Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

All right. Good evening, everyone. By way of introduction, my name is Davis Fields. I'm the chair of the Campbell Planning Commission. I would like to call to order this meeting of the Commission on May 26th, 2026. Ken, could we have a roll call, please? Commissioner Scissor? Here.

Commissioner Kempkart?

Here.

Commissioner Alney?

Here.

Commissioner Bugminder? Vice Chair Aquilino?

Present. Chair Fields? Present. Taking us to our second item, the minutes. Has everyone had a chance to review the minutes of the previous meeting, and are there any corrections?

I'll move to approve the minutes of May 12th.

Do we have a second? Second. Ken, could we have a roll call, please? Commissioner Scissor?

Aye.

Commissioner Kamkar? Aye. Commissioner Alney? Aye. Vice Chair Aquino? Aye. Chair Fields? Aye. Next item, communications or agenda modifications. Director Eastwood, do we have any of that?

Chair Fields, honorable commissioners, just of note, you received late a report from your ad hoc subcommittee and can send out to you earlier today two public comments you should have received. That's it.

The next part of the meeting is oral requests. I will... Open for that. This is the point of our meeting where any member of the public may address this commission on an item that is not on the agenda. You may speak for up to five minutes, but be aware state law prohibits the commission from acting on non-agendized items. The Planning Commission will not take any action today on these items, although we may refer the matter to staff for research and possibly place on a future agenda. Would anyone in the chamber like to speak? Any speaker cards? we have a speaker card for item number two. Item number two, great. And anybody on the line? Great. Closing oral requests. And now we will start the public hearing. A brief overview for those who are here, although I see lots of meeting veterans, so you all know this. For each item, I will announce it and then ask staff for presentation, after which the commissioners will ask questions. After that, we open the public hearing where members of public who wish to speak may speak for up to two minutes on the items. We will start with the speakers who are in the chamber here and then move to anybody who may be online. And the applicant will be allowed to speak both at the beginning and then at the end if they would like to respond to any of the public comments. Once we received all that testimony, we'll close the public hearing, and then we will discuss as a commission based on the nature of the item. Before we start on the items, commissioners, for the three items before us tonight, do we have any disclosures? Mr. Okay. Mr. Conker.

I have a question.

Sorry, I have a question that since the capital improvement plan is throughout Campbell, how does that affect our 500 foot exclusionary rule for where we live?

That's a good question. Because it impacts everybody equally, it shouldn't have an impact.

But some of them are very specific.

Some of them are specific.

But we're voting on the whole shebang.

Correct. And you're not voting on any particular project proceeding. Oh, that's how it's cleansed? Yes.

Thank you.

Disclosures? No disclosures. I also have no disclosures. Can I bring something up?

I didn't know whether to wait or not. Yeah, sure. The late addition of the subcommittee report at 4.37, I had a real problem with this coming in so late and being added. First of all, I didn't see it, okay? It's less than two and a half hours before the meeting. Secondly, the report that's being submitted

The report is not being submitted.

I understand, but it's in the agenda, which means that we should be all reviewing it. And since the report is pretty complex with lots of links to references and a significant amount of information, I'm not comfortable with the fact that we're, you know, since I haven't had a chance to review it, that something like this slate would come in and be added to the agenda. So I don't know what standard we have for that. It's a rare, it was sent, I got it at 437. That's a revised edition that was sent with a few changes, but the

Do I need to sign in or something?

I assume I wasn't here. Well, I just advise you're on the capital improvement. I guess you could discuss this. It's later on the agenda. We will discuss it later on the agenda. Your first item, of course, is the capital improvement. That's right.

My recommendation would be to pass this on until we get to the staff.

I just want to bring up before we got into anything else, in case...

I think we're going to do that item no matter what. And then once we do that item, we can decide to what extent we speak on that report. Do we need to have him say he's here now? Sorry, I'm late. I brought brownies. Noting Commissioner Bookbinder's presence. Fantastic. Okay. And Commissioner Bookbinder, do you have any disclosures on our three items for tonight? No. Fantastic. All right. Well, that takes us, you arrived just in the lick of time to the first item of business, which is the 2027 through 2031 capital improvement plan. This is a resolution roll call vote. It's a public hearing to consider the city of Campbell's 2027 to 2031 capital improvement plan for citywide projects for consistency with the Campbell 2040 general plan. Staff is recommending the project be deemed exempt under CEQA and the project planner is Daniel Fama. Take it away. Thank you.

Thank you. Before the Commission this evening is consideration of finding a general plan consistency with the 2027-2031 Capital Improvement Plan. As some of you may know, the city budgets long-term projects known as capital improvements to a rolling five-year plan. The government code requires that the planning commission determine each year that the CIP is consistent with the general plan. And so your review is to really look at consistency for those items, not necessarily the merits of any individual project. And traditionally, the city's procedure for determining consistency is to not to restate the entire capital improvement plan year after year because, again, it's a rolling plan. So you have projects that are on it for many years. So we really identify the new projects that are incorporated into the CIP. And many of these new projects really aren't really new per se. They're just this fiscal year's projects, but they are identified as new. And then your report, as shown here, identifies a summary of what that item is and the general plan actions, policies, or strategies which staff has determined that it is consistent with. And so, based on that analysis, staff does recommend that the Planning Commission determine that the proposed capital improvement plan is consistent with the 2040 Campbell General Plan. And we do have Campbell Public Works staff in attendance should you have any particular questions on the projects tonight.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the report. And for questions, why don't we start at this end? Commissioner Bookminder.

I'm going to ask the same thing I ask every year. I noticed that we have a tremendous amount of money for street maintenance, which as I understand it is very strictly earmarked for repaving and repainting. So we could in theory use that to put painted bike lanes on. We have as part of what the city is doing, we're hoping to get better bike infrastructure. We're currently developing that with multimodal plan. We're talking about several years ahead of time. Are we not planning well in that we're saying this can only be used for repaving? Are we legally prohibited from saying this can be used for more complete streets purposes? Should we be thinking about that? As I understand, the multimodal plan is in compliance with our general plan. So I think this is within our purview.

Hi, Amy Olay, Public Works Director. Let me just make sure I understand your question, Commissioner Bookbinder. Are you asking about the overall bicycle plan?

I'm noting that the vast majority of the street budget is for repaving it. There's several million dollars for that, and there's about $60,000 for bike and pedestrian things. which is not very much bike and pedestrian things and a lot of street things for cars. Is that repaying budget Like five years from now, when we have our multimodal plan and we're thinking, gosh darn it, I wish we had money to actually implement this and put in protected bike lanes. Are we saying right now we can only use that for repaving streets? Are we prohibited from saying we can use this for complete streets? Is that something that we can do or recommend?

So with the annual street maintenance budget, it is limited, restricted to repaving our streets. because we have a pavement condition index that we try to meet and that's in the general plan as well. And so, and we get measure B money and we get Senate bill one money, so the gas tax. In order for us to use those funds that we get, we are required to have a maintenance of effort. And for that is 917,000 for Campbell. And so at a minimum, we have to maintain that in order for us to get the grant funding. So what we do is that recognizing that our streets are very important to us, the condition of our streets, it really makes up for the quality of life for our residents in Campbell. One of the things that we do lately is that as an example with the Hamilton Resurfacing Project, it's not just about resurfacing. We're also looking at opportunities where we can introduce complete streets. and green bike lanes. That's what we're trying to do because that's a really great time for us to leverage the money that we have for paving and then add in the extra striping where there is enough right of way for us to introduce bike lanes.

Okay, but just to be clear that you can paint bike lanes, but none of this can be used to, for example, put up flex posts or curbs or bollards or anything like that.

At this point, the city does not have a policy to include ballers for bike lanes. Yes.

So I guess the multimodal plan is trying to figure out what the goals are for where the protected bike lanes will be. If, for example, we wind up saying, hey, we would like to have flex posts, curbs, bollards, something between the cars and the bikes on Hamilton, the next time it gets paved, is that something we can make it so that we can do, we can do that as well as part of the street you're paving, this money is only to be used for putting things flat on the surface of the road.

For the most part, we have to spend it on the pavement and then we have to find other funding sources to help us. So the multimodal plan is a really great plan to guide us on what sort of bike network we want to introduce, except that we just need to look for additional funding in order for us to make all those happen. So it really depends on the cost of those extra amenities.

Just to be clear, these are restrictions on the funds we're getting. These are not decisions we're making.

Yeah, those are restricted funds.

Okay, that's what I wanted to know. Thank you. Okay.

So can I ask a follow-up question on that?

He'd ask me first and then.

Go ahead. Go ahead. So what I'm having trouble with is these things tend to come down to definitions. And when we get our money from other sources like the state, the county, or the federal government, then there's these conditions that attach, pretty normal particle. What I'm not understanding is the level of definition that says streets that are by definition for bikes and cars, how come the money spent on streets can't be used for bikes when they are just as a valid instrument of use as anything else that we use on the road?

Well, we are using part of the money for Hamilton as an example for bike lanes.

But didn't you just say that we couldn't put bollards in with that money because that money is not for bollards? And I don't understand why there would be a distinction between safety devices on a street for bicycles that are different than safety devices for cars like streetlights.

Yeah, I don't think I said that we cannot use bollards for Hamilton. I just said that that's not the city policy to introduce bollards because we also need to look at the right of way that is.

But his question was very clear about was that a choice we made ourselves as a city or was that a restriction upon the funds that we receive? And I believe your answer was it was a restriction on the funds that we receive. Is that true?

It is a restriction on the funds for pavements. But we are able to because we are putting in some capital money in there to put the striping is an example. That's why we're striping it green.

But my question pertains to what is the definition in the restriction of those funds that prevents the street money to be used as much for bicycles as the city decides instead of a restriction that you alluded to?

I may need some legal on that one. Thank you.

I'm trying to pull up the app so I can actually look at that. I might have to get back to you on that. I'm going to look at the app and see exactly where.

I feel like I'm carrying somebody else's water, but I hope I'm... That is really what I want to know. The basic idea is if the city is restricted to putting paint in and that is what they can do for bike lanes, okay. If the city has leeway in... can they do complete streets, things like putting in actual safety devices, like curbs or rollers or flex posts, and we're just deciding not to do that, I would like to know that that's a choice for me.

Got it. I don't know the answer off the top of my head. I will look into it right now, though, as I'm going through this, yeah.

Go to Tom Carr and then, or is this a continuation of the same topic?

This question, yes. Okay. So Amy, as a fellow civil engineer, I have some experience with traffic transportation as well. So as you know, there is a lot of autonomous cars that keep coming to our area. Waymo is now the autonomous taxis. And they look at stripes on the ground mainly for there. You know, among other things, not just drives you know it's the GPS to what stripes really helps them on the road. How do we get. How do we get additional funding to be able to improve, even if we can't resurface. restruct because that will help a lot of the autonomous vehicles with that. How can we do that? That's question number one. And question number two is we received a letter from somebody who is a business owner. He actually owns a shopping center. And his concern was when these bike lanes come in, what happens to the street parking? that his tenants rely on, how do we solve that? Can we maybe do a duck out and come back so that the cars can still park next to the street? And then, you know, as well as the bike, you know, have their bikes there?

I think this is more of a multimodal plan question.

Yeah, so the letter was pertaining to the East Campbell Avenue plan line, which is a subsequent item of discussion. Okay, then never mind with my second question, the first one, please.

The first one, I think that's about us being proactive and pursuing grants and looking for grant opportunities for us to be able to add those additional improvements because we do have limited resources right now.

Have you approached the car companies who are probably one of the primary beneficiaries of these things?

We have not, but maybe that's something that we can think about.

Yes. Thank you. I just, you know, my follow-on was just to clarify. The multimodal plan is supposed to be completed in 2027. I don't know when it, there's a schedule on it, right? So it's a two-year thing. And then I don't know if there's a schedule of when the city would then start implementing it, but let's assume it's prior to the end of this period that's out five years for the moment. Has the city... put anything in the 29, 30, 31 periods that would accommodate the multimodal plan, or is that all assumed to be based on covering by grants or something in between?

So we are waiting for the multimodal plan to be complete, and then at which time, then we can start programming. One of the things that we're hoping to get from the multimodal are some concept designs that will be ready for us to apply for grants. So it's really a combination, right, of grants and city resources.

So at this point, nothing in the CRP is covering that.

For a multimodal specific? No, not at this time.

I see. Just add on that multimodal plan still in draft has to be adopted first. Council would have to approve what's in there.

That's what I was saying. It's like kind of scheduled to be approved in a couple of years.

Other, we have non. No, I have a question.

Yeah, go please. When a developer is building a very large project, a lot of times there's street work, whether it's connecting the sewers, electrical, et cetera. They pay fees, right, for repairing the streets. Does that show up in the CIP anywhere? Like, how does that money impact obviously it impacts your budget because it's more money right if the city if a developer said okay i'm going to impact the intersection of campbell and baskin okay he's got to repair the streets now if you're already doing work on that street where does that money go for instance if you're already doing something and he's gonna rip up the street to put in his project. Does fees pay for part of that street repair?

Well, typically, developers will, depending on the level of development, they're conditioned to provide improvements really along their frontage. Half street is not the entire street. And one of the things that we do try to in advance is coordinate so that we know and we don't want to put something a new street and then, you know, six months later, it gets ripped up, right? So we do try to coordinate that.

And then so what happens to that money? If the developers paying $300,000, let's say for street improvements, does that get added to the budgets at a separate line item? Because you can't predict when something's going to happen.

Yeah, if it's a conditional developer, we don't collect that money, that's improvement that is done by the developer.

Okay, all right, thank you.

I've got a question about another item.

In the example that was just given, if you were, I'm assuming based on what I heard, a developer is going to repave the street, then you wouldn't have to then pave that part of the street that was just done at the developer's expense. And all the costs that would have been associated presumably about what the developer paid would be retained by the city. And I think that's the origin of what happens when that money is not spent in a line item because of improvements from developers.

That could be another way of looking at it. But like I said, we really do try to coordinate very tightly. And so if we know that there's a project coming, then it's about us timing when we come in with our improvements. but the developer, we're not gonna collect that amount and then it's not gonna go elsewhere for us too, for the pavement of the streets.

On a different item, Commissioner Zisser?

Yeah, on the Highway 17 off ramp, I guess it is. This is the Highway 17 off ramp. There's a $3 million budget item But 2027 to 2029, source of funds are CIP and developer fees. So I don't know if that's a carry over, but it's on the short list. So there's been talking about the 17 South off ramps for years, right? I guess my question is, the $3 million, is that for implementing it, or is that for design? Is that the covered design of it? you know, consultant and architectural fees or whatever, or is it the $3 million is, because I've heard in the past that that is, you know, that's a Caltrans thing and that we would need to get state money to cover that. So I'm interested in understanding what the $3 million are. And then a portion of it is supposedly from developer fees. I don't know what developer fees those are.

So of the 3 million, 2.4 is coming for Measure B from their highway fund. And the rest is coming from developer fees that we've collected over the years, including coast development.

And that would be to complete the entire project?

Well, the rate is going with cost of projects, 3 million is not going to be enough, but we are starting the design phase of it. And we will be tapping what the funding money that we have right now and see how far that gets. Once we have a good design, then we'll know a better cost estimate. And then we'll have to probably approach BTA or look for other funding sources, grant money to help us kind of fill the gap on where that funding is. Thank you.

Other questions?

I'd just like to say thank you for looking at the bike-over crossing. I used to live in the Franciscan and take the Hamilton PPA, and every time I would cross the on-ramps, especially after dark, very frightening. So I appreciate that we're actually looking into this. It sounds like critical and nitpicky, so thank you for doing this. You're welcome.

I have one very high-level question. So the premise of this whole item was, are items aligned with the city's 2040 general plan? This general plan, I looked at briefly seems to have dozens, if not hundreds of goals. How did we decide that these seven or eight were the ones to do? Like, how are we like grading ourselves on the general plan to know, like, these all seem reasonable, but like, I'm just curious, like, why are we picking these? And like, how did that happen? I'm not 100% sure who I'm asking that at either.

Matt, can you take a stab? Sure. A lot of the general plans policies really aren't applicable to physical improvements of the type of capital improvement plan is proposing. So a lot of it's just not applicable at all. Sure. And so the ones that we do see time and time again really have to do with a lot of roadway construction. So a lot of these are going to be repeated. So you have a lot of goals pertaining to complete streets and safe streets. And those are the ones that are really just most pertinent to us. I mean, you're right, there's always the potential to be more expansive and have more and more policies and goals here. But these are the ones that we've determined are kind of the most relevant.

And is it staff recommendation sort of? Is that how we came up with the list? Correct. Got it.

One more question. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry, I was just looking at the line item. Does the community center pool replacement really cost $12 million?

Yes. Yes. It's our community center. Right. So that dollar amount also includes our design.

Okay, but this is just for the pool or is for like portion of the community center?

It's for the pool and part of the locker room.

And I have one more very tactical question after my big broad one. There's an item about fixing the HVAC controls. I've been here for a bunch of very hot, unpleasant summer nights. Is fixing the controls fixing the system? Or is it $300,000? I assume it's not $300,000 for a new thermostat. Is the premise that it's actually...

It's for the control system. So the control system that we have right now is outdated. And we're finding ourselves constantly fixing them. We fix one and then we see another problem. So we actually want to pivot from our current brand that we're using and actually going to more a standard that we've implemented at the community center, other city facilities that we found that actually works. Yeah, I hear you. It sounds great. There have been those hot days, yes.

We're getting the summer again.

Or cold.

Yeah. I got one more. One more question? Yeah, please. About the Highway 17 pedestrian overpass, which I think there's like 500,000 for probably a consulting device. And I saw something, I don't know whether it was part of the Hamilton Avenue thing, where they showed three examples of possibilities, right? Which were interesting. But I see in here that there's a specific item, it's really a detail, that says it's based on a 10-year useful life. And 10 years seem really low because there are a couple other items that are 20-year useful life. And it's like to me, you put in a pedestrian bicycle ramp that's going to connect the west side with the east side to the station, that it should have more than a 10-year useful life. I don't know how you get to useful life. So I was just kind of curious.

So this is the current funding, what you were referring to the three different options was the actual feasibility study, right? And then now, with one design option that we're moving forward with this line item is actually for the project initiation document, because we want to take that further that planning. And then so it's really about that work that we're looking at. It's really not really about the construction, not about the actual structure itself. Because that's the line item that we're funding.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I just saw it in the details on the page. It said useful life of 10 years, and it was like that. It seems like it should be more. Any other questions?

I just wanted to circle back. Oh, yeah, please. OK, so the streets and highway codes for use of the vehicle tax do allow for funds to be used for projects, including but not limited to road maintenance, safety projects, railroad, complete street components, including active transportation purposes, pedestrian, bicycle safety projects, et cetera. Measure B funds have similar language that allow for complete street components. Amy mentioned that these are measure B grant funds. Without looking at the terms of the actual grant agreement, I'm not sure if there's limitations on how those funds can be used that are otherwise specified.

Because our PCI is not 70 and above, we cannot use it towards that. A lot of the other elements like the complete streets, they're allowed if our PCI is over 70. PCI stands for? Pavement Condition Index. The streets have to be a certain level to allow for those.

So it's a rating.

So it's a rating of like poor streets that have failed. So those are like in the 30 and below range. And then you have some that are moderate, right? About 50 or so. good is like 60 70 is like excellent something like that that rating okay but is that is that the average for the jurisdiction or or is that specific to the improvement being performed for the jurisdiction the average okay so again what's our average in the city then our current average is um i think it's 66 64 is 66. So after the Hamilton project, we'll probably be closer to 66.

So because we're at below 70, then the streets come first before safety items that were mentioned, like ballers. Is that what I'm hearing?

That's how the grant funds are written.

And you have to raise it for the average. That's a pretty big discouragement to what you're, that's your kiss of death right there.

I think if you visit White Oaks, it will bring the average down. All right.

Weren't we giving that to San Jose? Any other questions? Thank you. Thank you all for the presentation. I am going to open it up now for the public hearing on this item. This commission follows the Campbell City Council's guidance on time allotment. Members of the public can speak for up to two minutes on each item. Are there any members of the public who would like to speak?

I do have Susan Landry.

Welcome.

I have a handout. Good evening, Planning Commissioner. Susan Landry here. I would just like to bring to your attention that the Campbell Community Center Master Plan is nowhere in the five-year CIP. The Campbell Parks Master Plan recommended that a Campbell Community Center Master Plan be performed before the pool is replaced or before any other major projects at the community center. I've been coming to a lot of the commission meetings and councils to remind everybody that our community center has a facilities maintenance assessment in the tens of millions of dollars just to fix repairs. And that the parks master plan does recommend a community center master plan. I made citations here of how important it has been to the community. And I'm planting the seed. Hopefully it'll germinate. We have a five-year CEP and nothing on there says we're going to do this master plan. It took eight years to build police. That was a $25, $35 million project. The community center could be 50, 60, 70. That's a 15 to 20 year project. Somewhere we got to start. So I'm here. I know this tonight is about conformance with the general plan, but I just don't want us to forget about the community center. And instead of spending tens of millions in repair, it's time for us to evaluate it. The report, the master plan or the parks plan talks about deficits and adding gathering spaces and adding classes and the community really felt like we needed better services. And if we're going to increase our population even by 10 or 20%, we should be increasing activities and events at the community center.

Thank you. Thank you for the comment. Do we have any other speakers in the chamber? Any other speakers online? done in the chambers and not online. Sure. All right. I will close public comment. Now it's time for our deliberation. I started questions over there, so I'll start deliberation over here.

Yeah, with respect to the specific items that we're looking at,

Commissioner Comcar.

Do you only think that I should say that I was surprised what was this $12 million budget for the pool, but otherwise, you know, I think everything is okay as well. Commissioner Olley.

I concur. Sticker shock on a $12 million project.

Commissioner Bookbinder. I usually advise to your last. Okay.

nothing nothing to add I appreciate having my questions answered nice chair no comments again it's very comprehensive report having dealt with a lot of construction issues I understand these costs and they never go down so it is what it is thank you very much

Um, I'm also supportive of these. I am, I am interested. I have one question for staff after this, like when, when was the master plan or like, what is the status of the Campbell community center master plan and the intent of updating it? I'm just curious about that. Given the one public comment we received.

Good evening, Natasha Bissell, recreation community services director. Um, so with that question and comment that has come up repeatedly, The community center master plan, we had one done in the early 2000s. And if you want to talk sticker shock, there was a lot of sticker shock. The only improvements that came out of that were the exterior improvements. So if you're a long-term resident, you'll remember it connected the two parking lots. It relocated the tennis courts. It took out one side of the stadium bleachers, added in the skate park and did all external things. And the facilities weren't touched because of the massive sticker shot. In our master plan outreach and communicating with the public, it was very clear that any tear down of that building or the buildings there was not something they wanted to see. They liked the look and feel of our community center. With that, the Parks and Recreation Master Plan did provide a laundry list of things that are in need of repair. Most pointedly, our pool. Our pool is being held together with Two Picks and bubble gum. We have spent thousands of dollars in the last year fixing leak after leak after leak. We continue to have chemical imbalancing due to the ongoing leaks. So we are at failure state. Fixing the pool is a choice between fixing the pool or no longer having accessible community pool for your community. Because it is a long project that's going to be underway. It's not something that will happen quickly or overnight. And delaying the project will inevitably close the pool for an undetermined amount of time. years, possibly. The $12 million in 2018 was a $5 million project. The longer we continue to kick the can down this road of renovation, it's just the price is going to go up. That $12 million is an expansion of the existing pool footprint, too. So that would include your eight to 10 lane lap swimming pool, but also a programming pool that could be used year round. Updated locker rooms, fitness space, as well as an entry building. So it's very clear how you enter the pool deck. While it's not consistent with master planning the entire site, we have also done maintenance. Public Works has also conducted priority maintenance things to kind of mitigate that. Master planning is important. I'm not going to discredit that. It's just they take a lot of time and a lot of resources, which we don't really have when we're faced with such large infrastructure needs. Our pool is heavily used. We teach hundreds and hundreds of children and adults to swim every summer. It would be a great opportunity for us to expand that footprint and provide more opportunities to teach people to be safer and more.

Thank you. Questions? May I ask a question? Yeah. Is our pool open to everybody or just Campbell residents?

Our pool is open and accessible to everybody. We are one of the very few pools in the area that you can literally drop in and pay a one-day use fee and have access to water. That is not a very common practice. A lot of places require monthly or annual memberships for you to have access to their pools.

And is there a big source of income?

It's generally cost recovery. So in the sense that it pays for the full-time staff and those types of things. So it is a revenue generator for the Recreation and Community Services Department, yes.

So do you know what the useful life would be on a new $3 million pool?

More than six months, which is what I'm going to give our pool. I think with where we're at now, my hope would be 30 years. But I mean, this existing pool is from the 50s, and it's lasted a long time. So I think with good care and maintenance, with new infrastructure and understanding and I mean, we have no blueprints from this building from the original high school. So there is, it's a guessing game sometimes of where things are. In the 80s, the pool also lifted out of its shell. And so we're dealing with some of that. So there's a lot of things that are, you know, I would hope, you know, 30 to 50 years. I don't know the answer to that, unfortunately.

Just for in Trivian High School, I cleaned that pool. Oh, great.

You answered one of my questions in terms of, I was going to ask how fire had been kicked down the road, because I'm certainly familiar with the pool issue these last few years. And so it's been eight or nine years, obviously. So my question is, about the funding of it. That seems to be the key issue is we're gonna get what used to be 5 million now is 12 million. So has the council gotten closer to whether they're going to do a bond issue or?

You have the best segue into my next item. All right.

That sounds good. Okay, anything else to add to the deliberation? Nope, also supportive, thank you staff for the thorough report and all the work you do to help the city meet its goals. Let us get to a motion. Who'd like to make one?

Vice Chair. I'd like to make a motion that the City of Campbell or the Planning Commission approves the City of Campbell 2027-2031 Capital Improvement Plan, and it's consistent with the Campbell 2040 General Plan. I'll second.

And can we have a roll call, please?

Commissioner Scissor? Aye. Commissioner Kamkar? Aye. Commissioner Alney?

Aye.

Commissioner Buckbinder?

Aye. Commissioner Echolino? Aye. Chair Fields? Aye. The item passes 6-0. The Commission item is final unless appealed in writing to the City Clerk within 10 calendar days. Thank you again, Daniel. Have a good night. Moving us to item three, overview of park impact fees, staff presentation of the city's park impact fee program. Staff presenter, Natasha Bissell. Thank you for being here.

Thank you, just one second. All right. Good evening. Natasha Bissell, Recreation and Community Services Director for the City of Campbell. Tonight's an opportunity for me to share the importance and the impact of the Parkland Dedication Fund that we have for the City of Campbell. I'm going to be really focusing on the why tonight, and then my colleague, Roger Storrs, will be following up with how they get here. So... We know Campbell is growing, and I just want to start off by stating that I support housing and a thoughtful growth within Campbell, but growth must be paired with infrastructure that makes our city livable. Parks and recreational opportunities are not optional amenities. They are essential, essential public infrastructure. As Campbell adds residents in an already built out community, parkland fees are one of the few tools we have to maintain quality of life and avoid shifting costs onto existing residents. As Campbell grows denser, who's gonna pay for the increased demand on our parks and recreation system in Campbell? So there's two options, our existing residents through taxes, just having to deal with overcrowded parks, continued deferred maintenance, declining park quality, Or option B, new development contributes proportionally to the infrastructure impacts that it creates. Campbell is already park constrained. It's largely built out. We are landlocked. Opportunities to acquire new parkland are limited and very expensive. Existing parks already experience heavy use when the city faces ongoing fiscal constraints and maintenance obligations. The City has two reference plans and we've talked about these this evening. The general plan is and more recently the Parks and Recreation Master Plan. Our own planning documents acknowledge the existing park deficiencies and the need for additional park investment as our population increases. The general plan has a goal to require new development to adequately provide and or contribute toward additional open space parks and recreation facilities. They do this, they strive to provide public access of three acres of open space parkland and recreation facilities for every thousand residents. In our recent parks and recreation master plan, we came in at 1.8 acres for every thousand. That is well below the national median for the same size cities of 9.6 acres and still well below the 3.0 acres required or suggested or recommended in our general plan.

Sorry, I lost the slide.

Parkland provided a higher density housing creates more reliance on our public parks and recreational opportunities. Residents in apartments, condos, townhomes, mixed use development, they have less private space, they have smaller yards, and they have fewer recreational opportunities at home. Our parks become shared backyards Community gathering spaces become more important and recreational infrastructure experiences heavier use throughout the year. The denser we build, the more important public open space becomes. Every new housing project adds residents, but land does not magically appear. If we eliminate or reduce parkland fees while continuing to add housing, we are effectively guaranteeing less park access per resident over time. Now, Roger is going to go into this in more detail, but it's important to remember that park impact fees are not punitive. They are mitigation tools and a way to ensure that infrastructure keeps pace with growth, and they are legally authorized mechanisms for cities to use. New development increases park usage, which shortens the lifespan of infrastructure and increases maintenance needs and increases infrastructure demand on new amenities to meet the needs of new and changing population demographics. Park fees help to offset those impacts. Developers are not being asked to solve historic park deficiencies. They're simply being asked to mitigate the additional demand their projects create. Removing these fees does not remove the costs. It just simply shifts them elsewhere. If we eliminate these fees, Campbell will then be shifting the burden to our residents. Campbell already faces budget constraints as you're well aware. We have aging infrastructure and rising maintenance costs. If developers do not contribute to growth related infrastructure, Existing residents will bear those costs and future projects will be reliant on general fund dollars when looking for capital projects. Parks and recreation opportunities are not luxuries. They are core components of thriving communities and are just as important as roads, water systems, schools, libraries, and public safety facilities. Parks and Recreation support physical health, mental health, youth recreation, senior wellness, climate resilience, tree canopy, heat reduction, stormwater management, and community cohesion, and the list goes on. Campbell cannot responsibly add population while simultaneously reducing investment in public open space. we reduced or removed these fees future park acquisitions become harder land costs will continue to rise and eventually these opportunities will be permanently lost good planning balances housing infrastructure quality of life and fiscal responsibility once parkland tools are weakened rebuilding them later becomes politically and financially difficult Rehabilitating our park infrastructure will become reliant solely on general fund dollars, which will then be fighting for other capital projects within the city with no dedicated source. The city has developed the roadmap for the city's future growth through the general plan update and with recently the parks recreation master plan. The adoption of these two plans demonstrates the city's commitment to park and recreational facilities for their residents. The removal or reduction of these fees would directly contradict the adoption of these long-term planning documents and remove their primary funding mechanism to implement any of the projects. This is not about being anti-development. It's about responsible growth. Campbell residents value our parks, recreation, and the quality of life that we provide. In a city that is already park deficient, land constrained, and fiscally challenged, eliminating or reducing these park fees which shift the burden of growth onto existing residents while reducing our ability to maintain public open spaces that make Keppel special.

Growth should contribute to the infrastructure required to support it.

I understand that developers state that the high fees discourage housing or make it financially unfeasible for them to push projects through. But I would challenge that infrastructure deficiencies also discourage livability. housing and infrastructure must grow together parkland funds are dedicated to the acquisition of new parks and or the rehabilitation of existing infrastructure this slide illustrates some of the more recent uses of this fund with the complete renovation of the skate park the campbell park playground project the playground that was added to the community center many years ago the all-inclusive playground at john d morgan park and currently the new adult center for our senior population These are just some of the amenities that make Campbell great and why people choose to live here in Campbell. Developers benefit from Campbell's quality of life and the park system when marketing their projects. It is reasonable that development contribute to ensure funds are available when land acquisition becomes a possibility and when capital projects are needed for renovation and the methodology aligns with our city's planning documents. I am going to stop here. I'm going to get off my soapbox and maybe pass it to Roger for the how we get those funds. And then maybe we can answer questions together.

Roger Storrs, Senior Civil Engineer with Public Works. I've just got a quick little slideshow here to to discuss kind of the process that we go through. As Natasha mentioned, we collect these funds. So kind of the mechanics of how we collect and how we calculate fees is what I'll talk about in my presentation. Essentially, as the slide says, parking loot fees help fund parks. We did a park fee study back in 2019 to determine what the most appropriate park fees would be. As you know, the cost of land far outpaces the consumer price index. Generally fees have been adjusted over the years per CPI, but then every once in a while you have to do a reality check, and that's what the Park fee study in 2019 did. A couple of metrics that we determined during that Park fee study is that generally a single family unit holds about 2.72 residents, while a multifamily unit is about 1.93. park fees kind of came about with the quimby act where the state recognized that there was a lot of subdivisions that were taking place and not much open space was being dedicated and there was a real concern that you know we were just going to have houses houses and no parks so the state passed the quimby act and it allows cities to require developers when they're doing new projects to to either dedicate parkland. I mean, that's the primary goal is to dedicate parkland. The metric, as Natasha mentioned, is three acres of parkland per 1,000 new residents. So why, when we figure out how many people on average live in a single family or a multifamily unit is important is because that's part of the equation. You're trying to figure out when a new development goes in about how many people are we going to get with that new development. If I build a hundred new single family units, well then I'm looking at about 272 new residents. And so if I want three acres of parkland per thousand people, then I'm talking about roughly a quarter of the thousand people and it would be a quarter of three acres of land. So, and as Natasha mentioned, the, you know, you can't pay an in lieu fee opposed to, because some projects just don't want to dedicate the land or they're too small really to dedicate enough land to make a decent park. So we allow developers to pay an in lieu fee. So as we talk about the target is three acres of parkland per 1000 new residents, but I should mention that the Quimby Act actually allows cities to go up to five acres per 1000. That's why you'll see some communities have much higher park fees than we do. You look at your Cupertino's, you look at like Menlo Park, They're much higher because they actually have on average more than five acres of parkland per existing thousand residents. And so the state allows them to set their bar higher to maintain their quality of life so that they're not only asking for three acres when their system is four acres or five acres or six acres. So the reality is that most projects don't dedicate land. I can't honestly, in the 12, 13 years that I've been here, I don't think I've seen one development project dedicate land for a park. They do do some kind of some private open spaces, but generally nobody's dedicated a public park. So then the idea is, well, if they're not gonna give you the land, then they should at least give you the dollar equivalent of the land so that you have that money available if you wanna go buy land. And so as part of that Parkview study that I mentioned, The valuation at that time was $3.6 million. It's been since adjusted by CPI because that's how we're doing it annually by CPI. So the current valuation is $3.96 million per acre. That's what our current portfolio is. Now, if you do some recent real estate transactions around Campbell, you'll see that's probably a pretty low number. We've seen some properties sell large lots, like half acre lot, a house on it that gets torn down. So they're not buying the improvements, they're really just buying the raw land. And those transactions are coming in five, six plus million dollars per acre. So, as I mentioned, we look at both single family and multifamily units when we calculate the park fees. There are also, there's a park fee for ADUs, but SB13 was passed a few years ago, and it essentially said like for your junior ADUs, you know, 500 square feet or less, they're exempt from park fees. Also, ADUs that are less than 750 square feet are exempt from park fees. And there's a methodology they have for how, when you're over 750 square feet, how the fee is calculated. But as Natasha showed on her slide, so currently a single family unit is $32,000 and a multifamily unit is close to 23. These fees are now adjusted automatically every July 1st as part of our fee update. They're adjusted per CPI, which I think last year was something like 2.4, 2.5% or something. So as you can see, and for the accessory dwelling units, the junior is zero, less than 750 is zero, and over 750, it's up to $9,000 for the park fee for an ADU. I do want to stress that these are obviously for net new units. You tear down a house, you build a new house, there's no park fee, right? Because you get credit for what you have. Or if you, you know, the SB9 urban lot splits are very popular where people are splitting large single family lots into two and they keep the existing house and they create a new lot. Then they're paying the park fee for the new lot, for the new house that's going to go in there. And then obviously we do have some existing single family houses torn down, say eight new townhouses are built on that. They get credit for the existing single family unit at $32,000, and then they would pay for the eight new units at 23,000. So we do make sure to give everybody credit for what they have. And so again, we're not charging them, not overcharging them, I should say. I do want to mention that last year, there was a SB 315, a Quimby Act update that was proposed. It didn't it failed to move on. But that would have actually exempted park fees and slash dedication for info projects within a quarter mile of an existing park. And then there was SB 13, like I mentioned, which dealt with the calculation of park fees for prairies. so i think i'm going to end it there but like i said really the park fee is it's all a function of how much land does the project require what's the value of that land and then that's the basis for the inland foods open it up for questions start with commissioner zisser okay so um uh clarification on single family versus multi-family so um we we have

that definition for when we look at development. Attached hound houses are multifamily, for example?

Yes, so generally the only way you get classified as single family is if you have a detached structure.

Even if it's in a development with slightly smaller lots, those would still be single family.

They would be. But you could effectively take the same unit, push it up against, right? And make it. And now it's multifamily, right? So different cities do it differently. But yeah.

So the use of the parkland fees. these are in lieu of buying more land for another park, which we have a problem with in the city of Campbell. These are used for capital improvements like playgrounds and whatever.

What are those funds used for? It's rehabilitation.

Yeah, so any rehabilitation project or a community-wide asset is something that can be used. So if The pool and the community center are prime examples of those are singular community-wide assets that can be used for that. The last time we used Parkland Fund for park acquisition was the Stojanovic Family Park, when the family, if I recall correctly, donated the property at half market value if we promised to develop it into a park. And so I think we paid $2 million or so for that park and then made it into a park. And that's the last opportunity we've had for acquisition.

But you can use it for improvements in the park.

That's tricky. It has to be a complete overhaul. It's not like a new playground. Completely new. Yes.

Yes. And do we spend it all every year?

Well, currently we have it programmed out because of the pool project. Our finance department projects very conservatively on the out years just because of the unknown. And this year, I think we more than tripled the conservative projection. So that conservativeness allows us when a project like the adult center needed a little extra funding, we're able to make that happen. But at this point, yeah, we tend to have things in the pipeline. Public Works has been doing an excellent job over the last 10 years of ensuring that we've kind of methodically gone through and revitalized all of our different playgrounds and park assets that we have.

Okay. And is this a common practice throughout all of California with most or all cities? Are they charging parkland fees?

Oh, yes.

Yes.

It is a main source of, I mean, it's the main tool for a lot of park rehabilitation and acquisition. I mean, Sacramento, the Melrose, like Roseville area. I mean, they're like very high rates.

This is common practice nationally?

Yes.

Okay.

So the only other question I have is, you know, we're seeing a couple of big projects, right? It's going to take a little while, but, you know, we've got potentially almost 300 units going in at, you know, that's going to be a five-year project. And that will bring in, you know, if in fact we, know do better on our housing and and beat what we've done in the past um the number will go up right so has the city yet factored in you know the fact that we'll we're going to be building more units and getting more parkland fees or is that just wait and see

it's always wait and see with a conservative approach, yes. So we do the out years of what we have with that conservative approach. And then the next year, if something comes down the radar, the pipeline of things that need to be rehabilitated, I mean, the Parks and Rec master plan is kind of that guiding light for us of like, here's some low hanging fruit and here's some absolute dire needs. If you can get the funding, this is where you need to go. And it delineates that type of project. So when that funding like this year where it's come in more aggressive than what the conservative approach was when we were developing the cip for parkland funds we took that into account but we don't take that aggressiveness in the out years because it's so unknown okay and one more question then i'm done um when when do we uh have developers pay the parkland sure so usually uh there's two milestones

Historically, if a project is involved with subdivision map, the park fee is due with the approval of the subdivision, which is usually at the beginning of the project. If a project does involve, like let's say the project at Campbell and Bascom, the Farbano project that we've talked about recently, that project, typically apartment projects, they pay at occupancy. So depending on how long it takes to get the project built and then ready for occupancy, the money doesn't show up. And the other thing I just wanted to point out that I didn't make clear is, you know, really, the Quimby Act is all about land. It has nothing to do with the improvements. So even, you know, if the developer gives you an acre of land, you still have to fund putting improvements on it as well. So.

Just going to jump in that I'm asking Roger, that's a new state law that requires fee payment to be later. Typically in years past, it has been at permit issuance. I know developers have come in and often asked, because as you do financing, it's much harder to pay your fees up front. You have your construction financing. But I believe it's under this new state law that those fees are now deferred to occupancy. That has helped out development in their financing.

Right. So a lot of the impact fees, the fees subject to AB 1600, they can now ask that they... they defer payment until occupancy, but I believe Quimby Act fees are not covered by that legislation. We've asked, we actually asked, I think HCD, or one of the developers is asking HCD for an interpretation.

Yes, thank you. Thank you, Roger. That was a great presentation. So I liken this to like, if I want to buy a house and I don't have the down payment, I go rent or lease, right? So can Campbell Parks Department have a joint use agreement with like schools? Schools have playgrounds, you know.

I believe that's addressed in the master.

Yes, that is addressed in the master plan. The challenge we face now is perimeter fencing on school campuses and their lockdown. So accessibility after hours is quite challenging and who's responsible and liable. So while joint use agreements are not out of the question, it does pose a challenge in this current day and age where lockdowns of campuses are of the utmost importance for the school and public access is not.

OK. And then the other question is, I'm an avid sports fan. We don't have many sports fields, soccer fields. Many soccer fields is what I usually look for in Campbell. I know a lot of us have to travel outside to play our sport. Is there any programming to have

some circuit it doesn't have to be full size so we have four soccer fields at the community center on our large open turf and then there's a soccer field inside the football stadium inside the press users generally bring their own goals to those so that's probably why you don't notice them as frequently and then there is the what we call the bowl at johnny morgan park there is a soccer field there and also in the middle of the at the middle of the park can be um another soccer field so people do rent those fields from us all the time are they are they lined for soccer or just referring to groups usually line them for themselves yes so there's not pre-ordained like this is a dedicated soccer field they're athletic fields that are used for all kinds of things a lot of um youth sports organizations. There's the Bay Area Women's Soccer League that uses our fields regularly. I think there's a few flag football groups. So they're used pretty regularly.

And then these can be rented from the city?

Yes.

Thank you. You need to bring those little orange cones. I always do. I'm the team manager. I carry them. I carry the goals.

I'm going in reverse order. So following your question, you're charging a fee for people to use the park. Is that because they get to use it exclusively?

Yes. So if they're permitted to use an athletic field or a picnic site, they do have exclusive use for the time period in which they rent it.

I see. And then the rest of the public just... Works around them. Deals with it.

Yeah. And if picnic sites are not rented, they first come first serve.

Yeah. Okay. So thanks for that. My original question was, These fees are ostensibly because there's an adverse impact due to new construction, right?

Correct. It increases population.

Right. So if a developer of an apartment building, in this hypothetical example, wanted to ask the city to use its fee for the construction of recreational facilities on site of their own structure, would the city be willing to allow them to mitigate their impact on their own property?

So that would have to be publicly accessible parkland that's visible from a frontage street. So it can't be a recreational opportunity that's embedded within the development that is obscure to the general public.

There is, but there is also the code. You can't do private open space. They can get a certain credit against their park fees, not 100%. I believe it maxes out at like 50%. but there's a list of amenities that they have to construct. The bar's kind of high and they have to do a combination. They can't just do like a field or a pool or a community center or a community get together. They have to do a combination of things the way it's structured.

And that's a state law or city municipal code? that's in the city municipal code so so how would you guys in the parks already feel about the city revisiting that to allow a more generous interpretation of what the developer thinks its residents would find useful in the park like i would say that as a parks and recreation professional those needs of your constituents change all the time so you have to be flexible and if you're asking the needs of that group of people at that point in time it's going to change right so

What was common 30 years ago of having a billiard and ping pong room probably isn't the same of what they want. They probably want a pickleball court and a pool, you know, in their building. And that might change in 30 years too. And so the flexibility to require the apartment building to make modifications in future out years we're limited, I think would be the response.

I'm missing the logic on why a developer would have a requirement to change with the times when the city doesn't hold itself to that standard. John D. Morgan's park since my childhood has been ostensibly the same.

And every project that goes out goes out to the public and the users. So when the users are continuously asking for similar or like or You know, refurbished play equipment. I mean, John D. Morgan Bud site has changed, I think, three or four times since I've lived here. It's a playground.

But the park fees collected for its original use was not used to pay for these changes any more than my example would be for a developer now.

Say it one more time. Sorry.

So when John D. Morgan Park changed a couple of times, it kind of did. the money that originally paid for John D. Morgan Park was not used to change John D. Morgan Park. Subsequent to that, that money came from elsewhere. So just like a developer who on day one did something in 10 or 20 years, times change, the money is going to have to come from Selfware somewhere else, just as if he had written a check to the city to do whatever the city was going to do on day one.

So then I'll revert back to our planning documents and the general plan. you know, has a goal of three acres per thousand residents. And we are not at that goal. And the more we add residents, we are going to just continue to drop that percentage. There's no around with that at all because there is no, there's very limited opportunity for acquisition. So if apartment buildings were alleviated of their ability, their need to pay for, do apartment buildings pay? I don't even know how we get them all. But if they were alleviated of that responsibility to pay, we are then adding thousands of residents that possibly have their own personal recreation stuff that doesn't go into account in our general plan goals of what we have for ourselves. Because we don't take into account private access.

I completely agree that there is an irony when Sacramento says, build more units or else. and then says three acres per thousand and then says pay for it yourself leaving us with an unfunded mandate to do what it is they're demanding us to do so i understand the problem with that three acres per thousand is our own planning that's us making that goal when we did the general plan that's okay but it's what is the state requirement for parks is there one

Just because there's not a state requirement doesn't mean that parks aren't essential for a thriving community.

That's my question. So there is no state requirement. So the park requirement is in totality our own city's requirement? Yes. Okay. Because we have to recognize the fact that we can't keep up. I mean, do we have any analysis of how much money it would take to keep up with our own requirement as these units come on board? It seems an impossibility to me when I kind of just eyeball the numbers.

Yeah, I mean, the amount of just infrastructure need of deferred maintenance that don't even qualify for use of these funds is in the $30 million, $40 million. And that's deferred maintenance that we can't use.

So we're noncompliant, we'll continue to be noncompliant, and we'll likely never be compliant. Therefore, we need a new plan, not a continued plan.

But if we're having to debate whether or not we use capital dollars for deferred maintenance or improving a park, we're just going to essentially let our parks debilitate to a point that they get to the bottom of the list of deferred maintenance, too, if we're no longer collecting fees.

Okay, that's all I got.

One quick question. This is regarding that joint use. Have we explored maybe joint use with the neighboring city?

So there are very specifically Mary Jane Hammond Park is surrounded on three sites by Campbell. So while it's not in our master plan, 1.8 acres per thousand, it is accessible and usable. It doesn't bring us up to three by any stretch of the imagination. But when you're looking at pockets of our community that are truly park deficient and don't have 10 minute walking access to a park, that plays a role for us that we're determining if that's accessible there are public school properties that are leased out and not currently being used by the school district that are on our list to explore opportunities um for you know joint use your partnerships of how we can do that um but again those take time okay okay go ahead so third question i had was so so now that you can see where i'm coming from that we're in a tough spot and it's only going to get tougher

The third thing had to do with the schools. So when I lived in San Jose, Castlemont was at the end of my street. And they used Castlemont in their park calculation for the number of park-like acres in their city for decades. Then Castlemont started locking those doors 15 minutes after school was out. And when I went and showed them, wait, you're in a plan. You've got to open this public. They just did not care. They said, take it up with somebody else because we're not doing it ever. And I could no longer take my daughter to the school. Then I'm talking to developers about park fees and it kind of rubbed me the wrong way because here's somebody trying to build housing to pay for parks when I'm staring at locked fields. And I'd like to know if you're doing anything more proactive because there's a lot of acres that could be used to satisfy our noncompliance if we simply, you know, get government to work together.

It's very challenging. And all I can say is it's not been easy. And it's kind of an uphill battle to get those gates unlocked.

Well, because we got no leverage. So if you've wrestled with this problem and looked at it, what could we do to our local? I mean, I'm talking about Campbell Junior High that's right next to John D. Morgan or numerous other ones.

That one does have an MOU. The property line of the school actually runs directly through the middle of the park. And so they, instead of doing full perimeter fencing, did blacktop fencing of their school. They are probably the best school that we work with in the sense that they try to keep their blacktop with the playgrounds and basketball courts open and accessible on weekends. But that's the only school we've been able to be successful with.

But can you talk more about why? Because there is a path to success. I mean, what is really the holdup?

The only other school that's, which one do we have? Rosemary and Capri rest for all San Jose schools pain is in San Jose MMS is in San Jose. So when they leave our jurisdiction, it becomes a tad more challenging for them to feel the need to work with us. We're not going to We didn't do our master plan with the intention of counting those because they're not our city-owned property. And so we focused on what we have control over and what we manage directly so that it is a true accurate number of what the city is providing. I mean, there is analysis about how close you are But when those school districts want to lock down their schools, we don't have leverage to tell a school district.

Well, OK, but if we lock down City Hall, you know, the public can't come in either. I mean, I'm not talking about emergency circumstances, just a general Sunday afternoon kind of thing like Hammond Park. I mean, I know it's not in our city, but all the Campbell residents probably don't even know or care. I mean, it'd be great to work with, you know, San Jose on these things.

So yeah, the property is owned by the city of San Jose or the school district. There's a separate public agency that's the school district. It would be, the city would have to negotiate with that in order to open them up. Yeah.

You know, I'm trying to lead a, course the water here, because I'm looking at park fees getting collected that are standing in the way of new units. I'm looking at money you're going to spend not on land, because there isn't any, on stuff that maybe you could spend over there in San Jose or in some school that probably really need, because their maintenance budgets are like zero. So there's your grease for the problem.

The problem is that the schools are not under our jurisdiction. You're dealing with districts, and if they're not willing to cooperate with a a local city, then, you know, you're beating your head against the wall. I'm assuming this has been an issue that has been around for some time, and it's that there's a lot of knowledge associated with what can and can't be done. It looks easy, okay? But You know, it used to be schools where the gates were open. I get it. They're not open anymore. And you're going to have to convince a school district to change their policies. Not an easy thing to do.

And I would have preferred to hear the story of failure than the story of I didn't try. It's not that we haven't tried. Well, that's what I was trying to get at. Show me what the story is.

I think conversations have happened. It's just they, I mean... I can, Campbell Union School District tried to put up a fence directly through the middle of John D. Morgan Park 15 years ago when this all started. And yeah, there was a lot of conversations. And the conversation then led to public access to their schools. And this is the negotiating ground we have because they had every right to pretty much run a fence through there because it's their property if they wanted to. But we fortunately have that longstanding agreement to keep the open space of the fields. And so we did. Like I said, Moreland School District is predominantly San Jose. And so their willingness or need to work with us to provide that access is not high on their priority list. And so it's unfortunate. You know, another park that is also surrounded on three sides that people also think is is Campbell is Santa Mas Park over off of Santa Mas Aquino. And so that one is another one. And we work collaboratively with the city of San Jose for cleanup projects and volunteers, but we aren't using our budget to help support infrastructure changes in those parks either. You know, we are doing it more on a volunteer basis to kind of keep them up to standards that our Campbell residents are used to.

Thank you for the presentation. It's been very enlightening, and I really appreciate hearing your side of things. A couple questions. Does the denominator count the Los Gatos Creek Park?

The parts that are within the Campbell jurisdiction, yes. So the trail that leads up to our borders, yes. So once you hit the expressway, it does.

So I'm referring to the county park. It's not a city park. It's a county park. Even though it's within city limits?

That portion, once you cross the expressway, is not in our limits. Is it? If it's in our limits, then it's counted. I can see. Yeah. So the acreage, they kind of map it out.

I've been trying to count the number of acres of parks. I think the denominator you're using is about 75 acres. 77.8.

okay um moscato's um county park is like 150 acres and it's definitely not being counted there so what they're counting in the master plan is city owned and operated right so the dog park is probably something that they've calculated in there but because that property is city is managed by the county it's not in the that 77 point right which

i understand but it strikes me as slightly misleading in that the within the bounds of the city people have access to about 5.1 acres of parks for every thousand people even though they're not entirely city managed um how much would this actually cost if like per resident if existing residents paid for this i i couldn't tell you the long-term cost i don't know that answer okay um how much new parkland have we built like what was the last time we expanded parkland

Sojanovic Family Park in 2009, maybe.

And are there any other services the city provides that are paid for like this?

Like, can we charge impact fees for libraries, for police, for roads, for... Our library is done through county library systems, so not through us. And public safety, I'm not aware of any general fund. And... the roads are covered by gas tax and measure B. Anything else? Yeah, I think, yeah.

Great, thank you. Vice Chair. Thank you, great presentation, very eye-opening. So the question I have is, In the master plan looked at it, but are there sites identified for a new park that are within existing neighborhoods that aren't don't have what the 10 minute walking?

So not sites identified, but there are what we call park deficient pockets within the city that are if acquisition were to become available, that's where we would need to identify land. There are opportunities in one segment that has a leased school site that is on our list to explore as of segmenting out a portion, if that would be something amenable to the school district and the lease, the tenant on that lease space for the city to improve the property and make publicly accessible. But all that takes time and money.

Right. The second question I have is, Have you considered popos like San Francisco has the publicly owned, privately operated parks or whatever, maybe got flipped around, but where you use parts of new structures for public parks and a park is very loosely defined. In San Francisco, it could be a sculpture garden, it could be an area at lunch on top of a bank building, things of that nature to maybe help offset this need for public space to gather.

So Ainslie Park, if you're familiar with that, it's just on the opposite side of the blue line parking lot is in our list of parks within Campbell. Hyde Park, which is at the end of, it's on Winchester between Rincon, which is just a small little pocket park. So the city has done a great job at identifying small little opportunities when they become available to create those spaces. Hyde Park at the base of the water tower is another one Very small little pocket parks that when we have those opportunities, the city has done a great job of doing that. They're few and far between. I know on Virginia Avenue, there was water property there, but it was right next to Virginia Park. So the benefit of that, and now it's a huge housing development. So, you know, there's kind of those benefits and also

those people have great access to parks so identifying areas that have less access is is more critical when you're trying to find acquisition okay because i guess you know developers are coming in with 300 unit developments and if we could get a park as you said as long as it's not

exclusive and it's open to a front row maybe we consider ways of doing that and then you've got this market not just for the residents but for other people as well so so let me jump in so under campbell's objective standards and i think senior civil engineer roger storage referenced that there is an option to i mean anytime you could dedicate parkland to any of your fees because obviously you're at parkland The objective standards provides a bit more guidance. It has to be publicly accessible. It has to be pretty directly accessible to a public street. There's a minimum size requirement. But generally, it has to be accessible to the public. I don't think we've gotten, because I've seen those in San Francisco. My impression is San Francisco probably got to a point where they ran out of that option, went to the next option. Could the public go up an elevator or stairway to a roof? I'd say perhaps that's a tool in the future, but we're not using that tool yet. Right. Okay.

It also has to get developed. There's a park that I'm not sure very many people know that is downtown in Buena. It's on top of the convention center. There's actually a playground on top of the convention center, on the South Convention Center thing. And I never knew about it myself until my family was in there two years ago and knew about it. And there's actually a public playground on top of the roof of the South Convention Center in Musconi. But that kind of thing has to be developed, right? And it's like, you know. It's a big, it's a big deal.

I will say that we have heard from developers to small private parks that we've tried to encourage them to make available to the public. Yeah, liability, liability insurance there. They just don't want to have anything to do with it. Mr. Bookman.

I just want to let you know that I tried to do some back of the envelope math over the last 10 years. Impact fees have, if I have this about right, summed up to between $5 to $7 million. If you divide that by the roughly 16,000 units of housing here and made it into a parcel tax, that would be about $30 to $40 per parcel per year. Just for context.

Is that just residential?

Yeah. Thank you for the presentation. My only other question, so park fees are inherently tied with housing. If Campbell was on track for its housing target over the next eight years, based on our current park fees, are we fully funded the deferred maintenance? I'm just sort of curious, if Campbell was actually hitting its target with the current park fees, what does that mean for Campbell Park?

So I just want to be very clear that it can't be used for deferred maintenance. So our maintenance problems are our problems to deal with. And these fees, while if they were to be coming in and several millions of dollars, what that truly means is that over the next five to seven years, we can, as you know, Susan Landry mentioned, we can do a community center master plan. We can really do like kind of those things to kind of determine outside of the parks and recreation master plan. to bring things up to the level of service that Campbell is looking for. Or it's not spent and it sits and it grows. You know what I'm saying? And then it's spent when it's needed. We've never been in a position, I think, where it was so robust that we were like, oh, we'll just leave $4 million sitting in there. You know, it's just, that's not been the case. There's always been a need to use it for something. So, yeah. My hope is that with the development that's coming in over the next five to seven years with the housing needs or housing requirements that are on the city is that that can be a healthy resource of funds. Because the one thing I've learned is our community is changing and what they're looking for is changing too. And so we need to be able to adapt what their needs are and provide those services that they're looking for.

Thank you. All right, I'm gonna, this is an open public item too, right? All right, I'm gonna open for any public comment we may have as anybody in the chamber would like to speak.

Sorry guys, I just can't resist. Okay, you all know I'm a landscape architect. I spent 35 years designing parks, playgrounds, schools, colleges. For decades, there were joint use agreements between cities and schools. They used them, they maintained them. It was a beautiful working relationship. And then we got into having to lock down our schools. And almost all the joint use agreements went away because they need to lock down the school for safety. So there has been numerous joint use agreements that are no longer able to use. There was a development on Mozart through Robertson Homes. They wanted to build a park and they ended up putting it along Mozart, but their insurance and liability prevented them from opening it to the public. So the park is located on Mozart, but there's no gate. The only way to get in is through the development because they didn't want the liability of the open public. falling or hurting themselves. You mentioned stuff like, what about user fees? Well, right now, our citizens are paying to measure O. They're paying 100% of the cost to measure O for our library, but only 40% of the people in the Campbell actually use it. So our citizens are being taxed for something that other people are using. I do not support any fees for any other things regarding the park. And Natasha and I may not agree on everything, but I agree 100% with her. These fees have to stay. This housing is going to impact our city. We need to be able to have the money to build. Chris Brocker has offered his property to the city. 20 million, 10 million. There's developers like that, like Stravanovich, they were ready to give the land to the city, but we have to have the money to be able to buy them. And so having this fund build and being able to use it, we got what, $12 million for a pool. We can't get to other things and other new improvements. We need the money. If someone does want to donate land, Hopefully they will. We also need to have things like the JDM had a beautiful new playground. JDM, part of it is owned by the school. There is a joint use agreement on that one still. They did want to put a fence up like Natasha mentioned, and the city said no. But there are parts at our park, our facility on the school property. So do not get rid of park fees.

Thank you. Questions? Yeah, go ahead. Do you have a question? Yes, I do. Susan, I was filling out my ballot yesterday and I saw a Measure D, you know, and so if we were to replace this funding mechanism from the developers to like a property tax, And for my colleagues calculation that came up to $30 per year.

It's real back the envelope 30 to 40.

30 to 40. And then it's a repeated funding. It's not a one time. I'm not saying I'm pro keep adding things to the tax because at some point it becomes ridiculous. But something is repeated funding versus a one timer. Wouldn't that should be something we should explore in your opinion?

exploration yeah explore it but right now we are taxing our residents for measure o they are paying 100 of the bond back and 40 of the people use the library they have a little bit of an increased fee for non-residents but it's not enough people can use any of these parks anybody can show up at a park and use it and now you're telling me only the existing residents have to pay yearly to do that this fee is for the impact of what this expansive housing is doing and you've heard me speak continuously of the impact of this yes we need housing someone said i don't support housing i support housing but we need to understand the implications of it and you're hearing from our parks department of what that impact really is and you're here guys discussing taking the one funding source that they need to do that. And I don't want to keep paying it out of my property tax and things like that. That this gives, to me it's, maybe we do some of it into conjunction, but to get rid of this park fee is completely, is ridiculous. What do we have, what, a $3 million budget deficit? We're taking money out of reserves? 12 million for a pool, how many other projects? And if we do want to add any open space, we need to have some money available for someone like Stravanovich who comes along and is willing to sell at a half rate the property.

And just for clarification, I'm not saying I'm pro taking away the fees. I'm just saying we have to be open to it and just explore it and then decide what's the way. So thank you.

You can explore all the options, but I just do not want to see this fee go away.

For me? Yeah. Oh my god, you guys.

You're letting me talk this long?

Yeah. Well, you're tough, but you're fair, and I appreciate you for that. I don't know if you, so several times now it's come up about liability. And I don't know if you have any knowledge on this, but if a city bought a brand new park and did its thing, The city, would the city have the same liability that any owner of a park would have? Or is the city somehow immune from park liability?

I'm not a lawyer, but I can tell you the city's not immune from liability if someone trips and falls at a playground or cracks their head because they hit something.

That's probably the same.

The issue for when I talked to Ropes and Holmes about the Mozart development, first question was, Is your project going to pencil out? Can you build it? Can we get the property? Do you have any land left over for a park? If you are and you have land left over, put it along Mozart so that it is, if not readily available, visible for the rest of the people on Mozart. He said, that's great, but I can't put in a gate coming out onto Mozart. The liability for me that I own that land and the general public has access to it and they trip and fall and crack their head. I'm liable.

So in that example where I was going with this is if the city would have the same liability, if the city owned it, then maybe the city could spend some of this money to indemnify the owner and then get out of the cost of the land and then everybody can win again.

Okay, I'm not a lawyer and I'm not going to get into the identification, but I can tell you there's a massive amount of liability, especially with playgrounds. That's a huge liability is cracks and hitting your head and safety standards and all that. And Mozart basically did not want to pay for the liability.

Yeah, I mean, briefly speak, the government code has various immunities for public spaces, particularly public trails. That's the main one. And private property owners do not have those same immunity. So a apartment complex builds a park that their residents can use, others can use, or even the school. School maybe doesn't have, it's a little bit more complicated, but a private property owner isn't going to have the same government authority.

So could we lease it and then transfer the liability through a lease?

I think we're getting pretty far from that.

Well, except it is, you guys think you are, but you're not going to make your park number, not even with the money.

It's not the commission's fault. Oh, okay.

Fair enough. Vice Chair, you have any questions? No, I don't have any questions, but I just wanted to clarify that the reason why we had this presentation from our esteemed colleagues was to just find out where the money goes, how it's gathered, and that's it. We're not talking about eliminating any fees. We're just talking about we want to know where it's going, how it gets there. That's all this meeting was for.

Well, I'll just clarify, and I'm not debating the vice chair. I know the topic of park fees has come up quite often. Oh, yes. Quite often you've had developers come and it does cut into the pro forma. And I'd say, as a broad observation, four or five years ago, it was much easier to pencil housing projects. Today, it's much harder. Developers are looking at the bottom line, so you're hearing that much more. And I know your ad hoc subcommittee is looking at the issue. So to compliment the Vice Chair, my job was to, we want you to make educated recommendations and decisions, was to educate you on the World Park fees. And if you were to consider any recommendation around that, at least you're knowledgeable on how they're used and what they're used for.

Chair, I still have a comment.

Do you have a? I'd like to add a little context to this. For what?

There seems to be an idea that the goal is to abolish park fees and, I guess, defund the parks. That is not the goal. We're looking at alternate mechanisms of funding the parks department. That's the idea.

OK. Speaker Card. Yes, Chair. Andrew Rosenberg.

Topic of discussion. Good evening, commissioners. Thank you, Natasha and Roger, for that presentation. My name is Andrew Rosenberg, a principal at Pacific Development. We're a multifamily developer throughout the state of California. And just to put on record, I fully support all parks and rec and funds that get allocated towards those. We work closely with cities on ground up housing projects. So we understand what it takes to move housing from policy to construction. We're also very familiar with Campbell's current park in Luthi, the structure and after today and understand even more. And I appreciate the commission staff are taking a serious look at these fees tonight. At roughly $23,000 per unit, the fee has a meaningful impact on the feasibility on housing. In today's environment with elevated construction costs, higher insurance premiums, tighter financing, broader economic uncertainty, projects are already difficult to make pencil, as we just discussed. On a simple two-acre, less than two-acre, 300-unit project, you're talking about nearly $7 million in just park fees alone. At this point, these costs actually prevent projects from moving forward altogether. This matters because Campbell has a state obligation to plan for nearly 3,000 homes by 2031. a meaningful share of that housing will need to come from multifamily development. So I'd encourage staff to continue this discussion and seriously consider recalibrating the park fee for high-density residential projects, particularly those already providing public benefit through other avenues such as on-site affordable housing. There is a version of this that works both for the city and for the development community, but the fee structure only works if the project can get built. So thank you.

So you said you do developments all throughout the state. Is our park fee commensurate with some other cities that you work in, or is it?

Majority of the cities that we have developed in, a lot in Northern California, these are extremely high fees.

Okay. And then the other question is timing of payment of the park fees. you know, if it could be transferred to, because you don't build, let's say, 300 housing all at once, you do it in phases. If the payments were to be, you know, ask, not at permit stage, but at completion, you know, would that help matters?

You know, it really depends on the project. I heard Rob mentioned this earlier. We've had projects in certain jurisdictions where they've offered, you know, permit fees to pay at occupancy. On larger projects, the way the construction financing works, you're still allocating those dollars upfront. You still have to earmark it and put in your performance. So it's still, it still prevents us from actually building the project in that case. Oh, I see. OK, thank you.

Thank you. Do we have any other speakers? Anybody on the line? All right, with that, I will close the public portion of this item. Well, we're not voting on anything. Nope. Before Purpose was answering questions, we all feel like we learned something.

Yes, that was very enlightening. I really appreciate that.

All right.

Great.

please yeah go ahead all right so so further clarification is that um this case this came up partially because we have um some some on the commission who expressed questions about about parkland related to the fact that developers have expressed that this is uh this is a uh this is an issue with them in terms of it penciling out. So, it's come up a number of times and we've never gotten an overview of it. And, In lieu of taking any action, which we can't anyway, I had suggested that we get an informational presentation on it so that we understand it better. So I appreciate all those of you that came and Natasha and Roger. your presentations. That's my take on it. It's also my take that the commission, I suppose, in some form could recommend something, but we can't do anything about parking fees. That's the council's responsibilities from what I understand. So I'm I'm comfortable with what we've heard tonight. Park fees seem to be the standard in the state. I don't know what cities the gentleman is comparing us to, whether we're high compared to other cities in the Bay Area or high compared to cities in Sonoma County or in the Central Valley. My take would be that if one developer showed me his penciling out, which they're not required to do, then I would certainly be open to considering alternatives to park fees. But that's probably not going to happen. I just want to say that I've been here a long time. I've been to all the parks. I use a number of the parks over the years. I think the city does a great job of maintaining the parks and updating the parks. I think we have beautiful parks. We don't have enough of them. but that as well as the community center, which I hope we find a way to get it upgraded because it's a wonderful facility. So that's where I stand.

Okay. Any other comment? Great. Well, that will take us to our next item. Given we're almost at nine and we might talk a lot about these, why don't we do a little three-minute bio break here? Come back in three minutes. We are now moving to item four, the East Campbell Avenue Plan Line Project. Staff presentation on the draft East Campbell Avenue Line Project by presenter Roger Storrs.

Yeah, I'll be introducing it. So Roger Storrs, public works, senior civil engineer. So I'm happy to introduce this project to you. It's been a long time in the making. This was actually part of our work plan back in 2020. And then COVID came along and... Yeah, the project got delayed significantly, but we did start it the end of last year. John Cacciotti from HMH Engineers will be giving the presentation. I'm kind of here to give a little background and to introduce him. Really, if you want to think about the East Campbell Avenue plan line, it's built on the East Campbell Avenue master plan. The master plan was recommended by Planning Commission back in 2008, 2009 and subsequently adopted by the City Council. And it really spoke to East Campbell Avenue between railway and union, talked about the land uses. But part of that plan was a utilization of the street right-of-way and how we were gonna make the sidewalks wider. we were going to eliminate the left turnpockets and put in a permissive protective signal at Gilman, Page, and Campbell. They basically make a super signal there. And there were other projects that were, I just want a brief history. There were other projects identified in the East Campbell Avenue Master Plan that have since come to fruition. So you think about widening the bridge over the Los Gatos Creek, that happened. You think about the portals project that's been very successful project that was actually part of the East Campbell Avenue master plan vision. So that's since been implemented. So much of that plan has been implemented. There's also if you look on the west side, closer to railway, you have those areas where we have built the wide sidewalk and put in the street trees. But I would say probably the biggest deficiency of that plan, and it's not It wasn't a deficiency at the time. It's just, it hasn't kept up with the time. Just, you know, we've had a discussion discussion this evening about complete streets, that vehicles and pedestrians aren't the only users of a roadway, right? You have bicyclists. And if you look at the East Campbell Avenue master plan, it really didn't speak to bicyclists, giving them their own space. So a couple of things kind of came together to create this project. One is the desire to make this stretch of East Campbell Avenue. And actually, we're going beyond Union. We're going all the way to Bass. And so to make this area multimodal, to give the bicyclists kind of their fair share of the roadway. But there's also been, as you know, many housing laws that have passed. And there's a requirement that developers need to know up front what the expectation is of them, especially in terms of frontage improvements. So, you know, we do have some properties, some underdeveloped properties still along the corridor that we want to make sure when they come in, they can very quickly understand what our expectation is in terms of the frontage improvements. So that's the idea with this plan too, is to document that and comply with that portion of the law. So we have to also recognize that we have a limited amount of right-of-way. We're not gonna get much more. Some of these properties, we will be asking them to dedicate a significant amount of additional right-of-way like the Great Lakes frontage. But we're trying to make things work within what we have. And so anytime that you have to balance pedestrians, bicyclists, parking, vehicle lanes, there's going to be some give and take. And as we get ready to have John give you the presentation, I do want to bring up that one of the property owners, Bruce Bowen, who owns the Lloyd Center, has written in because I've had many discussions with him. And he was concerned because as you'll see in the plan, the parking spaces in front of his shopping center are due to be removed to make room for the bike lane. And we made a commitment to him to evaluate, because he's saying like, well, I can't take away the parking from in front of Presley and leave the parking in front of my... And so we did do an alternate design and evaluated that, but we do have some concerns about it, some safety concerns, which John will share as well. So I just want to let you know that we have heard his concerns, and we will be addressing it as part of the presentation. All right, so to that end, John Cacciotti, the president of HMH Engineers, our consultant on the plant land project, will be presenting to you.

I don't know if I should disclose this or something, but I commute by bike from Union westward on Campbell Avenue daily, sometimes with my kid. So I have a stake in this. I'm invested.

Thank you. Thank you, Roger, for the introduction. Thank you for spending your time here with me this evening. So jumping right in, I know it's late, so I'll try to move pretty quickly through this presentation. We can certainly circle back during Q&A. Project overview. So our limits of the project, the study was from Railway Avenue to the west to Bascom Avenue to the east along East Campbell Avenue. As Roger mentioned, this was really an update to the already existing master plan from 2007, revalidating some of the conclusions of that plan, freshening it up based on current best practices, and most importantly, incorporating bicycle facilities and improving the walking experience. We are very constrained with right-of-way, and we want to prepare that corridor for future development. The goals of today is to review the three alternatives that were considered, present the preferred alternative and understand any feedback that you may have for our team. Going back to November of last year, when we got this project going, we've had a number of outreach meetings, both with the community, with the Bicycle and Pedestrian Commission, and ultimately here today, and moving forward, looking to present to city council in August. So I'll overview some of the big picture comments we heard, but we have worked through initial stakeholder input design, and we are hopefully looking forward to wrapping up the study this summer. We had two primary rounds of outreach. In the first round, we really went out to the community with a blank slate and said, this is what the old plan said. What do you want the new plan to look like? What are your issues? So we met with the Bicycle and Pedestrian Commission. There was concerns about what are the potential impacts to traffic along the corridor that we had to consider. They were concerned about left-hand turnpockets that exist along the corridor, and we'll talk a lot about that, and concerned about comfort biking immediately adjacent to on-street parking, door collisions, and door swing type issues. From the community, we heard a strong support for protected and continuous bike lanes. So the residents and business owners along the corridor saw value in improving the bicycle infrastructure because similar concerns about traffic operations, whatever we're doing, understanding what the implications of that may be given the demands along East Campbell Avenue and a desire for wider, safer, and better lit sidewalks, recognizing especially on those business frontages, the opportunity that is created when you've got a walkable environment in front of your businesses. Property owners did voice concerns just about existing conditions, a lot of the nuance and friction that exists on the corridor with some of the existing operations, as well as just kind of reviewing overall what the 2007 plan had recommended. We went back for a second round of outreach in spring of this year, a couple months ago. We presented those three alternatives and highlighted the preferred alternative that we'll be talking about today, which includes continuous bike lanes and maintains existing left turn pockets. In that set of outreach, we heard positive support from the Bicycle and Pedestrian Commission. We did hear similar support from the community as a whole, that the continuous bike lanes we're recommending are well accepted in the community. And we'll talk a little bit about the signalization of Page Street, but that was also well received from the community meetings we had. And again, the property owners were generally supportive. Roger had a series of one-on-one meetings with each property owner along the corridor, at least an effort to communicate directly with each property owner along the corridor, really understanding the nuanced concerns that they may have with the proposed improvements. And again, generally supportive of the preferred alternative that we're representing here today. There were three alternatives that we explored, shown on the left column there. So the first alternative proposed to essentially propose the left-hand turnpockets. So a lot of what we're talking about real quick, I'll zoom out, is gonna be on that westernmost segment, right from, you know, railway to the creek, where you've got the existing bulb outs and you've got some infrastructure, but you don't have bike lanes. There's a lot of friction and congestion in that corridor. On the eastern portion of the corridor, closer to Bascom, it's a little bit more uniform. The improvements we're recommending are a little less significant or different than existing conditions. So a lot of our conversation will be focused west of the creek.

you're really talking about between Railway and Gilman, are you not?

Yeah, from Railway to Poplar, that series of left-handed turnpockets that exist on the corridor. Thank you for the clarifying question. So in our first alternative, we said, can we keep those turnpockets that we heard were generally desired by the community? We looked at a second alternative that said, OK, if we eliminate those turnpockets, we can create additional space. How do we want to reallocate that space within the roadway? And then the third alternative was a road diet. I'll briefly talk on some of the pros and cons. In the road diet, we actually explored whether or not we would want to remove a lane on East Campbell Avenue, reduce East Campbell Avenue to one lane in each direction. So for that first alternative, preserving those left-turn pockets, first of all, it aligned well with stakeholder feedback. It does require some future right-of-way widening. We'll talk about that. We've got some interim conditions before development comes forward, and that is our preferred alternative that we'll speak about in detail. The second alternative to remove those left turn pockets did allow us to add buffered bike lanes. So the improvement to bicycle facilities is a little bit better. And it did allow us to maintain more parking. As you think about how we're allocating that space, essentially you're removing those left turn pockets and creating additional space out near your curb that can be allocated to various modes as you see fit. We have some significant concerns with pedestrian safety of that alternative, and we'll talk about that along the corridor. If we're going to put money into bicycle and pedestrian accommodations, we need to make sure that they're safe first and foremost. We also saw some decrease in traffic operations. So again, some of those concerns about the impacts of traffic, that second alternative did perform worse as compared to the recommended. And finally, the road diet. So we did at a high level kind of look at the the viability of reducing the number of lanes on East Campbell Avenue and reallocating those. It would allow a higher level of bicycle and pedestrian facility, but we had significant concerns of neighborhood cut through traffic and essentially the demand that is currently served on East Campbell Avenue, rerouting through the neighborhood, east, west, and essentially just moving the friction onto smaller streets that are not designed for higher volumes and have even more potentially vulnerable road users on some of those smaller streets. So we ultimately did not carry the road diet any further for those concerns. And again, that was consistent with a lot of the public feedback, which was understanding the impacts of traffic operations with whatever we do, on the corridor. I'm going to spend a couple of minutes now diving into the details of the preferred alternative. There are three segments that we'll talk about. Segment one being that westernmost segment. That's really, again, where we're going to spend a lot of our time. But the project does have segment two and segment three as well across Highway 17 and then out to Bascom Avenue in front of the Prune Yard Shopping Center. For segment one, in the preferred alternative, the cross sections that you see above are what is proposed. So we are proposing in some areas parking and most notably through this segment that's not present today is class two bike lanes continuous through the corridor. And we'll dive into more detail in just a moment. In segment two, generally, we are maintaining the existing infrastructure there because of some of the projects that Roger mentioned, Campbell Portals, the bridge widening. It serves the needs that were identified in 2007 and can continue to serve the needs of our project as we re-envision it in today's environment. And then in segment three, the segment closest to the prune yard, we do have some additional space. So we're recommending improving that to buffered bike lanes through that area. The better setback you can provide, the more all ages and abilities type bicycle users you'll get. Diving in even deeper, we're gonna get into a lot of detail here. This is the segment from Railway to your left to Poplar to your right. This is segment one. And this is a detailed description of the improvements that would be proposed in the preferred alternative. The highlights are at the top of the screen there. New bike lanes continuous through the corridor. We would install a new signal at Page Street, and that would really be a combination Page-Gilman signal. And we would be narrowing the lanes on East Campbell Avenue to create space for those bike lanes airing that interior lane to 10 feet and maintaining the outermost lane at 11 feet for transit operations. I'll note that those lane widths are acceptable within AASHTO standards. So you'll get some additional benefit in the form of traffic calming by having narrower lanes, drivers a little bit more alert and drive a little bit slower when your stripes are closer together. Other considerations to note on here is the removal of eight parking spaces that piece of annotation you see on the top left. That is the pertaining to the comment that was received from Mr. Bowen. That is the frontage in question there. I'll talk in just a moment about that alternative study. But what you can see through there is essentially the frontage being used on the north side of East Campbell Avenue from foot to page. is now being allocated as a bike lane. The parking that's there today would be lost. There is other roadway and curb alignment modifications needed through that frontage to accommodate the ultimate roadway configuration proposed. East of Page Avenue on the north side, there is a widened right-of-way. Roger talked about some of the right-of-way acquisition that would be required in this proposal consistent with the 2007 master plan. We would propose to shift the curb there by two feet to create the space for the roadway and bikeway facilities that currently do not fit within the existing roadway footprint. And there is a dedication that would be required from that property owner. Before that dedication takes place, there is an interim condition that essentially is existing conditions to remain, but we would propose to add sharrows in the interim condition before we could move that curb two feet to the north. We can't meet design requirements for the roadway and meet minimum standards. We do have an interim condition proposed here where essentially we would indicate that drivers would share that outermost lane with bicyclists until such a time that the development could come forward and dedicate the land necessary to align the curb on the north side as desired.

Aren't there sharrows there now?

Yes. So we'd essentially be maintaining while we would, great question, while we would build continuous bike lanes along the corridor, this one gap would have to retain as a sharrow. We could not implement the preferred configuration. This is the study that was performed as a result of Mr. Bowen's comments at our public outreach meeting about a month ago. So he did a request that we look at, instead of removing the parking along the north side of the roadway there in the blue box you see, could we instead shift the roadway to the south along the Cressley development and modify the parking or eliminate, I should say, the parking that's currently planned to be built by the Cressley development? So we did look at this study essentially There's seven parking spots available in this corridor. And the question is, should those parking spots be maintained along the Cressley frontage as currently planned? Or could we reevaluate the plan line to retain those parking lots on the north side? One of the key drivers of the decision and the recommendation that we have, which is to maintain the parking along the Cressley frontage and remove the parking along the north side, is the alignment of East Campbell Avenue. Generally speaking, you want clear sight lines and you want a linear alignment on your roadways. just for driver familiarity. You don't have to zigzag through the corridor. We get a lot more of the offset lanes through these intersections when we shift the roadway to preserve parking along the north side. As you look at the constraints east and west of where we are, especially to the east where we're not doing a lot of work and you've got the bridge, it really lends itself to a more linear alignment that has parking retained on the south side along the Presley frontage and removed along the north side. But Mr. Bowen's concerns are heard and it is acknowledging a loss of parking along that frontage. And we want to be clear about that impact. We also looked at traffic operations analysis at the Gilman Page Street intersection. This essentially would be one big intersection when that signal goes in. So this is a very unconventional configuration and generally in roadway design, you would avoid offset intersections like this, but this is, you know, the existing conditions that we are addressing. In the proposed study, we would propose a single signal that would operate both Page and Gilman as a single intersection. We did study that there was sufficient queuing along East Campbell Avenue for the signal to operate in this manner. Other benefits in the preferred alternative here is with those left turn pockets, we could essentially have a protected left turn phase. Pedestrians would not be allowed to cross the street. One of the things you'll see in just a moment is in our second alternative that was not recommended, we've got some conflicts between left turning vehicles and pedestrians. But in this configuration, we can maintain protected left turn movements and minimize those conflicts. And then finally, East Campbell Avenue would operate at a simultaneous phase. So eastbound and westbound movements could operate concurrently, allowing us to maximize the green time on what is the dominant movement along that leg of the intersection. Continuing with the preferred alternative as we move to the east, we're now looking at the Highway 17 and Los Gatos Creek Trail alignment. Some minor improvements at Poplar to widen the sidewalks to 10 feet between the bridge structure to eliminate some minor pinch points and some new green paint at some bike and bus conflicts out to the east at Union Avenue. Generally very small modifications to the existing condition. And as we move out further to the east segment three along Bascom Avenue, again, we're proposing new green paint at bicycle and bus conflict areas. There are transit lines that run through here. We want to identify to both cyclists and transit drivers that there is a conflict zone there. We would have a new eastbound bicycle lane from Barbano Avenue to South Bascom right at the very right edge of the screen. And then finally, we would have intersection improvements at Bascom Avenue. creating additional queuing area for bikes and pedestrians. There's currently pork chops, which are kind of the high speed yield movements that you may be familiar with that exist along Bascom. Those are generally out of practice and not current design standards because they allow a higher speed yield crossing with pedestrians and have been shown to have increased collision rates as opposed to a right turn that's at a tighter radius corner. So those improvements are proposed at Bascom Avenue, as well as some additional bicycle improvements to connect to what is ultimately VTA's future Bascom Complete Streets corridor, which would extend the investment in this corridor through the remainder of the roadway network. So that was the preferred alternative in detail. I'd be happy to address any questions. The second alternative study, malpreferred, essentially removed left turn pockets in segment one. I'll note that the recommended treatments in segments two and three are identical to the preferred configuration. So we're really going to just focus on that portion from railway to POPLAR. In the second alternative that we are not recommending, the most significant change is that we have added buffered bike lanes. So you do get a higher level of bicycle treatment, but at the cost of removing the left turn pockets along the corridor. And that does, again, increase the opportunity for parking along the corridor. What that looks like, particularly in that segment one, is we would now have no left turn pockets through the corridor. If you were making a left turn, you would need to wait in the number one lane with vehicles that are otherwise free flow behind you waiting. This is not a... you know, not a unconventional configuration, but it comes with its drawbacks. So in depth, we would remove those left turnpockets through the corridor. One of the biggest concerns we had is and I'm going to kind of ask you to kind of envision yourself driving a corridor. Let's say you're driving east on East on East Campbell Avenue, and you want to make a left, let's say onto Foot Avenue, just that first intersection to the left there. In that configuration, you would essentially be traveling in the number one lane, the fast lane. You would need to stop or slow down your vehicle until such a time that both of the westbound lanes had cleared and there was a clearance interval there that you could safely make a left turn. And then you would need to read the crosswalk to understand if there's any pedestrians that may be crossing in the crosswalk in that configuration and then bikes as well. So you've got kind of a three tier priority of making sure you can safely make that left turn lane. While you're doing that, the vehicles behind you are often honking or weaving around you and creating friction that is further accelerating or increasing the stress levels of your behavior. So that scenario along the corridor was a significant concern for us with any alternative that removed the left turnpockets because the potential for a collision with pedestrians through those hectic environments could be avoided with the preferred alternative. So there's some corridors in the state that this makes sense. When you have alternatives like left turn pockets, they generally are well regarded as a better configuration. So given the opportunity that exists along the corridor and the fact that it's an existing condition, we had recommended that we maintain those left turn pockets as part of this study.

But there's a left turn pocket to foot right now. There's an existing left turn pocket to foot avenue?

On foot specifically, that was potentially, given its proximity to railroad, it has some special considerations. But, you know, I'll use that same analogy as a left turn onto Dillon from westbound, East Campbell, right? That configuration exists along the corridor. But I appreciate the clarification that at foot specifically, because of the proximity to railway, there's some unique considerations there. I think that's a keep clear. Yes, you have keep clear throughout the intersection so that queuing does not queue back through the intersection. We know that behavior associated with keep clear is questionable. But in the scenario I paint, I really envision free flow. That's really where it becomes very difficult to maneuver those left turns.

Since we're on this, right next to that, I don't know what it's called, but it's like a railroad crossing alert painted on the street. But since I travel this a lot, a lot of people treat it like a keep clear. And then they get frustrated and start blocking the real keep clear. And then a guy is sitting there trying to turn left, especially during a farmer's market. And it's like watching seething gridlock. And then forget if a train's coming in there too and all the lights get out of circuit. I mean, so can you, is it possible to remove the railroad thing? Since I don't know that it helps anybody with anything.

The national guidance through the MUTCD does require that we designate crossings for railroad. That's something I think city staff could look at whether we could decrease the size or location of it.

Put it in front of the light? Then it's in an intersection anyway.

Let me answer that candidly by saying I don't know, but there's national rules. So as long as we're within the national rules, we do have flexibility there. If you could, it might be very helpful for no impact at all the other constraints. Yeah, that's a unique issue. I appreciate you sharing that.

So my question is that bike lane is, you know, almost every time if you have a parking area, Bike lanes is on the left side, which is the side where the door opens. And 99% of the cars have a driver that opens. Now in downtown San Jose, Second Street near San Jose State, they're actually putting the bike lane on the right side of the car. And so the car actually acts as a buffer between the bike lane, was that considered as a possibility?

I would say given the corridor, there's a lot of difficulty with that. So that's considered a parking protected bike lane. And they really do great wonders for bicyclists. What most people don't realize with parking protected bike lanes is they have a significant impact to sight distance at intersections because those parked cars are another eight feet closer to the roadway. So approaching vehicles are that much closer. less visible. So what happens is you actually end up having these big buffers at the intersections where you need to go back 20 or 30 feet to have adequate sight lines for turning vehicles. And then you start losing all your parking. And given the density of your intersections here, I would surmise that you probably wouldn't have any parking left when you met all the necessary sight lines.

Yeah, I was going to say, isn't it? Are we in the question period? Yeah, are you through with it?

Not quite yet.

Yeah, if we could keep going. Great questions, though. I'd love to entertain. I'll keep shooting through, and then we can get into it. We're almost done here. Real quick, zooming in on the Page and Gilman intersection without a left turn pocket. Again, what you see is that the operations of the intersection need to be considered a little bit differently. We have demonstrated that we have sufficient queuing space between Page and Gilman. But there's a complexity with when pedestrians are allowed to cross. Essentially, because you've got a shared through left in each direction, you would need to close the opposite direction of travel on East Campbell Avenue. So while your eastbound through movement and left turns are operating, your westbound has a red and vice versa. And so that further degrades the operational throughput of the corridor. And then on top of that, you continue to have the issues with pedestrian crossings where you've got a conflict between a pedestrian and that permitted left turn at the intersection. So for those reasons, we did not recommend either the road diet alternative and the removal of the left turn. We are here to present an information item that we have a preferred alternative that would retain much of the existing configuration, would add continuous bike lanes, and would have some moderate impacts to parking and development frontages along the corridor. As we move forward past this meeting, next steps are to present to the Bicycle and Pedestrian Committee in June and subsequently an August 3rd Council approval date. With that, I will now open it up to any additional questions. I'm not starting with you, though, after that.

Let's start on this one. Good idea.

As I mentioned, I do actually go down this corridor frequently with my kid. Has there been any consideration towards putting in any kind of protective things, bollards, flex posts, curbs, anything like that? I realize it can't be for the entire length, which means it's not really low stress. But at least having paint would be an improvement over what's here now. I've had somebody yell at me for not being in the bike lane, by which they meant biking on the picture of the shower, which for some inexplicable reason is way off to the side, which is somewhat deceptive to drivers. Sorry. Any possibility of putting in actual physical barriers for this?

Thank you for the question. First of all, on the east side, segment three out nearest the prune yard, we do have some buffered bike lanes proposed there. That would be an opportunity that flexible delineators or other barrier treatments could be implemented. On the west side, really in that segment one, we need every inch of roadway that's there right now without completely widening the roadway. So as I mentioned, we've narrowed our lanes down to 10 and 11 foot lanes. Our bike lane is five feet wide. We just physically don't even have the two feet that would be necessary to add those delineators through that segment. But I think in area where we do have the footprint within the buffer, that's absolutely something that we could consider or implement.

Are you doing any coordination with the city's multimodal plan, which I realize is not finished, but this is, there was a mark on on the map saying like, this is part of a different plan right now.

Yeah, internally with the city, we've coordinated, you know, to ensure consistency with the plans. This is a little bit more detailed because it's a precise corridor than a broader multimodal plan. So I would say generally, we would expect our plan to inform a broader citywide document since we're getting more nuanced and detailed along the corridor here. Thank you.

Please, Chair.

Thank you. Thank you for a nice presentation. Full disclosure, I've worked with your company for many years, since retired, but always enjoyed working with your team. A couple of questions. On the Bruce Bowen properties, was there a time utilization study done on how many cars are in the parking lot at which time of day so that you could say, well, you know, the parking lot's never really full, so can you give a few spots or something that that you could say, well, you know, those spots are always full, but the parking lot is never full. So to kind of assuage his fears of not having enough parking. Yeah, that's the first question. And then the other question I had was, well, Commissioner Tomkar kind of alluded to it. In some countries you have the parking and then the bike and then the sidewalk. So I guess it's obviously not wide enough. It's a very tight street. I drive it almost every day. And I guess one other thing that I thought of was there was a project in New York City where they closed Times Square. Have you seen that? I'm not going out on a limb here, but did you look at closing down from Railway to just before Winchester so that downtown Campbell becomes more walkable, more livable, and brought all the traffic around?

Railway West? Yes. Okay. That's beyond the scope of this study, so our study only focused on Railway East and not through the downtown core.

So then at the Greylands, I know that site... the gray lands kind of little medical to medical. Yeah, in the top right corner of that image. Yep. Now, are you taking or asking that you take some of the frontage off of that to increase lane width?

On the north side of Campbell? For two purposes. To fit those bike lanes in, so we'd be shifting the curb, as well as implement wider sidewalks. The sidewalks through there right now are very narrow. To deliver the vision for the corridor, we're asking for a dedication there so that we can have wider sidewalks as well.

Okay. Why wouldn't it be easier to do it on the south side of the street? The same thing. in the same area.

So zooming out maybe right, because you're asking right about that parking.

Yeah.

Yeah. As you look at East Campbell Avenue, it's a very linear street, right? There's no, there's not a lot of curves. So what happens when you shift the parking, here we go, shift the lanes to the south through that frontage, it just creates the undulation of the roadway that further exacerbates issues. And then I'll note, we do have 10 foot lanes. It's about as skinny as you can get. So, you know, it's just adding more friction, I would say, to the system. And then I'll note that in either scenario, it's the same amount of parking, because in this... To build this scenario, we would need to go back to Cressley and have them change their frontage to eliminate the parking that's to be built. So the net total parking for the project is the same. It's just about whether or not that parking is provided in its existing condition on the north side or with the Cressley development on the south side.

No, I got one more. So the bridge over the creek, man, that's been around a long time. Do we know what the remaining useful life of that is? Because that's a pinch point for everything you're doing, right?

Because of the widening that was done on the bridge, we can deliver the project vision and get continuous bike facilities through the corridor on the bridge. So as far as the existing useful life of it, we could certainly reflect on some bridge inspection reports, but it would be a, you know, within the Within the definition of this plan line, we would expect that that would be a significant cost that would have a significant burden on development potential. And we believe that we can deliver the vision for the corridor of implementing complete streets without having to modify the bridge.

But does anyone know when the widening happened? When is the widening? 15 years, 20 years ago? Order of magnitude.

But is it, after all this is done, is it still the narrowest part of Campbell? Of the corridor? Yeah. Probably, yeah, I would surmise. And so did it, it didn't, did it limit you with all the stuff you did here? Did that become the thing that stopped you from doing stuff?

Let me maybe rephrase the question of what else would you like to do on the bridge with having a wider structure?

Well, it's that jog thing you're talking about. Like what, particularly with cyclists, I mean, I drive it all the time and then I see how close cyclists and cars come when they're going through the bridge. And it kind of, I mean, I kind of feel for the drivers because they're going along and then all of a sudden the bike moves over and they're right next to the car because they gotta be.

I could candidly say that's probably a $20 million project. So we just did not anticipate that there would be a tolerance for that kind of expenditure as part of this plan. I just go under the, in the pedestrian.

But you're narrowing the lanes to accommodate the bike, bike, bike lanes, right? Correct. Okay.

So that's not on the bridge, though, not on the bridge, not on the bridge, you're not nearing that you're already narrow. Yeah, correct. Okay. And when I talk about the job, yeah. And again, I mean, we can do anything that you want us to do. It just it didn't seem to pencil in our review of cost to benefit.

But you're going to have bike lanes on the bridge too, right?

Are you saying that is correct. So through that corridor, I might as well pull up my image. So this is that segment through the bridge. We are proposing no work on the bridge nor under the Campbell Portals area where under Highway 17 where Campbell Porters was built. So we do have 11 foot lanes on the bridge as well as a five foot bike lane and 10 foot sidewalks on the bridge. So given that the bridge is well within its useful life, replacing it to address lane shifts doesn't seem to pencil.

Just to be clear, where I was going with that is, sure, we're not going to replace the bridge now, but eventually we're going to have to. And when that day comes, can you make it so that it's easy to then make your vision more holistic, I guess is the way to phrase it?

Possibly. I mean, I would say if the bridge wasn't there, and it wasn't a constraint, I would like to see buffered bike lanes through the area. But then you go to Highway 17. And you say, Okay, what does it look like under 17? And how far do you chase it? So yeah, I would, you know, agree with the premise that if the if we could rebuild the bridge, we could do it better. Yes. Yeah.

One more question. Was there any thought or investigation to maybe changing road surface in areas where there might be critical bike and car conflicts like, you know, cobblestones, for lack of a better word, wake people up, because Campbell Avenue, people never drive the speed limit there. It's always faster. And so for Adam's concerns about being on the bike and whatnot, was that looked at? Is that part of the study?

I would say, candidly, I can't say it was looked at in detail, but any... I can say that we know that, especially on that segment one, because of how narrow it is, anything that's not a vehicular lane or a bike lane just doesn't fit. So if you're thinking about, you know, concrete separators or delineators, anything that takes up a horizontal width, that would be a challenge.

I'm just talking, not a horizontal width, just it's the pavement itself is a different texture such that, you know, it makes noise in your car like your wheels are going over cobblestones. To slow people down.

In conflict areas or just transverse to the roadway along the corridor? No, just in conflict areas. You need to be careful because any vertical introduction is a hazard for cyclists. So you want to be sure that if you're putting anything that has a chatter to it, that's exacerbated when you're on a bicycle.

Keep it out of the bike lane.

I'm just talking the vehicular way. Yeah, so there are treatments that could be, and generally speaking, I would say that's nuance that can be addressed in a future phase, right? I mean, the intent of the study is to define the cross-sectional width and the frontage improvement. So I'd say we have control over that if down the road there was an interest in implementing something like that. They have transverse lane markings that you've probably seen where you drive over them and you go chick, chick, chick, chick, chick. Those are just thermoplastic paint applied perpendicular. So there are traffic calming measures that could be implemented within the footprint of this plan that could address some of those needs. I would suggest that the plan is probably a little bit more broad than that level of specificity. Okay, thank you.

Mr. Kamkar. Thank you. So just one question left for me. how much dedication would you be asking for, for example? Seven feet, five feet, 10 feet, you know?

So the dedication is limited to only a couple parcels. And I believe consistent out, I'm going to look to my project manager, Allison Golden here, who knows it better than I do. Along that, along the gray lens, it's the same dedication that was identified in the 2007 master plan. And I believe it's between 10 and 15 feet requested. And Allison's telling me I'm not lying to you guys. Thank you.

And questions? There's room for that at the Graylands because there's some buildings that are close to the They're close to the curb, right? So I'm assuming there's room for that.

There's room for it when Graylands develops, which is why we have an interim condition. So until that development went forward, that dedication would not take place and we could not enact the full vision of the portal.

So this is assuming that Graylands will be redeveloped? That's correct.

All right. For that one frontage, of course.

I haven't heard anything about that happening. The the question about the concern by the owner of Lloyd's. He's he's worried about losing the curb park. Is that what you're saying? That's correct. Seven or 77. And and so first of all, would it be if we lost that curb parking would make the the plan a better plan? versus what you've come up with to accommodate him?

Okay, so first of all, because I got to check there, I want to clarify that there's existing eight parking spots there. So I just wanted to go on record as having that correct. The question that you posed was what exactly? Would you mind restating that for me?

Well, you've accommodated him, right? No, they haven't. Oh, you haven't. They produced an alternate, but that's not the recommendation.

Okay, so your preferred is to lose the curb parking?

That is correct.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay. I actually don't have a problem with it. I mean, you know, I don't those like Gary talking about doing a study. I'm not I know he's the owner and, and he probably should know what his parking requirements are. But I'm like a lot of them, a lot of the others, I go by there all the time. And I'm the parking lot is not full very often or at all, except for maybe when there's a festival. I would question really whether losing those is a big deal. But going down towards Bascom, there's a plan for a huge development, right, at the Hickory Pit Shell Station area. The discussion has been about the access to Barbano from coming west from Hamilton to turn left into their Barbano where the garage is going to be. Are you factoring this into your plan? Because the big question we had at the commission was, what are you going to do about that left turn lane, about turning left onto Barbano? And whether that's what we have existing, there's gonna be a sufficient, you know, we basically have a left turn, we have a center lane, right, for left turns and right, left turns into Pruneyard and then a left turn on the Barbato, which is not a problem right now, but when you're gonna have a 300 unit apartment complex, it may present a problem in the future. So is that factored into this?

At that area, and I've got it pulled up on screen here, we're proposing to maintain the existing two-way left turn through that frontage. So I would say a detailed traffic study pertaining specifically to that development was not performed as part of our work, but we are proposing to maintain the existing configuration.

So it's possible that we could make changes at some point to accommodate the project in the future, even if we implement this?

I would say the city has discretion, Danielle, maybe pulled back up from Roger, on your flexibility on this plan.

So I talked to Matthew, the traffic study for the Barbano project has yet to kick off. We do, I believe we have a traffic consultant getting ready to get under contract. So we will reevaluate this area as part of that traffic study. As you know, these projects come and go. We don't know what's going to happen. I do know that as part of that Barbano proposal, they do have a lot of traffic coming in and off of Bascom. They have that major driveway off of Bascom. So hopefully the amount of traffic coming this way won't be, it's not all of it, right? It's a portion of it. We did want to focus, we actually did show- There's also another 20 or 24 units-

you know, going to be behind there too, right?

Yeah, yeah, the 18 units that are going through plan check right now down off the little cul-de-sac. We did want to stress to Barbano early on, even though this plan hasn't been adopted, our desire to close the free ride along their frontage and open up the sidewalk because we've heard a lot about pedestrians on the weekends people walking up ask them going to the prune yard and you know that little pork chop island only holds a few people and it gets just real crazy there. So we saw implementing what you see here on the screen, we saw this kind of a natural extension of the frontage improvements that they would be doing with that project.

Well, I mean, my only concern in general about that is I see people also walk in the middle block across Campbell now, right? Yeah. Between Union and Bascom.

We're concerned about that, too. And there was talk of looking at a crosswalk in that area, a mid-block crosswalk. Unfortunately, you've got the bus stop there. It's very close to Bascom. It's just a bad place to encourage people to cross. Right. OK. I'm glad you're thinking about it.

And the only other thing I had a question about is back at Page, is there going to be a new crosswalk page across Campbell? That doesn't exist now. There's no crosswalk at Page, right? There's no crosswalk at Page, across Campbell? I don't believe so.

No.

So would there be a crosswalk there?

Yeah. Yes. It's part of the signal design. And as part of the Cressley Fringe improvements that have already been designed and are ready to go for construction, you'll see that there's a little bulb out there as part of the parking. with a wheelchair ramp there. And so they would be building that, but we would be like signing, you know, putting one of those little barriers that say, don't use it yet. Once the signal goes in, we would open that crosswalk, paint it in, and yeah, it would provide a crossing there as part of the, that would be implemented with the construction of the traffic circuit.

Yeah, that would be good. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. That's all I got.

I have one more question. So we were talking about if there was a vehicle protected bike lane. So bike lane would be on the right side vehicle. And one of the concerns you said was the parking would make the the bicyclist basically invisible. But I thought in 2026, there is a law that you can't park within 20 feet of the curb return anyway. So you get that visibility that you were looking for.

Yes and no. You are correct that there is a law that went into effect on January 1st that requires a setback from the intersection that cannot be parked When you look at the sight lines, especially for left turns, you need a seven second approach is standard practice. So you need to be able to see seven seconds upstream to be able to safely maneuver that left turn. That seven seconds is a long distance. And then when you look at where a vehicle needs to wait to be behind the crosswalk, you've got your parking for eight feet, then you've got a five foot bike lane, and then you've got a five foot crosswalk. And then you're back here. This is where you're legally supposed to turn from. to see seven seconds upstream, all of that parking further exacerbates your inability to see upstream.

That's because the parked vehicles are

further into the street rather than... By flipping, because you can see over the top of a bike lane, you can't see over the top of a parked vehicle. So in practice, parking protected bike lanes, I'm all for them. They address a lot of issues, but they've got to be the right system. And where you really want to implement them is long corridors where you don't have driveways, you don't have intersections, then you can really get a lot of bang for your buck on them. Good, thank you.

All my questions have been answered in our coverage here, so thank you very much. I am now gonna open it up for the public portion of this item. Do we have anyone in the chamber or online who'd like to speak?

You're encouraging me, guys. This is cracking me up. The only question I have is, does the bus stop move by the park?

No, no proposed changes.

There we go. There we go.

All right, and I am closing the public on that section. Questions answered? Yep. Feeling good? Great. Excellent presentation. Thank you very much for the presentation. Thank you for the presentation. That was informative, and that is really gonna be an exciting area as we get that in there and the properties right next to Campbell Park and the creek. Next up. staff and subcommittee reports. First one up for subcommittee reports is the housing permit streamlining. I think maybe up top from your comments, I don't know, four or five hours, whenever this meeting started, five hours ago, we should probably talk for one moment, like what are we trying to do with the report?

This is an interim update. We're not taking a vote on it. There's been a lot of talking to people and I wanted to keep the commission updated and the public updated as to what's going on, who we're talking to, what we found out so far. So this isn't dropped out of nowhere on people. I'm just gonna say who we've talked to since the last time we were here, any important bits that we've added, and what we hope to accomplish going forward. That's it. Should be like a five minute update. I do not have like a long thing planned. Did you have a?

No, I just haven't read that.

I do apologize for that I sent it in on Thursday, but it was the packet came out on Wednesday.

So I will discuss it.

We won't I'll try to get it in by Wednesday, going forward.

Well, actually, our next meeting is canceled. So next meeting, I think is June 26.

So a month from now, I'll try and hopefully we'll have so much more to add. The main things are that we spoke to some more developers. The document has been rewritten to sort of put developer feedback throughout it. There's a list of sources for who exactly we spoke to. There's one more uh some more quotes from the san francisco i believe controller's office on the infeasibility of their inclusionary zoning mandates and also late breaking some concerns were brought up that there was that we may not have water or sewer capacity and we're not really considering this and who's going to pay for the water or sewer it turns out that if you look at our housing element from 2023 we do have water and sewer capacity to serve the planned growth of our general plan, which includes our housing. Additionally, if it is at some point impossible to reliably hook up water or sewer to a new development, that is a health and safety reason to deny a building permit. That is not likely to happen, but the issue that was brought up that we would powerlessly look on as our infrastructure collapsed under the weight of new development is not particularly plausible and we have thought of that. That was in fact presented to the city council in 2023 and is part of our housing.

Okay, but on that, should that come to pass, when do you have to notify the developer that that's the case? That what's the case? That there's a health and safety issue. Because if we wait until they come before us and it's time for vote, I believe it's too late for us to complain about it.

So that's more for the building. So there's a whole process by which the city declares a state of emergency. I don't expect this to happen.

yes i guess i'll weigh in so um the four corners of the ad hoc subcommittee i think is looking at trying to look at streamlining helping housing development the capacity of the city is a whole different matter i don't think you're making recommendations on upzoni we have our own housing element we have our own general plan sp79 established new capacity questions on capacity water sewer happy to talk to in a further date but i don't think it's within the four corners of our ad hoc subcommittee Generally, in answer to your question, Commissioner Helme, generally health safety issue or a conflict with objective standards are only the two areas where you could not deny a housing project. It has to be generally knowable up front or at the time, definitely before a hearing. But I just say that issue probably goes far and beyond the four corners of what the ad hoc said.

Yeah, I'm not suggesting that we do something different than that. That has been brought up as a reason why we should forestall development, and it

it's brought up every time we have another development, somebody brings it up every single time. We actually didn't think about that. At least one resident that brings it up, you know, on every single project, not only in Campbell, but everywhere else. So, you know.

Yeah. It turns out we looked at that. Yeah. We were there. We all received that report. And frankly, I did not remember that part of it. Yes, so going forward, I'm gonna see if I can talk to people hopefully from Los Angeles and San Jose who managed to do much faster building permit reviews and how Los Angeles managed to, I think like an average of 45 day turnaround, like how that was possible for them. I think that's mainly what I have going forward. And I hope to talk to staff about what it would take for them. So yeah, that's who you've talked to.

One question I have is like, what form, like when you are done, are you planning to bring this back to us with a set of policy recommendations?

Yes.

Is it like, is that the final form?

yeah we want to make sure that we have policy recommendations that will be both effective and plausible for the city and hopefully that city council will also go for it may we may bring to city council they may say how dare you do this and we come back here we figure something else out and bring it to them um but it will come here we will discuss it we'll and hopefully i will have enough footnotes that everybody will be fully convinced of everything i'm hoping that we do

Yeah, because that sounds great. Because there are a couple of these, I think, just seeing them described, it's a little difficult to understand like the before after as it relates to like, whatever's on the books now or what you think that would drive. So I think that level of specificity is going to be really helpful to evaluate the ideas when you get there. Yeah. That was my only comment, maybe.

Yeah.

Okay, I will open the public portion of this item.

Can you state your name?

I would politely request that I get two two minutes.

Because?

because the last meeting I was at the speaker and the noise, I got very frustrated and comments were made to me about what I said that weren't clear and what I was trying to say. So I wanted to first make one statement about that and then talk about the, cause I did meet with Matt and Adam.

I'm sorry, I should have mentioned, we also met with Ms. Landry and Roy.

Okay. Two weeks ago, four weeks, no, four weeks ago, I came to a meeting to talk about the technology part. And I sat and listened and I heard Bill remind you guys of potential conflicts and making statements and then having to come take votes and being biased. I got up and made a comment about that and that there was a public perception of bias on people on the planning commission. A public perception, and every ethic class I ever took was public perception is reality. I was approached after that meeting with some very conflicting statements about bias. And a certain member came over to me and said, we have to do this. And I said, look, I'm not going to stand here and argue. And I walked away. And then it came up later about wanting to meet. And I said, I came later the next meeting when the speaker was going off. And what I was trying to say is there is a public perception that people on the planning commission are biased. And the question is then why? And what I said, and I don't know how it came out, but I said something about people thought that you were in cahoots with developers. I have no proof of anything. I'm trying to relay to you guys what I have heard and then what happened after the meeting when someone comes over and basically makes some very biased statements to me. I'm not accusing you guys of being in cahoots, collusion, whatever the word is. I'm just... What I'm hearing is people are concerned that there's a bias that's being expressed. How can you then be fair in voting? Well, I wanna just make that very clear. Okay, so that's enough that. I wanna appreciate that Matt and Adam did meet with Roy and I to address some of the concerns that we have. And I appreciate that Adam put the report in here. He did list our names. But I'm still concerned, hang on here, sorry. I'm still concerned because there are statements in here that say things like, currently the source of capital park development and in view of that, it would be better to place a pause on park funding. Okay, that says it right here. But then earlier when we were talking about park funding, there was the comment of what we aren't just proposing that. Well, your report is proposing that. It's not my report. No, it's not a report, sorry. I just, my eyes are gone tonight. I just, you know, I'm proud of Campbell. You can tell I'm proud and I want you guys to be proud and I want the community to feel like we're all open and receptive to what's going on, that you're here, you're listening and that you aren't biased. And I'm out trying to help promote the city in what we're doing. So I'm here as a concerned citizen I am also here as a landscape architect who is doing housing development projects. I've finished two that both had 10 units and having to go through the process. And when I read reports about taking away the one meeting where you can come and bring up health and safety issues and that that will streamline the process by taking away that one meeting, I ask questions of like, well, really, how long is the process? When a person submits an application and they get an incomplete letter, how long does that take? And then the city has to review and write the incomplete letter. There's 30, 60, whatever days. Then the developer gets it back. And now the architect team of multiple disciplines have to respond. Was that my first two minutes or my, that's my four minutes. I don't know if you want me to finish my sentence.

Finish your sentence.

All right. I would really like you guys to investigate how long people are developers taking from the time they make their first permit to the time they get a complete letter. Because I see that in what I'm doing is a big problem. And the architects, the standard thing is, oh, everybody gets an incomplete letter. Well, no, I'm sorry, I don't. I get maybe a typo. I go through those lists. I make sure that they're set. And developers, I don't think, are conveying that in this process of, oh, yeah, my architects took three months and were wrong, and then we had to do it a second time. So I really would like you guys to look at what this incomplete Like how many people are getting letters? How long does it take to respond? You know, because you are doing it more than once.

But you mean application complete, correct?

The application is submitted with a set of architectural plans. The staff spends time to review it, and they issue an incomplete letter and says it's not complete. The application is not complete. The application is not complete. The plans are not complete. The application is not complete. That is a very long process when you keep getting incomplete letters. So I mean, I don't know what the statistics are. I've kind of mentioned to Daniel in passing about that. I am concerned. I've been here expressing my concerns, but I'm not saying you are guys are in cahoots with anybody.

Thank you.

That came out wrong when the whole speaker thing drove me crazy. But I do appreciate what you guys are doing, and thank you for listening.

Thank you. Thank you for the feedback. We will definitely talk to staff about what the timeline actually looks like.

Wasn't expecting anything from the other subcommittee, right?

You got a little something? Yeah, I got a little something. Okay. So today, Commissioner Zisser and I, with Nathan Donato-Weinstein, spoke with four retail brokers that do work, a lot of work, in the city of Campbell. We had a list of questions that we asked them. We didn't get through all of them. um and basically we're gathering information as to their experiences their clients experiences with the retail side of leasing uh next we're going to talk to industrial brokers to find out you know that their experiences and we're also sending them the questions so that they can add more to what they spoke about once we gather all this together then we'll prepare a report of what we've learned and maybe come up with some recommendations for the city to consider.

Tremendous. All right. Taking us to our final item of the night.

Did you separate public comment out for the two items?

No. Okay, public comment for what you just said. Thank you for making sure we're diligent. Closing public comment. Now taking us to the final item, the community director's report, which Rob assured me was less than two hours.

Chair Davis, commissioners, given you're on hour three of your meeting, first I thought it was going to be short.

I'll keep it very pithy. So two report outs at the last council meeting last week.

Two items of note for the commission. One, council considered extension of the city's current urgency ordinance regarding starter homes. That's been of much attention of Campbell's Neighborhoods. It did require a fourth-fifth vote. There were only four council members present. It did not receive the total amount of votes needed, only three affirmative votes. Given one council member was absent, we are rescheduling that for the next council meeting. So it may be reconsidered. No folks are tracking that issue. We did want to report that on to the Planning Commission. And that's the city's starter home interim ordinance. And the city also reviewed, I'm sorry, the city council also reviewed the draft climate action plan. Large number of speakers, probably 20 folks of varying interests and recommendations. Council gave some feedback on some final recommendations for the climate action plan. It's anticipated to go back to council in late June. Only report I have is we are still working with only two planners at this point. I appreciate everyone's patience if you're looking for our service. We have closed the recruitment for an associate and assistant planner. I have over 100 applicants. It's good news. And we'll start the oral board interview process in the next week or two. So wish us luck on finding some good candidates. That's all I have. What about Planning Commission? Planning Commission, I knew I was going to be asked this question tonight. I reached out to our, thank you, Vice Chair Aquilino. And you preempted Chair Davis, who usually asks me this question. It's still vacant, obviously. I do know we have at least two submittals I haven't tracked. If there were more, that was the last I heard. There have been challenges due to the absence of one council member recently. I know that council member had some family medical issues. They are hoping, and this came from the city clerk, in the next few weeks to be able to convene the city council to review those candidates and make a selection. Okay, great. All right.

Okay. It's my understanding that you that you submitted a questions to a CD with regard to the starter home issue, or the and or the demolition ordinance. I'm not quite sure what. First of all, I wanted to confirm that you have done that and whether or not you've received an answer.

Yeah, yeah, correct. We made a number of questions. If you would like, it's all posted on our, if you want to look up our starter home website, the six questions we asked the state. with respect to the current ordinance, the prior ordinance, demolition control ordinance, legality, conflict with state laws. We verbally met with the HCD staff working on it, including city attorney Bill Seligman, myself, and two senior planners. Talked through generally some of the issues around it. I think it was an exploratory meeting. Following that, they said they were investigating and they would give us a written response within a month or two. and we have asked that that's a published response. There is an option sometimes to receive only verbal assistance. Given the significance of this issue to Campbell and I'm presuming the other 482 cities in California, I think that we're asking for it in writing.

Okay, thank you.

And with that. Oh, I'm sorry. Oh my goodness. We didn't get the starter home ordinance passed. What is the state of things and when does it change?

Uh, starter home ordinance is in effect until June 5th.

What happens if nobody votes on it after that?

Council will reconvene on June 2nd. If they have four affirmative votes to extend it, it will stay live. If they do not have four affirmative votes to extend it, it will expire on June 5th. There'll be no local ordinance implementing starter homes. The issue is there's a lot of mechanics in how we process starter homes, that ordinance. So they'll just be a lot more difficult. I'll just say both the developers, neighbors, staff, on the rules of how starter home projects are processed. So there's no, there's no words versus it doesn't revert back to the old word. Does not. Yeah. When the council took an action at April meeting, they repealed the fire ordinance and adopted.

So in effect, it would follow the state's law. That is, that is true. That's a good thing.

And with that, at 10.10 p.m., I adjourn us to our next meeting. We don't have a meeting in two weeks, so that is a meeting in late June, 2026. Have a good night, everybody.