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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2025-09-06 Planning & Transportation Commission Verbatim Minutes_______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Planning & Transportation Commission 1 Draft Verbatim Minutes: September 6, 2025 2 Mitchell Park Community Center 3 Adobe Room & Hybrid 4 10:00 AM 5 6 Call to Order / Roll Call 7 10:00 AM 8 9 Chair Akin: I call to order this September 6, 2025, special meeting of the Planning and 10 Transportation Commission, our retreat. Mr. Tavera, could we call the roll? 11 12 Roll Call 13 14 Administrative Associate Samuel Tavera: Yes. Chair Akin? 15 16 Chair Akin: Here. 17 18 Samuel Tavera: Vice-Chair Chang? 19 20 Vice-Chair Chang: Here. 21 22 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Samuel Tavera: Commissioner Hechtman? 1 2 Commissioner Hechtman: Here. 3 4 Samuel Tavera: Commissioner James? 5 6 Commissioner James: Here. 7 8 Samuel Tavera: Commissioner Ji? 9 10 Commissioner Ji: Here. 11 12 Samuel Tavera: Commissioner Peterson? 13 14 Commissioner Templeton: He’ll be coming late. 15 16 Samuel Tavera: Commissioner Templeton? 17 18 Commissioner Templeton: Here. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Samuel Tavera: For the record, we have a quorum. 1 2 Chair Akin: Thank you. 3 4 Public Comment 5 Members of the public may speak to any item NOT on the agenda. Three (3) minutes per speaker. 6 7 Chair Akin: So do we have any public comment for items not on the agenda? 8 9 Samuel Tavera: Through the Chair, no. We have no requests to speak and no raised hands and 10 none online. 11 12 Chair Akin: Very good. 13 14 Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions 15 The Chair or Commission majority may modify the agenda order to improve meeting management. 16 17 Chair Akin: Assistant Director Armer, do we have any agenda changes, additions or deletions? 18 19 Assistant Director Jennifer Armer: No agenda changes. 20 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. DISCUSSION ITEM 1 Public Comment is Permitted. Applicants/Appellant Teams: Fifteen (15) minutes, plus three (3) minutes rebuttal. All 2 others: Three (3) minutes per speaker. 3 4 1. Planning and Transportation Commission Retreat: The Planning and Transportation 5 Commission will Conduct a Retreat to Discuss Commission Purpose and Other Topics 6 Related to Meeting Management, Administration, and Related Functions 7 8 Chair Akin: Well I guess it’s time for our single discussion [inaudible 7:40]. 9 10 Jennifer Armer: Yes. Good morning and thank you all for joining us in this different location and 11 different timing for our first retreat in a number of years. And so this – we’ve set up the topic of 12 this kind of broadly so that we can touch on ideas. So it’s a discussion of the Commission purpose 13 and other topics related to meeting management, administration, and related functions. And so 14 we’ll share just a couple slides here. Next slide. And so in the staff report, we did provide some 15 background information, just some of the rules and regulations [inaudible 8:31] should all have 16 a common understanding. The new Commissioners and those who have been on the Commission 17 for a few years, always good to have a reminder of the basis for the work that we do. In addition 18 to what was provided in the staff report, the Chair has also asked me to compile a list of online 19 resources and other resources that might be useful to Commissioners. Some of those you already 20 received as part of your orientation, but I would welcome any suggestions for other things. This 21 is my list so far that we pulled together. Also in the staff report, I mentioned the idea for future 22 retreats, retreats that would allow us to dig in on topics of interest, varying topics under 23 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. transportation and housing, for example. Again, we would welcome suggestions, ideas under 1 that. 2 3 For today’s discussion – we can go to the next slide. So we kept it broad on purpose because 4 really an overall conversation about – to do the work that we do, we need to understand the 5 basis of that work and have some common goals even when we have different opinions on 6 individual topics. And so working towards that today, we can talk about the elements listed in 7 the staff report. First though, as City staff, as the liaison to the PTC, I wanted to frame a little bit 8 of context for the discussion. I’m sure you’ve all heard complaints about the Palo Alto Process, 9 and there have been efforts over the years to try and work to reduce the difficulties of that while 10 maintaining the benefits of the process. And the Planning and Transportation Commission, of 11 course, is an important part of that. To many, it’s an impediment to change and improvements, 12 but it also provides important benefits to the community. So over the years, there are – have 13 been efforts to try [inaudible 10:48]. One of those things is reducing the types of things that come 14 automatically to a public hearing. In recent years, a lot of that’s been surrounding housing, that 15 if [inaudible 11:00] meeting the rules, then it’s something that just gets approved by the Director, 16 doesn’t need to come to a public hearing. And so what that means is the work that you all do, 17 the items that you see are the unusual asks, the exceptions, the contentious projects, and 18 changes that are proposed through code changes, through area plans, through transportation 19 plans. And so that means that you’re given questions to resolve that usually don’t have clear 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. answers. And so that leads to some of our meetings where it takes a while to work through 1 [inaudible 11:40]. 2 3 But even with those difficult, contentious, or complicated topics, we do need to aspire to not 4 impede the process. The overall goal really is to be making a recommendation to Council, to do 5 that to efficiently use the limited time that we have in meetings, to – from a staff perspective, I 6 hope the goal of helping the professional staff and experts who are here to support you provide 7 you the information that you need to do the work that you’re doing, given an understanding of 8 the limits of the resources that we have, time and technology, of course. And so we can talk 9 through ideas and questions in advance, how to provide that information back to the questioner 10 or maybe to the Commission as a whole in advance. And staff has continuously tried to learn 11 from past meetings about how we can provide information better or what type of information 12 [inaudible 12:50]. And then as we are then going through the information, making sure that there 13 is a balance and understanding of the information received from different sources [inaudible 14 13:02] you receive private comments from those who are neighbors, from those who have 15 experience or expertise or just strong interest in advocacy on a topic, versus those who aren’t in 16 the room. And then tying all of that back to the purpose, the findings, the basis for the decision 17 that you’re making a recommendation. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. So with that, these items here, just kind of high-level categories to get you started thinking. The 1 purpose [inaudible 13:38] recommendation to Council. The idea that alignment with Council is 2 something that’s worth aspiring to but maybe not total. We’re each bringing a different 3 perspective, and you dig into things more deeply than Council has time to, and so as appropriate. 4 What’s the purpose of the PTC liaison? That’s something that I think has changed over the years. 5 And then having staff support the liaison. A conversation before the meeting, a heads-up of when 6 things are scheduled as we try to do at the beginning of each hearing but maybe individually 7 reaching out, ideas for that. And then the roles of individual Commissioners. 8 9 And then for meeting management, thinking about the structure. As I observe meetings and the 10 experience that I’ve had with previous boards and commissions, one of the things that is difficult 11 is the structure that we have to work with. And there are some things that are flexible, and there 12 are other things that aren’t. Having to ask questions up front can sometimes lead to individual 13 questions, trying to solve the things that they’re wrestling with on their own, limiting the ability 14 to solve those as a group. And so thinking about the kinds of questions, clarification up front, and 15 how to shift into discussion later to say this is a concern, this is something I identify, can we see 16 if we can work together to solve that concern. Or asking – working with staff to solve those 17 concerns. Ideas for efficiency in the meeting. Of course, Council is wrestling with that as well. 18 They had it as an agenda item to discuss recently. They use time limits for each time anybody’s 19 speaking, which can be kind of heavy-handed, but sometimes it’s a good reminder of okay, I’ve 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. been going on too long. There are also recognition of different types of discussion items. So when 1 you think about the items that we’ve presented, we’ve got 3 agenda items for you next week, for 2 example, but the first 2 of those are ones where it’s the first time you’re seeing it. It’s – really the 3 goal is to get initial ideas. Maybe in something like that, it’s 1 or 2 rounds of individual comments, 4 no need for consensus, and then we can move on. So there are different ways to kind of set up 5 the discussion or different types [inaudible 16:15]. 6 7 And then I included here also the use technology during meetings. Is there support we can 8 provide with what we have available, understanding how to use it. And then I’ll conclude with 9 this last item: Interactions and roles between Commissioners, staff, and the public. W-, my goal 10 is staff is to support you and to work with you and to make sure that you have the information 11 you need but also [inaudible 16:45] bringing my professional experience to try and guide the 12 discussion when appropriate. And so I would emphasize the importance of respect in between 13 all of these different groups who are involved and the work that we do and how that can build 14 trust rather than contention and conflict and the value of that. And I think on that point, I’ll pass 15 it back to the Chair to talk about how he’d like to organize this discussion, or to open up to a 16 discussion as to how [inaudible 17:24]. 17 18 Chair Akin: That’s much more likely [inaudible 17:30]. I did consider a number of issues that we 19 might discuss [inaudible 17:41] that includes skill development versus individually. There are 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. several [inaudible 17:50] the hindering of [inaudible 17:56] we have information [inaudible 1 18:03] that we can use [inaudible 18:05]. I have a topic here that I labeled work [inaudible 18:12] 2 but the new Commissioners have seen [inaudible 18:16] suggestions for ways to make yourself 3 more effective [inaudible 18:23], but I didn’t pass those along to anyone else because I didn’t 4 think you needed them. But I can certainly [inaudible 18:30] if you’re interested. And then most 5 of the rest dovetails with what Ms. Armer has already said. The only other thing on my list of 6 [inaudible 18:45] is cooperation of all the boards and commissions. So I have [inaudible 18:52] 7 more details than that, but I don’t want to jump the gun and [inaudible 18:55]. So how do we 8 organize this discussion? We have – my inclination at the moment is to take the outline that Ms. 9 Armer has provided and then inject more details as we discuss. Does anyone have a preference 10 [inaudible 19:35]? 11 12 Commissioner Templeton: I would love to see us pick what the – maybe top 1 or 2 issues 13 [inaudible 19:42] and start with the ones that have the most common interest. I don’t know. Is 14 there something magic about the order? 15 16 Jennifer Armer: No. 17 18 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah. So that might be a good place to start because I think even just 19 hearing the list was kind of getting the juices flowing and remembering. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Male: [Inaudible 20:00]. 2 3 Chair Akin: [Inaudible 20:01] only have 2 hours. 4 5 Jennifer Armer: Through the Chair, before we continue, we are using the Owl for the microphone. 6 We do have Albert Yang online joining us in case there are any points of process or history or 7 legal questions that come up. He is having a little hard time hearing you. 8 9 Commissioner Templeton: I also. 10 11 Jennifer Armer: And so if you could try and project a little [inaudible 20:28]. 12 13 Vice-Chair Chang: Also close those d-, close the door because the smell in here is making me 14 nauseous. 15 16 Commissioner Templeton: It’s making me [inaudible 20:36] it’s – yeah. 17 18 Commissioner Hechtman: But perhaps we could move that table up this way since… 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Jennifer Armer: Yep. 1 2 Commissioner Hechtman: …since Sam is saying very little. 3 4 Jennifer Armer: [Inaudible 20:46]. 5 6 Commissioner Hechtman: Yeah. Most of the dialogue is… 7 8 Jennifer Armer: We also could rearrange… 9 10 Commissioner Hechtman: Yeah. 11 12 Jennifer Armer: …the tables. 13 14 Commissioner Hechtman: Let’s try this first and then get a… 15 16 Female: Yeah. 17 18 Commissioner Hechtman: …Mr. Yang. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Jennifer Armer: And I will note that we don’t have anyone else online, and so… 1 2 Male: [Inaudible 21:01]. 3 4 Commissioner Templeton: Do we need to ask for public comment, like official? 5 6 Jennifer Armer: What I – so I am, for the record, stating that there are no members of the public 7 joining us and so no need to [inaudible 21:11] public comment [inaudible 21:12]. 8 9 Female: [Inaudible 21:13]. 10 11 Vice-Chair Chang: And so since this is a retreat, we’re just jumping in? Is that – I don’t know how 12 – I’ve never been to a PTC retreat. 13 14 Chair Akin: I would advise – I’m toying with the idea… 15 16 Commissioner Templeton: I have [inaudible 21:26]. 17 18 Chair Akin: [Inaudible 21:27]. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Chang: Yeah. You might be the only… 1 2 Chair Akin: [Inaudible 21:29]. 3 4 Commissioner Templeton: [Inaudible 21:29] it was before you. 5 6 Commissioner Hechtman: Your first year. 7 8 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah. 9 10 Commissioner Hechtman: Yeah. So [inaudible 21:32]. 11 12 Chair Akin: So you are the only one of us who [inaudible 21:35]. 13 14 Jennifer Armer: Who knows the history and what’s been done before, I would guess that Albert 15 probably as well. But also that being said, I think knowing what’s – how it’s been done before 16 might be helpful, but also… 17 18 Commissioner Templeton: [Inaudible 21:50]. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Jennifer Armer: …how does it work for this group? 1 2 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah. Exactly. 3 4 Chair Akin: Are we missing anything important? 5 6 Commissioner Templeton: I don’t think that what I intended was [inaudible 22:01]. 7 8 Jennifer Armer: All right. So let’s [inaudible 22:05]. 9 10 Commissioner Hechtman: There were some characters on the Board – on the Commission at that 11 time. I remember hearing about that retreat… 12 13 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah. 14 15 Commissioner Hechtman: …when I joined the next year [inaudible 22:19]. 16 17 Jennifer Armer: So lessons learned from that retreat. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Templeton: I think we have an excellent group here today, and I think I’d like to 1 hear from all of us on the items that were brought up. 2 3 Commissioner Hechtman: Yeah. I do like – can we be informal and use first names today or should 4 we be formal? 5 6 Commissioner Templeton: I’m cool with that. 7 8 Vice-Chair Chang: That’d be great. 9 10 Male: [Inaudible 22:40]. 11 12 Commissioner Hechtman: Great. 13 14 Jennifer Armer: Me too. 15 16 Commissioner Hechtman: So I did like Cari’s idea of taking this list as augmented. For example, 17 Allen’s idea of the collaboration with other boards. I thought that’s sort of a 1E, part of the PTC 18 purpose rather than our meeting management. So – but I like Cari’s idea of are there a couple of 19 these we want to start with that are really resonating with us? For me, one of them brought up 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. by Jennifer is the efficiency, really how we get through items in our meeting so that we’re 1 respectful of everybody’s time and actually we get to a result without getting to the point where 2 we’re too tired to get to a result. So that’s one that I’m particularly interested in talking about, 3 2B. 4 5 Chair Akin: And as Jennifer knows, one of the items on my list was the use of technology. So I’d 6 like to see if we – if there’s some low-hanging fruit, we can [inaudible 23:43] there [inaudible 7 23:45]. 8 9 Jennifer Armer: [Inaudible 23:45] pretty quick. 10 11 Vice-Chair Chang: That’s one I’d like to discuss if we can kind of knock it out in 10 or – 10 minutes 12 just so that – because I feel like we’ve used up at least 10 minutes in the last several PTC meetings. 13 14 Commissioner Templeton: Do we want to wait to have that conversation? 15 16 Vice-Chair Chang: That’s fine too. So then if we could [inaudible 24:05]. 17 18 Commissioner Templeton: [Inaudible 24:05]. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Chang: But yes. I think we should have it. Yeah. 1 2 Chair Akin: Ten minutes. 3 4 Vice-Chair Chang: And we can decide what our norms are for how we want to do that. 5 6 Commissioner Templeton: Mine is 2D. 7 8 Commissioner Hechtman: 2D? 9 10 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah. 11 12 Vice-Chair Chang: [Inaudible 24:23] other boards and commissions for me. 13 14 Commissioner Ji: Yes. And one thing that’s – I didn’t – I guess maybe it’s related to C is how we 15 share data, like information amongst each other. I remember specifically a diagram that Allen 16 presented at a meeting that then we spent a lot of time discussing about how is the data correct 17 and all these questions that maybe if there’s something that we want to point out for exhibit, 18 how do we do that, how – because there’s also the discussion staff is professionally trained to be 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. able to validate and say hey, is the thing that I just hacked together make sense so that there’s 1 some kind of process amongst Commissioner-created information. 2 3 Commissioner Templeton: So is that 2D for you, Kevin? 4 5 Commissioner Ji: I guess. Yeah. 6 7 Jennifer Armer: And then it ties into the questions to staff in advance or… 8 9 Commissioner Ji: Yeah. 10 11 Jennifer Armer: …how the Chair… 12 13 Chair Akin: [Inaudible 25:21] categories here. 14 15 Jennifer Armer: Yeah. [Inaudible 25:23] as much of this does [inaudible 25:25]. 16 17 Chair Akin: [Inaudible 25:26]. 18 19 Commissioner James: I’m interested in all this stuff. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Templeton: Which one do you want to talk [inaudible 25:34]? 2 3 Commissioner James: It’s all sort of new to me and – yeah. No. I’m super flexible honestly. I 4 [inaudible 25:43] touch on all of this. 5 6 Commissioner Templeton: All right, Chair. You get to choose. It looks like 1D and 2B, C, and D. 7 8 Commissioner Hechtman: Is it 1E? 9 10 Chair Akin: 1E. Yeah. 11 12 Commissioner Templeton: I don’t know. What’s 1E? 13 14 Commissioner Hechtman: E is the… 15 16 Chair Akin: That’s the… 17 18 Commissioner Hechtman: Off-the-menu collaboration with other boards and commissions. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Templeton: Well, I thought you said that was… 1 2 Male: All right. 3 4 Commissioner Templeton: …under roles… 5 6 Commissioner Hechtman: Literally under D [inaudible 26:07]. 7 8 Male: [Inaudible 26:11]. 9 10 Commissioner Templeton: Physically listed under. I see. 11 12 Commissioner Hechtman: [Inaudible 26:19]. 13 14 Commissioner Templeton: Not included in. 15 16 Commissioner Hechtman: Right. 17 18 Commissioner Templeton: I see. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Akin: So I heard a great deal of interest in the other boards and commissions. 1 2 Male: [Inaudible 26:25]. 3 4 Chair Akin: And since that’s one of the few I actually prepared for, I can throw out some additional 5 information, more loudly so that Albert can hear me. So the genesis of this, for me, is that I was 6 approached by Peter Baltay and David Hirsch from the Architectural Review Board to try and 7 make sure that projects that are reviewed by both commissions are – that we deal efficiently 8 with the exceptions that are being requested and the concerns that are likely to arise so that the 9 applicants are fully prepared and the meetings can go more quickly. 10 11 Commissioner Templeton: Where? With us? 12 13 Chair Akin: So that’s first thing on the list. To minimize the Brown Act issues, it makes sense to 14 do all of this through staff. 15 16 Male: Mm. 17 18 Chair Akin: So probably the – what Dave and I discussed was that the form this will take would 19 be an ad hoc for each of the commissions working with Jennifer to get as early access as possible 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. to proposals to highlight the – now I’m going to go through a long list here, but please feel free 1 to comment [inaudible 28:05] – to identify the requested exceptions for – as Jennifer said earlier, 2 the projects that come to us tend to be the ones that have exceptions [inaudible 28:18]. So let’s 3 identify a list, highlight those that might be hotspots in hearings. And just an example list: the 4 setbacks, special setbacks, daylight planes, parking within the project, parking nearby the project, 5 traffic circulation nearby the project. Those are the sorts of things that are likely to generate 6 discussion. And the goal would be to make sure the applicants are prepared to justify the 7 exceptions that they’re requesting so they have a rationale that they can give to us and to the 8 ARB. Suggest alternatives that staff may want to discuss with the applicants, in some cases 9 [inaudible 29:09] come to mind. 10 11 Commissioner Templeton: I can’t hear anything you’re saying here. I’m so sorry. Could you please 12 speak up? 13 14 Jennifer Armer: Do you want to shift over [inaudible 29:17]? 15 16 Commissioner Templeton: Well, I mean I… 17 18 Commissioner Ji: Maybe you can scoot the table this way. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Templeton: Or maybe he could speak up. That’s what I asked for. It’s okay if he 1 wants to continue whispering. We can’t hear you very well over here. 2 3 Chair Akin: Sorry. That’s a – this is a natural problem. 4 5 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah. 6 7 Male: [Inaudible 29:35]. 8 9 Commissioner Templeton: [Inaudible 29:36] so… 10 11 Chair Akin: Even Gennady classified me as soft spoken. 12 13 Commissioner Templeton: Aw. 14 15 Chair Akin: Um… 16 17 Commissioner Templeton: I can hear you now. Thank you. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Akin: Good. I will try to keep it up as long as my voice lasts. So the third thing that we would 1 ask staff to discuss with the applicants would be long-term enforceable mitigations for matters 2 that can’t be resolved in any other way. And ultimately the goal here is to create a sort of checklist 3 that could be used by staff to talk to applicants so that the personal involvement of the ad hocs 4 of the 2 commissions would no longer be needed. 5 6 Commissioner Templeton: We haven’t agreed on ad hocs, but go on. 7 8 Chair Akin: [Inaudible 30:28]. 9 10 Jennifer Armer: This is the idea [inaudible 30:29]. 11 12 Chair Akin: Yeah. This is just what David and I have been discussing. So Yingxi, who is currently 13 Chair of the ARB, and I have met, and we have talked already in much less detail than I’ve just 14 given you. So what I expect would be the next step would be to have Yingxi and you and me go 15 over this given that how we’re informed by the discussion here and see where that goes. So you 16 now have all the details. That’s the extent of which this idea has been explored so far. Cari? 17 18 Commissioner Templeton: I really like the idea of the Chairs meeting with staff and asking staff 19 what they need. I’m not sure what the purpose of the ad hocs would be. In my experience, using 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. ad hocs and being part of ad hocs on this committee and not being a part of some other ad hocs 1 is a lot of really important discussion happens behind the scenes and is reported poorly and 2 incompletely, and then we have to have it all again or we have some commissioners who are like 3 we’ve already discussed it, we don’t need to talk about it. And so it’s a bit of a frustration because 4 the, as we’ve discussed today and other times, the conversations we have are really important. 5 So I’m not sure about having ad hocs and that kind of thing. However, I really agree that I want 6 staff to bring those topics forward that you listed, like here’s the problems, here’s what we’re 7 anticipating, make sure the same information is going to both commissions. That – I really like 8 that idea. 9 10 Chair Akin: Okay. The suggestion for the ad hoc, I think, was driven by 2 things. One, making sure 11 that the load gets shared because potentially there are a lot of projects. And the other is 12 sometimes individual Commission members have expertise that the Chair doesn’t have. And so 13 occasionally there’s a fit that makes sense. 14 15 Commissioner Templeton: But that’s why we all need to hear from that person, for exactly that 16 reason. 17 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Akin: So the unknown here is how much information flows back to the Commission. And 1 that’s partly a Brown Act issue, so we have to be careful that the information flow is legally 2 acceptable. 3 4 Commissioner Templeton: It’s not Brown Act if it’s on a dais. 5 6 Chair Akin: As – no. It’s the earlier things that I’m concerned about. 7 8 Male: Mm-hm. 9 10 Chair Akin: So it can’t be as interactive as we might like to solve the problem, but there is still 11 opportunity to, at the very least, make sure that the applicant knows what are the issues that are 12 likely to be of concern to both boards – to both commissions. 13 14 Commissioner Templeton: And do you think that we’re the right people to identify that or staff? 15 Because my feeling it’s probably the staff. I don’t know [inaudible 33:46]. 16 17 Chair Akin: Yeah. David and I came to the conclusion that what we needed to do was make sure 18 staff knew… 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Female: Mm. 1 2 Chair Akin: …and… 3 4 Vice-Chair Chang: That certain issues would be hot button issues… 5 6 Chair Akin: Would be hot button issues. 7 8 Vice-Chair Chang: …for this – for a particular project. 9 10 Chair Akin: That’s right. 11 12 Vice-Chair Chang: Okay. 13 14 Chair Akin: So the [inaudible 34:05]. 15 16 Commissioner Templeton: [Inaudible 34:05] we can just tell. 17 18 Chair Akin: To share the load. Well, this is before a project comes before the Commission as a 19 whole. So it’s got to be some subset of us talking only to staff. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Templeton: That doesn’t make any sense. 2 3 Commissioner Hechtman: If I’m understanding, at every meeting we get a heads-up, this is 4 coming in 2 weeks or 4 weeks, and ARB, for example, gets the same thing [inaudible 34:36]. And 5 so this is an opportunity for the Chairs to sort of look at those that are on the horizon in advance 6 and sort of mentally ask for or discuss – 2 Chairs talk about is this one where this ad hoc or 7 whatever structure is going to be useful so that we can have a conversation with staff before it 8 actually comes to us in 2 or 4 weeks and make sure that when it comes to us, it’s got these pieces 9 in place. Is that the concept? 10 11 Chair Akin: Yeah. 12 13 Vice-Chair Chang: I think it’s even earlier than that. 14 15 Chair Akin: Earlier than that. Yes. 16 17 Vice-Chair Chang: Because – okay. Let’s take an example, 660 University. This is the one at the 18 corner of University and Middlefield. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Akin: Maybe we should not talk about specifics. 1 2 Vice-Chair Chang: Okay. But we saw – I’m not going to talk about specifics. We saw many different 3 iterations of that work, and my understanding is that every time something gets redone, it – well, 4 in 2 to 4 weeks, you can’t redo something that completely changes the whole building and the 5 whole – so I think – is it earlier? So is it way, way, way earlier before a… 6 7 Chair Akin: It’s as early as staff gets a [inaudible 35:49]. 8 9 Vice-Chair Chang: Wind of that project or… 10 11 Chair Akin: [Inaudible 35:52]. 12 13 Jennifer Armer: The application. 14 15 Chair Akin: [Inaudible 35:53] the application. 16 17 Commissioner Templeton: But we should not, as Commissioners, be discussing projects that are 18 agendized or about to be agendized. It’s not legal. We need to not be making ad hocs to talk 19 about things we’re not allowed to talk… 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Chair Akin: Okay. Let’s separate 2 issues. 2 3 Female: [Inaudible 36:11]. 4 5 Chair Akin: One is the ad hoc versus Chair participation. 6 7 Commissioner Templeton: I do think the Chair can talk about anything they want to talk about 8 with staff, and so can the rest of us. 9 10 Chair Akin: Okay. So let’s separate those 2 issues, but let me try and make a generic example. 11 12 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you. That would help [inaudible 36:27] I don’t get it. 13 14 Chair Akin: Right. So special setbacks that exist for transportation projects. There are a bunch of 15 them throughout the City. 16 17 Female: Mm-hm. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Akin: And they affect large numbers of projects that are about to be proposed or that are 1 being considered. So special setbacks are generally not of concern to the ARB for aesthetic 2 reasons. 3 4 Commissioner James: Mm. 5 6 Vice-Chair Chang: Mm. 7 8 Chair Akin: Special setbacks are of concern to us for transportation reasons. So an applicant who 9 goes to the ARB and says we would like to use our special setback for this purpose will receive no 10 pushback and [inaudible 37:17]. 11 12 Commissioner Templeton: Nor should they because they’re the ARB. 13 14 Chair Akin: And then come to the PTC where they may receive pushback. So what I would like to 15 do is – and I think what David has in mind as well – is for us to communicate to staff this is likely 16 to be an area of contention, so please talk to the applicant so that they are prepared to deal with 17 this… 18 19 Commissioner Templeton: [Inaudible 37:42] important. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Chair Akin: …in the 2 different ways that they are going to have to at the 2 different commissions. 2 But what we don’t want is to have an applicant think that this is a thing which passed the ARB… 3 4 Female: Mm-hm. 5 6 Chair Akin: …and therefore, is no longer of concern. 7 8 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah, I mean… 9 10 Chair Akin: So up front they need to be [inaudible 38:08]. 11 12 Commissioner Templeton: I agree [inaudible 38:10] a time check. I don’t know what more we 13 want to say about this, but I would love to hear from other people. I know I talk a lot, so what do 14 you guys say? 15 16 Jennifer Armer: If I may jump in briefly with what I’ve heard and some thoughts from a staff 17 perspective, what I’m hearing is an interest in sharing from maybe a Chair participation 18 perspective a first look at projects when they first come in and going through their first review 19 with staff to identify some of these issues. Also, I think you mentioned the idea of using that as a 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. way of compiling a list so that maybe this isn’t something that goes on forever but is something 1 that is developed. I might add to that the idea that alternatively it could be based on the projects 2 you have seen during your time on the PTC and the ARB members. Maybe this is a future retreat 3 or even joint retreat discussion. 4 5 Commissioner Templeton: I – what my – what you didn’t capture – that was very, I think, good 6 about what we have. So what is not included in that is how much staff is the one that knows 7 because you’re the people interacting with these and you create the list and you can tell. That’s 8 not something that means — and to your point about reserving our time, this is not something 9 that really is a surprise. You guys always know, and you can warn the other Chairs. 10 11 Jennifer Armer: Thank you. Thank you. And I do see that as part of my role and responsibility and 12 why I do attend all PTC, ARB, and HRB meetings so that as I’ve been with the City for a year now, 13 I am building a sense of what are the hot button issues. 14 15 Female: Exactly. 16 17 Jennifer Armer: There were some I already could predict, but there are ones that I’m developing 18 so that as I am reviewing all of those staff reports, as I’m guiding our current Planning Manager, 19 for example, and she’s leading her team, that they identify those things early. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Templeton: And to the Chair’s point, I think all of us can participate in this in 2 saying, when we’re reading the packet, adding a little checkmark or a note at the top that says 3 during the Commission say this – please add this to the list [inaudible 40:31]. We can do that 4 because then the list will build itself… 5 6 Chair Akin: Well… 7 8 Commissioner Templeton: …together. 9 10 Chair Akin: …yes and no. 11 12 Commissioner Templeton: Okay. 13 14 Chair Akin: Yes. That process should go on. 15 16 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah. 17 18 Chair Akin: Is that the way to jumpstart it? What’s going on, that’s where I think – at least with 19 us and the ARB, I think we need to push things a little initially. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Templeton: [Inaudible 41:07]. 2 3 Chair Akin: Well, that’s the process that’s being discussed. 4 5 Commissioner Templeton: I would love to get to some of the other things [inaudible 41:17]. 6 7 Chair Akin: Yeah. 8 9 Commissioner Templeton: So… 10 11 Commissioner Hechtman: [Inaudible 41:19] I’m open to trying this. I’m not candidly seeing the 12 need for it. The ARB – just to use the ARB/PTC example, we have different roles, and a lot of 13 projects only come to one or the other. We’re talking about the ones that are going to come to 14 both. 15 16 Female: Both. 17 18 Commissioner Hechtman: Or for any other PTC paired with somebody else, historic, whatever. I 19 think every applicant – staff has to figure out which commissions every application, depending 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. on its nature, has to go through. And I think staff’s obligation – and I suspect they do – is to 1 explain you’re going to have to go to both, ARB and PTC, and they have different roles. Maybe it 2 could be made a little more clear to them what those different roles are – I haven’t been in the 3 room when those conversations occur – so that somebody doesn’t come out of an ARB meeting 4 thinking I’ve got my setback set, when really that’s a PTC issue – it’s not an ARB issue so they 5 glossed over it. Or it’s possible there are overlapping areas. So having said that, I’m open to trying 6 this. My concern is staff time, and we hear in many of our meetings where we have ideas about 7 some other thing that it would be nice to have about a particular item, that there are staff time 8 and budget issues. And so I think as we think about adding this to staff’s plate, we have to think 9 about what other things we might want to put on the plate and then prioritize those. 10 11 Vice-Chair Chang: What does staff – I’m curious [inaudible 43:01] what does staff think of this? 12 13 Jennifer Armer: I’m – I like the recognition that staff is already working to try and do some of this 14 work. 15 16 Vice-Chair Chang: Mm-hm. 17 18 Jennifer Armer: And I would add that sometimes even when the suggestion gets made that 19 justification be provided for something that… 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Vice-Chair Chang: It doesn’t happen. Sure. 2 3 Jennifer Armer: It’s up to the applicant and the effort that they’re going to put into it. And so part 4 of it is you’re seeing kind of the end result of that process. I have some concerns about a single 5 Commissioner, even if it’s the Chair, kind of weighing in early and whether that could potentially 6 be leading them in a direction that then isn’t actually the whole Commission’s opinion. But I think 7 it’s an interesting thing to consider. I think it also leads to other ideas like coming up with a 8 checklist of common concerns that could be something that the Commissions work with on. Also, 9 in some cases, having joint ARB/PTC meetings is another way of bringing the 2 together and 10 hearing the different interests. 11 12 Commissioner Templeton: We’ve had joint sessions before. Right? 13 14 Jennifer Armer: In fact, I am looking into doing one in the next [inaudible 44:31]. 15 16 Commissioner Templeton: That could be a possibility as well. 17 18 Chair Akin: Yeah. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Jennifer Armer: There are lots of different possibilities. 1 2 Chair Akin: We’re all in favor of that. It’s just the timing matters. 3 4 Jennifer Armer: Absolutely. And it will depend on the type of project. I think on development 5 projects, that probably isn’t the best way to do the review. But on some things – the example 6 that’s coming to my mind right now is the Cubberley plan and the work that they’re doing right 7 now. That might be one that we would bring to a joint special session. 8 9 Commissioner Templeton: [Inaudible 45:05] fun. 10 11 Jennifer Armer: Yeah. I think it could be a really interesting discussion. And then if a 12 recommendation’s needed, it would be done individually but at the [inaudible 45:13]. So what I 13 would recommend to the Chair for this discussion today is that there are some really great ideas. 14 And I will note for the record that Commissioner Peterson has joined us. And that it’s something 15 that we can continue to think about, as you already have been, if there might be more thoughts 16 from other members, but it might be useful to move on to the next part. 17 18 Commissioner Ji: Okay. I just have [inaudible 45:46]. I’m really in favor of the checklist, but I think 19 it’s not additional work. For example, one thing I like about the way that the findings set up is 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. there’s a finding and then there’s an explanation. So maybe if there’s a way that we just kind of 1 punt this to the developer and it’s like here’s the checklist, you have to add an attachment that 2 is for each of these things you explain, and if it’s blank, it’s blank. So there’s no staff time involved. 3 And then as long as we kind of during the meeting we can just say oh, setbacks, special setbacks, 4 daylight plane, whatever, we just throw them on there and then we can just say hey, this – our 5 list just keeps growing. And it becomes kind of a natural way to make this minimal staff time but 6 also we get what we want. And also from our perspective, it’s almost like a cheat sheet. It’s like 7 hey, we can flip to Appendix B and see okay, these are the issues that might come up. And so 8 that – I think [inaudible 46:33]. 9 10 Commissioner Templeton: But the staff is doing that. Right? 11 12 Vice-Chair Chang: They always have the development… 13 14 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah. 15 16 Vice-Chair Chang: There’s that chart every single project that has the… 17 18 Commissioner Ji: I think the one thing I’d like to add there is just explanation subcolumn 19 [inaudible 46:43]. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Vice-Chair Chang: That’s – so that’s something that’s like… 2 3 Female: Yeah. 4 5 Vice-Chair Chang: …immediately doable. Right? 6 7 Commissioner Ji: Right. 8 9 Vice-Chair Chang: It’s an ask that you can make of … 10 11 Commissioner Ji: Yeah. And if it’s blank, we know why it’s blank. So – as opposed to being buried 12 in a paragraph somewhere. 13 14 Jennifer Armer: And that is something that I have seen with other agencies, requesting that the 15 applicant provide the justification for things and particularly for exceptions [inaudible 47:08]. 16 17 Commissioner Templeton: And to go further into the Chair’s request, what about include having 18 the applicant send the list for both commissions – to both commissions. In other words, so we 19 can see what their considerations are. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Vice-Chair Chang: Yeah. 2 3 Male: Yeah. 4 5 Commissioner Templeton: And then they’re doing the work. What do you think about that? 6 7 Jennifer Armer: With the cautionary comment that your work will be a little bit complicated 8 because you’ll need to make sure your discussion is focused on what your findings [inaudible 9 47:35]. 10 11 Commissioner Templeton: We need to format it nicely. 12 13 Chair Akin: [Inaudible 47:37]. 14 15 Commissioner Ji: For the PC requirements, we also do see the ARB findings [inaudible 47:43] so 16 don’t expect it to be… 17 18 Commissioner Templeton: Well, the question was if this – if the applicant wanted to produce 19 something that was – included justifications [inaudible 47:52]. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Hechtman: I do think that’s reasonable. I sometimes get hired to prepare draft 2 findings for staff to consider. The County has this elaborate grading ordinance requirement to 3 justify grading. Is it the minimum needed to make a legal use, and sometimes I write those. I draft 4 variance findings sometimes. And again, they’re not locked in, but it’s… 5 6 Vice-Chair Chang: Yeah. We’ve seen [inaudible 48:22]. 7 8 Commissioner Hechtman: But there are situations… 9 10 Vice-Chair Chang: We’ve seen them in letters from attorneys. Right? [Inaudible 48:25]. 11 12 Commissioner Hechtman: Right. But it is a burden on applicants to hire me to do that kind of 13 work, and it is not inexpensive to hire me to do that kind of work. 14 15 Chair Akin: All right. The final comment… 16 17 Commissioner Templeton: It is – it’s not inexpensive to come back multiple times to the PTC. 18 19 Chair Akin: That’s [inaudible 48:46]. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Templeton: Sorry [inaudible 48:48]. 2 3 Chair Akin: That’s [inaudible 48:49]. That’s a perfect segue. Yeah. The final comment I wanted to 4 make was that one of the other goals here is to minimize work for staff and for applicants 5 [inaudible 49:00] by making sure that things are addressed as early as possible and not 6 repetitively. So… 7 8 Male: [Inaudible 49:09]. 9 10 Commissioner Templeton: Well, I’m talking about staff. Should we move on to the Interactions 11 and Roles: Commissioners, Staff and Public. 12 13 Chair Akin: I think I’m ready to move on. Is everyone else? [Inaudible 49:23] 10 a.m. 14 15 Vice-Chair Chang: So what are we covering in D? I understand – I see the words, but I don’t 16 understand what it means. 17 18 Male: [Inaudible 49:33] . 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Chang: Yeah. 1 2 Commissioner Templeton: Well, I know what Ms. Armer said, and I’m going to repeat it back 3 through my lens and see if we can all achieve a common understanding because we may not be 4 exactly on the same page, but what do we expect from staff and how do we deal with that if 5 we’re not receiving what we expect. Is that part of it? 6 7 Jennifer Armer: I think that is a good component of it. And I think the way that I framed it is 8 thinking about how we can all work together because staff’s responsibility – we’re employees of 9 the City – is to provide you the information you need to be able to make your recommendation 10 to Council within the limits that we have in terms of time and technology and resources. And I 11 think that is what your statement is. One of the places that we run into difficulty when staff works 12 to provide the information based on past experience and our technical expertise that we think is 13 important for your discussion and recommendation and it’s missing something or isn’t what 14 you’re hoping for or expect. And how do we handle that? Is it something that – we talked a little 15 bit about asking questions ahead of time, have – reaching out and talking with staff, and just 16 having a common understanding of what can and can’t be. 17 18 Vice-Chair Chang: We’re just [inaudible 51:27] today to [inaudible 51:29]. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Peterson: No one here has ever worked with staff. Correct? City or county stuff? 1 So I spend time with staff. 2 3 Commissioner Hechtman: I have. 4 5 Commissioner Templeton: [Inaudible 51:38] staff. 6 7 Commissioner Peterson: You [inaudible 51:39] staff too. 8 9 Commissioner Hechtman: No, I [inaudible 51:42]. 10 11 Commissioner Templeton: [Inaudible 51:42]. 12 13 Commissioner Hechtman: Other than being a short-term City attorney, I have not [inaudible 14 51:46]. 15 16 Commissioner Peterson: Okay. I’ve been a level 3 clerical worker. That’s where I get my union 17 membership [inaudible 51:51] Measure 8. Everybody’s for Measure 8 for healthcare. 18 19 Commissioner Templeton: We’re not doing political. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Peterson: That’s right. I’m not – it’s not political. 2 3 Male: [Inaudible 51:59]. 4 5 Commissioner Peterson: Anyway, so the staff – as staff, I was the recipient of all Joe Simitian’s 6 requests during the creation of the Office of Labor Standards Enforcement. And so Joe doesn’t 7 know who I am at the time. He just sees the staff member or the manager he needs to look at 8 and says well, I want to see the data set that proves we need this. And I think this is a standard 9 narrative for an elected off-, for staff. And staff says okay, we’ll provide you that evidence. So 10 they come back and it goes down the chain, and I get the request to produce this data set, which 11 takes me 3 days, being up all night, all the rest to produce. And we produce it [inaudible 52:40], 12 and Joe says well, I don’t trust these. I want to see something I trust. I want to see just 1 week or 13 1 month, some snapshot. So I go through and I do the whole [inaudible 52:49] first time I didn’t 14 know he was going to come back and ask again, so I just – the first time I just [inaudible 52:52] in 15 Excel. So I think a lot of times when we ask something for staff, that chain reaction where it goes 16 all the way down, there’s somebody at the other end that’s doing the work, and it comes back, 17 working really, really diligently. But sometimes the reason why we’re asking for the stuff is – Joe, 18 I think, was just opposed to the [inaudible 53:08]. But whenever I talk about anything with staff, 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. I’m always imagining okay, what’s the whole network that we’re looking at here when we’re 1 putting in these requests. 2 3 Commissioner Ji: I just want to [inaudible 53:22] that because I’ve been a transportation 4 consultant. So the one layer after that is staff will ask the consultant to go and create a budget. 5 6 Commissioner Peterson: [Inaudible 53:28]. 7 8 Commissioner Ji: So just want to [inaudible 53:31] that as well. But I think that one of the things 9 – just kind of jumping a little bit more deeply into some of the things that I think could be helpful 10 – are like one – for example, the street sign ordinance, I’d never seen the original iteration. And 11 so doing some kind of comparison [inaudible 53:48] hey, if this item came back, it just would 12 reference this ordinance has changed significantly from the past. Or just having so-, maybe the 13 previous iteration of the ordinance to look at or kind of specifically highlighting could be useful. 14 And then also having a little bit more details about, for example, when it came from prescreen at 15 ARB, sometimes it gets dissected into just a couple of sentences [inaudible 54:18] I know it’s 16 because there’s a lot there, but I think it could be helpful to expand upon specifically if there 17 were certain motions that we passed over to ARB or Council direct us on specific things, just kind 18 of diving into that a little deeper could be helpful. And then one of the other things that came up 19 at the street sign ordinance, I was curious about the number of properties that were impacted. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. So having kind of an impact analysis on certain kind of, not project specific, but kind of larger 1 policies I think could be helpful. I would have liked to have not had to ask for the number of – the 2 amount of impact that certain ordinances [inaudible 54:58]. 3 4 Jennifer Armer: The one immediate pointer that I would give is that all the staff reports and 5 videos of previous meetings and meeting minutes are available online. So when we can, we 6 definitely will try and provide summary and stuff from those previous meetings and kind of the 7 key takeaways that staff heard, but we also do try and provide links and references to those 8 previous meetings. I know you have limited time as well, so it’ll always be a balance. 9 10 Chair Akin: Go ahead. 11 12 Commissioner Hechtman: Yeah. A couple observations. So one of the things that I think we have 13 to be cognizant of is – I don’t think any of us that I’m aware of have planning degrees, but every 14 member of our staff has some kind, I think, of graduate degree. They have been trained in this 15 and in the issue spotting. That doesn’t make them flawless, but it creates a situation where – and 16 when a matter gets brought to us, I may spend 2 hours on that staff report for that 1 item, 17 studying it, thinking of what I need to know that’s maybe not in here, but the staff member who 18 prepared it has spent 20 hours or 40 hours or more sometimes with their professional 19 background to flesh it out. And so one of the things I have to remind myself is just because it’s 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. not in the staff report doesn’t mean staff hasn’t already thought about it and dealt with it or 1 dismissed it, whatever the situation is. And so one of the ways I try to show respect is to not 2 assume that they missed it. If I need to know what their thinking was, I try to couch it in those 3 terms, like you’ve probably thought about this but I didn’t see it in the staff report. How’d you 4 deal with this? 5 6 The other thing that I think is sometimes helpful when I see a gap– I typically read the staff report 7 Saturday mornings. That’s when I work on this. And if I see something I need to know, I’ll send an 8 email usually to the staff member who wrote it, copies to Jennifer and the Chair, saying on 9 Wednesday night I’m going to ask this question and be ready for it. And I don’t do it often, but 10 when I’ve done it, I find that it works pretty well because I do ask the question, and there’s an 11 answer. And so not only does it give staff a heads-up, I think it also builds trust in the public in 12 the process and in their confidence in staff because if alternatively I asked that question, staff 13 didn’t know it was coming, they have to say they’ll have an answer later. 14 15 Commissioner Templeton: I want to piggyback on both those comments and say that this is one 16 of the things that I did as Chair. We didn’t have any transition. And I know you guys had a lot of 17 jumping right in, but one of the things I did in the Chair meeting was anticipate the kinds of 18 questions that we’re going to get and ask staff to please come prepared with answers. And you 19 may be doing that as well. The more that Commissioners can communicate, like Bart does with 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. the Chair and with Ms. Armer, the better that meeting is going to go and the better our meeting 1 is going [inaudible 58:38]. 2 3 Chair Akin: So that’s a perfect jump to the point Bryna made before all of us were here that 4 getting questions into staff and then having the answers reflected back out to the Commission 5 might be the [inaudible 58:54]. 6 7 Vice-Chair Chang: In… 8 9 Chair Akin: [Inaudible 58:55]. 10 11 Vice-Chair Chang: In or as early as possible so that as people are – so what we’ve both been doing 12 is we’ll come with lists of questions or semblance of questions. And I was just sharing with 13 Jennifer that Amy often would send answers to those out to the whole Commission rather than 14 only to us. And the reason… 15 16 Commissioner Templeton: It’s required. Is that not happening? 17 18 Vice-Chair Chang: It’s… 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Akin: Not always. 1 2 Jennifer Armer: Not always. It depends on the… 3 4 Commissioner Templeton: That’s a problem. 5 6 Jennifer Armer: It depends on the type of question, but in general, my preference from previous 7 experience would be to not only be providing it to all the members of the Commission but also 8 have something that we publish online so that the information is commonly shared. And 9 sometimes it can be a clarification that isn’t necessarily something that’s needed for the whole 10 Commission and so we just handle it as an individual ourselves. 11 12 Female: Okay. 13 14 Chair Akin: So that would mean – if those are being released publicly, then that would mean we, 15 as Commissioners, have to be very careful about how we pose all questions… 16 17 Commissioner Templeton: What are the… 18 19 Chair Akin: …unless you’re editing them. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Templeton: I think they edit them… 2 3 Jennifer Armer: It… 4 5 Commissioner Templeton: …and combine them. 6 7 Jennifer Armer: It depends on how we proceed with that. The – my most recent experience, we 8 would put together an addendum report or desk item. As we were talking about, additional staff 9 time. Of course, I want to be careful that we’re not creating a whole new process, but the benefit 10 of that is then we can combine or more generalize some of the questions that are asked to try to 11 polish them up. 12 13 Chair Akin: So the takeaway I’m getting is we should pose our questions early… 14 15 Jennifer Armer: And do it over the weekend, great, but I know sometimes we give you big packet. 16 17 Chair Akin: …and that we should do so in a way that we think will minimize your effort if the 18 answers are going to be distributed more widely. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Jennifer Armer: I guess framing the question with the idea that how might this be helpful to 1 everybody and to the public. 2 3 Commissioner Templeton: And being transparent with the Chair about it so that you can talk 4 about it at your meeting if you need to. If there’s not a time for you to get back to the 5 Commission, at least the Chair can say remember this, we’re going to – this is going to come up, 6 so just make sure you have an answer ready. 7 8 Chair Akin: [Inaudible 61:32] the premeeting. 9 10 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah. 11 12 Jennifer Armer: [Inaudible 61:33] extremely. 13 14 Commissioner Templeton: When is your premeeting? Fridays [inaudible 61:37] 15 16 Jennifer Armer: Tuesdays. 17 18 Commissioner Hechtman: Tuesdays [inaudible 61:38]. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Templeton: [Inaudible 61:38]. 1 2 Vice-Chair Chang: Tuesday. 3 4 Jennifer Armer: At 3. 5 6 Chair Akin: At 3. Correct. 7 8 Commissioner Hechtman: Right. I try to send the email actually over the weekend while it’s fresh 9 so that when you come in Monday, you’re not reading your emails over the weekend, I’m hoping 10 you’re not always reading your emails. When you come in Monday, it’s there because Tuesday 11 at 3, if that’s the first time staff sees it, that’s a pretty short ramp to not only find an answer, 12 write something… 13 14 Male: Right. 15 16 Commissioner Hechtman: …and put it out. So hopefully by Tuesday at 3, you’re reiterating these 17 are the questions that have already come in, you’re on it. And staff can say yeah [inaudible 62:20]. 18 19 Chair Akin: Yeah. The most successful pre meetings are those in which the answers are provided… 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Hechtman: Yeah. 2 3 Chair Akin: …rather than the questions. 4 5 Commissioner Templeton: [Inaudible 62:34] I’m going to add because yes, you’re right. That’s 6 definitely the best. Option B is anything else that comes up that the Chair and the Vice-Chair tell 7 you is going to be a problem needs to be in the presentation when you give it on Wednesday. 8 9 Jennifer Armer: And that is another way for us to convey that information. Getting the heads-up 10 ahead of time of here are some issues, let’s get ahead of it. 11 12 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah. 13 14 Jennifer Armer: Let’s have it in the presentation so that it’s part of staff’s presentation. Or alerting 15 when there’s an applicant – alerting the applicant that this going to be something that you’re 16 going to need to be prepared to answer at the meeting. 17 18 Commissioner Ji: Yeah. Not directly related to this, but one thing I found really helpful in the last 19 packet was there this was this whole thing that was the last time we came to the PTC here was 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. the question posed, here’s [inaudible 63:21]. So having all those compiled was super helpful in 1 one of the appendices. I really liked that. 2 3 Chair Akin: And just to note, I [inaudible 63:30] the questions that we pose show up with the 4 presentations a lot [inaudible 63:36]… 5 6 Commissioner Templeton: Thanks. 7 8 Chair Akin: …and is appreciated. 9 10 Jennifer Armer: Getting the questions ahead of time is very [inaudible 63:46]. 11 12 Female: [Inaudible 63:50]. 13 14 Commissioner Hechtman: Is there anything further with B? 15 16 Jennifer Armer: [Inaudible 63:52]. 17 18 Chair Akin: Anything further on [inaudible 63:54]? 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Jennifer Armer: [Inaudible 63:57]. 1 2 Chair Akin: Okay then. Let’s talk about efficiency, 2B. 3 4 Commissioner Hechtman: Can I lead off with a couple ideas? 5 6 Female: Mm-hm. 7 8 Commissioner Hechtman: So one of the things I observed – and it changes as the Commission 9 changes, but we are now prone to spend an unusually large amount of time on the area of 10 technical questions… 11 12 Female: Mm-hm. 13 14 Commissioner Hechtman: …before public comment. And I’m as guilty as anybody, at least I was, 15 because we’re spending so much time on it and I think we set a PTC record maybe at the last 16 meeting. Hour and a half of technical questions. We can ask whatever questions we want after 17 the public comment. And so what I decided I’m going to try to focus on was I want to ask the 18 questions that may resonate with public comment we’ve already received where I think if we get 19 an answer to that before the public speaks, that may answer a question they’re going to ask… 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Female: Mm-hm. 2 3 Commissioner Hechtman: …and shorten their comments, which will shorten our meetings. And 4 then other questions, even though they could qualify as technical but I don’t feel like they’re 5 going to impact public comment, I’m going to hold. And so that’s just personally something I’m 6 going to try to do my part to get us through public comment sooner. And then the other sort of 7 back-end thing is the issue of sort of getting it off our plate and moving it forward. And you’ve 8 heard me do this or suggest this a number of times. I am comfortable in many occasions trusting 9 staff, having been given adequate direction, to carry something forward to Council with us – 10 without us seeing the next iteration. 11 12 Commissioner Templeton: Same. 13 14 Commissioner Hechtman: And we don’t always do that. Sometimes we want it to come back. 15 Sometimes it really should. But sometimes I feel like it didn’t need to because I think there was a 16 way to get it moving forward and trust staff to do it our way or to follow our direction. And so 17 that’s just another way to, I think, make make the Palo Alto Process more efficient by not having 18 things come back to us as often [inaudible 66:55]. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Templeton: Is there anyone – I am going to phrase this so I’m not putting people 1 on the spot, but what are some examples where we would not want to trust staff to do that? Do 2 we have any this was an instance and that’s why I’m constantly vigilant kind of thing? I don’t have 3 any of those, but I’m just wondering if anybody has heard the lore of that or – because I agree. 4 We – for the most part, staff conveys our intentions pretty clearly to Council, and we haven’t – I 5 haven’t personally, in my almost 7 years, experienced any problems with that. So I’m just 6 wondering if anybody feels held back for any reason about that. 7 8 Chair Akin: [Inaudible 67:43]. 9 10 Jennifer Armer: And if you’re not interested in sharing it with the group, I would love to hear 11 about it [inaudible 67:48]. 12 13 Commissioner Templeton: That’s a better way to put it. Thank you. Okay. Because I – yeah. 14 15 Jennifer Armer: Because that’s the kind of thing that if there are trust issues/concerns, that’s 16 something that’s really important for me to solve with [inaudible 68:02]. 17 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Chang: I think as an example of what – where I asked [inaudible 68:05] had to do with 1 – it resulted in the El Camino retail nodes coming back to us. And it was because it was buried in 2 part of another piece of – I think it was in the HIP or AHIP… 3 4 Jennifer Armer: HIP/AHIP… 5 6 Vice-Chair Chang: It was HIP/AHIP… 7 8 Jennifer Armer: …retail preservation. 9 10 Vice-Chair Chang: …retail preservation, and I wanted the HIP/AHIP to go on because we needed 11 to do that or the housing element. We had to, and yet that one was – that was a big issue. 12 13 Commissioner Templeton: It was a good one to come back [inaudible 68:43]. 14 15 Vice-Chair Chang: [Inaudible 68:43]. 16 17 Commissioner Templeton: No, no. That [inaudible 68:46]. 18 19 Vice-Chair Chang: Okay. So I… 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Jennifer Armer: It was a good balance. 2 3 Vice-Chair Chang: Right. No. So that one was why I was like this needs to go on. And then when 4 it got to Council, Council was also like yeah, this needs to go back to the PTC also because they 5 saw the same thing. 6 7 Jennifer Armer: [Inaudible 68:57]. 8 9 Vice-Chair chang: Okay. So then that’s not an example of what we’re talking about. 10 11 Commissioner Templeton: Well, it’s a good distinction though, that that wasn’t a trust issue. 12 13 Vice-Chair Chang: No. That wasn’t a trust issue. 14 15 Commissioner Templeton: [Inaudible 69:04] 16 17 Vice-Chair Chang: That was like this is a burning issue. 18 19 Commissioner Templeton: [Inaudible 69:06]. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Vice-Chair Chang: We need to address this. 2 3 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah. 4 5 Vice-Chair Chang: We don’t have time to address this. It’s not agendized. 6 7 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah. 8 9 Vice-Chair Chang: Yeah. 10 11 Jennifer Armer: And it was a solution that balanced the urgency of the one part of the effort with 12 the need to come back and have the further discussion with the other. Then I was able to, as an 13 example, where I as staff was able to take on that further discussion with you without having to 14 use additional consultant time. 15 16 Female: [Inaudible 69:28]. 17 18 Jennifer Armer: It just kind of – all those different things circling together was a solution for that 19 situation. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Vice-Chair Chang: I’m trying to – have we been asking for things to come back too? 2 3 Commissioner Templeton: I think this might be a change in how we’ve established our 4 relationship. We’ve got a pretty high-functioning group here, and I think we’ve built a lot of trust 5 with Jennifer. And I think this is an issue that is worth clarifying because there are times when 6 we can trust. And I think we did that the other day when we had some changes to… 7 8 Female: [Inaudible 70:06]. 9 10 Commissioner Templeton: …a motion and we said can you handle it because we’ve discussed it 11 enough and we trust whoever. It was you as our rep, perhaps. And that was a great positive use 12 of our time and staff’s time. I hope it was a positive use of your time and not too burdensome. 13 14 Chair Akin: It wasn’t. 15 16 Commissioner Templeton: So that’s a good example. But I don’t think we’ve had any problematic 17 – and that’s why I asked. I just – I don’t recall any, but I don’t want to assume that there is not. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Akin: Yeah. And so I’m reaching pretty far back into my first stint as liaison to Council. So 1 this interacts with our relationship [inaudible 70:48] issues talk about their… 2 3 Commissioner Templeton: [Inaudible 70:52]. 4 5 Chair Akin: So in that – now I’m not recalling what the issue was, but the concern there was that 6 what made it to Council didn’t capture the sense of the PTC’s decision. 7 8 Commissioner Templeton: Oh. 9 10 Chair Akin: And perhaps if it had come back to us, we would have generated something more 11 explicit. 12 13 Commissioner Templeton: Hm. 14 15 Chair Akin: And my interpretation was that this was a judgment call while constructing the staff 16 report for Council, so it wasn’t a trust issue so much as a communications failure. But that’s not 17 the issue that I think you’re trying to capture here. That’s something more about interaction with 18 Council. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Jennifer Armer: I think it ties in really well with the other topic of the role of the PTC liaison and 1 how the PTC wants to have that liaison serve. I think it is also that example, from whatever that 2 was, is a really good example where staff does try to summarize the main – in addition to the 3 actual motion and recommendation, here are the topics and kind of why this was their final rec-, 4 the final recommendation. But with the need for brevity, sometimes some of that does get 5 missed. We also have situations where from a professional standpoint, staff’s recommendation 6 may continue to differ from the PTC’s… 7 8 Female: Mm-hm. 9 10 Jennifer Armer: …recommendation and so making sure we’re laying that out clearly in the staff 11 report or if there’s new information that’s received after the fact, then maybe [we’re 73:03] 12 coming back even if you did manage [inaudible 73:07]. 13 14 Commissioner Templeton: I think for this reason – this is one of the reasons that we sometimes 15 explicitly say in the motion please convey this divide to Council, for example. 16 17 Female: Mm-hm. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Templeton: So that’s one of the things that has happened before is we’ll have a 1 4-3 vote and the packet for Council says and the Commission passed this… 2 3 Vice-Chair Chang: 4-3, which doesn’t explain… 4 5 Commissioner Templeton: And it doesn’t say anything about what the issue is. That’s probably – 6 because I think that has happened while you’ve been on the Commission. 7 8 Male: Hm. 9 10 Commissioner Templeton: So I think if – in order to maintain the trust, in order to save the time 11 and that one of the things we’re relying on you as a conduit to Council on our behalf – that’s our 12 function and you’re the conduit – if you can try to review it with that kind of authenticity in mind 13 in terms of capturing relevant parts of the discussion and process because if that’s not included, 14 even in the summary, then we just wasted 4 hours of our time and countless thousands of dollars 15 of your time. 16 17 Vice-Chair Chang: Yes. 18 19 Jennifer Armer: And I would say that it just – it doesn’t [inaudible 74:18]. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Templeton: [Inaudible 74:18]. 2 3 Jennifer Armer: It isn’t supporting the Council as fully as is intended. Right? 4 5 Vice-Chair Chang: Yeah. 6 7 Jennifer Armer: Because they aren’t able to spend as much time as you dedicate to some of these 8 since they are doing that less [inaudible 74:33]. 9 10 Commissioner Templeton: So who reviews that part of the packet for Council? 11 12 Vice-Chair Chang: Mm. 13 14 Commissioner Templeton: Is that you? 15 16 Jennifer Armer: In terms of the staff, we – multiple layers. 17 18 Commissioner Templeton: I don’t – yeah. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Jennifer Armer: [Inaudible 74:41]. 1 2 Commissioner Templeton: I means what per-… 3 4 Jennifer Armer: I am [inaudible 74:44]. 5 6 Commissioner Templeton: The buck stops with you. 7 8 Jennifer Armer: I am looking at all of them. The Director reviews all of the Council reviews. 9 10 Commissioner Templeton: Who at our meeting of all of us? It’s you. 11 12 Jennifer Armer: It’s me. 13 14 Commissioner Templeton: So – or do you think that you… 15 16 Jennifer Armer: I am [inaudible 74:56]. 17 18 Commissioner Templeton: [Inaudible 74:56] any additional input from us? Or if you’re not sure, 19 do you feel comfortable reaching out to the Chair? 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Jennifer Armer: Yes. I – as you have seen over this last year, when there is something that isn’t 2 clear, I will speak up and request clarification. 3 4 Female: Mm-hm. 5 6 Male: [Inaudible 75:14]. 7 8 Jennifer Armer: I very much appreciate when there is something that there is an interest in being 9 very explicit about. That is very helpful. 10 11 Commissioner Templeton: Okay. 12 13 Jennifer Armer: But also there are times where it’s okay to refer to the list of revisions or things 14 to consider without having to go back and rehash them. 15 16 Female: Mm-hm. 17 18 Jennifer Armer: And I will let you know if it is not clear to us. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Ji: I wonder if this relates to also the purpose of the PTC liaison, so maybe in terms 1 of it could be interesting for the PTC liaison to also review that – kind of – not review but kind of 2 give feedback [inaudible 75:52] be a part of the packet that is PTC discussed this and if the PTC 3 liaison is like actually it’d be great if you incorporate this other component of our discussion, that 4 could be part of the role for the pa-, the agendized [inaudible 76:05]. 5 6 Commissioner Peterson: The liaison signs off on it. 7 8 Commissioner Ji: Yeah. That – I think that could be an interesting idea. 9 10 Commissioner Templeton: Well, adding – add the fact that it’s not discussed at – it would 11 [inaudible 76:15] you have professional training, and I think that you’re saying that would be easy 12 for you to only include stuff that we discussed and that was part of the public conversation. I 13 think you can imagine 10 years from now when it’s not you in that seat, somebody with less 14 experience perhaps adjusting how they provide that feedback to some other [inaudible 76:38]. 15 So we need to think about how to make sure that whatever’s included in the packet was 16 transparently something that we have all heard and agreed to through either the motion or the 17 discussion. 18 19 Jennifer Armer: And that is why you have professional staff who… 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Templeton: Mm-hm. 2 3 Jennifer Armer: …are working to provide that summary. We’re not going to be perfect. And from 4 a staff perspective, I think my recommendation would be take a look at what is presented in the 5 staff report, and if there’s more that needs to be added, then that’s an option for the PTC liaison 6 to join the meeting. 7 8 Commissioner Hechtman: Right. 9 10 Jennifer Armer: But… 11 12 Commissioner Hechtman: I think that – to me, that is the solution. It’s not to add another layer 13 of dialogue before the… 14 15 Vice-Chair Chang: The Council. 16 17 Commissioner Hechtman: …the Council staff report can go out. I do the PTC liaison at the Council 18 meetings. The way I was trained when I first started here was our job is not to speak for ourselves 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. but rather to reflect the whole of the action of the Commission on the item, including the parts 1 that me, as the speaker, was not in favor of. 2 3 Female: Right. 4 5 Commissioner Hechtman: Right? To – particularly to explain the no votes. 6 7 Female: Right. 8 9 Commissioner Hechtman: Right? Because the staff report explains the yes votes. 10 11 Vice-Chair Chang: Exactly. 12 13 Commissioner Hechtman: And so I view that as my role, and so the couple times a year when I’m 14 the liaison, I read the staff report with that eye that did they really adequately explain [inaudible 15 78:11]. 16 17 Vice-Chair Chang: Where that discussion was. 18 19 Commissioner Hechtman: Right. Right. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Vice-Chair Chang: Yeah. 2 3 Commissioner Hechtman: And then my job at the Council meeting is to explain, to provide that 4 color that wasn’t captured in the staff report, and to do it without throwing staff under the bus. 5 Well, they missed this really important discussion in the staff report that you need to know about. 6 7 Vice-Chair Chang: Right. 8 9 Commissioner Hechtman: There are more tactful ways to do it, and I’m prepared to do it. And 10 the frustration that I have had a couple of times [inaudible 78:36]. 11 12 Vice-Chair Chang: They don’t ask us to speak[inaudible 78:36]. 13 14 Commissioner Hechtman: Right. And so that is the problem is there needs… 15 16 Vice-Chair Chang: But that’s [inaudible 78:43]. 17 18 Commissioner Hechtman: At every Council meeting, there’s a staff report… 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Chang: That’s what I [inaudible 78:46]. 1 2 Commissioner Hechtman: …a staff presentation and an applicant presentation and public 3 comment. It needs to be automatic that maybe after the staff report the PTC liaison… 4 5 Vice-Chair Chang: Is asked if they have anything to add. 6 7 Commissioner Hechtman: Right. Correct. 8 9 Vice-Chair Chang: Yes. 10 11 Commissioner Hechtman: And if the answer’s no, its no, but I’m here to answer questions. 12 13 Vice-Chair Chang: Exactly. 14 15 Commissioner Templeton: Well, I’m… 16 17 Male: [Inaudible 79:09]. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Templeton: I’m going to suggest that the process that I had – this was before your 1 time, Ms. Armer, but this – the person who was staffing would contact me before Council… 2 3 Female: Mm-hm. 4 5 Commissioner Templeton: …and say do you have [inaudible 79:22]. 6 7 Vice-Chair Chang: Anything to add. 8 9 Commissioner Templeton: And that way they don’t have to call me if they don’t – if we both 10 agree it’s adequate. 11 12 Vice-Chair Chang: What – and I – what I would also ask is that if we’re sitting there, that you let 13 Council know because Council can’t see who all is joining by Zoom… 14 15 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah. 16 17 Vice-Chair Chang: …or might not be aware that we’re sitting in chambers. So it’s useful just to tell 18 Council and we have our PTC liaison here if you have any questions of them so that… 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Templeton: Yeah. 1 2 Vice-Chair Chang: Because I’ve seen Council – they hash over something, and I’m woohoo. We’ve 3 done this work for you. I can tell you what the perspective is of the 2 – of the pros and cons. 4 5 Chair Akin: It’s interesting to see the different approaches. The couple of times I’ve spoken when 6 acting as liaison, I went to Jon first and said I have something to say, and that – and then 7 everything happened. 8 9 Vice-Chair Chang: Well, I’ve said please let Council know I’m here and I know you guys are busy, 10 you have a lot going on, so you forget. 11 12 Jennifer Armer: It doesn’t [inaudible 80:24]. 13 14 Vice-Chair Chang: It doesn’t. 15 16 Jennifer Armer: Yeah. 17 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Chang: So what I find is sometimes I ping a Council member just saying hey, just so you 1 know, I’m here if you have any questions to make s-, but I don’t – I cannot – I don’t know them 2 all, so… 3 4 Commissioner Hechtman: Right. But I think [inaudible 80:40]. 5 6 Vice-Chair Chang: You think it’s better if you can formalize it and sort of say… 7 8 Commissioner Hechtman: Right,and it takes 10 seconds if the liaison says I have nothing to add 9 but I’m here for questions. 10 11 Vice-Chair Chang: Exactly. 12 13 Commissioner Hechtman: Because then all 7 Councilmembers have seen it. They all are on 14 notice… 15 16 Vice-Chair Chang: Exactly. 17 18 Commissioner Hechtman: …that we’re there if they have a question, and it takes no time. So 19 that’s why I kind of like and I also believe that Council owes it to… 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Vice-Chair Chang: I couldn’t agree more. 2 3 Commissioner Hechtman: …the PTC… 4 5 Commissioner Templeton: Well. 6 7 Commissioner Hechtman: …to give us that moment since they’re having us sit through that 8 meeting and they’ve already appointed us to do the work that took hours, to give us that maybe 9 10 seconds or more. 10 11 Vice-Chair Chang: I was furious at a last meeting where I’m like oh my gosh, we have gone through 12 all of this and they’re sending it back to us. Are you kidding me? 13 14 Male: [Inaudible 81:28]. 15 16 Vice-Chair Chang: I was like do not send it [inaudible 81:30]. 17 18 Commissioner Templeton: My favorite counterexample, though, is one time we were going to – 19 we’re very rarely unanimous. This was about child safety at the railroad tracks. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Vice-Chair Chang: Yes. And they totally… 2 3 Commissioner Templeton: They said I could flip a coin, but I’m just going to vote against. 4 5 Vice-Chair Chang: Well, so that’s why I think it’s useful [inaudible 81:47]. 6 7 Commissioner Templeton: [Inaudible 81:47] mayor. 8 9 Vice-Chair Chang: I know. It was [inaudible 81:49]. 10 11 Commissioner Templeton: Not our current mayor. Our current mayor would never do that. 12 13 Vice-Chair Chang: It was infuriating. 14 15 Commissioner Peterson: [Inaudible 81:53]. 16 17 Commissioner Templeton: It was infuriating. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Chang: But that’s where it’s helpful if the PTC has any inkling that this might be 1 happening… 2 3 Commissioner Templeton: I was there [inaudible 82:02]. 4 5 Vice-Chair Chang: I know, but… 6 7 Commissioner Templeton: It was… 8 9 Vice-Chair Chang: [Inaudible 82:06]. 10 11 Commissioner Templeton: It was not – it was so infuriating. It was infuriating, but there – yeah. 12 But there’s nothing – I guess what I’m trying to say is just the fact of being called on is not enough 13 to affect the changes that reflect our work. So I find that staff reaches out to Council, Council says 14 whether they want to hear from us or not, we reach out to staff and say whether we want to 15 speak to Council or not, and if we’re both noes, everybody saves times. That’s my opinion. I know 16 it’s different for you. 17 18 Commissioner Hechtman: So… 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Templeton: And everybody can do their own thing. 1 2 Commissioner Hechtman: In that situation, do you not show up for the meeting? 3 4 Commissioner Templeton: If I’m told that you are not needed, then I don’t go. 5 6 Commissioner Hechtman: But how does Council really know before they dig into their dialogue… 7 8 Vice-Chair Chang: Right. 9 10 Commissioner Hechtman: …that they might not have a… 11 12 Vice-Chair Chang: Right. 13 14 Commissioner Hechtman: I don’t think of every question I have for staff in advance. 15 16 Commissioner Templeton: Most of our issues are not that kind of issue where they need – staff 17 is very prepared and there is not something that has not been… 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Ji: I’m pretty supportive of having this added to the process. It’s kind of like are 1 there any public comments for this item. If no, we just move on. So just adding it as a 1-liner in 2 the – just in the formal process. And then I also think – not just speaking for us, but maybe this is 3 something that if the ARB also… 4 5 Vice-Chair Chang: Yes. 6 7 Commissioner Ji: [Inaudible 83:23] a representative, I’d be like the PTC liaison is here to answer 8 questions and do they have anything to add? Yes or no? Does the ARB have anything to add? Yes 9 or no? And etc. for other [inaudible 83:31] boards and commissions. 10 11 Commissioner Templeton: But you don’t have to be online if they have no questions for you. 12 13 Commissioner Ji: But I [inaudible 83:38]. 14 15 Commissioner Templeton: Well, I’m just being serious. We have the technology. Anybody knows 16 how to text and say there’s a discussion here. They want to know more about PTC. Get online. 17 18 Commissioner Hechtman: Yeah. [Inaudible 83:49]. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Templeton: That’s – it’s not… 1 2 Commissioner Hechtman: We’ve had situations in the past when consultants have joined for part 3 of the meeting, and sometimes staff says oh, the consultant’s getting ready to go, anybody have 4 any questions. And other times, the consultant’s just been gone and then we realize we have a 5 question… 6 7 Jennifer Armer: Yeah. 8 9 Commissioner Hechtman: …and they’re not there to answer. 10 11 Jennifer Armer: Exactly. 12 13 Commissioner Hechtman: And so I think we have that same position. And so, again, when I 14 [inaudible 84:11]. 15 16 Commissioner Templeton: I did it for the first 4 years, and then I compromised with staff, and 17 that’s what we figured out. So you know… 18 19 Commissioner Hechtman: Yeah. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Templeton: …if you feel differently, that’s fine. And if you want me to show up, I’ll 2 show up. But… 3 4 Commissioner Peterson: On call for those meetings. 5 6 Commissioner Templeton: But I’m on call and it works just fine for staff so far, for Council, and 7 for me. 8 9 Male: [Inaudible 84:32]. 10 11 Jennifer Armer: I’m hearing a couple different things that I think are going to be helpful moving 12 forward. One is that I’m going to work to try and have some kind of standard statement… 13 14 Vice-Chair Chang: Mm-hm. 15 16 Jennifer Armer: …in their presentation that PTC liaison is available. But if we’re making that 17 statement, we need to make sure that we’re having some regular communication on whoever is 18 – with whoever is liaison. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Templeton: And have it in the prep meeting too because that’s the key. That’s 1 what happening for me. I don’t know if you’re aware of that, but the staff has been asking Council 2 if they want to hear from the liaison. 3 4 Vice-Chair Chang: [Inaudible 85:12] with Council? 5 6 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah. 7 8 Vice-Chair Chang: Okay. 9 10 Commissioner Templeton: They have meetings too. 11 12 Vice-Chair Chang: No. No. I was clarifying. 13 14 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah. Yeah. So as long as both of those things are happening, because 15 if the one happens and they’re like yeah, I have questions, then the other should happen because 16 the person will be there to answer the questions. 17 18 Female: [Inaudible 85:30]. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Templeton: Right? 1 2 Vice-Chair Chang: I don’t think they always know though. I just watched – I’m thinking of one 3 particular thing where like curveballs were thrown in the middle, and I was thinking gosh, ask the 4 PTC liaison – I wasn’t the liaison – but they didn’t. And that’s something that in terms of Palo Alto 5 Process [inaudible 85:50] this puts a lot on staff to think on why. But if you see it churning 6 [inaudible 86:00] PTC liaison is here, I can speak to that. 7 8 Jennifer Armer: Mm-hm. 9 10 Commissioner Hechtman: Do you attend the Council meetings? 11 12 Jennifer Armer: Some of them. 13 14 Commissioner Hechtman: Yeah. Because I think… 15 16 Jennifer Armer: But not of them. 17 18 Commissioner Hechtman: Right. And that’s what I think. A lot of times Jonathan’s there. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Chang: Yeah. 1 2 Commissioner Hechtman: But he doesn’t have all the detail. 3 4 Vice-Chair Chang: He doesn’t have the context. 5 6 Commissioner Hechtman: Right. And so again, that’s why it’s important to me that the PTC liaison 7 be sitting there… 8 9 Vice-Chair Chang: I agree. 10 11 Commissioner Hechtman: …and [inaudible 86:27]. 12 13 Vice-Chair Chang: Unfortunately, though, you kind of can’t call on yourself. Or can we? 14 15 Male: Can we stand? 16 17 Jennifer Armer: If you are on Zoom, you could probably raise your hand. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Chang: All right. It’s helpful because I just – I was just sort of always thought okay, I’m 1 supposed to be silent unless called upon. But if we have – this might be – that would be helpful. 2 3 Jennifer Armer: They then would get to choose [inaudible 86:51]. 4 5 Vice-Chair Chang: No. I understand that but… 6 7 Commissioner Hechtman: Right. 8 9 Commissioner Hechtman: And you can say, if they did call on you, I can provide the color from 10 the PTC on that if you’re interested. 11 12 Vice-Chair Chang: Right. 13 14 Commissioner Hechtman: And they can say oh, we don’t want to hear from you, or they can say 15 yes, please do. 16 17 Vice-Chair Chang: Right. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Templeton: That’s the public – to Kevin’s point [inaudible 87:06] if you have 1 something to say, raise your hand. 2 3 Jennifer Armer: If it’s in advance of their discussion. 4 5 Vice-Chair Chang: Their discussion. 6 7 Jennifer Armer: If it’s in the middle of their discussion, then that’s [inaudible 87:15]. 8 9 Commissioner Templeton: But if you were – if it’s a big concern, you can raise your hand for 10 public discussion and say I am the PTC liaison and I’m here, you can call on me if you need me 11 later. And that’s it. It’s not rocket science. 12 13 Jennifer Armer: And I think that is the other side, that from a staff perspective, I’m going to work 14 to try and build some of this into the structure as we’re – we go through the process on each 15 project. But would also appreciate, as you are attempting to, what month you’ve got coming up 16 as liaison, paying attention to it and reach out if you’ve got questions or if you know that you’ve 17 had issues. Having that – if we’ve got kind of both sides working towards that goal, then it’s less 18 likely that [inaudible 88:07]. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Chang: Yeah. This is a good discussion, I think, because we were never all – this is a 1 very useful discussion because it’s like oh, you’re the liaison. Well, what do I do for [inaudible 2 88:16]. Yeah. 3 4 Chair Akin: And even for those of us who don’t [inaudible 88:23], we’re doing it differently. 5 6 Vice-Chair Chang: Mm-hm. 7 8 Chair Akin: And that… 9 10 Vice-Chair Chang: Yeah. We’re doing it differently. 11 12 Chair Akin: That’s [inaudible 88:27]. 13 14 Commissioner Templeton: Well, some of us get frustrated at how it’s been going and have tried 15 to alternate – tried alternative approaches to see what’s most effective, and I think that’s 16 something we should continue to do. And if we have experiences that we should share, that’s 17 something we can bring up in our discussion points at the end of meetings and say I was liaison 18 this month and it was again totally pointless. Probably wouldn’t want to say that. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Chang: [Inaudible 88:59]. 1 2 Jennifer Armer: [Inaudible 89:00]. 3 4 Male: [Inaudible 89:01]. 5 6 Jennifer Armer: [Inaudible 89:02]. 7 8 Commissioner Peterson: [Inaudible 89:04] only because I see some of the same issues that we 9 have here, I see them again at the Water District. 10 11 Female: Mm-hm. 12 13 Commissioner Peterson: So at the Water District, we defunded all the [inaudible 89:12] stuff. We 14 sent all the plumbing to San Jose. But there was no liaison that came and spoke to us and said 15 no, we really want that [inaudible 89:19] work, which I don’t think would have been this planning 16 commission but probably would have been City Council with a liaison, but they didn’t. So having 17 no public comment, all those in favor, yep. And I don’t think we have funding even now for the 18 [inaudible 89:32]. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Templeton: Director said [inaudible 89:34]. 1 2 Commissioner Peterson: [Inaudible 89:35]. 3 4 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah. It was the Director’s call. 5 6 Commissioner Peterson: It was somebody’s. But I mean the liaison thing goes a little bit further, 7 even probably more so than us talking to City Council, but as how do we coordinate with basically 8 where a lot of our funding comes from [inaudible 89:49]. 9 10 Commissioner Templeton: [Inaudible 89:50]. 11 12 Commissioner Peterson: [Inaudible 89:52] staff not be there? 13 14 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah, but if staff’s like we need the funding guys, we need to tell 15 Council, and that is not something they should leave to… 16 17 Male: Right. 18 19 Commissioner Templeton: …our availability. Yeah. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Jennifer Armer: Through the Chair, we actually started with talking about efficiency and kind of 2 shifted to PTC liaison. 3 4 Male: [Inaudible 90:10]. 5 6 Jennifer Armer: It’s kind of helpful. Very good conversation. Just wanted to remind that there 7 may be some more on that and we have about half an hour [inaudible 90:19] time check. 8 9 Chair Akin: So I think we would like to talk about technology… 10 11 Male: Yeah. 12 13 Female: Mm-hm. 14 15 Chair Akin: …and our expectation is that will be short. So let’s see if we can wrap on efficiency 16 first, see if there are any other… 17 18 Jennifer Armer: Ideas. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Akin: …ideas.. 1 2 Commissioner Ji: I actually had a… 3 4 Chair Akin: [Inaudible 90:36]. 5 6 Commissioner Ji: …had a question about kind of – it’s a very vague question about the purpose 7 of the clarifying questions section. I think I totally agree with Bart’s comment about if I saw the 8 public comment they’re going to ask something, I’m just going to ask it, save this person some 9 time. But I was also wondering, because our last meeting did have a lot of clarifying questions, 10 kind of what the balance that we think is between a question that would go before and after. I 11 know Bart said what he thinks, but I’m just curious what other people are thinking as well about 12 the balance between these 2 sections for certain questions. 13 14 Jennifer Armer: Good question. 15 16 Commissioner Templeton: Well, we now have a lot of engineers and lawyers and scientists on 17 the Commission, so we’re having more clarifying questions that we used to. And I think perhaps 18 it is worth discussing. What used to happen is we had, I think, 2 lawyers and 1 planner and they 19 asked these kind of technical questions and then we all got into our discussion. And now we’re 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. looking for data, we’re looking for justification for recommendations or theories. We’re finding 1 ourselves wanting a little bit more. So there’s 2 answers from my perspective to your question. 2 One is staff recognize that this body is technical now. We want it every time, and if something is 3 going to be used to justify a recommendation, we’re going to look at it. And that wasn’t the case 4 before. So if that were to change a little bit in terms of what’s presented, I think our clarifying 5 questions would be minimized. 6 7 And then for what’s left, I think to – Bart phrased it well when he was like if it’s going to make 8 the 300 people lined up to speak go down to 200 people or 100 people, we’re clarifying or – so 9 we have had ambiguous statements or confusing statements or typos in the – between the 2 of 10 you, there are typos it’s just astonishing that you guys find. I’m like I didn’t even notice that. I 11 read it and my brain processed it differently. So I think those kinds of things will help. That’s what 12 I would – because if you’re the public, do you want to sit through 2 hours of our discussion about 13 clarifying stuff? Probably not. You’d probably rather only stay if you’re interested in how the 14 discussion continues. I don’t know. That’s my 2 cents. Anybody else want to weigh in? 15 16 Commissioner Ji: Also, I’m technical. I know I’m a really significant portion of the… 17 18 Commissioner Templeton: [Inaudible 93:32]. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Ji: …base questions. So yeah, that’s kind of what I’m interested in, and I’d love to 1 see more of that. And I’ll try to get those questions to you at one point as well. 2 3 Vice-Chair Chang: I think it would also be helpful because that was sort of our venue to ask 4 questions. We have our norm that we’re going to ask the questions that are kind of general 5 interest or that gen-, that definitely would completely kind of shift the [inaudible 94:00] before 6 public comment, but then before we all lead into comments that we’re going to do another quick 7 round of questions. I think that’s helpful just because sometimes it’s definitely things that are not 8 going to be of public interest but are really [inaudible 94:18]. 9 10 Commissioner Templeton: [Inaudible 94:18]. 11 12 Vice-Chair Chang: Are important for us to level set to make sure we all understand the right thing 13 before we make our comments. 14 15 Commissioner Templeton: Totally agree. 16 17 Vice-Chair Chang: Right? 18 19 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Vice-Chair Chang: So we know that there’s going to be kind of a second round of questions. 2 3 Commissioner Hechtman: Right. 4 5 Vice-Chair Chang: I think it would shift how we ask our questions. 6 7 Commissioner Hechtman: [Inaudible 94:36]. 8 9 Vice-Chair Chang: So… 10 11 Commissioner Ji: Jennifer, is there – is the setup that we do questions, public comment, and then 12 discussion, is that required? Or is this kind of a just what we have decided to do? 13 14 Jennifer Armer: So the core of the structure for the meeting is that we have a defined space when 15 members of the public are speaking, are either having their – it’s the applicant, it’s any member 16 of the public who want to speak individually, it’s the applicant’s closing statement. And any 17 questions, say, of the applicant should occur during that defined time. 18 19 Vice-Chair Chang: Mm-hm. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Jennifer Armer: But what I’ve seen in the structure of meetings is that we do have those clarifying 2 questions up front. If there is a common misunderstanding of something that’s going into the 3 project that you’ve seen from the questions from the public or something like that, clarification 4 that’s going to help everyone hear public comment in context or help those who are making 5 public comments understand that no, we’re not going to force you to replace your fence kind of 6 question, those are very helpful up front. But there is absolutely capacity for questions 7 throughout the discussion part, though those should be focused on the staff, the consultants. It’s 8 those who are here rather than the members [inaudible 96:20]. 9 10 Vice-Chair Chang: [Inaudible 96:20] applicant. 11 12 Chair Akin: Applicant. 13 14 Vice-Chair Chang: See, that was the other thing that I thought [inaudible 96:24]. 15 16 Commissioner Templeton: [Inaudible 96:24]. 17 18 Vice-Chair Chang: I could be misunderstanding, but part of the reason to get all my clarifying 19 questions in is because if the applicant’s going to say anything or if I want to ask anything of the 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. applicant, I need to ask them during that section. This is where, again, in a recent City Council 1 meeting, I saw the applicant just get up and starts to – and I was like oh my gosh, you’re not 2 supposed to be talking then. So that was – that’s also a question. 3 4 Jennifer Armer: It’s – and so I’ll start by answering to my understanding, and then I’ll invite… 5 6 Vice-Chair Chang: Maybe Albert [inaudible 96:58]. 7 8 Jennifer Armer: I’ll invite Albert to join us as well with anything he wants to add. 9 10 Vice-Chair Chang: Mm-hm. 11 12 Jennifer Armer: So the official structure of the meeting, the applicant is a member of the public. 13 14 Vice-Chair Chang: Mm-hm. 15 16 Jennifer Armer: And so – but I generally advise that the questions of the applicant occur after 17 their closing statement. That it’s that point right as you’re leading into the discussion that you 18 can get those questions of the applicant. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Chang: Got it. 1 2 Jennifer Armer: And that even after the public comment period including the applicant has been 3 closed, if you have a focused question for the applicant, that still can be – through the Chair, be 4 asked to have them give a concise – the goal being to not open it up for a whole discussion with 5 the applicant during the period of time where it really is supposed to be about the Commission 6 discussing the project rather than kind of an ongoing negotiation with the applicant. 7 8 Commissioner Templeton: Can I reflect back my understanding… 9 10 Jennifer Armer: Yeah. 11 12 Commissioner Templeton: …very concisely because I think Albert is going to chime in here? But 13 – so we want the public to be able to respond to the presentation. That’s it. So everything that is 14 part of “the presentation.” That includes staff and the applicant and whatever… 15 16 Jennifer Armer: The staff report [inaudible 98:23]. 17 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Templeton: …all the responses by other presenters happens, then the public, and 1 then us. So if we get too much information from the applicant after, then the staff doesn’t really 2 h-, I mean the public doesn’t have a chance to… 3 4 Vice-Chair Chang: [Inaudible 98:40]. 5 6 Commissioner Templeton: ..respond. 7 8 Vice-Chair Chang: Right. 9 10 Commissioner Templeton: So it’s a little touchy about how much comes after. 11 12 Vice-Chair Chang: Right. 13 14 Commissioner Templeton: So [inaudible 98:48]. 15 16 Jennifer Armer: So Albert Yang, do you… 17 18 Albert Yang: Yeah. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Jennifer Armer: …have anything [inaudible 98:52]? 1 2 Albert Yang: So I guess I would generally support what Cari just said, which is the purpose of 3 having these clarifying questions, this round of questions before the public comment is to get all 4 of the relevant information out there before the public speaks so that the public is informed. And 5 so that’s why we have that round of questions. And as Jennifer said, but there’s nothing stopping 6 the Commission from directing further questions to the applicant later. But we generally do want 7 the public to have that information, and that’s why we ask it first. I think that was – I think that – 8 that’s about it. Was there another question about this that I’m missing? 9 10 Commissioner Templeton: Any other questions for Albert? I think you covered it. 11 12 Female: Mm-hm. 13 14 Male: [Inaudible 100:05]. 15 16 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you. 17 18 Albert Yang: Yeah. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Ji: I’m supportive of [inaudible 100:09] questions and answers from the applicant. 1 I – not for this Commission, but at City Council, I did see one time where the applicant just started 2 kind of dialoguing about something beyond the statement of the question. And so it became a 3 whole back and forth, and I think that felt a little bit strange. So I think having – if we do ask any 4 questions you can then [inaudible 100:33] and really focus on specifics. 5 6 Jennifer Armer: And that is one of the difficult tasks to the Chair to – in managing the meeting, 7 having that role and responsibility to step in when needed to refocus. 8 9 Commissioner Templeton: Right. 10 11 Chair Akin: Well luckily for us, we haven’t had very many instances where things have gotten out 12 of control. 13 14 Commissioner Templeton: Knock on wood. 15 16 Chair Akin: [Inaudible 101:02]. 17 18 Commissioner Templeton: Does that transition us to 1E? 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Chang: Yeah. 1 2 Chair Akin: 1C? 3 4 Commissioner Hechtman: 2C, technology? 5 6 Female: 2C? 7 8 Chair Akin: [Inaudible 101:14] technology. 9 10 Vice-Chair Chang: Yeah. We should [inaudible 101:17]. 11 12 Chair Akin: Let’s talk a little bit about – so the – my thinking about this is pretty [inaudible 101:27], 13 so I’m curious to see what everybody else is thinking. But I would like to have the ability to freely 14 display information in the course of a discussion. Typically where this comes out – Forest, you’ve 15 done this several times. You want to be able to use Google maps to look at an area, you want to 16 be able to circle an item on a plan or a site diagram to say this is what I’m talking about. And we 17 have some limited ability to do that which, as far as I know, none of us had used before Kevin did 18 [inaudible 102:19]. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Peterson: Yeah. I was going to say Kevin’s [inaudible 102:21]. 1 2 Commissioner Templeton: I’ve been on this Commission long enough that we didn’t use to have 3 presentations. They were papers handed out at your seat. 4 5 Vice-Chair Chang: Yeah. We didn’t have our own screens for a long time. 6 7 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah. 8 9 Vice-Chair Chang: Right? So… 10 11 Chair Akin: So I’d like to see what opportunities we have to make more use of that. And diving 12 down into the technology for a second, it occurred to me that since I get Webinar participant 13 invitations, that I wonder if it’s possible to log in and then have the moderator share a screen. 14 15 Jennifer Armer: Yeah. So I know from my experience with the Architectural Review Board, they 16 do actually use the drawing on the screen feature more often. 17 18 Vice-Chair Chang: That would make sense [inaudible 103:18]. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Male: [Inaudible 103:18]. 1 2 Jennifer Armer: It can very helpful so then you’re all looking at the same point on the diagram. 3 With the Webinar participant, you could log on on your own device. I think a lot of the 4 functionality that you’re looking for can probably be done through the screen, particularly… 5 6 Chair Akin: So much the better. 7 8 Jennifer Armer: Right. In terms of drawing on things that are being shared, it could be shared by 9 staff. And part of the reason I would encourage us to try and keep to that in most cases is that if 10 there are other materials that individual commissioners want to share, that I would strongly 11 encourage that be shared with staff in advance… 12 13 Female: Mm-hm. 14 15 Jennifer Armer: …so that everybody has a chance to see it in advance of the meeting because 16 different people process information in different ways and we’re already handling a lot kind of 17 [inaudible 104:18] in the meeting with public comment that are being brought – to be bringing a 18 new resource in that others have not had the opportunity to kind of think about or look at in 19 advance can mean that it has a little less kind of use. And so if things can go through staff so then 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. it is shared in advance, I think that’s something I would encourage. And then I think just learning 1 some of those things like sharing Google maps and circling items on the screen or other kind of 2 things that you’ve seen done or wonder if we could do, we can look into that and see what we 3 can figure out. We could do a test Zoom meeting to practice things. If you want to be the one in 4 the driver’s seat on Google maps, for example, then you probably would need to be logged into 5 Zoom and be sharing your own screen. 6 7 Commissioner Templeton: I’m going to push back on that a little bit. Staff needs to be ready to 8 do that. We clearly need it. We’ve been asking over and over again, and why should the Chair, 9 who’s got enough stuff to do, need to be driving that. 10 11 Jennifer Armer: And as you have seen, we’ve been able to do that for… 12 13 Commissioner Templeton: Then I think that’s the right way to go. 14 15 Commissioner Ji: I’ll jump in and say I can do a – we can do a quick 5 minutes before the meeting 16 I’ll do a drawing exercise [inaudible 105:38]. 17 18 Male: [Inaudible 105:38]. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Chang: That [inaudible 105:40] then we don’t spend a lot of time… 1 2 Commissioner Templeton: Yelling at you to do it? 3 4 Male: Yes. 5 6 Vice-Chair Chang: Yeah. Wasting time trying to figure out the technology, and if we all just knew 7 how to draw on it… 8 9 Commissioner Ji: For the staff, on the screen sharing, I kind of agree with that. I think it’s a little 10 bit too much for each person to be managing or the Chair to be managing. 11 12 Jennifer Armer: Yeah. 13 14 Commissioner Ji: But I’m happy to do some kind of Zoom just learning the tools. 15 16 Vice-Chair Chang: Yeah. 17 18 Commissioner Ji: Maybe we’ll say 10 minutes before the meeting or something. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Templeton: That’d be really nice. 1 2 Vice-Chair Chang: That’d be great. 3 4 Commissioner Ji: Or from 45 to 55 when people can take a break and then come back [inaudible 5 106:12]. 6 7 Jennifer Armer: Many of you are here for the – for dinner ahead of time anyway. 8 9 Commissioner James: Right. 10 11 Jennifer Armer: And so it could just be something that [inaudible 106:19]. 12 13 Commissioner Ji: We can schedule [inaudible 106:20]. 14 15 Commissioner Templeton: So do we have norms that we want to establish about what kinds of 16 things we can ask to share? I think Google Maps is good. The planning, the zoning maps. 17 18 Jennifer Armer: Zoning maps. Some of those common [inaudible 106:31]. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Templeton: What other kinds of things… 1 2 Jennifer Armer: [Inaudible 106:34]. 3 4 Commissioner Templeton: We have to ask sometimes to bring up like the charter and other 5 documents so that staff has them ready, so that’s what I’m just trying to think of what kinds of 6 things would be [inaudible 106:46]. 7 8 Commissioner James: Just sort of related to that, I’m remembering – it’s a little side here, but 9 comments about data visualization and if they can be more sophisticated and, of course, some 10 of your comments about GIS and sort of mapping tools. And I noticed when you talked about –11 early on when you talked about – you mentioned time and technology just like that. And so that 12 suggests to me that you feel like there may be some limitations that the staff has on technology. 13 14 Jennifer Armer: Yeah. 15 16 Commissioner James: I’m wondering if that’s something we can address that would maybe feed 17 into these other kind of richer data or mapping implementations. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Jennifer Armer: Yeah. Yeah. The staff has certain resources. We do have a GIS program that’s also 1 available online and other things like that. There are certain types of things we can put together 2 and other things we don’t have. 3 4 Commissioner Peterson: [Inaudible 107:42] 20 years teaching future planning professionals that 5 – I don’t know if I listed all the cities that my students are at, and my job is that when they walk 6 out the door of Stanford that they are competent in basically data visualization. 7 8 Male: Mm-hm. 9 10 Commissioner Peterson: And so I think my expectations might be a little bit different. None of 11 my students are working at Palo Alto, but maybe if I reached out to one and said hey, can you 12 come and share [inaudible 108:05] how things are done. 13 14 Commissioner Templeton: But not necessarily at the meeting. That’s something – a conversation 15 you can have with Jonathan and Jennifer and say look, here’s some cool stuff that you should 16 consider as professional training that the City can… 17 18 Commissioner Peterson: Right. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Templeton: …sponsor. And then I think as professionals, they need to get 1 [inaudible 108:21] anyway. 2 3 Commissioner Peterson: Professional development is always a topic with staff. 4 5 Jennifer Armer: We would welcome ideas for professional development. 6 7 Commissioner Templeton: I’m going to add to the norms because I really like what you said there. 8 Any still picture that you have grabbed to put in a document, have it on hand. We’re going to dig 9 in. That’s what we want to do. And honestly if you’re preparing a list for our clerk to be able to 10 show, then share it with us as well because we can pull it up on our screens and give our answer 11 sometimes without wasting valuable Commission time. 12 13 Commissioner James: Dovetailing that, resolution is a real issue. I have sort of pinched to zoom… 14 15 Commissioner Templeton: [Inaudible 109:01] real. 16 17 Commissioner James: …to a point where I need to know what that street name is that I don’t 18 know. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Templeton: Yes. 1 2 Commissioner James: So I don’t know if there are resolution standards. 3 4 Vice-Chair Chang: In our packets. 5 6 Jennifer Armer: In the packet? 7 8 Commissioner James: Well, but… 9 10 Vice-Chair Chang: Yes. 11 12 Commissioner James: …particularly in the digital version of the packet [inaudible 109:15]. 13 14 Vice-Chair Chang: Right. The digital – well, exactly. So let’s say we have our printed packet and 15 we’re like I need to see what that street name is. And then you go to the digital packet and you 16 try and pinch into it, and it’s fuzzy because whatever the image is that’s been added in there is 17 not at the resolution that we need. 18 19 Male: [Inaudible 109:32]. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Templeton: So print-, okay. So printing resolution is 2 or 4 times higher than your 2 screen, so if you’re grabbing a screenshot and you print it, it’s blurry. Just to let you know. So if 3 you grab it on a zoomed in – if you grab it from a PDF, for example, you can export into a higher 4 resolution. We can talk about that, but she’s absolutely right. 5 6 Commissioner Ji: [Inaudible 109:56] one thing I noticed. I just did a quick look through the packet 7 coming this week with the bike tunnel, and I noticed that the – whoever authored that report 8 had a really small diagram, but then also the appendix included a very big version of it, and that 9 was super helpful. If you like – so in the staff report where it references the diagram, it’s like 10 here’s a small version. If you care about the big picture, they’ll also refer to Appendix B if you 11 want to see the [inaudible 110:20]. 12 13 Commissioner Templeton: That’s a great idea. 14 15 Commissioner Ji: So I thought that was really helpful. 16 17 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah. 18 19 Chair Akin: So Sam is having trouble getting packets out to everyone… 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Female: Yeah. 2 3 Chair Akin: …because of email size and locations. Who’s having that problem? 4 5 Commissioner Hechtman: Who’s getting bounce back [inaudible 110:33]? 6 7 Commissioner Templeton: Gmail – and they also have a filter [inaudible 110:36]. 8 9 Samuel Tavera: It was… 10 11 Commissioner Hechtman: Me. Yeah. I just didn’t get it and didn’t know if anybody else didn’t get 12 it. 13 14 Jennifer Armer: But it got through to others. 15 16 Samuel Tavera: [Inaudible 110:47] remember what list [inaudible 110:52]. 17 18 Commissioner Templeton: I don’t want you to trash my inbox with a gigantic attachment either, 19 just so you know. So here’s my suggestion. How this works is – I do this because professionally I 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. make very large files that I share with people through their inbox, and I link to a drive or a storage 1 folder. And the email contains the link, and then the person can download it from that location. 2 We know these are already posted on the website [inaudible 111:22]. 3 4 Jennifer Armer: So then I think that is a question for the Commission with different levels of 5 interest and comfort. Are you all comfortable just receiving a link rather than an attached 6 document? 7 8 Vice-Chair Chang: Yes. 9 10 Commissioner Peterson: Yeah. I [inaudible 111:37] link anyways because it’s more – I always ask 11 Sam [inaudible 111:40]. 12 13 Female: [Inaudible 111:41]. 14 15 Commissioner Templeton: Let’s get the full consent. Is this something [inaudible 111:45]. 16 17 Commissioner Hechtman: Well, so here’s the issue. I usually use the paper version to prepare for 18 the meeting, and that’s what I bring to the meeting is the paper version. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Templeton: We’re not even discussing replacing it though. 1 2 Commissioner Hechtman: No, no. But we are because we’re talking about at the end of that – in 3 that paper version there is a printout of a map. And if we instead in the staff report are not going 4 to actually attach the map but just go by the link to it… 5 6 Commissioner Templeton: Oh, no, no, no. That’s not what we’re suggesting. 7 8 Commissioner Hechtman: Well… 9 10 Commissioner Templeton: Because we need – I still want the paper packets. We can vote on that 11 too, but… 12 13 Vice-Chair Chang: We’re talking about the email. 14 15 Commissioner Templeton: That’s an email with an attachment of the packet, and that 16 attachment… 17 18 Commissioner Hechtman: Right. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Templeton: …is large. 1 2 Commissioner Hechtman: Right. So… 3 4 Commissioner Templeton: So… 5 6 Commissioner Hechtman: …if you’re only saying the packet that we get it delivered is going to be 7 exactly the same except in addition to that map, physical copy of which is there, in addition to 8 that, there’s a link… 9 10 Commissioner Templeton: Two different deliveries. Two different – there’s an email delivery and 11 there’s a paper delivery. 12 13 Commissioner Hechtman: But – yeah. 14 15 Commissioner Templeton: [Inaudible 112:56]. 16 17 Commissioner Hechtman: But we’re not going to ask him to make 2 versions of the staff report. 18 19 Commissioner Templeton: Hold on. Stop. You’re conflating… 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Hechtman: I don’t think I am. 2 3 Commissioner Templeton: Well, let me try… 4 5 Commissioner Hechtman: [Inaudible 113:05]. 6 7 Commissioner Templeton: Let me try and convince you because we started talking about 8 resolution of the printout. 9 10 Commissioner Hechtman: Right. 11 12 Commissioner Templeton: Somehow we also ended up talking about emails. These are 2 13 different activities that Sam does. 14 15 Jennifer Armer: So maybe I can rephrase my question once you… 16 17 Commissioner Templeton: Let me finish. 18 19 Jennifer Armer: Yeah. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Templeton: So one is can we have higher resolution of the documents – images 2 that are included in the printed documents so when it prints you can read it and all of us can read 3 it. Okay, so that’s one question. 4 5 Commissioner Hechtman: Yes. 6 7 Commissioner Templeton: And then the concern was that may make the packet bigger. So then 8 we started talking about the email. When they attach the email version of the packet which we 9 also receive every time, how do we prevent that contradiction from preventing them from 10 making the printed packet better. And the reas-, the way I suggested was allow us to download 11 the packet. You don’t have to attach it any… 12 13 Commissioner Hechtman: Yeah. That’s what I understood. So the electronic version… 14 15 Commissioner Templeton: What’s the problem? 16 17 Commissioner Hechtman: …would be a link. 18 19 Commissioner Templeton: No. In your email, they’ll be a link. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Hechtman: That is the electronic version, the email. 2 3 Commissioner Templeton: No. The email has an attachment [inaudible 114:17]. 4 5 Jennifer Armer: Yes. So the question is when you get the email from Sam… 6 7 Commissioner Hechtman: Yeah. 8 9 Jennifer Armer: …it says your packet is ready. 10 11 Commissioner Hechtman: Right. Click here. 12 13 Jennifer Armer: That email actually has a PDF attached to it. 14 15 Commissioner James: It’s embedded. 16 17 Commissioner Hechtman: Right. Right. 18 19 Jennifer Armer: Right. And so that makes the email much bigger. It also [inaudible 114:34]. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Hechtman: But what actually – what is making the email much bigger is not the 2 text of your report. It’s that fat image of the map that is Attachment B. That’s what’s making your 3 staff report use a lot of memory. And so what we’re saying is in the electronic version – that 4 digital version, we don’t want to have that fat map. 5 6 Vice-Chair Chang: No. 7 8 Commissioner Hechtman: Instead we want to have a link. 9 10 Female: No. 11 12 Commissioner Ji: [Inaudible 115:04] tried to download the packet from the PTC website? 13 14 Commissioner Hechtman: No. 15 16 Commissioner Ji: Okay. So maybe – okay. So when you download, you go to PTC, whatever… 17 18 Male: [Inaudible 115:14]. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Peterson: [Inaudible 115:15]. 1 2 Commissioner Ji: Go to PTC meetings, whatever, and then on the side there’s a thing that says 3 download. 4 5 Male: Yeah. 6 7 Commissioner Ji: So you click download packet and you get this big PDF. So basically we’ve just 8 replaced what comes to you in the email. Instead of the whole packet, you just get this URL to 9 click downloads. 10 11 Commissioner Peterson: There’s 3 dots. 12 13 Commissioner Hechtman: So Sam last week sent us 2 emails. One was just a link. 14 15 Female: Mm-hm. 16 17 Commissioner Hechtman: And the other was a PDF attached packet. 18 19 Vice-Chair Chang: Yeah. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Hechtman: So is the suggestion no longer email the PDF packet… 2 3 Vice-Chair Chang: Yes. 4 5 Commissioner Hechtman: …just email the link? 6 7 Vice-Chair Chang: Yes. Yes. So… 8 9 Commissioner Hechtman: Now I get it. 10 11 Vice-Chair Chang: [Inaudible 116:00] that packet as huge as you want to because we’ll just all 12 download it. 13 14 Commissioner Peterson: Sam, what are you going to do with all your free time? We got to check 15 with Sam. Is this part of your main [inaudible 116:08]? 16 17 Samuel Tavera: [Inaudible 116:09]. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Templeton: [Inaudible 116:10] one thing just to make sure we’re all on the same 1 page. Sometimes when I get the website packet, I get – I don’t get the drill-downs in one file. Are 2 we still going to get all of the entire thing that’s in the printed packet… 3 4 Samuel Tavera: You… 5 6 Commissioner Templeton: …in one file from the website? 7 8 Samuel Tavera: You got them separately? 9 10 Commissioner Templeton: Well, like with Council’s packet, it’s like 10 different… 11 12 Commissioner Hechtman: Like where all the attachments are separate? 13 14 Vice-Chair Chang: Where you have to click. I don’t want that. 15 16 Commissioner Templeton: We don’t want that. So as long as what’s – what you’re directing us to 17 with the link via email, which is very handy – thank you for doing that – I’m happy to get the link 18 and not the PDF as long as that link is the same thing as the packet. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Samuel Tavera: Yeah. 1 2 Commissioner Templeton: Okay. 3 4 Vice-Chair Chang: Okay. 5 6 Commissioner Peterson: You okay with that? 7 8 Samuel Tavera: Yeah. 9 10 Commissioner Peterson: Okay. 11 12 Jennifer Armer: Yeah. I think… 13 14 Vice-Chair Chang: But the other thing is that I think that – so that solves that problem. I think that 15 some of the staff aren’t aware as their preparing their individual reports that whatever they’re 16 attaching as attachments in their report or images are just not high resolution at all. 17 18 Jennifer Armer: Yeah. And that’s one of the things that I, as a reviewer of those staff reports, can 19 start looking for… 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Vice-Chair Chang: Okay. 2 3 Male: Thank you. 4 5 Jennifer Armer: …and pass back to staff… 6 7 Male: [Inaudible 117:26]. 8 9 Jennifer Armer: …the importance to make sure that the quality of those graphics… 10 11 Vice-Chair Chang: Yeah. 12 13 Jennifer Armer: …is high enough. If we can’t get it into the Word document of the staff report, 14 then attaching it as [inaudible 117:36]. 15 16 Commissioner Templeton: And we have like – Word is notoriously problematic on that. 17 18 Jennifer Armer: Yeah. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Templeton: We can talk about it, but we have – I want to say, at least half of us 1 are happy to provide tech support on that because my eyesight’s not getting any better, so… 2 3 Male: [Inaudible 117:52]. 4 5 Commissioner Templeton: I’m just saying. All right. 6 7 Chair Akin: Good. That was useful. 8 9 Commissioner James: [Inaudible 118:01] this is off again [inaudible 118:05] but just as we were 10 talking about tech [inaudible 118:07] and you said you had G – some… 11 12 Jennifer Armer: GIS. 13 14 Commissioner James: GIS. 15 16 Jennifer Armer: Yeah. Geographic Information. 17 18 Commissioner James: I know that – not to sort of mention any particular vendor, but I know Peter 19 Calthorpe has developed a GIS-based urban planning software package, and I’m sure others have. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. I’m not sort of shilling for him. But it does occur to me that in terms of tracking everything from 1 whether we are removing trees or adding trees or anything, that it is – GIS is like the DNA on 2 which you can locate any data, whether it’s an ordinance or a [inaudible 118:55]. And I just feel 3 like if that’s not the present, it sort of ought to be part of our future… 4 5 Commissioner Peterson: Hundred percent. 6 7 Commissioner James: …to have that capability. And I’m sure you know this is [inaudible 119:08] 8 state of the [inaudible 119:10] urban planning and could locate everything about that point on 9 the map that applies to [inaudible 119:17] that would be amazing if [inaudible 119:19]. 10 11 Jennifer Armer: If there are online resources, please – that you are aware of, please let me know 12 and I’ll add them to the list and share [inaudible 119:27]. 13 14 Commissioner Peterson: If we have a couple minutes after, I could show you the website 15 [inaudible 119:30] throw it up on the screen… 16 17 Jennifer Armer: [Inaudible 119:32]. 18 19 Commissioner Peterson: [Inaudible 119:32] 10 minutes. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Templeton: Also to just share an old-timer on this Commission response. When I 2 started, we weren’t even using GIS. We had a custom Palo Alto thing and [inaudible 119:45]. 3 4 Commissioner Peterson: [Inaudible 119:45]. 5 6 Commissioner Templeton: We have advanced. 7 8 Chair Akin: The public interface to the GIS is very limited. 9 10 Commissioner Peterson: Oh yeah. 11 12 Jennifer Armer: Yes. 13 14 Chair Akin: I have requested GIS queries from staff going as far back as 2013, and they’ve all been 15 great, but it’s just not publicly accessible. 16 17 Jennifer Armer: No. Because we have to be cautious with some of the data. 18 19 Chair Akin: So for the streamside corridor I used my backpacking map service. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Peterson: [Inaudible 120:26]. 2 3 Chair Akin: So I could see where all the banks were. So those things exist, and some forms are 4 even free, so we can explore those as well too. Perhaps [inaudible 120:46] reached a good 5 stopping point. 6 7 Female: Mm-hm. 8 9 Jennifer Armer: Thank you, everyone, for such a great conversation [inaudible 120:52]. 10 11 Commissioner Ji: I also just want to take the time to say we really appreciate what staff’s doing 12 already. 13 14 Female: Yes. Mm-hm. 15 16 Commissioner Ji: These are just additions that we’d love to see also. 17 18 Commissioner Templeton: Well, it’ll make us even happier when we are interacting with you 19 guys, and perhaps that will help some of our interactions. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Jennifer Armer: And I do invite offline interactions as well. Please do reach out to me with 2 questions, comments at whatever point they come through. 3 4 Commissioner Peterson: Yeah. I like the coaching calls. 5 6 Jennifer Armer: We have a lot going on, but supporting you is one of my main tasks. So… 7 8 Commissioner Hechtman: Thank you. 9 10 Vice-Chair Chang: Thank you. 11 12 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you all. Thanks for being here, Albert, and… 13 14 Chair Akin: Yes. Thanks… 15 16 Female: Thanks, Albert. 17 18 Chair Akin: …everyone. I’m glad you could all make time. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Albert Yang: Bye, everyone. 1 2 Chair Akin: [Inaudible 121:39]. It was very valuable, and I hope we can do another for more topics 3 in the future. 4 5 Female: Mm-hm. 6 7 Vice-Chair Chang: Thank you. 8 9 Commissioner James: [Inaudible 121:50]. 10 11 Chair Akin: [Inaudible 121:50]. 12 13 Adjournment 14 12:02 PM 15 16 /km 17