplemented and
quantitative data, where available. Required minimum diversion rates by project type are
covered under the California Green Building Code and the City's local amendments in Chapter
16, Building Regulations. This section covers approved facilities to receive and recycle debris.
5.24.020 Definitions.
For purposes of this chapter, terms defined in Chapter 5.20 shall have the same meanings in this
Chapter 5.24. The following terms shall have the ascribed definition for the purposes of
applying the criteria of this chapter and other chapters as referenced.
(1) "Approved facility" means a re-use, recycling, composting, or materials recovery facility
meeting the required diversion percentages set forth in this chapter, for which the compliance
official has determined can accept diverted materials, has obtained all applicable federal, state
and local permits, and is in full compliance with all applicable regulations for re-use, recycling,
composting, and/or materials recovery.
(2) "Applicant" means (a) any individual, firm, limited liability company, association,
partnership, political subdivision, government agency, municipality, industry, public or private
corporation, or any other entity whatsoever who applies to the City for, or who is issued, the
applicable permits to undertake a construction, remodeling, or demolition project within the City,
and (b) the owner of the real property that is subject to the permit.
2
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(3) "Construction and demolition debris" means (1) discarded materials generally considered to
be non-water soluble and non-hazardous in nature (as defined by California Code of Regulations,
Title 22, § 66261.3 et seq.), including but not limited to metal, glass, brick, concrete, porcelain,
ceramics, asphalt, pipe, gypsum wallboard, and lumber from the construction or destruction of a
structure as part of a construction or demolition project or from the renovation of a structure
and/or landscaping, including rocks, soil, trees, and other vegetative matter that normally results
from land clearing, landscaping and development operations for a construction project; (2)
remnants of new materials, ,including but not limited to: cardboard, paper, plastic, wood, glass
and metal from any construction and/or landscape project.
(4) "Covered project" means any project that is required to comply with the standards of
Chapter 16.14 (California Green Building Code).
(5) "Reuse" means further or repeated use of construction or demolition debris, including sale or
donation of items.
(6) "Salvage" means the controlled removal of construction or demolition debris/material from a
permitted building, construction, or demolition site for the purpose of recycling, reuse, or storage
for later recycling or reuse. Examples include air conditioning and heating systems, columns,
balustrades, fountains, gazebos, molding, mantels, pavers, planters, quoins, stair treads, trim,
wall caps, bath tubs, bricks, cabinetry, carpet, doors, ceiling fans, lighting fixtures, electrical
panel boxes, fencing, fireplaces, flooring materials of wood, marble, stone or tile, furnaces, plate
glass, wall mirrors, door knobs, door brackets, door hinges, marble, Iron work, uietal balconies,
structural steel, plumbing fixtures, refrigerators, rock, roofing materials, siding materials, sinks,
stairs, stone, stoves, toilets, windows, wood fencing, lumber and plywood.
5.24.030 Applicability and Standards for Compliance.
Covered Projects shall comply with construction and demolition debris diversion rates and other
requirements established in Chapter 16.14 (California Green Building Code). In addition, all
debris generated by a covered project must haul 100% of the debris not salvaged for reuse to an
approved facility as set forth in this chapter.
5.24.040 Debris Collection and Approved Facilities.
Applicants using a debris box provided by the City's collector pursuant to the provisions of
Chapter 5.20 shall be deemed to have complied with the requirement to take construction and
denl0lition debris to an approved facility. Applicants using any other method of disposal shall
dispose of such debris at an approved facility in accordance with the following requirements:
(a) The City shall make available to each applicant a current list of approved facilities.
(b) A facility not on the approved facilities list may apply to be listed by submitting the name
and address of the person who owns the facility, the name and address of the person who
operates the facility, a statement that the owner or operator has all permits, authorizations or
licenses required by any local, state or federal agency to operate the facility, and all
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necessary insurance, and a description from the facility of the debris accepted for reuse,
recycling, compo sting, biomass conversion, and/or alternative daily cover (ADC) for
landfills, and overall facility recovery rates for the previous year by material type.
(c) To be approved, a facility must have an overall minimum recovery rate for inert solids of
ninety percent, and an overall minimum recovery rate of seventy-five percent for all other
construction and demolition debris. The recovery rate may include materials used as ADC
(alternative daily cover for landfills) or bio-mass conversion, provided that the facility can
demonstrate that the use as ADC or bio-mass conversion is the highest and best use. The
. recovery rate will be determined by the total quantity of materials delivered to established
recycling and composting markets divided by the total quantity received by the registered
facility. Highest and best use for ADC does not include ADC which is generated by
intentional crushing or grinding of construction and demolition debris that has not been
processed to remove wood, metal, wallboard, glass and other materials for which markets or
uses other than ADC are available. It also does not include ADC use for recovered
unpainted or untreated wood, unpainted or untreated drywall, metal, landscape debris,
asphalt, concrete or other materials that have adequate markets. Highest and best use of bio
mass conversion does not include materials that have reuse, compo sting or other recycling
markets unless the facility can demonstrate that these markets are not an adequate or feasible
alternative to the bio-mass conversion market.
(d) All approved facilities must:
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(1) Maintain mInImum overall recovery rates as listed under Section
5.24.040(c).
(2) Submit an annual report outlining the recovery rate, recovery type (reuse,
recycling markets, bio-mass conversion, compo sting or ADC) by material
type.
(3) Implement and maintain a hazardous waste load checking program.
(4) Issue a uniquely numbered receipt to transporter of each truckload of
incoming materials received .including quantity of materials, name of
facility and facility recovery rate:
(5) Allow for on-site visits to verify application and report information.
(6) Notify the City within thirty days of any change in registration or
application information.
(7) Notify the City within twenty-four hours of the time a permit,
authorization or license required by local, state or federal agency to
operate the facility expires, or is revoked or suspended.
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** NOT YET APPROVED **
(e) The compliance official may approve facilities equivalent in spirit and stringency to the
requirements of this chapter that have been listed on another city, county or state reuse and
recovery list.
SECTION 2. Amendments to Chapter 12.32-Water Efficient Landscaping. Section
12.32.040 (Water efficient landscape ordinance) of Title 12 (Public Works and Utilities) of the
Palo Alto Municipal Code is hereby repealed, and anew section 12.32.040 is added to read as
follows:
12.32.040 Indoor and Outdoor Water Efficiency.
Pursuant to the California Water Conservation in Landscaping Act, also known as
the State Landscape Model Ordinance, Government Code Section 65591, et seq.
as amended, a City is required to adopt the State Landscape Model Ordinance or
equivalent local landscape water efficiency requirements' that ate "at least as
effective" as the State ordinance in conserving water. The Council has adopted
requirements that are at least as' effective in reducing landscaping water use, also
known as outdoor water use, as well as additional requirements for existing
landscapes and indoor water use in Chapter 16.14 (California Green Building
Code).
SECTION 3. Amendments to Chapter 16.11-Storm Water Pollution Prevention.
Section 16.11.030 of the Palo Alto Municipal Code is amended to add a new subsection (f) to
read as follows:
16.11.030
required.
Permanent storm water pollution prevention measures
(f) A development project, or other project type of any size or impact, may have
to comply with additional storm water pollution prevention requirements during
and after construction relating to both quality and quantity as set forth in Chapter
16.14 (California Green Building Code).
SECTION 4. Amendments to Chapter 16.12-Recycled Water. Section
16.12.015 is amended to add at the end to read as follows:
All users of recycled water shall comply with the California Department of Public
Health regulations contained in Title 1 7 and Title 22 of the California Code of
Regulations, and with the Palo Alto Water Reuse Rules and Regulations for the
use of recycled water.
Additional opportunities and/or requirements for adding recycled water
infrastructure or nonresidential and multifamily new construction and major
renovation projects are described in Chapter 16.14 (California Green Building
·Code).
5
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SECTION 5. Amendments to Chapter 18.44-Green Building Requirements and
Zoning Code. Chapter 18.44 (Green Building Regulations) of Title 18 (Zoning) of the Palo Alto
Municipal Code is hereby repealed and a new Chapter 18.44 is added to read as follows:
Chapter 18.44
GREEN DEVELOPMENT REGULATIONS
18.44.010 Development Standards for Sustainable Neighborhoods
All new planning applications that fall under any of the thresholds below
submitted between January 1, 2011 and December 31, 2011 shall participate in a
pilot program utilizing the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design
("LEED") for Neighborhood Development rating system.
1: hI 1 LEED ND POI P a e --lot rogram R equlrement Th h ld res 0 s
Threshold Fixed Rail (University, Traffic Corridor Neighborhood All Other Sites
California Ave., and San El Camino Real Center
Antonio)
Type All new construction. All new All new All projects including an
construction. construction. application for one of
the following:
• rezoning
• planned community
• site and design
review for a mixed
use project
• conditional use
permit for change of
use from commercial
to residential
Location within Y2 mile within Y4 mile nla nla
Parcel Size Y4 acre minimum Y2 acre minimum Y2 acre minimum 2 acres minimum
Compliance All pre-requisites, and achieve 25 points in the Smart Location and Linkage (SLL) and
Level for Neighborhood Pattern and Design (NPD) sections ofLEED-ND. Projects retaining and
Evaluation rehabilitating an existing historic building( s) shall receive a 5 point credit towards the minimum
25 points required.
Special Considerations:
If a project includes more than one parcel that are adjacent to one another, and have the same owner or developer,
they will be considered together under LEED-ND review.
The requirements apply to cumulative or phased projects under review within a five year period.
Single family residences in R-l and R-2 districts that fall below the thresholds above, and are not included in a
planned community zone project, are exempt.
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During the pilot year applicants will be required to submit LEED-ND
documentation for informational purposes only. A complete planning application
shall include materials showing how the project could meet the referenced
compliance levels. At the end of the pilot year staff will return to PT &C and
Council to review if the thresholds of compliance were appropriate, to make any
necessary adjustments, and to consider for mandatory adoption.
18.44.020 Compliance with California Green Building Standards Code
Required.
All development projects may be subject to additional requirements under the
green development regulations outlined in Chapter 16.14 (California Green
Building Code) of Title 16 (Building Regulations) of the Palo Alto Municipal
Code. A complete application as described under Chapter 18.77.020
(Applications) and Chapter 18.77.030 (Determination of Completeness) shall
include appropriate documentation showing compliance with Chapter 16.14 and
this Chapter, as applicable.
SECTION 6. Repeal of Chapter 9.06-Woodburning Fireplaces and Appliances.
Chapter 9.06 (Woodburning Fireplaces and Appliances) of Title 9 (Public Peace, Morals, and
Safety) of the Palo Alto Municipal Code is hereby repealed.
II
II
II
II
II
II
II
II
II
II
II
II
II
101102 sh 8261448
7
** NOT YET APPROVED **
SECTION 7. Environmental Review. The Council hereby finds this ordinance is
categorically exempt from the requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act
("CEQA") pursuant to Section 15308 of the CEQA Guidelines because it is an action taken by a
regulatory agency for the protection of the environment.
SECTION 8. Effective Date. This ordinance shall be effective on January 1, 2011.
INTRODUCED:
PASSED:
AYES:
NOES:
ABSTENTIONS:
ABSENT:
ATTEST:
City Clerk
APPROVED AS TO FORM:
Senior Deputy City Attorney
Director of Planning and
Community Environment
101102 sh 8261448
APPROVED:
Mayor
City Manager
8
LEED 2009 for New Construction and Major Renovations
The following scorecard shows how a typical -project in Palo Alto could comply with CALGreen and meet LEED Silver.
(21 T oloJ ~ustain~b!e~jtes Possible Points: 26 J
y N die.
y ~ Prereq 1 Construction Activity Pollution Prevention
d Credit 1 Site Selection
d Credit 2 Development Density and Community Connectivity
d Credit 3 Brownfield Redevelopment
d Credit 4.1 Alternative Transportation-Public Transportation Access
d Credit 4.2 Alternative Transportation-Bicycle Storage and Changing Rooms
d Credit 4.3 Alternative Transportation-Low-Emitting and Fuel-Efficient Vehicles
::: ... d Credit 4.4 Alternative Transportation-Parking Capacity
C Credit 5.1 Site Development-Protect or Restore Habitat
d Credit 5.2 Site Development-Maximize Open Space
d Credit 6.1 Stormwater Design-Quantity Control
d Credit 6.2 Stormwater Design-Quality Control
C Credit 7.1 Heat Island Effect-Non-roof
d Credit 7.2 Heat Island Effect-Roof
d Credit 8 Light Pollution Reduction
7 0 0 IWater Efficiency Possibie Points: --
Y ? N
I y I d Prereq 1 Water Use Reduction-20% Reduction
I~! I J d Credit 1 Water Efficient Landscaping
2 Reduce by 50%
No Potable Water Use or Irrigation
I~ I I I d Credit 2 Innovative Wastewater Technologies
1 3 -I 1 I d Credit 3 Water Use Reduction
Reduce by 30%
l Reduce by 35%
Reduce by 40%
LEED 2009 for New Construction and Major Renovations Project Checklist
5
6
3
2
10
2 to4
2
4
2
2 to 4
2
3
4
Notes on Relationship to CALGreen.
All PA projects claim this . Not in CALGreen .
Elective Chosen Tier 2
All PA projects claim this. Not in CALGreen.
Requirement in CALGreen.
Requirement in CALGreen.
Elective Chosen Tier 2
Elective Chosen Tier 2 • May be required by City Sormwater
Ord.
Elective Chosen Tier 2
Required Tier 2
Notes:
Required by local amendment to CALGreen.
Elective Chosen Tier 2
Required Tier 2
Elective Chosen Tier 2
,
I
1 of 4
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Y N I Notes:
Y I C Prereq 1 Fundamental Commissioning of Building Energy Systems
Y ~ d Prereq 2 Minimum Energy Performance
Y ~ d Prereq J Fundamental Refrigerant Management
1 to 19 Optimize Energy Performance Ii;·;·;·'
j , Improve by 12% for New Buildings or 8% for Existing Building Renovations
Improve by 14% for New Buildings or 10% for Existing Building Renovations 2
Improve by 16% for New Buildings or 12% for Existing Building Renovations 3
Improve by 18% for New Buildings or 14% for Existing Building Renovations 4
Improve by 20% for New Buildings or 16% for Existing Building Renovations 5
Improve by 22% for New Buildings or 18% for Existing Building Renovations 6
Improve by 24% for New Buildings or 20% for Existing Building Renovations 7
Improve by 26% for New Buildings or 22% for Existing Building Renovations 8
Improve by 28% for New Buildings or 24% for Existing Building Renovations 9
Improve by 30% for New Buildings or 26% for Existing Building Renovations 10
Improve by 32% for New Buildings or 28% for Existing Building Renovations 11
Improve by 34% for New Buildings or 30% for Existing Building Renovations 12
Improve by 36% for New Buildings or 32% for Existing Building Renovations 13
Improve by 38% for New Buildings or 34% for Existing Building Renovations 14
mprove by 40% for New Buildings or 36% for Existing Building Renovations 15
mprove by 42% for New Buildings or 38% for Existing Building Renovations 16
Improve by 44% for New Buildings or 40% for Existing Building Renovations 17
Improve by 46% for New Buildings or 42% for Existing Building Renovations 18
Improve by 48%+ for New Buildings or 44%+ for Existing Building Renovations 19
On·Site Renewable Energy 1 to 7
Ie Energy
Ie Energy 2
ble Energy 3
4
5
6
7
2
LEEO 2009 for New Construction and Major Renovations Project Checklist
15% compliance is required by CALGreen and the City's Energy
Efficiency Ordinance.
2 Electives Chosen Tier 2
20f4
<
•••••
d Credit 4 Enhanced Refrigerant Management 2
I
.. .....
C Credit 5 Measurement and Verification 3
I
....
i :. ,-Credit 6 Green Power 2
6 0 ~aterials and Resourc e!_.~m .. _m"m .. ~.mm .. m~m Possible Points : 1'4
,~.~.~,,~w.Y.y"'Y"'W,
y ? N Notes:
l y I d Prereq 1 Storage and Collection of Recyclables
I I I I c Credit 1.1 Building Reuse-Maintain Existing Walls, Floors, and Roof 1 to 3
Reuse 55% 1
Reuse 75% 2
/ Reuse 95% 3
I I I I c Credit 1.2 Building Reuse-Maintain 50% of Interior Non-Structural Elements 1
I 2 I I I c Credit 2 Co nstruction Waste Management 1 to 2
50% Recycled or Salvaged 1
1 80% diversion required by CALGreen and existing CaD
2 175% Recycled or Salvaged 2 Ordinance.
I I I I c Credit 3 Mate rials Reuse 1 to 2
Reuse 5% 1
Reuse 10% 2
I 2 I I i c Credit 4 Recycled Content 1 to 2 I
10% of Content 1 Required Tier 2.
2 20% of Content 2 Elective Chosen Tier 2
I I I I c Credit 5 Regional Materials 1 to 2
10% of Materials 1 I
I
20% of Materials 2 I
I 1 I I I c Credit 6 Rapidly Renewable Materials 1 Elective Chosen Tier 2
I
, I 1 I I. I c Credit 7 Certified Wood 1 Elective Chosen Tier 2 J
LEED 2009 for New Construction and Major Renovations Project Checklist 3 of 4
r··s····ror ···o···l
y ? N
y
y
'UE; ;\ .................
'.'. ·c .. ; ............
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1 -
r olor···o··]
y ? N
ruoTuour··o·····j
y N
(soroTUoj
: Indoor Environmental Quali~ Possible Points: 15
d Prereq 1 Minimum Indoor Air Quality Performance
d Prereq 2 Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) Control
d Credit 1 Outdoor Air Delivery Monitoring 1
d Credit 2 Increased Ventilation 1
c Credit 3.1 Construction IAQ Management Plan-During Construction 1
s-Credit 3.2 Construction IAQ Management Plan-Before Occupancy 1
'-. Credit 4.1 low-Emitting Materials-Adhesives and Sealants 1
c Credit 4.2 low-Emitting Materials-Paints and Coatings 1
c Credit 4.3 low-Emitting Materials-Flooring Systems 1
"-Credit 4.4 low-Emitting Materials-Composite Wood and Agrifiber Products 1
d Credit 5 Indoor Chemical and Pollutant Source Control
d Credit 6.1 Controllability of Systems-lighting
d Credit 6.2 Controllability of Systems-Thermal Comfort
d Credit 7.1 Thermal Comfort-Design
d Credit 7.2 Thermal Comfort-Verification
d Credit 8.1 Daylight and Views-Daylight
d Credit 8.2 Daylight and Views-Views
t" dO :---- -----------------~. P -----
die Credit 1.1 Innovation in Design : Specific Title
dIe Credit 1.2 Innovation in Design: Specific Title
die Credit 1.3 Innovation in Design: Specific Title
die Credit 1.4 Innovation in Design: Specific Title
dIe Credit 1.5 Innovation in Design: Specific Title
die Credit 2 lEED Accredited Professional
Resional Priority Credits
die Credit 1.1 Regional Priority: Specific Credit
die Credit 1.2 Regional Priority: Specific Credit
die. Credit 1.3 Regional Priority: Specific Credit
die Credit 1.4 Regional Priority: Specific Credit
Total
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
p able Points: 6 -~---
1
1
1
1
1
1
Possible Points: 4
Possible Points: 110
Certified 40 to 49 points Silver 50 to 59 points Gold 60 to 79 points Platinum 80 to 110
lEED 2009 for New Construction and Major Renovations Project Checklist
-
Notes:
Elective Chosen Tier 2
Requirement in CAlGreen.
Requirement in CAlGreen.
Required Tier 2,90% CAlGreen, 100% lEED.
Elective Chosen Tier 2
Elective Chosen Tier 2
Elec.tive Chosen Tier 2
Elective Chosen Tier 2
Notes:
Notes:
4 of 4
LEED 2009 for Neighborhood Development
Project Scorecard
Prereq 1 Smart Location
Prereq 2 Imperiled Species and Ecological Communities
Prereq 3 Wetland and Water Body Conservation
Prereq 4 Agricultural Land Conservation
Prereq 5 Floodplain Avoidance
Credit 1 Preferred Locations
Credit 2 Brownfield Redevelopment
Credit 3 Locations with Reduced Automobile Dependence
Credit 4 Bicycle Network and Storage
Credit 5 Housing and Jobs Proximity
Credit 6 Steep Slope Protection
Credit 7 Site Design for Habitat or Wetland and Water Body Co.nservation
Credit 8 Restoration of Habitat or Wetlands and Water Bodies
Required
Required
Required
Required
Required
10
2
7
Credit 9 Long-Term Conservation Management of Habitat or Wetlands and Water Bodies
It . J . L
Prereq 1 Walkable Streets
Prereq 2 Compact Development
Prereq 3 Connected and Open Community
Credit 1 Walkable Streets
Credit 2 Compact Development
Credit 3 Mixed-Use Neighborhood Centers
Credit 4 Mixed-Income Diverse Communities
Credit 5 Reduced Parking Footprint
Credit 6 Street Network
Credit 7 Transit Facilities
Credit 8 Transportation Demand Management
Credit 9 Access to Civic and Public Spaces
Credit 10 Access to Recreation Facilities
Credit 11 Visitabllity and Universal Design
Credit 12 Community Outreach and Involvement
Credit 13 Local Food Production
Credit 14 Tree-Lined and Shaded Streets
Credit 15 Neighborhood Schools
I Yes ? No
o I 0 I 0 -;iM,'MdflUWliiiii.i.I ;Jbjijiib.j
I #
Prereq 1 Certified Green Building
Prereq 2 Minimum Building Energy Efficiency
Prereq 3 Minimum Building Water Efficiency
Prereq 4 Construction Activity Pollution Prevention
Required
Required
Required
12
6
4
7
2
1
2
1
2
1
2
29 Points Possible
Required
Required
Required
Required
Project Name:
Date:
Yes No
Yes No
9
Yes No
Credit 1 Certified Green Buildings
Credit 2 Building Energy Efficiency
Credit 3 Building Water Efficiency
Credit 4 Water-Efficient Landscaping
Credit 5 Existing Building Use
Credit 6 Historic Resource Preservation and Adaptive Reuse
Credit 7 Minimized Site Disturbance in Design and Construction
Credit 8 Stormwater Management
Credit 9 Heat Island Reduction
Credit 10 Solar Orientation
Credit 11 On-Site Renewable Energy Sources
Credit 12 District Heating and Cooling
Credit 13 Infrastructure Energy Efficiency
Credit 14 Wastewater Management
Credit 15 Recycled Content in Infrastructure
Credit 16 Solid Waste Management Infrastructure
Credit 17 Light Pollution Reduction
Credit 1. 1 Innovation and Exemplary Performance: Provide Specific Title
Credit 1.~ Innovation and Exemplary Performance: Provide Specific Title
Credit 1.:: Innovation and Exemplary Performance: Provide Specific Title
Credit 1.~ Innovation and Exemplary Performance: Provide Specific Title
Credit 1.~ Innovation and Exemplary Performance: Provide Specific Title
Credit 2 LEED" Accredited Professional
Credit 1.1 Regional Priority Credit Region Defined
Credit 1.~ Regional Priority Credit: Region Defined
Credit 1.:: Regional Priority Credit: Region Defined
Credit 1.~ Regional Priority Credit Region Defined
·5
2
4
1
1
2
1
2
1
111111 Project Totals (Certification estimates) 110 Points
Certified: 40-49 points, Silver: 50-59 pOints, Gold: 60-79 points, Platinum: 80+ points
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C
ATTACHMENT E
1 Planning and Transportation Commission
2 Verbatint Minutes
3 October 13,2010
4
5 EXCERPT
6
7 Review and Recommendation Regarding Adoption of Revisions to Chapter 18.44 (Green
8 Building Regulations) of the Zoning Ordinance to: (1) Revise and Incorporate the City's Green
9 Building Regulations to Chapter 16, Building Regulations; and (2) Add Criteria for Sustainable
1 0 Neighborhood Developments.
11
12 Ms. Kristin Parineh, Sustainability Planner: I am Kristin Parineh of the City of Palo Alto
13 Planning Department. I run the Green Building Program. We held a study session on this on
14 September 1 so I just wanted to highlight quickly some of the major changes that have been
15 made since Septenlber 1 to call out to your attention.
16
17 First I will start with the LEED-ND issue. We decided to go with a pilot program as opposed to
18 a mandatory approach. The original proposal that came to you was to require LEED-ND of all
19 proj ects starting January 1 as a mandatory requirement. We moved to a pilot program starting
20 January 1 that would run through the end of the year. At the end of the year we wouldretum to
21 you all with hopefully some good data on how the program went, how the point levels worked,
22 how our size and location thresholds worked, and do any adjustments need to be made, and
23 should it bemandatory at that time. So that was a major shift.
24
25 Also, we got a lot of input from you all as well as from the Council on the size and location
26 trigger points. So we did a lot of analysis on those and made a lot of changes in that area, which
27 are on page 6, Table 1. We differentiated location and size based on fixed rail, traffic corridors,
28 and then essentially everything else. The table looks a little tricky but we think it will capture
29 the projects we want to capture and help us have some good data at the end of the year.
30
31 The only other thing that I would like to point out is you now have the actual ordinance in front
32 of you. It is Attachment A. This is essentially what we are calling the cleanup ordinance. So we
33 are cleaning up all the sections of the Palo Alto Municipal Code that are in conflict with the
34 California Green Building Code or compliment it or repeat it I guess. So this is how we are
35 cleaning up sections of the code since we are adopting the California Green Building Code.
36 Then also replacing Chapter 18.44 where are Green Building regulations are. So that is what you
37 are looking at.
38
39 Ijust want to point out that Section 2, the Indoor Water Efficiency section, and then also Section
40 6, which is the Wood Burning Fireplace section, we completely took out those regulations. That
41 is because they are covered under other code sections. We don't need to have sections on them
42 anymore because for the wood burning at least it is covered under Building Code so we don't
43 need to have our own ordinance anymore. Then the water efficiency section we incorporated all
44 of the requirements that we had for water efficiency into the Green Building Code amendments.
45 So most of that section isn't necessary either. So I just wanted to make sure I point those out.
46
Page 1
1 Also, prior to the meeting Commissioner Keller asked a few clarification questions. I don't
2 know if now is an appropriate tinle or if you want to go through a round and he can ask them in
3 that process.
4
5 Chair Tuma: Are they relatively brief or?
6
7 Ms. Parineh: Yes, a few of them are fairly brief.
8
9 Chair Tunla: Okay, go ahead.
10
11 Ms. Parineh: One of the first questions was at least related to CALGreen how the elective
12 measures work compared to the point system in LEED. One of the additional attachments, I
13 know there are many. Attachment B includes all of the local amendments that we are making to
14 the California Green Building Code. At the very back of it there is a checklist. It is page 16 and
15 I don't if you have page numbers on it, but it looks like this.
16
17 Just to explain how this works is at the very top of the checklist there is a mandatory column and
18 then the tier columns. If the box has an X in it that means it is required of every single project.
19 If it is open then that means it is an elective measure and project can electively choose to do that
20 as part of it. They have to meet a certain number of electives. So there really isn't a point
21 system where they have to collect points but they have to collect electives. So they have to
22 collect a number of the things with the empty boxes.
23
24 Right before the checklist, the page before the checklist start it describes in Tier 1 and Tier 2
25 how many electives they need to get. They have to get a certain number of electives in each
26 category. So it is kind of like collecting points but instead they are collecting electives, just to
27 make that clarification.
28
29 Another question was I think Commissioner Keller was worried about the stringency of the
30 commissioning requirement in CALGreen compared to LEED. Definitely LEED currently
31 provides a lot more guidance on how commissioning needs to be performed and who needs to do
32 it, and how it will be verified. In response the Building Standards Commission is about to
33 release a guide on their commissioning credit and how it should be enforced at the local level. It
34 looks very similar to the LEED documentation. So the idea is that the local governments will
35 enforce that guidebook or guideline for how to enforce the commissioning regulations in the
36 California Green Building Code. So as long as the local jurisdiction is abiding by that then it
37 should be consistent with how LEED enforces commissioning.
38
39 The last question I would like to address is he asked why we didn't consider requiring EV
40 stations. Currently EV stations can be chosen as an elective measure but it is not required for
41 every proj ect. He questioned why we don't require it. We looked into this with our Utility
42 Department and also with the City Manager's Office to talk about whether or not to require this.
43 I think we came to the conclusion that we currently felt uncomfortable requiring it just because it
44 is new technology, we don't have a lot ofEV charging stations out there. Then how do you
45 balance the importance ofEV charging stations versus other things in the checklist? So we came
46 to the conclusion that at the Staff level we were uncomfortable making that a mandatory
Page 2
1 measure. If via the Planning Commission or the City Council felt it to be a policy priority then it
2 could come out that way.
3
4 Chair Tuma: Okay, great, thanks for that presentation. I think we will go to the public. We
5 have one member of the public with us this evening but I don't have a card from him. So
6 assuming that he doesn't want to speak, we will open and close the public hearing, and come
7 back to Commissioners.
8
9 hl my process memo that I sent out prior to the meeting I had suggested that we try to divide
10 tonight's discussion into first talking about the LEED-ND and whether we thought that was a
11 good idea, and the pilot program and some of the issues there, and then separately talking about
12 the CALGreen and adopting that. Does that division make sense to folks? Okay. So in the first
13 go round let's try to stick with the LEED-ND stuff and see if we can kind of give the feedback
14 there, put that to bed, and then second go round we will focus on CALGreen.
15
16 So I have a light from Commissioner Keller followed by Fineberg.
17
18 Commissioner Keller: The main question I have about LEED-ND is chart of Table 1 on page 6
19 of the Staff Report. We are gathering data based on a fairly small threshold for parcel size, near
20 fixed rail, .near traffic corridors ofEI Camino, near neighborhood centers, and a much larger
21 collection of data for all other sites. It seems to nle that if the purpose of this pilot is to gather
22 data then we should have a quarter-acre minimum for gathering data all throughout. Then when
23 we have that data we can later on decide where we want to set the thresholds, if we want to set
24 thresholds, where they should be. If you want to gather data, gathering data uniformly seems to
25 make more sense. I am wondering what Staff thinks about the idea of changing it for the
26 purposes of gathering data to a quarter-acre minimum, particularly since if you have a two acre
27 minimum for all other sites nleaning the sort of undesirable sites for building housing you are in
28 some sense encouraging housing over there rather than discouraging housing from those places
29 away from transit.
30
31 Ms. Parineh: That is a good question. I think when we were originally looking at our location
32 and parcel sizes we were looking at where we thought it would be reasonable when it was going
33 to be mandatory, particularly the two acre size. It being reasonable outside of these locations to
34 meet our 25-point level, being mandatory, and us not having done a pilot program we were
35 trying to be conservative and cautious. Given that it is now going to be a pilot program we could
36 probably reduce it to get a bigger study sample I guess, and more information, but along with
37 that comes more time during review, more time for the applicants. It is going to open the
38 applicant pool up considerably to the number of people or the number of projects that will have
39 to be reviewed. So they will all have to go through that process, be discussed here, so keep in
40 mind the time involved in capturing that many.
41
42 Comnlissioner Keller: I think that because this is LEED-ND we are talking about neighborhood
43 development. I assume that we are talking about residential development. So it is only when
44 you are building housing or are we talking about non-housing as well? So are we talking about
45 anything whether it is housing or not?
46
Page 3
1 Ms. Parineh: Yes, that is correct.
2
3 Commissioner Keller: Is that what the intent ofLEED-ND is? Anything? It is? Okay, that is
4 interesting. So if we wanted to do things for all other sites for example, then I would be happy to
5 have a threshold of at least a certain number of housing units for the last column. So instead of it
6 being a quarter-acre if it is at least three housing units for example then it is a housing
7 development and then it should be considered in this. If it is not at least three housing units then
8 it doesn't have to go through the threshold. That seems to be a better thing than acre size. What
9 do you think about that?
10
11 Ms. Parineh: It seems reasonable. Do I make that call? I don't know.
12
13 Chair Tuma: Let me just interject a thought into this. I think you maybe are going to hear
14 similar or a lot of the focus here is going to be on thresholds. I think if you are going to do this
15 as a pilot coming up with something that gives a reasonable sample makes all the sense in the
16 world. Have you done any sort of proj ections as to what sample size you might get with this and
1 7 then as we take these various levers arid tweak them up or down what impact that might have in
18 tenns of increasing your sample size?
19
20 Ms. Parineh: Yes. If you look at Table 3 on page 8 it gives you a sample size for everything but
21 that last column. So if you look at the table it says parcel size on the left, if you are a quarter-
22 acre, half-acre, or one-acre. Then it says how many parcels would be captured in those areas
23 under this program. But this is all parcels not necessarily parcels coming in here. The ones that
24 are bolded are the current thresholds we have in Table 1. So for instance under University
25 Avenue it would capture 176 parcels, but we don't have the numbers for the two-acre level just
26 the others here.
27
28 Commissioner Keller: Do you have numbers comparable to this that indicate how many of these
29 parcels have had projects within the last year or two years? The fact that there are 471 parcels
30 within a quarter-mile ofEI Camino that are a quarter-acre or more is interesting but if only ten of
31 them had projects then that would be a lot different.
32
33 Ms. Parineh: We don't. I don't know that we have that data collection tied up with our GIS
34 maps to report something like that in an efficient manner that I know of. Do you?
35
36 Ms. Amy French, Current Planning Manager: No, I don't think we do. I hear what you are
37 saying but I guess if you think about the projects that have come through here certainly the ones
38 that you have seen they are more inline with the two-acre. For instance Alma Plaza is four acres.
39 Edgewood is 155,000 that is three-ish acres. Palo Alto Bowl is another three~acre. So when you
40 get down less than that we are looking at some things that have gone through ARB at a quarter-
41 acre.
42
43 Ms. Parineh: She is looking at Table 2.
44
45 Ms. French: Sorry,Table 2 on page 7.
46
Page 4
1 Ms. Parineh: We tried to give you some examples ofprojects that would have come through and
2 whether or not you would have had to review them based on the trigger points.
3
4 Ms. French: So that might help indicate. We don't get a lot of projects that are two acres or
5 more. They are pretty few and far between. Most of our projects are replacement of existing
6 with a similar product. So whether we need to capture all those and data I don't know if that is
7 helpful. It seems like the larger parcels that is why we came up with the two acres I think as
8 those are the more complex projects.
9
10 Chair Tuma: Thanks. Commissioner Fineberg .
. 11
12 Commissioner Fineberg: I have a quick follow up on Commissioner Keller's last question. So
13 in the world's worst case of how many projects might trigger the LEED-ND review let's say we
14 were to add all the ARB projects that don't come to us, world's worst scenario maybe it is two or
15 three a week and they have four nleetings a week, so let's say it is three projects a week. Is that
16 reasonable? Five? Ten?
17
18 Ms. French: We get about 100 ....
19
20 Commissioner Fineberg: Not R-1, not Individual Review.
21
22 Ms. French: Right. ARB project applications are about 130 a year. Most of those are Staff level
23 review and there are a few that are strictly ARB that are major ARB that Planning Commission
24 doesn't see. The major projects, a lot of them come to you because they are Site and Design or
25 Planned Community.
26
27 Comnlissioner Fineberg: So you are saying 100 to 150?
28
29 Ms. French: There are 130 ARB ...
30
31 Commissioner Fineberg: A year?
32
33 Ms. French: ,Which a lot of them are Staff level like signs, something else that would definitely
34 not fit LEED-ND. So very few.
35
36 Commissioner Fineberg: So maybe it is 100 then.
37
38 Ms. French: Less than that, 25.
39
40 Commissioner Fineberg: So if we lowered the threshold to a quarter-acre and'it excluded things
41 like signage that wouldn't conle to us, worst case we are going to get another 25 or 50 projects a
42 year. I don't think that is a big burden. I think the information we would gain would be
43 significant compared to -ifit was 100's I would question, but if we are talking 25 to 50 I would
44 advocate for capturing it at a smaller level. I would also like to reiterate the reason
45 philosophically I am in favor of that, and I talked about this at our Study Session, the LEED-ND
46 documents talked about, and I am looking at page 5 of the minutes included in Attachment F.
Page 5
I ... ~.
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41
Quoting myself from the bottom, "LEED-ND is saying that the minimum size should be two
habitable structures as a minimum to consider." So I would advocate for something like a
certain acreage, maybe quarter or half for commercial properties and then and/or pick a number,
two, three, four habitable structures on the residential side.
Commissioner Garber: Units or structures?
Commissioner Fineberg: LEED-ND says structures. So I don't know if that is if it is a giant
structure, multifamily home, how they count it, but maybe we want to say dwelling units so we
are clear what that means here. That way we have different granularity if somebody is redoing a
dry cleaner we may not need to rate it. I think there is a huge advantage to capturing more of the
projects in the analysis because right now if we exclude everything under two acres that isn't
close to transit we are introducing a bias into the measurements. If you think of it in terms of
building a data set and you exclude everything that isn't near transit, and isn't near EI Camino,
and isn't near retail shopping centers I think the language was 'neighborhood center' then by
definition those are the ones that are going to have the most trouble scoring the walkable, scoring
the points that show that they are in the locations where they belong. So before we would even
start measuring if we excluded the ones that would fare the worst we are going to get erroneously
high numbers and positive numbers because we are simply not measuring the ones that fail. That
is a nlistake I don't think we should go for. That is my time for now I will save the rest for later.
Chair Tuma: Vice-Chair Lippert.
Vice-Chair Lippert: I guess I see this a little differently. I am not opposed to what I see here but
I think it might be antithetical to some of the programs that are trying to be accomplished at the
state level. I will try to clarify what I mean by that. SB 375 has in it tiered or cascading
thresholds for relieving projects from the burden of having to conle under CEQA review. What
it specifically addresses is when you build higher density development near transit and
specifically also looking at low, very low, and moderate-income housing types, and senior
housing as well. When you go through this process and you look at SB 375 it actually begins to
say well, this is the kind of development we are looking for statewide. It is sustainable
development, and it begins to remove the CEQA process. What I think this begins to do is
ratchet up the review process so what the state is trying to undo in terms of regulation this may in
fact be then putting it back into more of a regulatory type review at the local level. So I really
have difficulty with that. It sounds like we are taking away CEQA but we are adding more local
review here based on, and again we started this discussion with half-acre sites and now we are
down to quarter-acre sites.
One of the things that Commissioner Fineberg mentioned about adding 25 more projects to the
ARB project list for review isn't that what you were suggesting?
42 . Commissioner Fineberg: No, they would be projects that the ARB is already reviewing but we
43 would ask those projects to complete the LEED-ND checklist during the pilot period.
44
45
46
Vice-Chair Lippert: Okay, I understand a little bit better now: The point is that what the state is
trying to do on one hand is to undo some of the regulatory processes. This may in fact bring
Page 6
1 back at a local level additional regulations that are imposed on them. So from that point of view
2 I have some difficulty with this. I am not opposed to it, and again we are talking about having
3 this as a pilot program or trial program so we can see how it goes, but I think it would be very
4 interesting to take a look and see how TPPs, Transit Priority Projects, as well as SCCs, which are
5 Sustainable Centers of Community, fit into LEED-ND. Because LEED is a national program I
6 don't think it takes that into account. Have you reviewed that at all or looked at SB 375 and
7 those measures?
8
9 Ms. Parineh: Yes. I was under the impression for SB 375 that what it was taking away from
10 CEQA review was because the City was doing appropriate via our Comprehensive Plan we
11 were doing an EIR for our Comprehensive Plan, for our Green Building Regulations, for
12 everything so the projects didn't have to do the City was taking the burden off of them from
13 doing CEQA review because we were going to be providing the greenhouse gas emission
14 information, all the analysis that they usually do for individual projects the City would provide.
15 So that was my impression of kind of the entire thing.
16
17 LEED-ND went through extensive review. It incorporates all of the sustainable neighborhood
18 indicators I have ever come across. So I think, they have incorporated it all to the best of my
19 knowledge.
20
21 Vice-Chair Lippert: Okay. Well that is really the main thrust. I think that we maybe in fact
22 taking away with one hand and putting it back with the other.
23
24 Chair Tuma: Okay, thanks. Commissioner Tanaka.
25
26 Commissioner Tanaka: Thank you. So overall this seems like a pretty good idea. So I want to
27 thank you for putting this together. I have a few questions for you though. The first question is
28 have you estimated or thought about how much effort it is going to take for developers to
29 implement LEED-ND per project? If you have an answer I would like to hear it.
30
31 Ms. Parineh: During the pilot period obviously it will be voluntary or optional for them to
32 incorporate the different measures into the project. Part of the pilot program could be working
33 with some applicants who would voluntarily like to give us cost or time projections to actually
34 implement those points or measures. One of the tricky things about doing a cost or time estimate
35 is determining whether they would have done something already in the project or whether they
36 are adding it because they were required to do so under the program. So it is a bit tricky to do
37 that estimate when we don't know how they would have originally come in, I guess. Same I
38 think with Green Building the easiest way to reduce cost and time is education and telling them
39 from day one it is obviously going to reduce time and cost for every applicant as opposed to
40 implementing it mid-project, which is what is good about this pilot program. People who are
41 thinking about doing projects two or three years from now will kind of get a heads up that we are
42 thinking about this or we are trying to implement it.
43
44 Commissioner Tanaka: So then I assume as part of this pilot program you are going to also ask
45 people how much time or overhead it took to implement this?
46
Page 7
1 Ms. Parineh: Well, they won't necessarily be implementing it. We could ask them for the time
2 involved in kind of doing an assessment of the scoring card.
3
4 Commissioner Tanaka: Correct.
5
6 Ms. Parineh: I performed it on a proj ect going through ARB and PTC right now just to see if
7 they would have conlplied or not, and it probably took me a half a days work to go through the
8 scorecard to figure out would they comply and get points or not. That is just a let's see what
9 would happen. That is not doing any work for implementation.
10
11 Commissioner Tanaka: Okay, so it doesn't seem to onerous at this point.
12
13 Ms. Parineh: Yes, for the pilot stage.
14
15 Commissioner Tanaka: Okay. Then at the end of the project or pilot are you going to publish
16 the data or compile it somehow in a database so that people could look at it and use it as a
1 7 reference for later proj ects?
18
19 Ms. Parineh: Yes, we will be compiling the information and bringing it back to you all for
20 review to consider whether it should be mandatory or we should adjust different levels.
21
22 Also, while we are back to the levels I just want to comment on some of the other things. If we
23 were to reduce the acreage down I think for ease of administration it would be great just to have
24 one-acre level. We have one-fourth, one-half, and then two. So just make it simple and say all
25 projects in the city over a quarter-acre might be something nl0re sinlple for you to consider.
26
27 Commissioner Tanaka: Then are you also - I didn't realize that we are going to be one of the
28 first cities to look at this. Do you know of the other cities that are starting to try this out? I guess
29 what I am thinking is with any new standard there are always bugs. It would be great to do some
30 learning with some other cities that are also trying this out and trying to figure out how well it
31 works.
32
33 Ms. Parineh: I know cities that have tried implementing on individual projects. I have not yet
34 found a city that is making it a city policy for projects coming in. There are a lot of workshops
35 that have been coming up even at the Green Building Conference coming up in November to
36 encourage cities to adopt it, but I have not yet heard of another city that has a policy underway.
37
38 Commissioner Tanaka: Okay. Well, if you do find one of course it would be great to collaborate
39 with them.
40
41 Ms. Parineh: Yes.
42
43 Commissioner Tanaka: Thank you for your work.
44
45 Chair Tuma: Commissioner Martinez followed by Garber.
46
Page 8
1 Commissioner Martinez: Thank you. Kristin, the LEED-ND, I think you talked about this a bit
2 last time, comes from a concept of a much larger plot of land. I don't remember what you said,
3 30 acres, 300 acres, or really kind of more of a planned community. Isn't that correct?
4
5 Ms. Parineh: LEED-ND did a pilot program themselves throughout a three-year period and they
6 had 100s of projects in it that ranged from half an acre to 500 and something. The average pilot
7 project was about 30 acres, but they had success at all of those levels.
8
9 Commissioner Martinez: Okay. I see in the list that you gave us of LEED-ND categories there
10 are things like slope protection and things that we wouldn't probably ever get into even though it
11 is one of my favorite topics, we probably wouldn't get into it in this pilot study. So why hasn't
12 the Staff taken this list of considerations, which are basically good planning practices, why
13 haven't you just taken it and really formed a list of objectives that really fit Palo Alto and the
14 areas that we are concerned about?
15
16 Ms. Parineh: I guess what you are suggesting and I would bring it back to Green Building
1 7 Regulations again, there have been cities across the country that have taken LEED for Green
18 Buildings and modified it for local use, taken out credits they don't like or adding new credits,
19 and they kind of create their own Green Building rating system for their individual cities. So that
20 is an option. We didn't look at kind of reinventing it locally, but just using the existing resource.
21 But we could create our own system.
22
23 Commissioner Martinez: Or at least remove some of those that don't really apply to the study
24 area in this pilot project. That was my question basically, not to try to reinvent it.
25
26 Ms. Parineh: Okay.
27
28 Commissioner Martinez: The other question I had is that along say South El Camino Real there
29 might be some buildings, in fact on Table 2 there is the Palo Alto Bowl, which the building type
30 doesn't really fit a number of the categories ofLEED-ND like providing bicycles for the hotel. I
31 am just wondering if the idea is that this is going to be something that is going to work for every
32 building type and we are going to try to force it to work or is it something that we need to sort of
33 step back and really look to where it really makes sense.
34
35 Ms. Parineh: That is a great question. One of the great things about points is they offer a lot of
36 different credit so it is flexible for every project. Like you said not every project is going to be
37 able to claim every point. The projects that are in Stanford Research Park that have to come
38 under this they are probably not going to get public transportation credit so they are out there.
39 The hotel project won't get bike but they may get public transportation. So the idea behind the
40 rating system is flexibility and kind of an understanding that it won't work for every project but
41 you claim the points in the areas where they are reasonable based on use or size or location. It is
42 not going to work just perfectly in every case, but just like our policies, our regulations don't.
43
44 Commissioner Martinez: This is a Planning endeavor rather than a Building endeavor, correct?
45 So the evaluation is going to be done by Planning Staff and the need for a certified professional
46 LEED AP person is not required?
Page 9
1
2 Ms. Parineh: No you won't need to hire any certified person. If you download the LEED
3 manual a typical planner, architect, or engineer could probably reasonably do the exercise. Yes
4 it would be done by Planning Staff would obviously help coordinate it and do kind of an initial
5 review, and then it would be presented when brought to the Commissioners and Boards.
6
7 Commissioner Martinez: Okay, thank you.
8
9 Chair Tuma: Commissioner Garber.
10
11 Commissioner Garber: My questions are somewhat along Commissioner Martinez's line. A
12 quarter of an acre is just slightly more than some of our largest residential properties. As I look
13 down the list in Table 2 there are two of the quarter acre sites that have just a single building on
14 them. These are commercial of course not residential. So because they are commercial they
15 would be required to meet LEED Silver, correct? Now the LEED-ND has attributes that a new
16 LEED building that the LEED requirements for buildings doesn't have, and those have to do
1 7 with neighborhood linkages, some additional transportation, and some other connectivity sorts of
18 points that can be earned. I guess I am wondering if there is an exclusion, or a potential
19 exclusion, here for commercial properties that have only a single use or a single structure on
20 them versus ones that have more than one structure, because then they immediately start to take
21 on characteristics that have more to do with neighborhoods in terms of how those buildings are
22 sited, how you get through them, the transportation through them, etc., or mixed use which it
23 seems to me is another -something that is more germane to the neighborhood.
24
25 Ms. Parineh: So one of the things that we get into when we talk about structures is size. You
26 could have two buildings on a single parcel that are 10,000 square foot each or you could have
27 one 20,000 square foot building, and would we apply the criteria any different based on those
28 situations. One of the projects I am thinking about is I think 325 Lytton, by Tenny building that
29 was just completely demolished. You could easily put three buildings there or you could just the
30 one big one that they are putting there. So if I am a developer and I thought it was expensive and
31 wanted to get out of it I might build one building there as opposed to three because I would
32 trigger the LEED-ND requirements.
33
34 Commissioner Garber: But if I am that developer I would still need to go through the regular
35 LEED process for that single building.
36
37 Ms. Parineh: Yes, they would still need to do Green Building review or CALGreen now I guess
38 if this is approved for the single building, but they would be getting out of the LEED-ND
39 requirement by doing a single building.
40
41 Commissioner Garber: I am not necessarily recommending this. All I am really trying to think
42 of here is the sort of double duty, the sort of belts and suspenders, and do we really need that for
43 the single building because the issues really are not -the opportunity to create incentives to
44 design a proj ect that meet some of the interests that we have in neighborhoods really don't exist
45 with the single buildings the way that they do for multiple.
46
Page 10
1 Ms. Parineh: Right. I think one of the things you brought up was mixed use, and could we
2 requite it when mixed use came in. One of the things that LEED-ND encourages is mixed use.
3 So they may have come in as a commercial project and we wouldn't have required it but if it was
4 required then if I were the developer I would seriously consider mixed use because I would get a
5 lot of points for that.
6
7 Commissioner Garber: I got you. We wouldn't be asking them to do both in that? Our LEED-
8 ND would then replace the requirement for LEED. But actually that is going away because we
9 are going to be doing CALGreen anyway, so they have to meet that criteria regardless.
10
11 Ms. Parineh: I want to make sure since you brought that up actually they would still need to
12 meet it. According to the way we wrote the ordinance was they would have to meet the LEED-
13 ND requirements for neighborhood connection, walkability, etc., and then the buildings would
14 actually have to meet our Green Building Regulations for energy, water efficiency, etc.
15
16 Commissioner Garber: Thank you.
17
18 Chair Tuma: I have a few questions/comments. I am generally in agreement with previous
19 statements about lowering the thresholds. I think if we get into a situation where we are simply
20 getting inundated and there is too much maybe we can revisit it and cut it off. I don't think there
21 would be anything that would prevent us from doing that. I would hate to go through a whole
22 year and then not get enough data to be useful or reasonable.
23
24 I think the concept that you have thrown out about sort of a single threshold size does make a lot
25 of sense, a little bit more easier to administer.
26
27 Along those lines though on the bottom of page 6 there is a discussion about whether 25 points is
28 the right number there. You talk about with LEED Silver being 50 points and 60 percent would
29 be 30. Since we are not actually requiring anybody to do this work again, will we get more and
30 perhaps better data if we bump that number up to 30? Again, it is just a paper exercise at this
31 point. We are not putting the 'financial burden of actually doing this work so if we bumped it up
32 to 30 sort of the equivalent of 60 percent ofLEED Silver does that get us better data? So that is
33 something that conceptually I am supportive of unless you see some reason not to do that.
34
35 Ms. Parineh: No, I agree with you. I think for the purpose of data collection that would be great.
36 My only concern is I hope in a year from now when we revise these Staff and Commissioners
37 recall that we increased these and lowered the parcel size and increased the point thresholds for
38 data collection purposes. I don't want us to get to a year from now and go with those thresholds
39 because that is where we collected the data.
40
41 Chair Tuma: We will rely on you to remind us of that.
42
43 Ms. Parineh: I will have to remember that.
44
Page 11
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Chair Tuma: Pull these minutes back out. One other sort of I guess somewhat administrative
thing here is in temlS of the timeframe. You have the date of January 1 through Decenlber 31. Is
that for any new application submitted in that time?
Ms. Parineh: Yes, the idea was any new applications that submitted in that time, or since it is a
pilot program now we could say anyone going to a Planning or ARB meeting during that time
because we might capture more in that way as well.
Ms. French: I would tend to suggest that it is for new applications submitted within the year. I
actually underestimated. I was thinking of Individual Review. We have about 130 Individual
Review applications per year. It is closer to 300~something ARB applications.
What I am thinking about, and I wish I had thought about this earlier, is when a project is CEQA
Exempt it is less than four residential units. They are not subject to Staff performing an
environmental document. When somebody is changing a fayade that could go to ARB because it
is significant visually, but I am kind of thinking we are trying to be business friendly to an
extent, why do we want to make somebody fill out for half a day something that is irrelevant for
their fayade remodel? That is an exempt from CEQA kind ofproject. So I am throwing this out
there, but perhaps we can think of when it is npt exempt from CEQA this data starts to be more
relevant.
Chair Tuma: Okay.
Ms. French: I am sorry, I should continue that thought. So for commercial buildings over a
certain size, so you might have a commercial building infill that is just a retail building that may
not because it is under 5,000 square feet you are not going to necessarily make them submit a
LEED checklist if you throw that exempt idea in there.
I
Chair Tuma: Okay. I had a question about something again on page 5 there is a comment there
at the end -of the first paragraph under paragraph D that LEED-ND concepts will also be used to
evaluate area plans and the Comprehensive Plan Update. That is an interesting statement. How
is it envisioned that that is actually going to come into play? We are sort of into that process
now and so I would be interested to hear thoughts on that.
Ms. Parineh: Right. That was more of kind of a notification statement .since we were bringing
up LEED-ND than direct relevance to the ordinance. However, during the Comprehensive Plan
Update I know the Sustainability Committee, I am not sure if that is their formal title, has been
meeting and we have been pulling in concepts from LEED-ND, most recently for slope
protection. When you get the revision for that you will see that some of the language directly
came for new slope protection policy or program from LEED-ND. So we are doing our best
with the limited scope of the Comprehensive Plan Update to incorporate ideas or language where
possible.
Chair Tuma: Okay.
Page 12
1 Ms. Julie Caporgno. Chief Planning Official: Can I just add one thing too? I believe that that
2 was a request that came from either the Councilor the Plannil1g Commission, but I believe it was
3 from the Planning Commission when you reviewed one of the projects previously that we apply
4 LEED-ND whenever possible for the concept plans. Now it is not going to fit perfectly because
5 we are looking at large scale development and we are not looking at specific projects. But we
6 are going to be taking some of the concepts from LEED-ND and applying them in the reports
7 that you will be getting on the concept plans for both California Avenue and East Meadow Circle
8
9 Chair Tuma: Great, I think that is helpful and useful. Commissioner Keller.
10
11 Commissioner Keller: Thank you. The purpose of this exercise is to gather data. If we are
12 going to be gathering data then we essentially want to gather data that we can do appropriate
13 statistical analysis on that we can then find where the thresholds should be in an ordinance, and
14 what the points should be. So in some sense the threshold of 30 points is an interesting thing but
15 it is also interesting to see if the threshold were 25 points how many projects would meet the
16 threshold or at 35 points how many projects would meet it. So in some sense it is interesting
1 7 thing to say the threshold should be 30 for something, but actually in many ways we want to
18 analyze how many points people get. So not only whether they meet the threshold of 30 but
19 exactly how many points they get.
20
21 So I am going to throw out a motion and if people like it we can use it, if not we can amend it.
22
23 Chair Tuma: Bear with me one second. City Attorney, is it okay for us to bifurcate this into two
24 motions and two actions?
25
26 Mr. Don Larkin. Interim City Attorney: Yes, that is completely within the Commission's
27 discretion.
28
29 Chair Tuma: Thanks.
30
31 MOTION
32
33 Comnlissioner Keller: So I am going to recommend that the LEED-ND checklist for the smart
34 locations and linkage, and neighborhood pattern and design sections of the LEED-ND checklist
35 be filled out for those projects that either exceed a quarter-acre or larger, or three dwelling units
36 or larger, however it excludes projects that do not change the building envelope, and it also
37 excludes projects that do not change the use. So in other words if they don't change the building
38 envelope, and they don't change the use they are excluded. If they change the use then they are
39 included. If they change the building envelope then they are included. But if they don't change
40 the use, and don't change the building envelope then they are excluded from the reporting
41 requirement. That should eliminate things like signage and such.
42
43 This applies to any new application. For example, ARB or PTe or new building permits during
44 the period of data collection. That the recommended threshold be 30 points.
45
46 Chair Tuma: Is there a second?
Page 13
1
2 SECOND
3
4 Commissioner Fineberg: Second.
5
6 Chair Tuma: So motion by Commissioner Keller and seconded by Commissioner Fineberg. Did
7 you have a question before we go to comnlents on the motion?
8
9 Ms. Parineh: I was curious if you could describe the intent behind the envelope. What were you
10 thoughts? Why did you say envelope?
11
12 Commissioner Keller: Well, basically if they are simply modifying an existing building, doing
13 an interior change, or putting signage, or whatever. I was trying to capture the idea of a lot of
14 projects are essentially not really making a significant change. They are ARB review but they
15 are not really things that are making a substantive change to the building for which LEED-ND
16 should apply. So I am trying to cut down if you will superfluous projects. Thank you.
17
18 Chair Tuma: Before we get to Commissioners the maker and the seconder would both have an
19 opportunity to speak to their motion and second if they would like, or we can simply go to the
20 other Commissioners for comment.
21
22 Commissioner Keller: I think I have spoken to this enough. I would be happy to address
23 anybody else's questions or comments.
24
25 Chair Tuma: ConlIDissioner Fineberg.
26
27 Commissioner Fineberg: Ijust have a quick friendly amendment and it may need to be subject
28 to some discussion. Amy had brought up the idea that another sort of catchall way to exclude
29 ones we wouldn't want to look at would be the exclusion ofprojects categorically exempt from
30 CEQA. I don't know whether the language of no change in use, no change in envelope picks
31 that up in its entirety, or whether it is worth layering on also. So I would like to make a friendly
32 amendment that we also exempt projects that are exempt from CEQA review.
33
34 Commissioner Keller: So in order to figure out whether to accept or not accept that friendly
35 amendment I would like to understand whether the not changing building envelope and not
36 changing the use is sufficient, or whether there are other projects that are exempt from CEQA for
37 which we might think might be useful to capture data on.
38
39 Ms. French: So if someone were to add 400 square feet to a building you would say it is not
40 exempt from the LEED-ND. It would be exempt from CEQA. SO if you are adding that onto
41 this it would be CEQA exempt but you would say it needs to go through because they are
42 changing the building envelope by adding 100 or 200 square feet. I don't know if I am
43 answenng you.
44
45 Comnlissioner Keller: Yes, that does answer the question.
46
Page 14
1 Chair Tuma: Let me just interject something there. That is unless we make it and/and/and.
2 Right? So if we made it and/and/and, in other words, the building envelope and categorically
3 exempt from CEQA and not change of use. In other words if it had to meet all three of those, if
4 it triggered any of those then it would ....
5
6 Ms. French: Although I would suggest that you think about if somebody is coming through and
7 they are adding 100 square feet for a recycling container storage on the back of their building do
8 you think that? I don't know, that is a judgment.
9
10 Commissioner Keller: Are there any other kinds of things that are exempt from CEQA? For
11 example if somebody were to build a -are any completely new construction buildings exempt
12 from CEQA?
13
14 Ms. French: Yes, those that are under a certain square footage. I want to say 10,000 square feet.
15 If someone were to teardown a building and put up another building you would be changing the
16 envelope because you would be removing the envelope and then reinstalling the envelope.
17
18 Ms. Parineh: I just want to point out in Table 1 at the top, at the Staff level we did think about
19 all of these weird ways that we would get projects and not want to include them and whatnot. So
20 we ended up going with all new construction. I just wanted to point out that that was the original
21 type covered was just any new construction, which would totally get rid of sign applications or
22 exterior improvements, or interior renovations, and all of that stuff. But it would capture small
23 new construction, large new construction. Then under the All Other Sites we had some other
24 trigger points for those sites. So just keep those in the back of your minds as you are thinking
25 about this.
26
27 Commissioner Keller: So are you suggesting that we replace the notion of this exclusion if you
28 will, by the type columnthat is in the top row?
29
30 Ms. Parineh: Ijust wanted to make sure that you saw that that was the original intention and you
31 had that in the back of your minds. I just wanted to make sure you saw that while you were
32 thinking about this anlendment.
33
34 Ms. French: To define all new construction would mean square footage basically. It is not
35 deleting a wall on the front of a University Avenue building let's say and putting up the same
36 wall for a different tenant.
37
38 Chair Tuma: I think Conlmissioner Martinez is trying to interject a comnlent first and then we
39 will go to Commissioner Fineberg.
40
41 Commissioner Martinez: Not moving ahead to the CALGreen section of our discussion, but in
42 there there was a discussion about rebuilds and what constitutes a rebuild. Are we looking at it
43 in the same way that new construction also will include rebuilds where 75 percent of the walls or
44 25 percent is left, or something of that nature? .
45
Page 15
1 Ms. Parineh: We didn't include a rebuild definition here. I think the original intent, it may be a
2 little broad, was what you think of as new construction, the Walgreen's on the comer, the 325
3 over here on Lytton, the AT&T building on EI Camino those are newly constructed projects. I
4 think the original intent when we were putting it in there was to capture those guys not your
5 building additions or any of the other things.
6
7 Chair Tuma: Commissioner Fineberg and then Garber.
8
9 Commissioner Fineberg: So Commissioner Martinez just exactly asked my question. I am
10 remembering, and correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't the process of the entire amendment
11 changing the Municipal Code how we define new construction? So it is not a matter of whether
12 we capture rebuild in the LEED-ND, but ifLEED-ND is referring to new construction, and if we
13 have changed how we define new construction in Municipal Code then new construction means
14 our new definition, which is the rebuild with the 75 percent.
15
16 Ms. Parineh: We are defining rebuild in the Building Code so it won't be this. Do we have new
17 construction defined anywhere in the Planning?
18
19 Ms. French: No, it is not in the definitions in Title 18, New Construction.
20
21 Commissioner Fineberg: Okay, page 3 of our Staff Report, top bullet point. Maybe I just don't
22 understand this, but it reads, "The definition of a "Rebuild" has been incorporated into the
23 definition of new construction." So is that going to impact how we define new construction?
24
25 Ms. Parineh: No, this amendnlent is in the Building Code. So we are an lending the -yes State
26 Building Code. So when it comes in for a building permit the project will be looked at that way,
27 but when it comes in for Planning it wouldn't.
28
29 Ms. French: Just to jump on that. Ifwe are using the two examples that Kristin brought up,
30 Walgreen's and 265 Lytton, those were buildings that were not exempt from CEQA. They were
31 adding square footage, removing the building and building a bigger building. So it wasn't just
32 simply replacenlent of the building with the same square footage.
33
34 Chair Tuma: Okay, thanks. Commissioner Garber.
35
36 Commissioner Garber: So is the maker considering the suggestion of incorporating new
37 construction into the definition of exclusions?
38
39 Comnlissioner Keller: I would entertain a motion of that kind.
40
41 Commissioner Garber: I would be happy to make it if I could think of how to construct it. Does
42 anyone from Staffhave a suggestion?
43
44 Ms. Parineh: Sorry. Is your intent to exclude new construction or add?
45
Page 16
\
1 Commissioner Garber: To get back to your Table 1 here that defines the study to be all new
2 construction. So it was defined as or the maker had structured around exclusion. You are
3 proposing it as inclusion.
4
5 Ms. Parineh: Right.
6
7 Commissioner Garber: I am trying to figure out is there a subset between these things that we
8 need to try and whittle away or add to one or the other? How do we get so I am looking for a
9 way to merge these things.
10
11 Ms. Parineh: Is there a way to do potentially one-fourth of an acre or three dwelling units or
12 larger of new construction and not categorically exempt from CEQA?
13
14 Commissioner Garber: That sounds good to me.
15
16 Ms. Parineh: Then the rest of that, which was new applications after January 1 and the 30-point
17 level.
18
19 Commissioner Garber: The 30-point level. Consider that a friendly amendment.
20
21 Commissioner Keller: I think that is fine. It should also I assume - I would suggest that we do
22 that as well as including all of the things that are on the other sites list such as rezonings, Planned
23 Community, Site and Design, all those other kinds of things uniformly across.
24
25 Commissioner Garber: Yes, that is fine.
26
27 Commissioner Keller: So with that change I will make the appropriate amendments if people are
28 keeping track of what is going on.
29
30 Ms. French: I am not keeping track of what you just said. Can I just ask the question? The
31 bullets under the projects that are not in those special areas you want to drag across the other
32 columns, is that what I just heard?
33
34 Commissioner Keller: Yes. I do want rezonings within fixed rail or traffic corridor or
35 neighborhood centers. I think that basically we should be uniform in terms of gathering data
36 across all of the four categories.
37
38 Ms. Parineh: Can I ask a clarifying question? So it would read new construction not
39 categorically exenlpt from CEQA andlor rezoning, Planned Conlffiunity is that the intention?
40
41 Commissioner Keller: Right. In other words, the things that are picked up by this are all new
42 construction that is not categorically exempt from CEQA.
43
44 Ms. Parineh: Okay.
45
46 Commissioner Keller: No, new construction and not categorically exempt from CEQA.
Page 17
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Ms. Parineh: Right.
Commissioner Keller: I am trying to figure out my DeMorgan's laws. So ifit is new
construction it is included. If it is not exempt from CEQA it is included. If it is rezoned it is
included. If it is Planned Community it is included. If it is Site and Design Review for mixed
use it is included, and if there is a CUP it is included. Those are all reasons to include.
Ms. French: CUP to change fronl commercial to residential?
Commissioner Keller: That is correct.
Mr. Larkin: I would just point out, I don't think it hurts to add those into the motion, but none of
those would be categorically exempt from CEQA, so none of those would fall in anyway.
ConlIDissioner Keller: Okay, great.
18 \ Commissioner Garber: You are pointing out that we are wearing both belts and suspenders here.
19
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Chair Tuma: So procedurally where we are is that there is an offer of a friendly amendment. I
for one anl not entirely clear as to what that friendly amendnlent is. Maybe I am the only one in
the room but I am seeing a few other grins. So can somebody state this?
Commissioner Keller: Can I try to restate?
Chair Tuma: Hang on one second I think Commissioner Fineberg wants to intelject something
here.
Commissioner Fineberg: A point of order. I think I had the first friendly amendment on the
table and to make life easier will withdraw it, get it off the table, and we can go to Commissioner
Garber's friendly amendment for discussion.
Chair Tuma: Okay, but I would like somebody to .....
Commissioner Garber: I am going to allow Commissioner Keller to give it a shot.
Chair Tuma: Okay.
Commissioner Keller: So I am going to try to restate the full motion just to be clear. We are
going to require the checklist for the purposes of gathering data in the LEED-ND checklist for
the smart location and linkage, and neighborhood pattern and design sections only. For all new
applications or for ARB or PTC review or new building permits that are either a quarter-acre or
greater, or include three or more dwelling units, and consist of one or more of the following: all
new construction, not exempt from CEQA, or involves a rezoning, Planned Community, Site and
Design Review for mixed use project, or Conditional Use Permit for change of use from
Page 18
1 commercial to residential. Further, that our recomnlended threshold is 30 points under the
2 LEED-ND.
3
4 Chair Tuma: Is the seconder comfortable with that friendly amendment as offered?
5
6 Commissioner Fineberg: Yes, and from our chart there is also a section that says projects
7 retaining and rehabilitating an existing historic building shall receive a five-point credit towards
8 the minimum 25 points required. Please add the five-point credit for historic preservation.
9
10 Commissioner Keller: Yes. So what I would say is that there be a separate listing of all those
11 projects that are entitled to a five-point credit towards the minimum points because they retain
12 and rehabilitate an existing historic building.
13
14 Chair Tuma: Our City Attorneywould like to say something.
15
16 Mr. Larkin: I was but it is taken care of.
17
18 Chair Tuma: Good. I have lights from Vice-Chair Lippert and Commissioner Martinez.
19
20 Vice-Chair Lippert: I am going to go back to my original premise, which is SB 375 and transit
21 priority projects. Within that the whole point is to build higher density near transit and for low,
22 very low, and moderate-income housing or senior housing. It is specifically when you begin to
23 take each of these bullet points on you have a cascading relief from CEQA. SO you are moving
24 in a direction of building something that is sustainable yet you are requiring that they put
25 together this checklist.
26
27 Now I am not so concerned about putting together the checklist for data gathering purposes.
28 When we begin to take the pilot program and now move it into something that is a requirenlent
29 that you meet a certain threshold or point, well, it seems like a duplication of effort. You are
30 imposing something on something that is supposed to be sustainable by prescriptive means. So
31 what I find is that in doing this the state is saying this is what we are looking for higher density,
32 affordable housing, low income, near transit and then now they are required to justify that as
33 being something sustainable. It is, as you described it, I think a belt and suspenders approach for
34 something that might be considered to be over-regulation in some ways.
35
36 Chair Tuma: Commissioner Martinez followed by Garber.
37
38 Commissioner Garber: I was just trying to understand, Commissioner Lippert, you are
39 concerned that, let's forget about the trial program here, what you are concerned about is should
40 the City require an applicant to perform the LEED-ND checklist that that in some way excludes
41 the project from the CEQA process, or that is yet one more thing that that applicant has to do in
42 order to get through the entire planning process?
43
44 Vice-Chair Lippert: Every time we impose another set of regulations or another set of
45 documentation it creates an obstacle to this process advancing. So what it does is create a
Page 19
1 regulation that is really an exercise not so nluch that it is going to change the substance of what
2 the outcome is.
3
4 Commissioner Garber: I think the argument would be that CEQA in the way it is written is
5 looking for impacts. It doesn't have specific recommendations for how to do some things.
6 LEED-ND is on the other end of the scale talking about how you do things. Would that be a fair
7 characterization? So yes, it would require yet one more thing for an applicant to perform, but
8 presumably the reason that the City would be requiring that is because we want thenl to do things
9 in a certain way. LEED-ND embodies a number of those things that we value in the community
10 and therefore it is important for us to require applicants to do that. Does that make sense?
11
12 Vice-Chair Lippert: Yes, but I am not arguing that point. The whole point of having LEED-ND
13 is in some ways self-evident. What I am arguing is that SB 375, which is so explicit in terms of
14 coming to an outcome where you have higher density housing located near transit for very low-
15 income persons or semors, which by itself describes a certain profile in a prescriptive nlanner.
16
17 Commissioner Garber: My understanding of that state law is that ultimately it is getting at
18 emissions. It prescribes certain ways that cities have to perfonn to reduce ultimately that. It is
19 written very generally, so again, it is saying density but it is not saying how tall, how much, how
20 dense that leads to any granularity that someone that is dealing with a specific site can use to
21 organize a building program or a pro forma to create financing around, something of that sort. It
22 is very general in that it is asking areas or regions to perform in a certain way. I guess what I am
23 trying to say is it is operating at a different scale.
24
25 So I guess in my mind it does leave open the need for cities/municipalities of a variety of sorts to
26 get down to the next granular level to talk closer to the 'how to' as opposed to the 'why' end of
27 the scale if you follow me. Am I making any sense? I am looking to Staffhere.
28
29 Ms. Parineh: I think that was a perfect explanation of how it relates. I mean it was developed as
30 an implementation tool for helping to make AB 375 possible and manageable from a developer
31 or an individual city level. So I think that was perfect. That was great.
32
33 Vice-Chair Lippeli: I think we are saying very sinlilar things. We are describing it a little bit
34 differently. Where you are talking about SB 375 as reducing greenhouse gas emissions I guess
35 what I am looking at is LEED-ND as reducing a carbon footprint. Very similar. But I guess
36 where the rub is is that the City is looking for ways of reducing, at least the City Manager, is
37 looking at ways of facilitating projects that we are in some ways over-regulating and being
38 duplicitous, is that the right word? Duplicating, duplicative, thank you. Duplicative in some of
39 the regulations here. What I think is important is that within another year or nlaybe six months
40 SB 375 as the nletropolitan planning agencies begin to come online and identify SCCs, the
41 Sustainable Centers of Community, this is a tool that is a rating tool for gathering information.
42 At some point there will be an intersection where we will be able to actually begin to implement
43 the regulations a little bit better.
44
45 Commissioner Garber: With the Chair's permission I will continue the conversation? I think the
46 City Manager is right to look for ways to streamline applicants' requests for permission to build
Page 20
1 and plan in the city. I don't think that this necessarily inhibits that. I don't think the City has
2 thought through the incentives that could be applied to pursue this. There is another topic in
3 there let me see if I can catch it as it is running out of my head. Let me come back to it because
4 it was important but I will come back to it.
5
6 Mr. Larkin: If I can interject while Commissioner Garber is trying to find his point. I just want
7 to mention because I think there has been some talk about the CEQA exemptions. It is important
8 to note that even though SB 375 is starting to become implemented it will be sonle time before
9 those CEQA exemptions actually become available to developers wanting to develop. It is not
10 going to happen during this planning period. There are some precursors. We will have our new
11 Housing Element and our new Comprehensive Plan Update completed before those get
12 implemented by ABAG. So it will be actually the next planning period before those CEQA,
13 exemptions actually come to fruition, which might actually make it dovetail with what we are
14 doing here with the LEED-ND standards.
15
16 Chair Tuma: Okay. Commissioner Garber did you catch that though back into your head?
17
18 Commissioner Garber: It has been roped. I had had a conversation with Commissioner Martinez
19 very recently regarding CALGreen and recognizing that the implementation of CALGreen, he
20 nlade the conlparison that it is probably going to be very similar to the introduction of the ADA
21 rules to build, and that there is significant burden at the beginning that will eventually be worked
22 out of the system fairly quickly as people begin to recognize how to operate within it. The only
23 reason I am bringing that up is I suspect LEED-ND as well as CALGreen, etc. will also have
24 similar effects. It is going to be hard in the beginning. Part of the reason that it is being
25 proposed as a trial is to give people an opportunity to learn it without penalty. Then presumably,
26 hopefully it is just the standard way of working.
27
28 Chair Tuma: Okay, Commissioner Martinez.
29
30 Coriunissioner Martinez: I forgot what I was going to say. Actually, I agree with both my
31 colleagues. I see it though a little differently in the sense that the LEED-ND is a Palo Alto thing,
32 a way for us, as I think I said earlier, to implement good planning practices. I agree with Vice-
33 Chair Lippert in the sense that we can over-regulate. Whenever we want to flex our muscles we
34 raise the ante a bit like going from 25 points to 30 points just to show we can do it.
35
36 I would like to see just the pilot project work.' As Commissioner Garber said to let the kinks
37 work themselves out. Let's get people working with it, getting accustomed to it, not making the
38 bar so high that we get complaints, and we come across as anti-business, anti-development.
39 There are plenty of Comprehensive Plan policies and programs under Land Use and Housing and
40 Natural Resources that cover many of the same things that we are trying to accomplish here.
41 This really gives us a really clear sketch of where we want to go in urban developnlent in key
42 areas of the city. I think we should allow it to proceed. I agree the quarter-acre size limit makes
43 a lot of sense. The 30 points I think it is a little arbitrary and I would prefer if we stick with the
44 25. Thank you.
45
46 Chair Tunla: Conlffiissioner Fineberg.
Page 21
1
2 Commissioner Fineberg: I just want to talk a little bit about the issue of whether it is a
3 regulatory burden for projects where the state is trying to reduce a burden. I see it as the
4 opposite because what LEED-ND is basically doing it is providing an objective, measurable, and
5 quantifiable tool that we can use to define the goals in our Comprehensive Plan. Our
6 Comprehensive Plan says we want walkable neighborhoods. Well, what does that mean? There
7 is a sidewalk that takes you to nowhere or a bicycle path that goes 100 feet and then stops? The
8 way our Comprehensive Plan is right now we could use those kinds of less than ideal features
9 and say it is a walkablelbikeable community when if you really look at it it is somewhere in the
10 middle of nowhere and a dead end transportation network doesn't help. This then removes all
11 objectivity. It provides an environment of certainty, one that is known, one that is dependable,
12 and one that developers or homeowners or whatever can know that that is how we are defining it,
13 that is what the City wants, and those will be the standards that they are measured by. They can
14 then choose to plan their project how they want knowing that is how we define the many
15 features. We don't have to invent the wheel again and define what walkable is, define what
16 livable is, define what near job centers, and frankly we are leveraging on the work ofLEED
1 7 because they are going to be tweaking and changing the criteria. I would assume if they do a
18 major overhaul we would pick that up in an amendment down the road. So it lets us kind of -we
19 can rely on the experts. We can pick and choose later if we want, but it allows us to provide a
20 known universe for people to plan in. We don't do that right now so I can understand with
21 Commissioner Lippert that it might be seen as a slight increase in a regulatory burden but I think
22 by regulating a known universe we are providing some certainty.
23
24 Chair Tuma: I know Commissioner Keller has a couple of wrap up comments and then I think
25 we are ready to vote. Does Staff have any concerns or input on where we currently stand, the
26 motion that is on the floor?
27
28 Ms. Parineh: Yes, my only concern and I am not passing judgment at all is he included building
29 permits in his amendment. I just want to make sure that we are all on the same page that that
30 would include any of these projects that if they already went to ARB or PTC and are now
31 coming in for building permit according to his amendment all of those projects when they come
32 in for building permit would also have to do this exercise. Everyone understands that this is a
33 new requirement and is okay with that. I just want to make sure of that.
34
35 Ms. French: I want to add on to that too because we are putting this in Title 18 Zoning, 18.44.
36 We are not suggesting now we go into Title 16 Building. If you just limit it to planning permi~s
37 then we are cool because we are doing Title 18. If you start saying we are going to make
38 building permits do it, like you are saying, redundancy because they have already submitted it
39 for the planning entitlement and then they are having to do it again at building. It is also things
40 that have already gone through and now they are conling for their building permits in January for
41 something that was approved two years ago, and is that what we really want to do here? I think I
42 would say no, stick to planning entitlements like we did when we started our Green Building
43 program, and keep it in Title 18.
44
Page 22
1 Chair Tuma: Okay. So Commissioner Keller, was that your intent to have this trigger to
2 basically projects that have been completely approved other than having the building pemlit
3 pulled?
4
5 Commissioner Keller: Well, what I was saying, my intent was basically to gather data. I wasn't
6 suggesting that if a project got planning approval and building approval that they have to submit
7 the checklist twice. It seemed to me that if projects had already gone through planning approval
8 and they were submitting a building permit then we would like them, in order gather data, to
9 include that. But I am open to comments about that.
10
11 Mr. Larkin: I think we can voluntarily request data but I don't think we can actually make a
12 requirement to provide data for a building permit. That is a ministerial act. So I think we would
13 have a harder time enforcing that.
14
15 Con1ffiissioner Keller: Okay, so let me amend that to say if they have a new subnlission for a
16 planning process, which may be a new application, it may be a revised application, and then they
17 have to submit the checklist somewhere along the way. Obviously if they have already
18 submitted a checklist and it hasn't changed that is okay, they don't have to submit it again. We
19 voluntarily request it if it meets the thresholds when they submit a building permit but it is not
20 required. That is an amendment. Is it okay?
21
22 Chair Tuma: Commissioner Fineberg, I know you had your light on but also I think first you
23 need to address the amendment of the motion by Commissioner Keller.
24
25 Commissioner Fineberg: Yes, I would accept that. Can I speak now to the? There two items in
26 Table 1 under Special Considerations that I forgot. I dropped that rope before. Under Special
27 Considerations it says that if the proposed project includes more than one parcel that are adjacent
28 to one another and have the same owner/developer they should be considered together under
29 LEED-ND review, and the requirement apply to cumulative or phased projects under review
30 with in a five-year period. If I read the Staff Report correctly, I believe those were suggestions
31 from Council that came up after our Study Session. If for fear of complicating things more if I
32 might do Special Considerations need to be included in the wording of our motion, or can Staff
33 capture that as work product if we all nod our heads yes?
34
35 Commissioner Keller: How about if I formally include the three Considerations in the motion?
36
37 Commissioner Fineberg: The third may already have been picked up given how we have
38 reworked our language so I think we only need to do the first two.
39
40 Commissioner Keller: Okay, I will take on the first two.
41
42 Commissioner Fineberg: I will second it.
43
44 Chair Tuma: Vice-Chair Lippert followed by Martinez, then if we could get to a vote that would
45 be great.
46
Page 23
1 Vice-Chair Lippert: I also wanted one additional clarification from Commissioner Keller with
2 regard to change of use on a building triggering this.
3
4 Commissioner Keller: That is no longer there. What is there now is Conditional Use Permit for
5 change from commercial use to residential.
6
7 Vice-Chair Lippert: So that is gone. Okay, that is great. That's fine because change of use
8 doesn't necessarily trigger the discretionary review process.
9
10 Chair Tuma: Commissioner Martinez.
11
12 Commissioner Martinez: I want to go back to the last amendment of this motion by
13 Commissioner Keller. I thought I heard you saying by asking applicants that have already gone
14 through the planning review and have an approval that they submit the checklist voluntarily
15 when they apply for a building permit. Is that correct?
16
17 Commissioner Keller: I am asking them to voluntarily do that if they are willing to if they have
18 not already submitted it.
19
20 Commissioner Martinez: My understanding is this isn't a survey. Isn't this an actual
21 requirement that you meet the 25 points or 30 points of the LEED-ND? So can we ask those
22 folks that have already received planning approval to fill out this checklist and verify that they
23 comply with LEED-ND?
24
25 Mr. Larkin: We can ask them to fill out the checklist but if they don't meet the 25 or 30-point
26 threshold it won't make a difference we will still have to issue the building permits.
27
28 Commissioner Martinez: I think then what is the point?
29
30 Commissioner Keller: Weare gathering data. We are not requiring for this purpose anybody to
31 implement anything but fill out the checklist. Remember this is simply gathering data for the
32 pilot program.
33
34 Commissioner Martinez: Are we not asking folks to comply with LEED-ND?
35
36 Commissioner Keller: No.
37
38 Ms. Parineh: We are currently not requesting that they comply with LEED-ND. There is one
39 other thing since this came up that I want to bring up. Before we pass our Green Building
40 Regulations we required voluntary checklists in a similar fashion to this for Green Building
41 projects. After probably the first six months of collecting that I realized that the data wasn't
42 incredibly useful because they just really wanted to pull their permits so they were just checking
43 off things and handing me the list, and getting their moment and moving on their way. So
44 probably only half the people were doing a thoughtful exercise and really thinking about it how
45 they can incorporate and the other half were just saying here. So we are going to get some bad
Page 24
1 numbers potentially on that end, and we will just have to keep that in mind when we are
2 reviewing that portion of the data.
3
4 Chair Tuma: So are we ready to vote. Commissioner Keller, two comments.
5
6 Commissioner Keller: The first comment is to address something that Commissioner Tanaka
7 brought up about whether Palo Alto should be on the bleeding edge of this. Palo Alto is
8 traditionally on the bleeding edge of it. Yes, exactly. In particular, dating back to when we had
9 one of the first recycling ordinances in the nation, and the fact that we had a climate protection
10 plan before a number of other cities did. So we like to be leaders. We traditionally like to
11 experiment with these things. Because the measures are not mandatory the filling of the
12 checklist is in general mandatory that is not a problem.
13
14 With respect to the issues brought up about SB 375 if SB 375 is worth its salt so to speak then it
15 should be easy to meet for those projects. It should be easy to meet LEED-ND. It should be
16 rather trivial for them to meet LEED-ND at no additional expense. If these projects that
17 supposedly meet SB 375 don't meet LEED-ND then we have a problem and we should identify
18 that.
19
20 The second half of that is that we could consider a potential exemption from the LEED-ND
21 process for those projects that do meet the SB 375, SCC, or whatever those other alphabet soup
22 of things there are. At this point we are simply gathering data and that data will allow us to
23 determine whether an exemption makes sense when this comes back to us in about a year.
24
25 MOTION PASSED (7-0-0-0)
26
27 Chair Tuma: Okay, with that seeing no more lights or flailing arms I would say all those in favor
28 of the motion as amended -well let me ask, is everybody clear on what we are voting on? Okay.
29 So all those in favor of the motion as amended say aye. (ayes) Opposed? That passes
30 unanimously.
31
32 I would like to just keep going unless anyone feels a compelling need to take a break. We will
33 go into the CALGreen section, which is again sonlething that we have seen before. It is coming
34 to us now having had some additional vetting through UAC, ARB, and the City Council. So
35 with that as a backdrop who would like to get us started? Great, do we have a motion then?
36 Commissioner Tanaka.
37
38 Commissioner Tanaka: Thank you. I have a question for Staff. With the LEED-ND with the
39 commercial and the residential we are going to have potentially three standards going on here. I
40 am all in favor of sinlplicity and efficiency as nluch as possible. So in your opinion'what do you
41 think the long-term trend is going to be in California for both residential and commercial in
42 terms of adoption of these different standards?
43
44 Ms. Parineh: I would probably say without a doubt that ten years from now we will be using the
45 California Green Building Code, and it probably won't even be called the California Green
46 Building Code. It will probably just be integrated into all the Building Code. So we will just be
Page 25
1 doing business as usual following the Building Code and it will all be integrated into that. That
2 is where I would think things are going.
3
4 Commissioner Tanaka: So for both residential and commercial it will be integrated all into
5 CALGreen.
6
7 Ms. Parineh: Yes.
8
9 Commissioner Tanaka: Okay. Given what my fellow Commissioner just said in terms of Palo
10 Alto being the bleeding edge if not bleeding, would it not make sense for us to go with one
11 standard for both the residential and the commercial ? If maybe some parts of it fall short from
12 what we are currently doing we could always do one standard and then amend a few things
13 above it. I. guess the reason why I am pushing for that is because I think for us to have multiple
14 standards it incurs cost, administratIve costs, inspection costs, cost to the applicants as well,
15 efficiencies with the architects. So I would strongly encourage that we try to go with one
16 standard, especially if this is going to be a long-term trend in the state. Maybe we should also try
17 to lead it. I realize that we have some legacy right now with Build. It Green but if this is the
18 long-term trend I think maybe let's get ahead of it. Especially since it looks like our inspectors
19 are going to be already rolling on CALGreen they would be able to do the residential as well
20 versus the applicants having to outsource that to someone else and incur additional cost. Do you
21 have any thoughts on that?
22
23 Ms. Parineh: Yes. The primary purpose and why we stuck with CALGreen for the
24 nonresidential and Build It Green for the residential was purely probably an enforcement issue.
25 Our residential construction is probably 60 to 70 percent whereas the nonresidential is much
26 smaller. So from an enforcement perspective we are starting offbiting off the smaller part of the
27 pie instead of the larger part of the pie. So I think currently it is more feasible.
28
29 Also for the last two years while we have been implementing the Green Building Program Staff
30 has been enforcing LEED for nonresidential projects. So we have experience on nonresidential
31 projects with a lot of the things that are in CALGreen for nonresidential projects. It is going to
32 take us time to become more comfortable with the residential side of things because the
33 residential code is significantly different than the nonresidential code. You could imagine the
34 differences in types of construction and construction methods between residences and
35 commercial use. So that is the reason why we went with the direction that we went with.
36
37 Over the next few years, get more confident using CALGreen, more confident using the
38 residential CALGreen and then switch over once we have better enforcement capability.
39
40 Comnlissioner Tanaka: So the long-term plan is still to actually converge on CALGreen but not
41 LEED is what you are saying?
42
43 Ms. Parineh: Right.
44
45 Commissioner Tanaka: Okay. Can you make it optional so that if residential projects for
46 whatever reason want to start using CALGreen instead of Build It Green?
Page 26
1
2 Ms. Parineh: The way the current language reads it allows them to use an alternative approach,
3 which would be CALGreen so long as they showed it was equivalently meeting our level of
4 green using CALGreen. The same for nonresidential. So say you have to use CAL Green but if
5 somebody wanted to use LEED and showed that they could do so equivalently then we would
6 allow them to use that path.
7
8 Commissioner Tanaka: How hard is that? Is that like hours, and hours, and hours of work of
9 trying to convince Staff that this CALGreen is equivalent to the Build It Green ordinance that we
10 have right now or is it something that is an easy process that we will have in place so that if
11 someone is trying to do this they could fit into the process easily?
12
13 Ms. Parineh: I don't think it would be too difficult. I did the exercise. It is one of the
14 attachments. I think it is Attachment D. It is Attachnlent C, the one with the yellow scorecard. I
·15 basically looked at CALGreen and said if I had to meet CALGreen Tier 2 with our local
16 amendments would I meet LEED Silver? So it is kind of a similar exercise that a project would
17 do. This probably once again took me about a half of a day to figure out, but also this was my
18 first time trying to do the exercise. So it might be faster for other people. So it is not
19 unreasonable.
20
21 Commissioner Tanaka: So just because I want to kind of test this. What if in one year we say
22 we are going to go CALGreen, and start phasing in CALGreen as soon as possible versus
23 dragging out the Build It Green, which we are going to phase out anyway, so that people know
24 that this is going to happen. Is that a feasible thing to have? A year maybe of transition period
25 and make it clear to people that we are going to CALGreen and that people could jump to
26 CALGreenright now if they want to or stick with Build It Green if they want to. So that is very
27 clear that this is where we are headed and that everyone could plan for it versus keep it going
28 right now and then say okay, in a couple of years we will kind of figure it out and standardize on
29 this one code.
30
31 Ms. Parineh: From a personal staffing perspective I would love to be able to do that but I would
32 have concerns unless we were able to hire additional staff within the next year to support the
33 inspections that would be necessary for a large residential market. While our inspectors could
34 become educated I don't think we have enough. They are currently already overwhelmed or not
35 overwhelmed but over booked and have a lot of work to do. So it is hard for me to imagine them
36 taking on all of the residential projects and then doing it to the same quality of enforcement as
37 Build It Green currently with our current staffing levels.
38
39 Commissioner Tanaka: What I am trying to say is, and I appreciate that. I guess what I am
40 trying to get at is maybe having a more explicit timeline saying that okay, maybe it is two years.
41 I don't know what a good transition period is but something so that it is pr~tty clear that we are
42 headed in this direction, and what I would really like for us to go to is really streamline this as
43 much as possible so we don't have multiple. I realize with Build It Green now the reason why
44 we could do it is because people have to hire someone, pay an outside party for this. But that is a
45 cost and an extra tax for them. So it is still costs anyway, maybe not the City but it is costing. I
Page 27
1 think accelerating the transition process is a good thing to do and efficient for everyone and helps
2 business.
3
4 Ms. Parineh: I don't know if we can do this but to help with your concern you could put in - I
5 don't know how we would do it because it is a Building Code amendment but you could put
6 something in there like Staff is required to return to us in three years to consider adoption of
7 CALGreen for residential market, or if you just have in the intent of the minutes if it works. I am
8 not sure how that works.
9
10 Ms. French: I wouldn't suggest that that be part of the ordinance, to return. We have done this
11 with our Green Building Program, we are going to come back in a year, revisit this, discuss how
12 it went. So definitely that is our intention is to come back in a year to discuss how it went. That
13 would be a good time to then say are we ready to take this on, how is the economy, can we hire
14 more staff? I agree with Kristin that we are not setup right now to just take it all for the
15 residential, nor can I imagine that we would absolutely be there a year from now.
16
1 7 Commissioner Tanaka: Could someone hire a CALGreen rated person to do it? So for
18 residential maybe ....
19
20 Ms. French: Do they exist?
21
22 Ms. Parineh: Yes you could. They currently don't exist. So you could hire somebody with the
23 expertise. You could hire a Build It Green rater that could also do CALGreen in a sense. Yes, I
24 suppose you could do that. The rating systems are slightly different and I feel like currently
25 there is a better quality control with Build It Green than with CALGreen since it is so new.
26
27 Ms. French: There is one advantage too with the Build It Green is that they are compiling data
28 down at Build It Green. So I am not sure how valuable that is to Palo Alto but there is some
29 value there.
30
31 Commissioner Tanaka: Okay. I don't want to monopolize the time but I would love to get other
32 Commissioners' feedback on should we have the three different codes going on or can we kind
33 of try to converge to one and make it simple for everyone.
34
35 Chair Tuma: Okay. Commissioner Martinez followed by Keller. Okay, Keller followed by
36 Lippert.
37
38 Commissioner Keller: I am not convinced that switching to the CALGreen rating system for
39 residential market is a wise move in terms of rushing the process. I remember we went through a
40 deliberate process of evaluating the adoption of Build It Green. One of the things that we
41 understood and we were careful and cautious about is the availability of GreenPoint Raters. We
42 were careful in understanding Build It Green's process for training these GreenPoint Raters. I
43 would be very loath to provide any criteria with respect to CALGreen ratings that replaced Build
44 It Green without a clear understanding of the availability of those raters. I think to me that is a
45 significant barrier to adoption of CALGreen replacing Build It Green.
46
Page 28
1 The second thing is that our ordinance that involves Build It Green green points is a sliding scale
2 ordinance. That ordinance requires seventy points, which is greater than the Build It Green
3 certification requirement of 50 points. Furthermore, the larger the project is the more points that
4 are required. In order to think about adopting a CALGreen equivalent we would have to
5 understand the thresholding and what the curve would look like, and I don't think we are
6 prepared to do that.
7
8 So we were one of the pioneers in requiring Build It Green. I think that based on the experience
9 we have we should continue that because the market understands Build It Green. I think that the
10 market for developers, residential developers, and contractors, and homeowners, and such has a
11 slower learning curve. It is a lot longer for that community to learn about new rating standards
12 and new requirements than it is in the commercial market where there are fewer players and they
13 tend to be bigger. So I think that we are best off continuing with our Build It Green process and
14 making that work as well as possible. In particular it was pointed out that Build It Green has a
15 database of the measures that are being taken for the green point rated housing. I actually had a
16 role in helping to create that database of projects and how that works. I gave them some advice
1 7 on that process. I think that the interesting thing about that database of projects is it is allowing
18 some evaluation of the effectiveness of Build It Green and how much greenhouse gas reduction
19 is being achieved. Until we see equivalent work from CALGreen on the residential side I would
20 be cautious.
21
22 I do understand the idea of having fewer standards. I think that the residential market for which
23 Build It Green applies is a completely different market from the commercial market for which
24 CALGreen and also LEED apply. Although, there are a handful of people who build LEED
25 residential buildings. I was in one the other day. Those tend to be fewer and far between. So I
26 don't really see the reason for combining these two. Thank you.
27
28 Chair Tuma: Vice-Chair Lippert followed by Commissioner Fineberg.
29
30 Vice-Chair Lippert: I guess before our review on September 1 of the CALGreen and what was
31 being originally discussed here I had received by email actually, literally just a couple of hours
32 prior to that a nlatrix or a grid that went and compared CALGreen to LEED and Build It Green
33 point systems. I was able to share that with two of the Commissioners, Commissioner Garber,
34 and Commissioner Martinez. Unfortunately that was a pre-release copy and it was not meant for
35 public distribution so I did not share it with the rest of the Commission.
36
37 The next day it was published and released and that matrix was done by a negotiation or a
38 collaboration of the Green Building Council.
39
40 Ms. Parineh: The City of San Francisco, and the Bay Area Climate Collaborative, USGBC
41 Northern California Chapter in Build It Green, and I think Stopwaste.org.
42
43 Vice-Chair Lippert: And AIA California Council. So the five groups had gotten together and
44 they had collaborated in creating this list.
45
Page 29
1 The idea here is that what they created was a list that basically had equivalencies as to how this
2 worked. What makes the green point rating system work right now is the fact that there are
3 GreenPoint Raters and that those people are independent. Where the difficulty or the rub is is
4 that this is an organization that has a proprietary product. As an architect, or an engineer, even
5 doctors and lawyers we answer to a state board that certifies or at least allows us to be licensed
6 because of our qualifications and our knowledge. Whereas a certification board has no basis in
7 state law, and that is one of the reasons why the CALGreen system was developed. As
8 California begins to get a handle on reducing the state's carbon footprint and greenhouse gas
9 emissions they need to have some way to regulate it. Te real transition or the direction that we
10 are going in is one of California actually having control over how we reduce that, and it is
11 through the legislative process.
12
13 My feeling is that architects and engineers are prepared to begin to pick up on that certification
14 or that within the CALGreen process. The difficulty is that an architect rating his own project or
15 an engineer rating their own project there is an inherent conflict of interest. It is almost as
16 though this person needs to be a third-party individual that is doing it. So if we were to adopt
17 equivalencies say within CALGreen as part of this table I would say that we would want third-
18 party licensed individuals who are qualified to be able to do that rating or the evaluation or the
19 verification process, not the architect or the engineer of record.
20
21 Chair Tuma: Commissioner Garber.
22
23 Commissioner Garber: I would like to make a motion and then we can structure other
24 conversation around it.
25
26 Chair Tunla: Please do.
27
28 MOTION
29
30 Commissioner Garber: I would like to make a motion that we support Staff s recommendation
31 that we recommend to Council the adoption of the attached ordinance revising Palo Alto's
32 Municipal Code Chapter 18.44, Green Building Regulations, to include or incorporate the
33 CALGreen state ordinance. Am I stating that correctly?
34
35 SECOND
36
37 Vice-Chair Lippert: I will second that.
38
39 Chair Tuma: Okay, motion by Comnlissioner Garber, seconded by Vice-Chair Lippert.
40 Commissioner Garber, would you like to speak to your nlotion?
41
42 Commissioner Garber: Just briefly. I wanted to just acknowledge Commissioner Tanaka's
43 concern about clarity. If only it were so easy. It is remarkable how complex this is to
44 accomplish. The fact that the state has actually come through and actually created what is
45 currently called CALGreen is frankly remarkable in and of itself. Trying to roll that out through
46 all the municipalities of California is a huge issue if for no other reason the manpower issues,
Page 30
1 because the series of responsibilities changes dramatically and each community has a different
2 problem to solve.
3
4 I do think it is the right thing to do in large part because it embeds it into the code. It becomes
5 roped. It becomes no different than trying to meet the plumbing code and structural
6 requirenlents and everything else. If it is not followed there are building inspectors that can
7 come by and say that is not right take it out, and there isn't a conversation there.
8
9 So I don't think I need to say anything more right at the moment. The seconder is welcome to
10 add.
11
12 Chair Tuma: Vice-Chair Lippert.
13
14 Vice-Chair Lippert: I think at one point LEED and Build It Green were really the only game in
15 town, so to speak. As the State of California begins to tackle its climate change and greenhouse
16 gas emission issues for us to now have a CALGreen scale or standard will begin to take on
17 additional importance as we move forward in reducing or meeting the state's goals for AB 32
18 and SB 375.
19
20 Chair Tuma: I have one question, which may eventually tum into a comment, for Staff. On
21 page 4 of the Staff Report, the final bullet talks about implementing performance reviews for
22 existing buildings. Then it goes up onto the top of page 5 and talks about how those
23 performance reviews will be conducted randomly. This whole bullet point gives me a little bit of
24 concern about now we are bringing into CALGreen performance reviews on existing buildings
25 over 10,000 square feet and we are going to sort of randomly do this. Can you give us a little bit
26 more background or thought about this? This is on the bottom of page 4 and the top of page 5 of
27 the Staff Report. I would like to understand a little bit more about and maybe to the extent that
28 we need any advice from the City Attorney about doing something like this with existing
29 buildings, and bringing these requirements in, and then the sort of randomness of the reviews. I
30 would like to understand a little bit more how we came to that.
31
32 Ms. Parineh: Well, before he comments I will kind of wrap the issue around so he understand
33 and we are all on the same page. The water reviews are required as is stated under the state
34 model efficient landscape ordinance, I guess. So what we are really looking at is the energy
35 efficiency requirement for buildings over 10,000 square feet. We put one constraint in there in
36 that a single building couldn't be audited any more frequently than once every five years. The .
37 intent was we have these great buildings coming through our Green Building Program, they are
38 designed to be energy efficient, and then how are they performing the next year? Did they just
39 unscrew the light bulbs and put something else in that is more energy inefficient? Did they plug
40 in big vending machines that are really inefficient and throwing their energy performance off
41 track? So this is really our opportunity to make sure that buildings are designing as they are
42 intended.
43
44 In ternlS of the randomness it is supposed to be an auditing program. So Staffwould choose one
45 out of so many projects. I don't know if we want to include that type of specificity or if that can
46 just be part of the program administrative requirements created later on, is more of the direction I
Page 31
1 was thinking. I don't know if it needs to be in here or not so that is probably where he comes
2 into play. It was just one out of however many in the future.
3
4 Chair Tuma:Okay, so maybe I misunderstood what was written here. When you are talking
5 about existing buildings and sites you are talking about buildings and sites that are built
6 according to ....
7
8 Ms. Parineh: After January 1, 2009.
9
10 Chair Tuma: January 1, 2009.
11
12 Ms. Parineh: We picked that date because that is when the Green Building Ordinance really
13 became effective. So proj ects after that date would have had to be energy efficient, and we also
14 have data on thenl to 90n1pare.
15
16 Chair Tuma: Alright, good. That helps me understand that piece a little bit more. Did the City
1 7 Attorney want to talk about whether we should truly do this randomly or whether there should be
18 some other methodology for deciding which of these buildings and when they are going to get
19 their audits?
20
21 Mr. Larkin: Randomly may not be the word because it sounds like we are flipping a coin and
22 deciding who to audit. I think that we would need to setup some sort of administrative
23 mechanism to do an auditing schedule. I think the ~ssue with randomly is it is probably not
24 feasible to audit every building every certain period. I think if we setup an auditing schedule and
25 stuck to it, and maybe 'randornly' isn't the right word to use.
26
27 Chair Tuma: Okay, that gives me a little more comfort that there would be some mechanism and
28 actually some sort of methodical way to do this as opposed to the flipping of a coin.
29
30 Ms. Parineh: If you don't mind, can I make one other statement? We also were looking at
31 purposely making it a little bit broad based on staffing resources in the event that we may have at
32 one point staffing resources to do the audits and at one point we may not have staffing resources.
33 So ifit did say one out of every ten and then we were unable to perform one out often, and one
34 out of 50 may be more reasonable, or one out of 60, so it could be adjusted.
35
36 Chair Tuma: Okay. Commissioner Keller followed by Fineberg.
37
38 Commissioner Keller: So the first thing is a minor amendment, which is a wording fix. If you
39 look at Attachnlent B, the third page, these are not nurrlbered so it is hard to tell. On the top it
40 says the word, the definition of Addition. It says, "For application of the green building
41 requirements, this term means new floor area added to an existing building or structure." I
42 would like to add to that to also include conversion of non-habitable space to habitable space. So
43 if you convert a garage for example, to habitable space that should be considered new
44 construction for the purposes of an addition. I would like to make that as a friendly amendment.
45
46 Commissioner Garber: Tell me where was it? In B?
Page 32
1
2 Commissioner Keller: On the very top of the third page. There is a definition of Addition,
3 which only refers to new construction, new floor area, and doesn't include conversion of non-
4 habitable space to habitable space. I would like to include that as new construction.
5
6 Commissioner Garber: Just a clarification from Staff. Is this regardless of if it is commercial or
7 residential? Is that distinguished here in some way?
8
9 Ms. Parineh: It is in the general definitions of the California Green Building Code. So
10 technically it would apply to both.
11
12 Commissioner Garber: So it would be either.
13
14 Ms. Parineh: But CALGreen only applies for Palo Alto, assume this is approved, for non-
15 residential projects. So a residential project would use it.
16
17 Commissioner Garber: So I am happy with the clarification. I accept the clarification.
18
19 Chair Tunla: Vice-Chair Lippert.
20
21 Vice-Chair Lippert: I am trying to figure out a way or if this affects it substantively, and I don't
22 think it does. I will accept it.
23
24 Commissioner Keller: Thank you.
25
26 Vice-Chair Lippert: I think just simply by the fact that you are making it something this
27 unenclosed and making it enclosed in fact it would need to comply anyway.
28
29 Commissioner Keller: It is a clarification.
30
31 Commissioner Garber: That's fine.
32
33 Vice-Chair Lippert: I think what you are asking is rather benign. I don't have a problem with
34 that.
35
36 Commissioner Keller: Thank you. The second thing is I appreciate the comments and questions
37 regarding the performance reviews by our Chair. It seems to me that the performance reviews
38 should not merely be random but rather they should in fact be targeted based on utility records.
39 We have our own utilities. Maybe the largest consumers but if what you see is a trend line that
40 shows that a building built after 2009 starts showing increased energy use, or increased water use
41 then that might be a trigger for doing an audit. I don't think that language has to be in there
42 because the language doesn't specify otherwise exactly what the criteria are for making an audit.
43
44 Chair Tuma: One second, City Attorney.
45
Page 33
1 Mr. Larkin: There are some legal issues with our Utilities Department sharing that information
2 with Planning Staff. Utility usage, particularly in commercial buildings is not something that is
3 publicly available and it is not something that would typically be shared outside of Utilities.
4
5 Commissioner Keller: Okay, thank you. Let me then withdraw that, but let me suggest that the
6 threshold saying that a building can only be audited once every five years certainly makes ~ense
7 for a building that passes its last audit. If a building fails its last audit the requirement that you
8 don't audit it for five years seems silly. So I am going to suggest a friendly amendment that the
9 limitation of five years does not apply if a building failed its lastaudit.
10
11 Commissioner Garber: I am fine with that if Staff is comfortable, meaning the Staff still would
12 have the choice whether to do that or not.
13
14 Ms. Parineh: I suppose we would be comfortable. I want to point out in the actual requirement
15 box and the local amendments, if you go to the Residential or Nonresidential Table it does say
16 that the ....
17
18 Commissioner Garber: Page?
19
20 Ms. Parineh: Sorry, once again it doesn't have the page number on it.
21
22 Commissioner Keller: The fifth page.
23
24 Ms. Parineh: The fifth page? Sorry, my pages are out of order now. if you go down to where it
25 says Operations the last two sentences describe that if after an audit if they are not meeting their
26 energy budget that the City may require that they bring it back into compliance with what was
27 supposed to be happening. So they would be required to bring it into compliance. So hopefully
28 the five-year period wouldn't be as needed.
29
30 Commissioner Keller: Well, just to be clear if they brought it into compliance, do you actually
31 show that it was in compliance? So that is why I am suggesting that the five-year limitation.
32
33 Commissioner Garber: Yes, you are giving the City the opportunity should they decide to pursue
34 it.
35
36 Commissioner Keller: That is right, yes. They don't have to pursue it but if somebody fails you
37 could pursue it if you wish.
38
39 Cortnnissioner Garber: Yes, and that would preclude the building owner from saying, I'm sorry,
40 you have to wait another five years. So I am happy to accept the amendnlent. Seconder?
41
42 Vice-Chair Lippert: I am. What I am unclear on is I guess what the remedy is. You can require
43 somebody to, or you can say we require you to bring it into compliance, however, we are not
44 going to yank somebody's use and occupancy permit and kick them out of their own building.
45 You can't do that. Civil penalties, can they be levied against a property owner for being out of
46 compliance in terms of their consumption?
Page 34
1
2 Mr. Larkin: If they are out of consumption with the terms of the Building Code then civil
3 penalties could certainly be imposed.
4
5 Vice-Chair Lippert: If a building is legally built using the code at the time it was designed, and it
6 met all of the energy requirements at the time it was built it is following the building code. It has
7 made energy conlpliance with the State of California for what the energy code was at the time
8 the building was built. Now, I am not saying it is right okay, all I am saying is that is what the
9 law was at the time the building was built. They are not out of compliance. It may not be in tune
10 with what our requirements are but you can't very well-that is a taking.
11
12 Mr. Larkin: I think the example Kristin gave earlier, if they come in and get their approvals, put
13 in all the proper lighting and everything, and then decide that they are going to swap out all that
14 expensive lighting and put in incandescent bulbs. We can make thenl go back and put it in the
15 way that it was originally approved. If they are consuming more energy than was anticipated
16 there could be reasons for that that don't have anything to do with the Building Code and then
17 we wouldn't have any enforcement abilities. Ifphysical changes are made to the building that
18 put them out of compliance then we can require them to correct those and then impose penalties
19 if they don't.
20
21 Vice-Chair Lippert: Where I am going with this is that I believe the remedy is that they don't get
22 to do any renovation, they don't get to get any more building permits, they don't get to be able to
23 make modifications to the building until they simply comply with the audit.
24
25 Commissioner Garber: Just to be clear, it sounds like you are agreeing with the amendment, but
26 your question is really more general related to the two sentences that Kristin has pointed out on
27 page 5 at the bottom here. Am I getting that correct?
28
29 Vice-Chair Lippert: Yes.
30
31 Commissioner Garber: Okay.
32
33 Vice-Chair Lippert: So what I really need in order to accept the amendment I would say is to
34 understand what the remedy is.
35
36 Commissioner Garber: Regardless of this particular issue, let's say that the City performs an
37 audit, finds out that they have changed the lights or whatever, and they decide sorry I am not
38 going to do that. Then they say but I do want to do an addition. Is the City within its rights to
39 say sorry, not until you have conlplied with your previous building approval?
40
41 Ms. Parineh: Can I make one other comment? I believe we put enforcement or penalties or
42 things like this in our Administrative Penalty Schedule so it wouldn't necessarily be an
43 amendment to this. It would be an additional penalty in our Administrative Penalty Schedule
44 and we make amendments to that.
45
Page 35
1 I also want to point out that in our Administrative Penalty Schedule we currently have a fine of
2 $500.00 per day every day you are not in compliance with our Green Building Ordinance or
3 Green Building Regulations. So I am not sure if that penalty would cover this as well, because if
4 their energy performance wasn't as it was approved then they would be noncompliant with their
5 Green Building Regulations.
6
7 Commissioner Garber: If I am following the attorney's previous comment it would be pretty
8 hard to try and apply this to energy usage, but if there are physical changes from the plans and
9 documents that have been submitted and have been approved then you could make findings.
10
11 Ms. Parineh: Right.
12
13 Mr. Larkin: Just to follow up, there are existing penalties for being out of compliance with the
14 applicable codes. Those get added to and changed every year, so if there are gaps then we could
15 fix those when we go back with our Administrative Penalties Schedule. We could also impose
16 civil penalties without having to do the Administrative Penalties Schedule.
17
18 To answer the second question, the answer is yes, we can require a building to be brought back
19 to code prior to issuing new building permits for additional, and we would require the building to
20 be brought back up to code prior to issuing new building permits.
21
22 Vice-Chair Lippert: I appreciate your description of how it could work with sonlebody swapping
23 out say florescent lights for incandescent, but that happens all the time and it is not as evident.
24 To give you an example, the current California Energy Code not only considers the building
25 lights but it also considers the task lights that are on desks in a per square foot or number of work
26 station count. That is considered as part of the energy requirement. Just simply by going from a
27 florescent desk lamp to an incandescent desk lamp it can very easily tip that balance without
28 necessarily the building being out of compliance. The energy calculations that are done for Title
29 24 are based on assumptions, but the reality is that as tenants move in and out of a building those
30 light fixtures change.
31
32 Ms. Parineh: Light fixtures may have been not the best example. Overall they one of the larger
33 energy uses but individually probably not so much. 1fwe were to do an energy performance .
34 review say three years later and we expected them to use 100 KGTU per year and they were
35 using 101 I don't think we would go in and do an analysis and ask for corrective action. I think
36 that is another area where there is a little leeway, and what is gross noncompliance there is
37 probably a little bit of gray area. For one light being off I am not sure we would go into fmes
38 and Administrative Regulations. We would probably look for the gross offenses, which would
39 probably mean illegal HV AC implementation, or different types of insulation that was taken out
40 or put in, or window changes that were not approved, or new appliances that were put in that
41 were heavy energy uses, things like that.
42
43 Vice-Chair Lippert: Just to give one other example. Process cooling doesn't figure into Title 24
44 at all. Process cooling is the cooling that you use for equipment such as server rooms.
45
Page 36
1 Chair Tuma: Okay. I have a whole series of lights here. So if we are going to get through this
2 we need to keep going and just bear in nlind .....
3
4 Commissioner Keller: Was my amendment adopted?
5
6 Vice-Chair Lippert: It was as long as the remedies are resolved.
7
8 Chair Tunla: I believe Commissioner Keller has one last amendment that he would like to offer
9 and then we are going to get through the rest of the comnlents that people have.
10
11 Commissioner Keller: Yes. In particular in terms of the CALGreen checklist there is -I am not
12 sure what page it is, but I am going to read you the number. It is AS.106.S.3.1, which is Electric
13 Vehicle Supply Wiring. The reason that this is interesting to me is that we essentially are being
14 asked to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by increasing density. However, it is probably
15 effective for Palo Alto to reduce its greenhouse gases through replacement of vehicles that
16 produce greenhouse gases to vehicles that are non-polluting. So I would like us to consider a
1 7 threshold that says if you are going to have at least ten parking spaces then you put in at least one
18 of these EV charging spaces. I offer that as a friendly amendment.
19
20 Conlffiissioner Garber: I am certainly interested in finding ways to incent the use of alternative
21 vehicles. What is the impact of including this?
22
23 Ms. Parineh: I think like I mentioned at the very beginning of the meeting Staff did look into
24 this. I think one of the reasons why we were a little bit hesitant is that we don't have a lot of
25 them currently. I think the other issue is if we were to require them, why require this as opposed
26 other things on the list that you could weigh as more environmentally or health beneficial or not?
27 That deserved a lot of analysis, so our thoughts from the Staff level is that we wanted to leave it
28 as a policy decision for the PTC and Council to pull out if they wanted to, to say that EV stations
29 were really important and a priority for Palo Alto as compared to other things that you may
30 require.
31
32 Commissioner Keller: One of the things is that this point does not actually require that they
33 install the electric vehicle service equipment, which makes it possible to charge, but they merely
34 install the electrical line that allows the electric vehicle service equipment to be installed. It is a
35 lot cheaper to install those lines during new construction time than any other time.
36
37 Commissioner Garber: Would there be a willingness to find a way to work into this? I am just
38 wondering, given Staff's comments here in that there may be things in addition that we might
39 want to consider as incentives as well, if there was another way to word it such that it was not
40 necessarily a part of the ordinance immediately but is something that we could find a way to
41 track or introduce with other topics would have sinli1ar benefits.
42
43 Commissioner Keller: If you don't want to make it mandatory I could live with encouraging it
44 and tracking whether people used those points.
45
46 Commissioner Garber: And returning in a year's time to ....
Page 37
1
2 Commissioner Keller: Sure, returning in a year's time to evaluate it, but I do point out that the
3 City is installing actual equipment and they are .....
4
5 Commissioner Garber: So how is the City deciding to install the various charging stations it has
6 now?
7
8 Ms. Parineh: I know some community projects but I don't know how we are distributing our
9 own. Do either of you guys know?
10
11 Commissioner Garber: Is it the utility company that is doing it?
12
13 Commissioner Keller: I am aware that there has been application by the City both in terms of
14 AB 118 I believe it is, and also through the Bay Area Air Quality Management District to install
15 six actual chargers in the City Hall garage.
16
17 Commissioner Garber: Could we possibly do it this way, and let's exclude it from this ordinance
18 but I would like can we figure out what is going on to see if there is some synergy that we can
19 take advantage of between the Utility Commission and the Planning Department here so that
20 maybe we can do this in a more coordinated manner?
21
22 Ms. Parineh: In terms of offering incentives or in terms of requiring?
23
24 Commissioner Garber: Either one, but it doesn't sound like we have enough it sounds like
25 there is an opportunity here that we can exploit but we just don't know the date, we don't know
26 how to do that.
27
28 Ms. Parineh: Okay.
29
30 Commissioner Garber: I am somewhat hesitant to tie it into the ordinance right now without
31 getting a better idea of how we might be able to manage it.
32
33 Vice-Chair Lippert: I am in agreement with you. I think I might be able to give you a little
34 clarity on it. I agree that I don't think it belongs in the ordinance right now because it is a work
35 in progress, and a moving target.
36
37 There are a couple of things. Today BP announced a partnership with a company that is
38 producing a quick charge station that is going to be rolled out at BP gas stations that allow
39 people to charge electric vehicles like the Leaf within a matter of minutes. So that is one aspect
40 to it. The other aspect to it is the Cope'nhagen model, which is that you use electric vehicles as a
41 repository for electricity, so that they become a battery source at night. Then you drive them to
42 work, you park them, plug them in, and then that is how you make up whatever the deficit is in
43 the way of electrical during demand hours. So you are able to actually run the car's battery
44 down and using that as a source for electricity. So I think it is a work in progress. So it is not
45 clear as to what direction we are going in with this technology yet.
46
Page 38
1 Commissioner Garber: So can we initiate a separate motion afterwards to pursue this, or is this
2 something we can take as a con1ffient and retunl to or agendize at a later time? Is there a
3 recommendation there?
4
5 Mr. Larkin: I recommend agendizing it for a later time. Ithink there may be other areas of the
6 code where it might be more appropriate to add the incentives.
7
8 Commissioner Garber: Could I also just suggest that when it does come back that we could get
9 someone from the Utilities Department.
10
11 Ms. Caporgno: I know that you had mentioned previously that your agendas aren't really full for
12 the next couple of months. Staffwould suggest that before the end of the year we will come
13 back with a report and have Utilities Staff bring that back. Then the Commission can decide
14 how they want to proceed after they have the additional information.
15
16 Chair Tuma: Okay, that sounds good.
17
18 Commissioner Keller: Maybe what might make sense is -we have never had one of these, but it
19 might make sense to think about a Joint Study Session with the Utility Advisory Commission
20 and the Planning Commission. This could be one of the things we talk about as well as other
21 itenls that might be of interest.
22
23 Chair Tuma: Okay. Commissioner Keller, are you done with your amendments?
24
25 Commissioner Keller: Yes, thank you.
26
27 Chair Tuma: So I have lights from Con1ffiissioners Fineberg, Lippert, Tanaka, and Martinez in
28 that order.
29
30 Commissioner Fineberg: Okay. I am unclear on how any of the most recent conversation will
31 be relevant to the PTC if we approve the motion. If I understand it correctly we are going to be
32 moving the CALGreen and the building codes stuff that is in Title 18 into Title 16. As soon as
33 "that is implemented am I correct that it is no longer the purview of the Planning Commission?
34 So how are we ever going to come back and have any conversation about future changes, or
35 whether things make sense? How do we have a Joint Study Session with the Utility Advisory
36 Commission ifit isn't our purview any more? How do we do any follow up about what triggers
37 review? We have talked about reviews down the road so I am stumped. Maybe somebody can
38 help me.
39
40 Mr. Larkin: The reason that I suggested that it be brought back is a separate item, the charging
41 station issue, was that I anl not sure that Title 16 is the appropriate place to put those incentives
42 or requirements if that is where the Commission wants to go. So there is room to come back on
43 that issue and talk about it further at a future meeting.
44
45 Commissioner Fineberg: How can we come back on something that is part of Building Code? If
46 it is in Title 16 why can we bring it up again?
Page 39
1
2 Commissioner Garber: You are asking for items that are not specific to the charging stations.
3
4 Commissioner Fineberg: Well, any of them. If the thing about the voluntary checklist for CAL
5 Build It Green is in Title 16 how do we bring up an item that is Title 16?
6
7 Chair Tuma: Hold on a second. The volunteer checklist that we were talking about before was
8 LEED-ND.
9
10 Commissioner Garber: Right.
11
12 Chair Tuma: Right, so this whole thing is putting LEED-ND into our purview. That is what. ..
13
14 Ms. Parineh: I think to address your question I think it is still in your purview if you want to pull
15 it out. Ifwe wanted to amend the California Green Building Code to require EV stations I don't
16 think we would come back here because it would be a building code amendment in the future
1 7 and it would go to Council. If the Planning Commission wants to pull it out and put it into the
18 zoning regulations, requiring it just like trees, we require a certain number of tree shading, I
19 think that you could put it into the zoning regulations and discuss it and regulate it in that way.
20 If we wanted to amend California Green Building Code to require it then it probably wouldn't
21 conle back here.
22
23 Chair Tuma: Right. So in other words, what you are saying is that yes, Commissioner Fineberg
24 you are right. As a result of our recommendation and Council adopts it this gets moved to the
25 Building Code so it is not within our purview. However, that doesn't keep us from as Kristin
26 points out bringing other topics up that are within our purview. So this example of requiring a
27 certain number of parking spaces, requiring these EV chargers to be put in place that is certainly
28 something we could do as part of zoning.
29
30 Commissioner Fineberg: Okay, so just to be clear, I am not talking about LEED-ND checklist. I
31 am talking about the Build It Green checklist. We are going to move it to Title 16 just to pick on
32 Commissioner Keller's example he talked about A5.l06.5.3.1 the Electric Vehicle Supply
33 Wiring. One or two of us could come and say hey, we want it agendized in the future, having a
34 discussion, and we would make recommendations to amend Title 16. I anl not there. How
35 would we ever have any ability to have a productive conversation about something that isn't in
36 our purview?
37
38 Mr. Larkin: You can make recommendations at any time to amend development standards, and
39 that is what you would be requesting to do. It would be up to -typically those development
40 standards would go into Title 18 including the requirement for every X percentage of new
41 parking spaces be equipped with charging stations. That is part of the police power of the City
42 and it is within the purview of the Commission. If at a later date it got incorporated into the
43 Building Code that doesn't preclude you from recommending changes to those development
44 standards through the purview that you are given under Title 18.
45
Page 40
1 Ms. French: The other place, I know it is not the Planning Commission, but the Architectural
2 Review has findings for approval and the bulk of the proj ects are going to be going through them
3 including those that conle to you. There are criteria that relate to environmental sustainability
4 and this is not repealing those. So there is still opportunity during the Architectural Review of a
5 process and you could amend. That is in Title 18 and you could amend that to say 'and electric
6 vehicle charging stations,' as a consideration or a finding or something.
7
8 Commissioner Fineberg: Okay, so who has purview over Building Code? Who keeps that a
9 clean - I know Council ultimately has decision-making responsibility and authority, but who will
10 be responsible for the review and subsequent follow up as the world changes around our
11 Building Code?
12
13 Mr. Larkin: Ultimately the State of California has purview over the Building Code. We have
14 purview over local am~ndments. Those are typically recommended by Building Department
15 Staff for consideration by the Council. The Council can always refer those issues to the Planning
16 Commission if there are development related issues that the Council wants input fronl the
1 7 Commission regarding. Typically they follow a particular process so they wouldn't normally go
18 to the Planning Commission, but that doesn't mean that Council wouldn't seek your input.
19
20 Ms. Parineh: I also want to mention that they are done every three years when the Building
21 Code updates. So every three years when the Building Code updates we have to return to
22 Council to get approval of the new code chapters. At that time we review what changed, what
23 has been working, what hasn't been working, and then make local amendments accordingly. So
24 typically in the past that happens only every three years but it could happen more frequently. It
25 just can be painful to go through the building standards to make changes in between.
26
27 Commissioner Fineberg: So that would be the place, if we created inconsistencies between Title
28 16 and Title 18, on a three-year review Staff would make the two chapters consistent again.
29 Okay, that is wonderful.
30
31 If the Chair can bear with me I have one more quick what might be a friendly amendment to the
32 motion. The maker referenced in his motion three out of four sections of our discussion. If you
33 look at the Staff Report starting on page 2 there is Section A, on page 4 there is Section B, and
34 then on page 5 there is Section D, which we covered in our first motion. Section C, which is
35 Clean Up of Other Palo Alto Municipal Code Provisions, was not explicitly called out in the
36 maker's motion. That covers things that are different than in A and B. So if I could ask that the
37 maker also include in the motion the clean up provisions ofC as Staffhas stipulated.
38
39 Commissioner Garber: Happy to do so.
40
41 Vice-Chair Lippert: I am on board.
42
43 Chair Tuma: Great. Is that it? That brings us to Vice-Chair Lippert.
44
45 Vice-Chair Lippert: I want to clarify something with regard to the California Building Code and
46 the City's amendments. It is very specific as to what the City can do in terms of amending the
Page 41
1 California Building Code. They can't just say, oh, we don't agree with the California Building
2 Code. It has to be found and based on I think that there are several different criteria. Geography,
3 geology, and geological hazard, and topography I believe are the different criteria by which the
4 City can begin to amend their Building Code. So for instance currently the City does not require
5 that all new houses have fire sprinklers. In January 2011 that will happen. Up until now the way
6 the City has determined it is that everything west of Foothill Expressway that is new needs to be
7 fire sprinklered and that is a result of geography because there are fewer fire stations out that
8 way. So it is a problem getting a fire truck out there in a timeframe where it is going to protect
9 property. So that just gives you an exanlple as to the kinds of amendnlents the City can make
10 with regard to that.
11
12 It is the same thing with CALGreen. CALGreen is really a list or a measure by which we are
13 looking at how we will be reducing our carbon footprint. So it makes sense to,begin to move it
14 into a realm where everything is far more ministerial. As long as you make the basic
15 requirements or the basic standards of the different thresholds of what we are looking for it
16 should be a ministerial process because we are looking at a green building code, we are not
1 7 looking at a green ordinance here. So with that the City should have some latitude in terms of
18 our amendments to the CALGreen standards, and perhaps that is something that we begin to look
19 at, not changing them but how we augment them perhaps a little bit.
20
21 Chair Tuma: Okay, thanks. Commissioner Tanaka followed by Martinez.
22
23 Commissioner Tanaka: Thank you. In general I support the motion and the various
24 amendments. I do think it makes sense to be part of the Building Code and for Palo Alto to be
25 adopting this.
26
27 Just to get to my fellow Commissioner's point I am not actually stuck on it has to be CALGreen
28 or it has to be Build It Green. I am actually pretty agnostic. I don't want to make that the point.
29 It could be any standard actually. I understand the issues with the need to have third-party
30 inspectors auditing. That makes a lot of sense. You don't want to have people doing it
31 themselves, and the lack of our ability to do inspections for CALGreen.
32
33 The point I was trying to get at, and I don't think I was clear earlier, is that right now I realize we
34 are setup for Build It Green. Build It Green is kind of the residential standard and things are
35 working well with it. They have a great database of history and all these other good things.
36 What I heard from Staff, and I am trusting that Staff is correct, is that California is going to
37 ,CALGreen and eventually CALGreen will be adopted statewide. My concern is that if Palo Alto
38 stays with Build It Green as the rest of California moves to CALGreen for both commercial and
39 residential that our developers in the city will incur unnecessary additional costs because Build It
40 Green may start to fade away except for maybe here in Palo Alto. Now, I am exaggerating a bit
41 but that is what my concenl is. If the future is CALGreen I think we should think about at least
42 having some sort of transition plan so that there is a way to bridge to that. It may not be a year, it
43 may not be two years, or it may be five years. I don't know when it might be but I think it is
44 important, especially given the discussions we just heard about going to Chapter 16 we may not
45 see this again for awhile.
46
Page 42
1 So I would like to make a hopefully friendly amendment that there be a transition plan to
2 CALGreen. I think Staff could figure out when is an appropriate deadline or tinleline but that
3 there is some sort of contemplation of this so that we are not stuck with maybe a proprietary
4 standard just here in Palo Alto while other cities have moved on to the state standard. So I would
5 like to make that as a friendly amendment.
6
7 Chair Tuma: Commissioner Garber.
8
9 Ms. Parineh: Could we just clarify where that would be? Where we would put that?
10
11 Commissioner Tanaka: In terms of?
12
13 Mr. Larkin: I don't think that is an appropriate thing to put in a Building Code itself, but if you
14 wanted to do that as direction to Staff outside of the code.
15
16 Commissioner Tanaka: Yes, okay, maybe direction to Staff. I am big fan of trying to simplify
1 7 things. Right now as it currently stands we are going to have three standards going on in Palo
18 Alto. That is not necessarily efficient. I realize that today we have certain limitations due to
19 budget and staffing and training, and I am understanding of that. In five years will we still have
20 that? Our inspectors will have done a lot of commercial properties by then and people are going
21 to become a lot more familiar with CALGreen. Does it make sense for us to be hard and fast
22 stuck with Build It Green while everyone else has moved on? So I guess I would like to have
23 Staff, as a direction to Staff, contemplating, my motion would be a direction to Staff to
24 contemplate a transition plan to what you feel actually is the eventual standard. So it is
25 something that our developers could get used to, our inspectors can get used to, as well as the
26 architects, and the other people involved in this process. So do you accept that friendly
27 amendment?
28
29 Commissioner Garber: I need to separate things here. So you are giving direction to Staff in the
30 motion, which is not impacting the status of the ordinance?
31
32 Mr. Larkin: I took it as direction to Staff to contemplate a transition plan outside of the
33 ordinance itself. So it would not go into the ordinance.
34
35 Commissioner Garber: Such that we can affectively sunset Build It Green and get into the
36 CALGreen world as efficiently andeffectively as possible.
37
38 Commissioner Tanaka: That is correct.
39
40 Commissioner Garber: I am happy to accept that.
41
42 Vice-Chair Lippert: I am as inclined to accept it because I think that there are many routes to
43 getting to sustainability. When I think about it, your former employer Jones, Lang, LaSalle, had
44 their own green program that is not widely popularized, but it does in the end achieve the same
45 result. What I am looking for here and I think it is paramount is that we all speak different
46 languages but we need to be able to communicate effectively. So in some ways what this
Page 43
1 represents is there are many different religions out there, but they all have some con1ffion themes.
2 So I am not so inclined to look at that. I could live with LEED, LEED residential, Build It
3 Green, CALGreen all being out there, and at some appropriate time there will be convergence
4 and perhaps one system out there. But for the time being I think that it is not clear. Again, there
5 are many different kinds of vehicles out there that people drive. It doesn't preclude you from
6 riding on the road. It is just how you get there is different.
7
8 Chair Tunla: If I may interject a thought there. Even if we did make this part of the nlotion this
9 would be a recommendation to Council that would then have to direct Staff to do this, because it
10 wouldn't be a small task. Even if we don't move it forward tonight there is nothing that
11 precludes us from bringing this back up as a topic. Maybe in a year's time or something like that
12 when we have some more data, we understand the economy a little bit better, we see what is
13 going on with the raters. There isn't anything that precludes us from moving in this direction
14 going forward. I for one would agree with Vice-Chair Lippert, I am not sure that right here at
15 this time making even the suggestion that this the direction to go it seenlS to nle to be a little bit
16 early in the process. We can always revisit it at another time.
17
18 Commissioner Tanaka: So I don't know whether it is going to be CALGreen or Build It Green,
19 and I don't know the timeline necessarily. I guess the reason why I am suggesting it now is
20 because it is kind of fresh in our minds and it is kind of a snlall topic. I don't know whether it is
21 worth us to bring this up again at point in time.
22
23 While I understand that the world has many religions, and we actually want to encourage that, I
24 don't know if that applies to standards as well. If you have multiple standards going on you
25 incur tremendous transaction cost. So you can imagine in my extreme example, let's say Palo
26 Alto was the last city in the United States, or maybe on Earth to use Build It Green. It would be
27 prohibitively expensive for the inspections. You don't get the leverage and the knowledge
28 sharing that we would get if we had gone with the standard that everyone else is using. So I am
29 really advocating this as a part of business efficiencies versus next year or tomorrow we should
30 switch to CALGreen. We have to transition when it makes sense. Ifwe stick with this, writing
31 our own code, and hope for one day that when we are not so busy, which I think we are always
32 going to be busy or whoever is on the Planning Commission is going to be busy to look at this,
33 which is a small topic. I think we will as a city have less efficient development because of that.
34 So it is kind of a suggestion to Staff. It doesn't seem to advocate that it needs to be done at a
35 certain time. It gives Staff the flexibility to work on this to figure out when it makes sense, and it
36 will save us time because we don't have to discuss this again as an agenda topic later on. So I
37 hope you will reconsider.
38
39 Chair Tuma: You could always do that, but let's move the discussion forward. Commissioner
40 Martinez is next followed by Garber, Keller, and Fineberg.
41
42 Commissioner Martinez: I want to change the topic a little bit. In adopting CALGreen we are
43 also adopting this idea of Tier 1/Tier 2. Currently we have LEED Silver for public buildings and
44 private buildings over 10,000 square feet. How does that translate under CALGreen?
45
Page 44
1 Ms. Parineh: As I mentioned in the report it is a little bit difficult to compare CALGreen with
2 LEED. My attempt to show that we are still meeting our same level of greenness or our green
3 regulations was in the LEED checklist I referred to earlier with the yellow lines. Basically what
4 I did was an exercise to compare our CALGreen requirements with local amendments to LEED
5 and found it was about equal to LEED Silver, but it would depend on which electives a project
6 chose. They could choose electives that are not provided points in LEED or vise-versa. There
7 are more mandatory requirements in CALGreen than in LEED so the comparison is a little
8 tricky. In general, I think based on this assessment that most proj ects will be meeting LEED
9 Silver by meeting our CALGreen Tier 2 with amendments.
10
11 Commissioner Martinez: But is that a requirement in adopting CALGreen? Are we still going to
12 require Tier 2?
13
14 Ms. Parineh: Yes, the proposal before you and Council is adoption of the California Green
15 Building Code with local amendnlents, and the local anlendments are adopting Tier 2 and all of
16 the local amendments that go along with Tier 2 that were in, I don't remember the attachment.
17 The one with the checklist.
18
19 Commissioner Martinez: That long one. What about LEED Platinum? Do we have anything
20 like that?
21
22 Ms. Parineh: CALGreen has two tiers, Tier 1 and Tier 2. There isn't really a platinum level in it
23 per se. We could create our own platinum but it would be requiring the level of platinum, which
24 I guess that is another conversation about whether you think that bar that we have been using is
25 too low.
26
27 Comnlissioner Martinez: Is Tier 3 as sexy as platinum? How do we promote it, I guess is my
28 question. Really get people into it.
29
30 Ms. Parineh: Right. The idea of getting back to what Commissioner Tanaka was talking about
31 is the future is it is going to be in code so people won't be chasing the gold, silver, platinum, or
32 the tiers. It is just the way we will be building buildings. So we are encouraging them to get
33 CALGreen Tier 2 but in the future they won't be chasing levels I guess.
34
35 Commissioner Martinez: What is the incentive for raising the bar?
36
37 Ms. Parineh: So the current incentive of course is recognition and then utility incentives to go
38 beyond the CALGreen Tier 2, but we don't require it obviously.
39
40 Vice-Chair Lippert: I think that the U.S. Green Building Council has done really a remarkable
41 job in terms of branding. When it comes to developers they look for the LEED Platinum, even
42 LEED Silver to be able to put on their buildings. While CALGreen is a great standard here there
43 is something about it that is not quite as elegant. So just from a branding point of view I
44 honestly believe people are not going to abandon the LEED Platinum standard or moniker. That
45 is something that becomes a selling point in terms of the real estate. So even though we would
46 be using several different standards here it is not going to disappear over night.
Page 45
1
2 Chair Tuma: Okay. Commissioner Garber.
3
4 Commissioner Garber: I have no idea why I put my light on.
5
6 Chair Tuma: Very good. Commissioner Keller.
7
8 Commissioner Keller: Let me address something that was brought up by Commissioner
9 Fineberg and also addresses Commissioner Tanaka's concern. By moving the Green Building
10 Ordinance into the Building Code, which is Title 16 and is no longer within the purview of the
11 Planning Commission. So I am going to encourage, and I am not sure of the form of this and I
12 will ask the attorney to figure out how to word this, but to encourage the Council to add back to
13 the purview of the Planning Commission the Green Building Code and perhaps the Building
14 Code in general when it goes through a periodic cycle that we are part of the review process for
15 that and can recommend amendments to that. In particular, that the success of the Green
16 Building Ordinance and this transition to the California Green Building Code be something
17 brought back to the Commission in a year, and that is part of the purview that we would have.
18 So I am wondering the form of that and perhaps the attorney can recommend that. My intent is
19 that this was put into the purview of the PTC, that we have a one-year review, and that the
20 Planning Commission is added to the loop of the three-year cycle of the local amendment
21 process in general.
22
23 Mr. Larkin: I think you can make the recommendation to have green building standards added
24 back in. You can make a recommendation to Council to ask them to send pretty much anything
25 to you for review, but I don't think you necessarily want to get into all of the Uniform Fire Code,
26 Unifornl Electric Code.
27
28 Commissioner Keller: No.
29
30 Mr. Larkin: So I assume you are talking just about the green building standards.
31
32 Commissioner Keller: I am suggesting that the purview of the Planning Commission in the City
33 code that defines what is the Planning purview explicitly amended to add that our purview 'is
34 over the Green Building Code.
35
36 Mr. Larkin: In that case it would require initiation of a Code Amendment. It couldn't be done
37 tonight, but at a later date the Commission could initiate a change to the code to put that within
38 your purview. That would take an amendment to the Municipal Code.
39
40 Commissioner Keller: Can we simply make this as a recommendation to Council?
41
42 Mr. Larkin: You could certainly make it as a request to Council to initiate. Typically it would
43 be the Commission making that initiation.
44
45 Commissioner Keller: Okay.
46
Page 46
1 Chair Tuma: I think Commissioner Garber has something to add.
2
3 Commissioner Garber: I have a suggestion, and that is that we utilize the Annual Report and
4 make this one of the recommendations that is included in it. Perhaps a suggestion is that rather
5 than that we have purview that we are included. Because the way that the Building Department
6 goes through it is that they have a process that they go through and we simply be included either
7 to be a part of that review process, in the loop, or even ifit is just a review so we have the
8 opportunity to conunent and be aware of the issues that are going on.
9
10 Chair Tuma: The analogy there maybe would be sort of the type of role that we have with
11 respect to the CIP;
12
13 Commissioner Garber: Yes.
14
15 Chair Tuma: Sure.
16
17 Commissioner Keller: So two other points. The first point is I agree with Vice-Chair Lippert
18 about LEED. People are chasing LEED one, because of brand, and also because it is
19 aspirational. CALGreen will never replace LEED in my not so humble opinion. The reason is
20 that as CALGreen goes up LEED gets higher. So LEED will always be -the intent ofLEED is
21 attempting to be above whatever CALGreen has. So in tenus of that structure LEED will
22 continue to exist and that is their intent. With respect to Build It Green I don't know what their
23 intent is, because they are more intending to refer to all buildings, all residential properties. So
24 they are not as aspirational as LEED is.
25
26 That gets to a different question. Just like we were requiring a LEED-ND checklist as we go
27 from LEED Silver requirement to California Green Building Code we are not gathering the data
28 as to whether these buildings would reach Silver Certification or not. We don't get the LEED
29 checklist. I am wondering how hard it would be for the applicants over the next year to submit a
30 LEED checklist of the appropriate kind and for us to just gather the data and get some idea where
31 they meet as a voluntary measure.
32
33 Ms. Parineh: I guess a question for you would be what is, the value in understanding how many
34 points they would get in LEED?
35
36 Commissioner Keller: The value is understanding the extent to which where they are achieving
37 the level that they are achieving through our CAL Green Tier 2 standard actually is comparable to
38 tbe level they would be achieving with LEED Silver. Having that checklist data may give us the
39 opportunity to decide whether we have calibrated it right and translated it right, or whether we
40 want to change the point thresholds for CAL Green Tier 2.
41
42 Ms. Parineh: Can I speak freely? One of the things that was brought up at our Sustainability
43 Committee meeting last week that I was talking to Commissioner Garber was interest in setting
44 our own level of how green or sustainable we want to be. It doesn't necessarily need to be
45 connected to LEED. Apart from LEED what is our minimum level of greenness we want to see
46 in the city? I don't think the definition of that is LEED. I think the definition of that can be
Page 47
1 water efficiency, energy efficiency how we see fit. I don't think we need to necessarily compare
2 it to LEED, or I don't see the value in conlparing it to LEED as opposed to how we would like to
3 see ourselves be sustainable.
4
5 Commissioner Keller: The reason I am suggesting it is it is a way of comparing our current
6 ordinance with the new ordinance, and understand better the effect of the new ordinance. I am
7 not suggesting that we continue to adopt LEED but if we are going to be reviewing this, this is
8 one measure of review, one measure that we would use for reviewing it to see all the
9 developments are meeting LEED Silver anyway it is fine, or very few of the developments are
10 meeting LEED Silver in which case we would understand that is interesting, maybe we need to
11 tweak the threshold. So it is just a way of comparing and seeing whether we move forward or
12 whether we move backward in terms of our measure of sustainability for these kinds of
13 buildings.
14
15 Ms. Parineh: Just as a comment, if you wanted to move forward I think Staff could do that at the
16 Stafflevel. I don't think we would necessarily need the applicant to submit a LEED checklist
1 7 but we could just do the comparisons ourselves if you would like.
18
19 Chair Tuma: Commissioner Garber.
20
21 Commissioner Garber: Thank you. Creating the checklists is a burden. It takes a number of
22 hours. If you actually apply, and actually go through the actual LEED Certification it is not just
23 one person but it is a team of people, because you are sitting around a table for several hours
24 working through each one of these issues because you are required to do it as a team as opposed
25 to just somebody sitting in a closet saying, well, I think I can do this. It is a matter of the team
26 coming and saying we can achieve this, we are going to commit to doing it, etc., etc.
27
28 So my view is that I would prefer not to have that burden as a practitioner where I am filling out
29 two lists to accomplish the same thing, which is to get my building in for approval of planning
30 and permitting.
31
32 It seems to me that there is a different sort of way to take advantage of the opportunity here. As
33 one of the Commissioners here as used an analogy regarding shoes, one foot is always in front of
34 the other. So when LEED advances or changes the opportunity for Staff to look at the
35 differences and to determine if there are 9Pportunities for things in one that should be
36 incorporated into the other that could happen on that interval, as opposed to trying to do it on a
37 sort of continuous basis in the way that you are suggesting. Does that make some sense?
38
39 Commissioner Keller: I was just suggesting it as an opportunity to gather data over the next year
40 when we review this. This is an opportunity to do that. Certainly it doesn't seem like something
41 that Staff should take on because I don't want to add additional burden to Staff. I don't really
42 want to add additional burden to developers either if it is something that is -what you are telling
43 me is that it is somewhat onerous. On the other hand, what is interesting according to the data
44 that one of these things says the cost of Build It Green in Alameda County, by Wes Sullins of
45 Stopwaste.org that was cited on some of the data that was given to us it said that the cost of a
46 $3.0 to $20 million project for LEED building design and construction phase review is $900.00
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1 for registration and $2,250 for certification. So I am not sure if that is reasonable or not. It says
2 commissioning is $20,000 to $60,000 which they would have to do. anyway under the CALGreen
3 commissioning requirements as far as I understand. So therefore this adds $3,150 to the cost. I
4 am not sure, maybe there are soft costs as well, and so that is an interesting question. The
5 document references the soft costs, this thing I am talking about, but basically you are right it
6 says the documentation is $8,000 to $35,000, but I am not sure I am talking about full
7 documentation. Creating a checklist is not full documentation. So I don't know how much
8 would be involved but it would give us some information as to whether we are still meeting that.
9 It also might be encouragement to some of the developers to try to get LEED Certification,
10 which I think would be a good thing.
11
12 Chair Tuma: Okay.
13
14 Commissioner Garber: You are offering that as an amendment?
15
16 Commissioner Keller: Yes.
17
18 Commissioner Garber: So yes, you are reading my facial expression correctly. I am hesitant to
19 accept it because I do see it as an additional burden. I think the relative differences are going to
20 be, and I don't mean it to come out quite like this, but they are relatively equivalents. They are
21 not -as we have discussed both with City Staff as well as my own staff in my practice, it is
22 extraordinarily difficult to try and compare these things on a point-by-point basis, these two
23 criteria. They really get at subtly different things. So CALGreen actually requires a higher level
24 of attention to indoor air quality than LEED does. Gosh, hey LEED wake up, step up, let's do
25 this. But LEED actually does a better job in some of the other areas. The difference is sort of
26 the level of accomplishing it. I don't think trying to make those fine distinctions is going to have
27 an appreciable difference other than creating a lot of work and attention for relatively minor
28 improvements.
29
30 Commissioner Keller: So are you basically, since you know more about what these standards
31 mean than I do, are basically suggesting that Tier 2 level of CALGreen is roughly equivalent to
32 LEED Silver in terms of benefit and effort?
33
34 Commissioner Garber: Actually, I think it is above LEED Silver. I think we are roughly in sort
35 of the gold-ish. We are in the golden world.
36
37 Commissioner Keller: Okay, well that is helpful to know. I think that assuages my concern.
38 Thank you.
39
40 Chair Tuma: Okay. Commissioner Fineberg followed by Lippert, and then perhaps we can get
41 to voting on the motion.
42
43 Commissioner Fineberg: Okay. My needle is still stuck on what we get to look at in the future.
44 I understand that a year from now LEED-ND is going to come back to the Planning
45 Commission. Will CALGreen, a review of where we are on CALGreen, come back to the
46 Planning Commission in a year?
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1
2 Ms. Parineh: Currently we don't have plans to return. There isn't a current plan to do that.
3 However, annually at Earth Day we do provide a Green Building Report on how the program is
4 doing and statistics related to that to the City Council, and you all get courtesy copies on that, or
5 what is it called, an informational item.
6
7 Commissioner Fineberg: Same question on LEED for the nonresidential buildings. Would it be
8 the same answer?
9
10 Ms. Parineh: Yes, normally we are reporting on LEED points claimed, how successful they are,
11 indicators of energy performance, etc. If Commissioner Keller's friendly amendment was passed
12 then our Green Building Report would have to include as well their LEED checklist for
13 construction as well as their CALGreen checklist. If it is not approved then we would just be
14 reporting on how the CALGreen code is being implemented.
15
16 Commissioner Fineberg: Okay, so unless we pursue some action that Council then directs Staff
1 7 to bring it back to the Commission we will not be reviewing other than courtesy copies,
18 CALGreen, or the normal LEED. Okay, because that goes to a little bit of Commissioner
19 Keller's comments of what it is that the data is being collected. If Staff is doing the analysis we
20 will get courtesy copies of Staff s work and we are not having a Study Session on it, unless we
21 change what we do, if that is what we as a body want.
22
23 Then I just want to quickly go back to a kernel of the conversation that Commissioner Tanaka
24 had proposed. I would be loath to direct Staff to have specific recommendations for what they
25 do with the various rating systems in the future, because I don't know what the future brings.
26 One of my big concerns in all of this is if we happen to have a Republican Administration or a
27 different administration that doesn't value SB 32 and other environmental programs we may find
28 a very different regulatory structure at the state level that may be completely different than what
29 we think of as today's status quo. Then we are going to need to·be able to deal with what we as a
30 City do in a different regulatory environment. So we need to be able to act how we want.
31
32 I think there is a kernel in what Commissioner Tanaka said that maybe we ought to express to
33 Council that there be direction about the values of how we regulate, of how we measure. It is a
34 little too late for nle to be very articulate to propose specific language, but the ideas that we have
35 talked about of not having three systems, and I can sort of state it in the negative easier than I can
36 in the positive. If there are ways that we can state -it is almost how do you do your best job?
37 Obviously in a perfect world, Staff, you will be doing that anyhow. But are there ways that we
38 could suggest to Council that we can say what we value, that it be predicable, that it be as simple
39 as possible, that it be non-duplicative, that it be as inexpensive as possible, yielding the best
40 outcomes. If we defme what we value in the process rather than say here is what to do. I think
41 that goes to the core ofwhat Commissioner Tanaka was suggesting. I don't know if that would
42 be something we also throw into the Annual Report. How we define that needs to be fleshed out
43 more, but kind ofa value statement.
44
45 Chair Tuma: Okay. I am seeing no more lights. Sorry, Vice-Chair Lippert.
46
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1 Vice-Chair Lippert: I don't want to be like Al Gore but I did invent the sustainability and green
2 building in this city. Back many, nlany years ago when I was on the Architectural Review Board
3 we talked about looking at our standards for review and in there we implemented or added the
4 LEED checklist to the standards for review. That is how this whole thing really got started. At
5 the time the ARB was far more forward thinking in terms of how the city was going to grow and
6 that we needed to have sustainability added to the standards. What were there, 16 at the time?
7
8 Ms. French: Yes, there was a Finding 16 that covered it.
9
10 Vice-Chair Lippert: Sustainability. I think you are going to find that Build It Green, LEED, and
11 CALGreen it is glamorous to talk about it, but when you get into the nitty-gritty of what these
12 lists are and the materials or the processes or whatever is being implemented it gets to be very
13 technical. In some ways it is like saying I drive a Prius but when you get into wanting to fix or
14 work on' your Prius it is all components, and that is what we are talking about here. In some
15 ways the process is beginning to componentized what this is all about, and what the net result is
16 to reduce the carbon footprint and the greenhouse gas emissions, and help us achieve and reduce
1 7 global warming and deal with a number environmental issues.
18
19 I would really hate to say this but going through and doing Title 24 energy calculations is really
20 like doing math. It is like doing calculations, and adding things up, and numbers. I think that
21 Comnlissioner Garber characterized it pretty well with your discussion with Commissioner
22 Martinez, which is Title 24 ADA stuff is all rote and it has become code. So for us to have more
23 to say about a city's green building ordinance is like talking about mom and apple pie and stuff
24 that we agree on, but when you get into the details I don't we are all inclined to go and start
25 baking pies or writing recipes for many pies. It is time to finally bundle the stuff up and put it in
26 something that is ministerial. It is something that we have all worked many, many, many long
27 years on to get it to be where it needs to be. We want this to be as easy to use for everybody no
28 matter where you are coming from. We want it to be able to be implemented simply by the
29 Staff. We want it to be real in terms of being able to have some real outcomes. The simplest
30 way to do it is to have as many avenues as possible in the ordinance by having LEED, Build It
31 Green, and CALGreen as the avenues by which you get there. If there are other systems that
32 come along I think they should be added to the process as well as long as we wind up with the
33 same outcome.
34
35 Chair Tuma: Okay. Commissioner Tanaka, and then we are going to vote.
36
37 Commissioner Tanaka: I just want to second Commissioner Fineberg's comments. I think you
38 wrapped it up pretty well. I was having trouble probably articulating that point. It doesn't have
39 to be tonight, maybe sometime later, but I think incorporating our values is important. I think
40 even Vice-Chair Lippert has some of those values although maybe the route he thinks is
41 different. I think about like my car and how I put fuel in my car. I was thinking well, gee if
42 there were three different ways to fuel in my car maybe I could use the round hole, and the other
43 standard is a square hole, and a third standard is a triangle how the transaction cost that incurs. I
44 have to drive around to the right pump or the right station. It is a very simplistic view, but if
45 standards are very important and to actually try to simplify and make it easier for everyone and
46 usually it is by picking one standard versus having three standards going where you have to buy
Page 51
1 three different codebooks, you have to learn all three different systems. Even for your practice it
2 probably incurs some transaction costs trying to learn all three, and master all three versus just
3 one and becoming very good at that. In any case, I don't think we are going to solve this tonight.
4 I just want to say I appreciate Commissioner Fineberg's comments and hopefully one day we can
5 go to one simple system that everyone likes and will accomplish all of our goals. Thank you.
6
7 Chair Tuma: Okay. With that I think we are ready to vote. All those in favor of the motion
8 made by Comnlissioner Garber with its amendments.
9
10 Ms. Parineh: Can we confirm the amendments? The only amendment I have is the additional
11 definition for Addition. Can you also just review those real quick?
12
13 Chair Tuma: The other one was adding Section C back in, the clean up amendments.
14
15 Commissioner Keller: I think there were three anlendments. One was the fix of the definition of
16 the word 'Addition.' The second was Section C. The third or second if you wish was allowing
1 7 energy audits before five years if they fail an audit.
18
19 Chair Tuma: Right.
20
21 Commissioner Fineberg: Maybe not using the word 'random,' the attorney had recommended
22 something different.
23
24 Mr. Larkin: That wasn't a formal amendment. That is just what we were going to do.
25
26 Ms. Parineh: Just to clarify, the word 'random' was in the Staff Report but it is not in the
27 language.
28
29 MOTION PASSED (7-0-0-0)
30
31 Chair Tuma: Okay. All those in favor say aye. (ayes) Opposed? That passes unanimously.
32
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