Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Hello and welcome to the Planning Commission meeting for Tuesday, July 14th. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you very much. So before we move to the approval of minutes, I would like to just reorder some agenda items for the flow. Oh, I'm sorry. You're right. We will do the roll call first. City Clerk, may we please have the roll call?

Commissioner Fung.

Present.

Commissioner Linskog. Here. Commissioner Rao.

Here.

Vice Chair Sharpe.

Here.

Chair Kasolsharan.

Here. Thank you very much. Okay, now. I WOULD LIKE TO MOVE THE STAFF AND COMMISSION REPORTS AND FUTURE AGENDA SETTING TO AFTER AGENDA ITEM 2, WHICH IS THE STUDY SESSION, BUT BEFORE AGENDA ITEM 3, THE ATP. SO JUST INFORMING EVERYONE OF THAT CHANGE. NOW WE WILL MOVE ON TO THE APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES FOR THE JUNE 23 PLANNING COMMISSION MEETING. DO WE HAVE ANY MOTION FOR THAT?

SO MOVED.

DO WE HAVE A SECOND?

SECOND.

Thank you. City Clerk, may we have a vote, please? The motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Great. So we will then move on to oral communications. Do we have any oral communications?

We have no speakers, Chair.

All right, thank you, moving on. So we will now move on to the study session on permit streamlining and simplification for small home upgrades on the city work program. Do we have a staff report for this?

Oh, there we go. Thank you. Now I can tell. I just wanted to do some quick introductions because we have three new staff members here for this item tonight. So as the chair noted, the item is focusing on the permitting process for small residential upgrades. I know there's been a lot of discussion in the past about permit streamlining. This is focused on just a really particular aspect of that of small residential projects. I believe this is a CWP item number four. So this will be something that will ultimately going back to city council. To start the presentation tonight, we have a planner, Julie Garofalo, who had done a lot of the research on this, and she will be giving the presentation. And since this is very much focused on the building division's work, we have both Sean Hatch, who is the city's building official, and Fong DeVries, who is the deputy building official. and they should be able to answer probably all your questions about the building process. I don't want to give you too much of a buildup, but anyhow, just wanted to get those introductions out of the way, and again, this is a study session item, so however you would like to give us information, that would be helpful. Thank you, and with that, I'll turn it over to Julia.

Can you hear me? Good evening, City of Cupertino residents, members of the public, staff, and Planning and Zoning Commission officials. My name is Julia Garofalo, the Assistant Planner here at City Cupertino, along with Fong Deverys, the Deputy Building Official, and Sean Hatch. our chief building official, to present to you a review of the community development department's assigned city work program priority goal efforts on permit streamlining and simplification for small home upgrades. Tonight's study session intends to review outreach findings, discuss current ongoing permit streamlining efforts, and receive direction on next steps. The city work program outlines major priorities for the upcoming two fiscal years and align staff efforts with the goals established by city leaders and by extension the community. This framework promotes transparency and accountability by directing resources towards initiatives that best serve community needs and priorities. The permit streamlining city work program rule of tonight's focus is identified as, develop a suite of improvements to improve access to and speed the processing of permits for small home upgrades to enhance compliance and improve overall efficiency, improve Turnaround times set service level agreements for staff and outsource reviewers set customer service keep KPIs Create templates to reduce back and forth and improve internal staff expertise to reduce consulting expenses. I The types of projects considered small home upgrades includes additions of 250 square feet or less, kitchen and bathroom replacements for additions, relocation of appliances and fixtures, and equipment upgrades such as EV charging, heat pumps, furnace, or water heaters, HVAC systems, and whole house or partial re-piping. In March 2025, after a series of priority goal workshops, the city council approved the fiscal year 25 to 27 city work program priority items. In fiscal year 25, community development staff began work on the division's city work program goal. In February this year, a benchmarking outreach survey was distributed to 12 local building officials in which we received six responses on comparable building permit metrics. Today's staff is ready to report on findings and progress. A benchmarking survey is a tool used to collect and compare data on processes, performance metrics, and practices across peer jurisdictions. This survey data has been included as attachment one. The survey responses focused on several key areas, including permitting programs and metric reporting, turnaround times, comparing expected versus actual performance, permit and staffing volumes, review processes and business support features, response times for both applicants and staff, service level agreements and key performance indicators and overall efficiency factors. This data is being used to evaluate how Cupertino compares with surrounding cities to help inform future decision making. A REVIEW OF PEER CITIES SHOWS THAT ALL JURISDICTIONS PROVIDE DETAILED CHECKLISTS AND HANGOUTS FOR SMALL HOME REMODEL PERMITS, WHILE ONLY ONE CITY PUBLICLY REPORTS KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS. PERMITTING SYSTEM PLATFORMS VARY, ALTHOUGH THREE CITIES USE A CELLA, AND OVERALL RESPONSE TIMES ARE GENERALLY CONSISTENT ACROSS AGENCIES. NOTABLY, CUPERTINO IS PROCESSING A HIGHER VOLUME OF PERMITS WITH FEWER STAFF COMPARED TO PEER CITIES. ACROSS JURISDICTIONS, THE MOST COMMON CAUSE OF REPEATS TO PLAN SUBMITTAL INCLUDES INCOMPLETE APPLICATIONS AND APPLICANTS' UNFAMILIARITY WITH CODE REQUIREMENTS. IN TERMS OF TRANSPARENCY, MOST CITIES, INCLUDING CUPERTINO, HAVE MADE PERMITTING TURNAROUND METRICS PUBLICLY AVAILABLE. FINALLY, WHILE MANY JURISDICTIONS EXPERIENCED A DECLINE IN SMALL HOME REMODEL PERMITS ACTIVITY FROM FY23 AND FY24, CUPERTINO SAW AN INCREASE IN PERMIT SUBMISSIONS DURING THAT SAME PERIOD. Participant cities have been given an anonymous identifier for presentation purposes as this benchmarking effort is designed to identify trends, best practices, and opportunities for improvement, rather than to evaluate and rank specific cities. Please note that the data may have limitations and should be interpreted with caution. Cupertino's actual average first round review for the building division is 13 days, while the actual average first round review amongst all divisions in Cupertino for building permits is 19 days. This is a graph of the total residential building permit applications in Cupertino, which have increased by 48% from 2021 to 2025, reflecting sustained demand for home improvement projects. Cupertino's average building permit turnaround time in days by division from 21 to 25 is as follows. Building permit review requires coordinated input across multiple agencies, including building, planning, public works, Santa Clara County Fire, and Cupertino Sanitary District. Review timelines are influenced by coordination across multiple agencies and divisions to ensure proposed projects comply with the applicable codes and regulations and result in a safe and functional environment. The city tracks average review times by division, including the elapsed time when the task is with the applicant between review cycles, pending a response, and resubmittal. The building division also utilizes contract plan review consultants during peak periods to help maintain service levels. Overall, the reported metrics combine increasing permit volumes with average review timelines by division, providing context for evaluating system-wide performance. The current... Currently, the City offers several service features to support applicants, homeowners, and contractors when navigating the permitting process, which include over-the-counter same-day plan review, the option to schedule pre-submittal meetings to help reduce review cycles, the access to detailed checklists, handouts, and permitting system guides, Applicants can also take advantage of electronic plan submittal and review, email notifications, and permit status tracking. In addition, the city provides walk-in counter services, maintains responsive and accessible staff, and utilizes a customer service accountability platform to help manage and track inquiries. The city is actively advancing permit streamlining through a combination of technology and process improvements, including exploring AI-supported prescreening and plan review in coordination with IT, expanding staff training and the use of Microsoft Copilot to improve internal efficiency, and developing clear, standardized plan review checklist for all small home remodel permits to simplify submittal requirements and reduce review cycles. The building division continues to support the available service features of instant online permits for a range of common residential projects with plans to expand this program to include additional minor projects like kitchen and bathroom remodels, HVAC change-outs, and heat pumps. Staff is also collaborating with IT to update the online permit portal to improve functionality and support the submission of all permit types and to implement e-check payment capabilities for permit fees. Finally, staff continues to monitor and respond to changes in state law, which can directly affect review timelines, application requirements, and the city's ongoing efforts to streamline permit processing across all divisions. At last, that concludes the presentation. Staff requests the opportunity for discussion at this time. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Julia, and welcome. And I'll bring this back to the Commission for any clarifying questions. YES, COMMISSIONER NELINSKAG.

SO DID YOU SPEAK TO ANYBODY WHO ACTUALLY APPLIES FOR PERMITS LIKE RESIDENTS OR CONTRACTORS WHEN YOU WERE IN THAT ONE YEAR PROCESS WHERE YOU WERE ALSO GATHERING SURVEY RESULTS FROM OTHER CITIES?

No, the direction was to reach out to our neighboring cities, and so that was the direction we followed. So yeah, no, we have not reached out to citizens or had outreach or that.

Okay, so we don't actually know what the pinpoints are that we're trying to solve.

I GUESS, SORT OF. YEAH, I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE, YEAH, I'D LIKE TO KNOW. I GUESS THAT'S WHY WE'RE HERE. RIGHT. SO, YEAH, ANY FEEDBACK TO WHAT THAT IS, KNOWING THAT MOST OF YOU HAVE GONE THROUGH THE PERMANENT PROCESS YOURSELF, YEAH, WE'D LOVE TO HEAR IT.

OKAY.

ABSOLUTELY. YEAH.

THANK YOU.

ANY OTHER QUESTIONS? COMMISSIONER RAU.

YEAH, I WAS CURIOUS, FOLLOWING UP ON THAT, THAT DIRECTION WAS FROM WHERE? OUR DIRECTOR.

OKAY.

Yeah, it just seems like the applicants would be a prime source of feedback, and I believe there's also a survey that the city conducts for planning permits and building permits.

There is a survey on our website, yeah, that I rarely get anybody filling it out, right? So, yeah, there's avenues to do so, but I don't, I rarely get any, right? So, yeah, I would love the feedback, not scared of it. Yeah, I appreciate it, for sure.

It would be useful, right?

It would be, very, yeah.

I can say that I've had residents that have been hesitant to provide feedback let's just leave it at that because they feel like they might not pass the permits if they give feedback so um there's sorry i've not completed there yet um the other question i have is i'm curious why planning is not Is planning part of the simplification, or is it building only?

Planning is a part of the process of reviewing building permits, and so this is kind of encompassed in that review.

So the scope of the CWP item includes both simplification of planning permits as well as building permits?

This is just building permits. When people do remodels and when they do small additions, they don't involve planning. as a permit, they come in as a building permit.

Yeah, if I could just say, all of these would be ministerial items that would go through building. Building permits are still reviewed by other divisions, though there's four divisions that make up community development, planning, building, code enforcement, and housing. So planning does review building permits in addition to the discretionary planning permits. So the scope of this project includes

review cycles within planning as well as building is that right the entire process correct anybody who would be looking at a project that fit the description of a small home model okay so the presentation as well as the comments i guess i'm i'm wondering why building is feeding the questions Are they fielding the questions on behalf of both planning and building? How should commissioners direct questions?

Yes. Buildings here, because this is really the process, they primarily oversee. These are building permits after all. None of these are things that would come before this commission, for instance. So you do have planning review, but building is the lead on that, which is why we wanted building here for their expertise.

And is this project now on the council calendar already, or is there time to do another iteration to get applicant and resident feedback?

There is not a definite council date. There was expectation probably would have been late September or October to take it, but there's no hard date for that. And unlike the development projects you get, we don't have AB 130 or anything to worry about here. Okay, great. Thank you.

Any other questions?

Yeah, sorry, I have one more. So all in all, just reading this report, it's an incredibly disappointing report. It's so top level. There's so many just obvious questions here that are not addressed, like, you know, Basically, the most important constituent is the contractors and the residents, and no one spoke to them to find out what their pain points are. So we don't know what problems we're trying to solve. So I feel like that's a really big lack. You know, looking at... LOOKING AT THE INCREASE, IT'S A PRETTY SIGNIFICANT INCREASE IN THE NUMBER OF DAYS THAT IT TAKES ON ALL THE DEPARTMENTS, RIGHT? SO THAT'S A PRETTY SIGNIFICANT THING. SO IT WOULD HAVE BEEN GREAT TO SEE A LITTLE BIT MORE ANALYSIS ON WHAT CAUSED THOSE INCREASES, staff shortages, whether it was the types of permits shifted, so there are some more time-intensive permits that are being asked. What is causing that? And just doing a little bit more of a deep dive would have been really helpful because I feel like we're being asked to provide feedback when we're not getting all the information we need to be able to give that feedback. The other thing is we get this little paragraph of potential next steps, and one of the things it says is we're going to see if we can do more instant online permits. That's great. But of the instant online permits that we have right now, what percentage of total permit applications do those represent? How much impact will it have? What are the levers that we need to be shifting? We don't know that because we don't have that information, right? So if 80% of the permits are currently online permits and we shift another 5%, it's not going to move the needle for us, right? But if it's 40% and we're going to add another 20%, yeah, significant impact. So again, there's just not enough data here to make any kind of meaningful conclusions or make any kind of recommendations. And I can just keep going. It's just like, what is the comparison of the types of permits that we have versus the other cities? Where are the pain points between us versus the other cities? Why are our numbers so much higher than other cities? What's causing that difference and is that causing the increase? I don't know. How many people are not applying for permits because it's too complicated? Don't know, right? So I reached out to, I recently got a new heat pump HVAC and a new heat pump water heater and the company that installed my new heat pump water heater is one of the bigger ones in the Valley. So I reached out to them and I asked them, you know, how much work do you do in Cupertino and what has been your experience? And I will read you what they wrote back to me. They said...

Through the chair, are we doing clarifying questions?

Oh, yeah, sorry. I can wait. Yes, we are on clarifying questions. I'll wait. Okay.

Thank you for clarifying that, chair.

Do we have any other clarifying questions? Sorry to break your train.

I did have some clarifying questions for staff, trying to get a sense of the ongoing streamlining projects that's in the staff report. Is that considered a part of the CWP or is that just coincidental that IT is sort of doing these things and these are other projects that are just ongoing activity? How much of that is actually CWP related or it may not be at all?

SO MOST OF THE STREAMLINE FOR KITCHEN REMODEL BATHROOM REMODEL AND HEAT PUMS I THINK THIS WAS ON OUR PATH OF GETTING IT TO STREAMLINE BECAUSE BOTH SEAN AND I DO RECOGNIZE THE FEEDBACK THAT WE GET FROM THE APPLICANT AND NEIGHBORING CITIES EVEN WE DIDN'T Even though we didn't go out with an official survey, but through our experience, we've seen like, hey, these can help out. And the reason why we didn't have that before is because we don't have the technology to kind of support that. And as with technologies come, with AI comes, I think that gives us basically the leverage to be able to provide these more instant services, whereas we didn't have that before. And then with the work study program, it basically, you know, light the fire under us to move it faster, right? And so I think that's why both Sean and I had no issues of moving things and helping out resident and moving project along. WHETHER IT'S LIKE, YOU KNOW, WITH YOUR COMMENT IN TERMS OF DID WE GET FEEDBACK FROM THE RESIDENTS AND OTHER CONTRACTOR, I THINK THE DIRECTION WASN'T GIVEN TO US IN THAT SENSE WHEN WE WERE TRYING TO PREP THE SURVEY, RIGHT? IT WAS, AS SEAN MENTIONED, IT WAS GIVING THE DIRECTION THAT, HEY, LET'S SURVEY OUT THERE TO SEE WHAT OTHER CITIES ARE DOING AND ARE WE MEETING UP TO THOSE CITY EXPECTATIONS? AND BASED ON THE REPORT THAT WE GOT BACK IS THAT, YEAH, WE MET WITH THE EXPECTATION AND AT SOME POINT EVEN MORE. BUT WITH YOUR FEEDBACK, OBVIOUSLY TODAY IT'S LIKE, YES, LET'S GO OUT, DO A SURVEY TO SEE WHAT IS OUR PAIN POINT, HOW CAN WE HELP THESE RESIDENTS, RIGHT, GET THEIR PROJECT MOVING ALONG. I MEAN, WE ALL UNDERSTAND WE OWN and want projects to move along as quickly as possible, right? And so without understanding that part, I think that's where, this is why we're, like, this year was our year of, like, pushing AI, pushing projects to streamline the process a lot more. So I think next year you're going to see that changes, at least in the building permitting side of things.

Thank you. I did have a follow-up on the direction or lack thereof, perhaps. Is it helpful to staff to bring this to Planning Commission multiple times? I know we do projects like ODS where we have come in a few times. And is that going to actually help to avoid sort of feedback like what we are maybe seeing? We'd love to make sure that staff time is spent in a way that is not wasted and at the same time it's meeting everybody's expectations. So just wondering if it helps to come in a few times and just everybody's happy with the direction it's going.

You know, I probably wouldn't always say yes to that question, but this time I would. I think for the reasons identified is that out of the gate, this is lacking things you wanted to see, so it's gonna limit what you can say tonight. I think you can still provide comments, but I think given that it's not where you'd like it to be, this kind of reminds me of a meeting on the oversized vehicles. where the first draft wasn't far enough along to get meaningful insight, so it needed to come back. And because this doesn't have a time restriction, I don't see why this could not come back to you. And my experience with the city council is they want full planning commission review before they're considering it. So my answer is yes.

And so I know you haven't solicited feedback from applicants, but has anyone volunteered feedback formally or informally to staff on feedback that could have been included or is available?

Yeah, I mean, no, we, I mean, right? We're here every day and meet with everybody and happy to do it, right? We've got a great crew. So yeah, we always hear about it, right? I mean, yeah, I'm sure some people, I mean, just the nature of the permitting and the government being scared that, oh, if I say something, I'm not going to get my permit. I mean, none of us down there that way. So we never give off that persona. So I don't think we're a space that people aren't comfortable coming and talking to us. So yeah, we hear about it all the time. And I think That's what sparks the thing that we're always working on it to make it better, right? We know the pinpoints that we hear the most is like our portal is terrible. Acela's portal is brutal. And so they're working on it. And also IT is we're working on doing a wrapper to make it easier and more user-friendly. We know that's a pinpoint, right? And so that's why we still offer the, you know, we'll pick up the phone and schedule the inspection for you because we know it's not friendly, right? And so that's been an ongoing thing, just having those resources to do it, right? So... uh... there's that i mean but for the most part it's pretty systematic right what what we find i mean i'm not that i'm going off on a tangent but it's like kind of what we find like this this happened last week where from a council member somebody reached out and said hey i can't get my permit so you know who do i talk to so i look into it and go oh what's going on here and it's it's it's been through five rounds of plan review it's just for a simple remodel but the designer cannot answer the comment from sanitary And it's gone three separate rounds, right? But instead of the, and I'm not pointing fingers, but instead of saying, oh, it's me, I don't understand it, it's, uh, the city, right? Which I get, I'm in this environment and I've been doing this a long time, but that kind of happens quite a bit, you know? So it's, you know, the message is, it's so important to hire a good person to do your design and also a good one to build it, right? But that's easy to say, I know. It's hard to find good people, right?

Thank you, Chair.

So I'm in the middle of a remodel, not a minor one. And all the problems with permitting were the contractor's fault, not the city's, I'll say that. I'm sure he's not listening. But I mean, one thing, In Cupertino, there should be a checklist that says, oh, most cities in Santa Clara County are like this, but Cupertino has these special things like the bird safe windows and even something as small as he got in trouble because he leased a bin for all the trash and he didn't lease it from Recology and apparently that's required in Cupertino, but he didn't know. So something in the checklist should have those little differences between Cupertino and maybe the San Jose or surrounding cities. I could go on for an hour about my remodel, but I won't because this is clarifying questions. Thank you.

Do we have any other clarifying questions, Commissioner Fung? All right, I had a few. I think my first is going back to kind of the scope of this item. So it's interesting to me, the scope of the item is, I'm going to go back and read it, is permit streamlining and simplification for small home upgrades. But when I look in the survey, there's actually questions around ARE THERE CYCLES TO HELP REDUCE REVIEW CYCLES FOR SMALL BUSINESSES OR COMMERCIAL BUSINESS PERMITS? AND ARE EXPEDITED REVIEW OPTIONS AVAILABLE FOR, AGAIN, SMALL BUSINESS OR COMMERCIAL BUSINESS? SO I GUESS I WANT TO CLARIFY, IS THE SCOPE OF THIS CWP ITEM FLEXIBLE? ARE WE ALSO TALKING BUSINESSES OR ARE WE JUST TALKING RESIDENTIAL?

I can try to answer that. I think we had collaborated a little bit with the Economic Development Department and through those questions and just to kind of help them get some data, but that is not pertained to this CWB item.

Got it, thank you. I was also curious about in the staff report, and thank you, I think this is a really important item and I know it's sort of difficult to tackle, but I do think it's important that we discuss all this. There was an interesting, so the chart around the staffing, so I see that we have consultant support. Is there an amount of headcount for that? Or is it, you know, is there a number of hours? It's just sort of hard to understand what that means.

I'll let building answer that. Planning does not have any consultant support, but I will let building answer for what support they have for building permit review for building related items.

So currently we have two contracts for consultants, and with that we don't require a certain number of staffing from the consultant. It's basically on project base, so how many projects we send to them. And the reason why we have the consultant is for the influx of building permits we receive. So we would assign to them when we have a high volume of permit where our staff is unable to meet that deadlines, right? And later on, we'll break down for you in terms of type of projects we sent out to the consultant, type of project we receive. And so that way give you a better idea of what type of projects we keep and the turnaround time in regards to that and the number of projects we receive as well.

BUT A VERY LOW PERCENTAGE OF OVERALL PROJECTS ARE RESENDING TO THE CONSULTANTS, RIGHT? IT'S LESS THAN 10% OF WHAT WE HAVE COMING IN. MOST OF IT, YEAH, WE WANT TO KEEP IT IN-HOUSE, RIGHT? AND SO THE BASIC KIND OF JUST FEE SO THAT, YOU KNOW, TOO, AS THE CONSULTANTS AND THEIR CONTRACT, THEY TAKE 65% OF OUR PLAN CHECK FEE TO DO THE REVIEW. SO THEN WE KEEP 35 FOR THE PROCESSING AND WHATNOT. BUT WE TRY TO, LIKE I SAID, KEEP THAT IN-HOUSE AS MUCH AS WE CAN.

Well, that's very impressive then that you manage, you know, multiples the amount of permits with your two staff. On average, how many people does a small home upgrade go through from start to finish? Is it just the two reviewers or within the city of Cupertino, I mean?

Yeah, I would say your typical remodel is going to be building and sanitary. If it's strictly remodeled, if they're doing windows and such, obviously then our friends in the planning division have a look. It's rare that a remodel or a small addition triggers the fire department or public works would be the other ones. So yeah, it's two or three that look at it, so not bad. Yeah, we got a pretty good little over-the-counter kind of process. The unfortunate thing, I guess, is that Cupertino Sanitary is its own district, and so they're not here at the city. So that poses a problem that they're at a different location. But we've worked out with them. When they come here, they get their permit number and all that, and then they head over there, and they'll usually kind of work it and send us over an approval so that we can get it out the door the same day. Some people don't want to do that and just wait, but if you want your permit that day, you'll go run around. You know, they're just behind Panera, so it's not far away.

And just to, like Julia was mentioning in the presentation with the graph that you've seen in terms of turnaround time for each department, that report we pull out of project docs, which is our plan review system. In that system, unfortunately, we can't separate out the type of permit. So this is collectively for all residential, which includes basic remodel to new single family. So that's why we kind of put the disclaimer to say that It doesn't, yeah, it's not just specifically for small remodel. If Commissioner really wants to, we can ask our developer to see if they can help us break that down just so that it gives you a better sense of what it is. But usually like for kitchen bathroom remodel with the middle is five day turnaround. And we get that out pretty quick. Heat pump, water heater, ACs, that's two days for us. PV is the same thing as well. And so most of these smaller projects, we do get out like really quickly. And unfortunately we, NOT UNFORTUNATELY WE DO PROVIDE SERVICES OVER AT THE COUNTER. BUT WITH THE EVERY SINCE COVID AS YOU KNOW MOST PEOPLE PREFER JUST EMAILING US WHICH MAKES THEM GO THROUGH THE STANDARD PROCESS RIGHT IF THEY WERE TO SHOW UP AT THE COUNTER THEY WOULD GET REVIEW AND ISSUE OR FEEDBACK THE SAME DAY. BUT FOR SOME REASON WE DON'T WE HAVEN'T RECEIVED THAT HIGH VOLUME OF PEOPLE WANTED TO COME AT THE COUNTER. AND SO THAT'S THE. kind of situation that we're in at the moment, yeah.

Okay, thank you. That would actually be helpful information to have because when I look at this, I actually get the opposite impression. It says, you know, first round review, 19 days, and then, you know, on the graph, it says it looks like the number's somewhere around 27 or 28. So it's actually really interesting to know that there's a two-day turnaround on some. Okay, thank you. Any other questions?

Actually, I would have... So... The correct interpretation of the graph really is that the larger numbers that you're seeing here for permit, that's including new home construction and things like that. So that's really what's driving that. Great. I would actually, maybe I can also pick this up in the follow-up comments, but I would also suggest perhaps if you have a breakdown of the kinds of common jobs. I realize you don't pick the work that comes to you, but at the same time, it's interesting for me, you know, Commissioner Lenskog mentioned she got a heat pump, right? And that must be very common now. So, you know, I think that having those sorts of breakdowns are interesting. Maybe we're past the time when people are getting EV chargers or photovoltaic systems. You really commonly, but I think just understanding those kind of categories are actually pretty interesting versus, you know, versus somebody who's having a kitchen remodel. I think it would be useful to understand the scope of what's going on. In particular, I think when you're talking about something like if somebody is getting batteries for their solar, that's probably extremely, I'm sure that's very much, you have a recipe for getting that through. Great. Thank you.

Commissioner Lanscott, yes.

Yeah, just a quick question. So are you able to provide the information in terms of how much of, like, roughly what percentage of the permits are, you know, instant online versus, you know, more, you know, hands-on?

We can provide you with that report, follow-up at the moment. We can't call that number off the top of our head, but we can definitely provide you with that breakdown. Okay, thank you.

Any other clarifying questions?

Yeah, I did have some questions. So in the process that we currently follow, so we have to go through planning review before building sees the permits. Is that correct? Or is that a sequential process? Is that a way to parallelize the process? Is it already parallel?

I can answer that. So it depends on the kind of work you're doing. If you are looking to build a balcony, for example, that does require a planning permit. So that's not part of a home remodel, right? The scope of what we're looking at tonight. To the extent that these home remodel permits are concerned, those are parallel. They happen once building routes it, it routes it to all divisions and departments at the same time, and that's when that review occurs concurrently.

So is there a list of items that are out of the scope of the CWP because it is considered not a simple or a minor home remodel?

This is focused on small remodel, streamlining small remodel permits.

Understood, but is there a list of what would be out of that scope for the benefit of the public or the commissioner's review?

I believe it was described in the presentation, which was additions up to two.

Could we put up that slide if someone has that slide handy if it is in the presentation? Thank you. So on this list, just staying on the slide for a second, is there a view of how we compare on over-the-counter permits for these items, specifically things like HVAC and heat pump installation? And I don't know if home window replacement is part of this or not.

I'm going to let Phuong answer that. I mean, at this point, she doesn't have the data she mentioned, but I think that is data we could probably get.

Yeah, we can definitely get you the numbers for each of these type of permits.

So the question, just to be clear, is how do we fare competitively to the other cities on the over-the-counter permits for these categories? And if you could keep the slide up, please, if that's possible. And so on that slide, once again, is window replacement considered a small home remodel?

Yeah, window replacement is considered part of small home remodel.

And is that an over-the-counter permit today?

It can be over-the-counter today as well, yep.

Okay, because I had a resident that told me that they applied for a window replacement and the permit feedback said their fence was 12 feet. And I don't know what's the correlation between window replacement and fence height. And he thinks his fence is not 12 feet, so I can understand 7 feet being 8 feet, but I don't know how a fence goes from 7 to 12 feet in the resident's view versus the reviewer's view.

I mean, that's not a building requirements.

I can try to answer. I mean, to the extent that residents do show improvements on their plans and those do not meet the code, we will identify those and let them know, hey, you have an unpermitted addition or you have a shed that doesn't meet setbacks, things like that. We do identify that through the review process. And that is when, otherwise we would never know. There's a 12-foot fence. But in terms of what that... pertains to the permit itself, the window replacement itself, maybe not, but there is an unpermitted addition or structure on their property.

So if it is just a window replacement, not additional work as a part of that, but just the window replacement, so planning would still be looking at?

For bird safety, yes.

So you'd be looking at all aspects of the home besides the window replacement?

We would look at the window replacement itself for bird safety, but to the extent that something is indicated on the plans or is just apparent when you pull up something, that's when we would comment on it, yes.

And is this something that is seen as an area of simplification? Because the resident is now terrified to replace his windows. He's like, first of all, I don't have a 12 foot fence, I have a seven foot fence. Secondly, this is a neighbor installed fence that has existed forever. So just throwing out an anecdote, but the meta point being, I guess, he's now concerned about ever being able to replace windows, I guess.

Well, I mean, to the extent that, you know, the residents don't want us to identify any code enforcement, you know, like unpermitted things, sure. I mean, if that's the direction that we receive, we will not be looking at anything else.

Yeah, I think the question is at what point are these sort of focused on the item being applied for? For example, if they applied for a HVAC replacement, would that end up in an inspection of all aspects of this property for other violations potentially or

Not unless it's indicated on the plans. Like you have a 1,000 square foot home and you're replacing an HVAC, but now you're showing on your permits that you have a 3,000 square foot home as an example. It's a terrible exaggeration, but if that were to occur, we would possibly flag it.

And so on this point particularly, is the window replacement or HVAC replacement over-the-counter permits today?

yes they are okay so i mean this sounds like a one-off i mean i'd love to know the address i'm happy to look into it or you can tell him come see sean right i'm happy to look into that because yeah that seems very thank you i appreciate that thank you

well i'd actually like to follow up on that so in the process of i think it's fine to flag when things are not conformant um but especially if a resident was not planning on making a change elsewhere and you know nothing and it's not unsafe i guess the question would be if if staff notices something that's not conforming does the resident have to immediately change it especially if it's not a health and safety hazard or is there a leeway i'll let sean answer that

Right. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of an open question. We don't go there looking for this stuff. Right. But if it's something gross or, you know, grossly out of code, I mean, the code changes every three years. Right. So you're going to go to homes all the time and stuff that's like that's not code compliant. But, you know, it was permitted that way. So that's the key is like if we can see that this was done without a permit. then that's when it's going to be flagged, right? But, you know, I get that concern a lot. Like on Thursday, I'm going to the neighborhood block leader meeting too. And right, I've gone, this will be my second time. And that's always, if you come to my house, are you going to find all the other stuff? And it's like, that's not what I, you know, direct our inspectors to do by any means. We're there to, for safety, right? We want to make sure your water heater is installed correctly, your furnishing, mini split, you know, your solar system. But yeah, if they come to your property and I mean, you know, it's just the integrity of the job that if you see something that clearly was done without permits, it's going to be brought up. Right, that's the direction that's, I've always been provided and kind of gone with, right? So yeah, I mean, if that was something council wanted to, or the commission wanted to recommend, that's, you know, code enforcement's a huge part of what we do, right? It is a time-consuming function, so. But an important one, too, you know, in some aspects. But yeah, fence, is a fence gonna hurt anybody? No, probably not, right?

Well, how much time would you say that you spend on tangential discoveries unrelated to the thing at hand?

We are reactive, not proactive. So we don't drive around. We don't do it. The only reason I come for unpermitted stuff is because somebody has issued a 311 or something.

I'm not saying that you're going after it. I'm saying, you know, in your workday, how much of your time actually intentionally or not gets spent on this type of thing? It doesn't happen very often or it does?

No, it doesn't happen very often. Our inspectors usually go out there, and unless it, like, bluntly violate the code, then, you know, just a glimpse of it, you can kind of tell, but they don't just walk around the premises trying to find, you know, unpermanent works. Okay, thank you.

Yes. So I think Commissioner Rao and Commissioner Kerselter raise a really good point, because I've had a similar experience. It's like many, many, many years ago, I called in for a permit for a bathroom fan. Actually, I think I came in person. I came in person to get a bathroom fan permit. And the person I spoke to, and I don't remember who he was, very nice person, said, well, how old is your shower? Is it a low flow shower? And what about your toilet? Is it a low flow toilet? And you really need to replace those as well. And I was like, okay, I am leaving now. And I walked away because I wasn't ready to sign up for a 20. I never did get that bathroom ceiling fan, and I'm admitting it now in public. I'm sure they meant well, but that project creep there is definitely something to think about.

I can respond to that real quick. I mean, so the message I give to staff, right, is please don't do that. And the message is, if you don't touch it, we're not gonna make you update it, right? Like I said, the code's updated every three years. So it's, you know, but I, at least under my realm, yeah, guys, this is within the last 15 years, I'd like to know, oh, geez. Okay, anyway, so yeah, no, that is not the MO, right, so.

Yeah, I had a... Go ahead, Vice Chair Scharff. You can go first.

No, I appreciate that. I ran and I said, do we have to replace all the toilets in the house when we remodeled one bathroom and put in the low-flow toilet? I don't know. Is the inspector going to come and say, no, these are 1.6 gallons, and now the rule is 1.2 gallons. You have to change everything. And I said, I don't think we have to do that because we didn't... you know, we didn't touch those. But the contractor really doesn't know. They would probably like to sell you everything. So I think it's important for that to be clear to people as only the things you're touching. And I don't, yeah, it seems odd about the fan. If you're only putting in a fan, why would you have to change the toilet and the shower head? Anyway.

Commissioner Rao.

Yeah, thank you, Chair. So there's a Are there any metrics around if you did the first round of review comments, but then it came back for review again, are the subsequent set of review comments a follow-up on comments already given, or are we going into a new cycle of review comments where you go from here's the first round, and the second round is a totally new set, and the third round is a different set, or are there incidents where that has happened?

I've been doing this a long time, and that is a pet peeve, right? You get one shot at this. And so that's the comment. So we don't come up with new ones. The only time that would happen is the plans change during the plan review, right? That happens all the time. Oh, the owner wanted to add this, or I'm doing this. And then it might trigger a new comment that way. But at least myself, Fong, and the two other plan check engineers we have, no, that is not... not the plan. So yeah, if I hear otherwise, I would love to know that.

And does the system provide you metrics or alerts when that happens? Is there a way to track that? Okay.

No, yeah, it doesn't. We generate a plan check correction letter and it's uploaded into a folder, so it's not like it's, you know what I mean, integrated into the system. Yeah, that would take some doing.

Does the metrics that you collect provide you feedback on the experience with different reviewers? Sometimes the feedback we get from residents varies widely based on who they're working with. So just curious if there's any way that the system gives you feedback that allows department directors to look at the data and make corrective adjustments on What could we learn from a very positive experience versus something that could be better?

Certainly open to that. Do we hear about this? Yeah, just in the nature that we're code enforcement. People don't like being told what to do. So, you know, I hate that most people don't like me. And that's okay just because that's what I do. I signed up for it, right? So I would be hesitant in that. Because, yeah, I mean, do we hear about the plan reviewers? They're too restrictive. You know, they're too detailed. Yeah, we do. And then we always talk about it and kind of explain and get away from that, right? We want to just get the big ticket items. I can't get everything in the code on a set of plans. But then on the flip side, what you hear out in the field is, well, it wasn't on the plans. well okay where do i stop and begin right so it's kind of a fine line but yeah i mean you know there is like again the survey where people do i just rarely get a survey filled out and i think it's the fear right and i don't know why i don't think i come off that way but i i believe one of the concerns i heard from residents was that the survey includes the permit number which makes the survey non-anonymous and so it would be good if the survey can be fixed to not require that in that way people feel comfortable leaving feedback

Excuse me, Chair. I mean, this is really good discussion. I appreciate all the questions back and forth, but it sounds like we're moving beyond questions of presentation, so maybe it's a good time for public comment.

Yep, I was going to actually break for that pretty soon, so why don't we go ahead and do that then? City Clerk, do we have any public comments?

We have no speakers in person and no hands raised on Zoom.

All right, well, moving right back. Are there any other clarifying questions?

Actually, in trying to look at the way you do improvements and given the kind of tenor of the discussion we've had, I'm curious, I think it would be great to report on how you get, how you encourage uniformity among your staff. It's a little bit the opposite of, you know, did somebody have a good experience or a bad experience because somebody happens to be picky. It's more, and I think you actually almost addressed that a little bit when you said, you know, if somebody had raised this thing, you know, we'll have a discussion about that. And I think that that's actually an important part of that, you know. I think a goal, a good goal for this kind of review is that it doesn't matter who you got when you hit the desk or when they read the email, that you got a good consistent objective. And I would say those are the kinds of things where in terms of your measurable objectives, I think that would actually be a good one.

Just to follow up back on that one, I think that's why we're looking to the AI screening of fronts to give the resident that capability is for us to provide the checklist, the standard checklist, and they can just run through that to make sure if their project is complete and address our standard plan review comments. understanding that structural design is a little bit different and that will need our plan check to look into more detail, but the very basic non-analysis type of comments, we're looking at putting on the checklist and then having that AI run through that pre-screen. This should basically standardize a little bit more with a plan review process. Sure.

Sure, and I think that's also an opportunity for it to become clear to the public what it is, how are these criteria derived and driven. I also will say, maybe it's because I haven't done anything that's required a permit for a long time. I actually, you know, one of the things that kind of came up here, and I think this has been a principle we've seen before, you know, when a plan is presented, you review it in its entirety, not just focusing on the parts, the specific parts. I think that's actually a good thing, you know, when that highlights something that would be an issue, incidentally highlights something that would be an issue, I think hopefully the penalty of that is that it may be difficult for you to do the window change if you have something out of code and noncompliant, but that it doesn't mean that you're gonna get an order from the city to take your fence down, unless that's a true safety issue.

Any other comments? Yes.

Yeah. So a few comments. So one is this list of what is a small home upgrade and what is not. It would be great to get a more comprehensive list and just to understand what it is and what it isn't and kind of what is in the scope because I think that it would be great to have that be part of the conversation as well. And then for each one of them, if it's easier to do in the table, just be like, what is the current process? Is it online? Is it manual? Just so we understand. what is currently online, what is automated, fully automated, what is proposed to be automated, just so we have a sense for kind of the scope of the change that is being proposed. And then we can look at also the types of, I mean, all the permits comprehensively that this would cover. We love reading small print here, so we're happy to read it. And so that's one thing. And then the other thing is, yes, I would highly recommend So it sounds like a lot of the issues that you have been identifying is just and from just from reading the report, like people are not submitting everything they're supposed to submit up front. And then when that happens, there's a lot of churn. And that's where the delays happen. Right. So. I think maybe it's because it's different from city to city, and maybe it's because you're dealing with people who don't do this on a day in, day out basis like you guys do. It would be helpful to understand, is there a pattern to the types of things that are being missed? We know exactly where the problems are like they always miss you know like in the case of I'll just throw that out but let's say no it's HVAC they always miss the the decibel report you know it's like I don't know or or you know the if there's any patterns like that where it's like oh yeah that's an easy fix you know it's like we can just be like did you include the decibel report you know did you include the blah blah blah um so I think that would be really helpful so uh can I read the letter now all right Yeah, absolutely.

Sorry, were we still doing questions or are we interleaving?

It seemed that people had moved beyond questions at this point, but you can still ask questions. Okay.

We can come back with more questions, right?

Yes. Go ahead. Okay. So I won't share the name, but it's a big company that does a lot and I asked them how many permits they do in Cupertino and they said about 50 a year in Cupertino and they work in the South Bay. So this is what they wrote. They said, we process a large number of permits in Cupertino each year and we'd be glad if our comments can help improve the printing process. Our main concerns are simple permits cannot be submitted through the online portal and must instead be submitted by email. I don't have the details to what that means. Applications submitted by email often experience significant processing delays. the permit review process generally takes longer than in many other cities and this is for heat pump water heaters in other jurisdictions these processes are much more automated which helps reduce turnaround times other than that we've had a very positive experience working with the city staff and we appreciate their assistance

No, thank you. Appreciate that. No, and that's noted. And that was kind of mentioned in our portal. Yeah, it's lacking. I don't know about significant delays on the emails because I think we're stick around 48 hours. It's funny, people, you know, they don't want to come in, like Fong said. And so, yeah, we get so many emails every day because nobody wants to come. If people, if it was half and half, that'd be really nice. But so it takes a day or two for us to process those, right, which is unfortunate. And two, a lot of these, they could go online and do it. They will be able to. Well, the heat pump one will be able to. But some of them, they can go online, but yet they don't want to mess with it, right?

I've heard from several contractors that they're not very tech savvy and they would much rather use email than the online portal. So that's a barrier. So I think this is why I go back to, you really need to be talking to them because I think you'll hear what their pain points are because you know, you guys are in this portal day in day out, but I heard this over and over and again from several of my contractors, you know, the solar guys, the roof guys, the plumbing guys, you know, it's like, they were just like, this portal is really difficult, we don't want to deal with it, we'd rather just send an email, and it's just like, ah, okay, well, you know, so, yeah, so.

Vice Chair. Oh, sorry, you looked like you were reaching. I am.

So I have a question, because it affected me. When they submit plans, if the project takes a long time, like, our contractors specified a specific bird safe light fixture. And by the time it was time to put in the light fixtures that was discontinued. So is it normal to specify like a specific model exact thing for that? I don't know.

I can help answer that. Okay. Yes, it is because every light fixture that is proposed can be different. and we've had instances where people propose something and then we go out to do the final inspection and it's completely different and doesn't meet the requirements either. So it is easy when we're doing the review and when the building inspector goes out and matches up what you said you were gonna put in, it's easy for them to do that inspection to make sure that it's all what was approved.

Okay, and when it doesn't match because it's not available, what happens then?

You can just revise the plans. It's not a hard process. You would just come in. You would say, hey, you know what? I just want to revise the plans to not have this light now. I want this one. It still meets the requirements. We do the review, and it's just a little revision to the plans.

So can the homeowner do that, or does it have to be the contractor?

I will look at Sean for that.

You know, if the plans are stamped and signed, it's that person kind of has the copyright to that. So we would need their authority to change their plan. So typically, but if it's a designer, the homeowner drew their own plans. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Yep.

Commissioner Rao?

Yeah, I had another question on the turnaround times. I've heard anecdotally that the turnaround time from planning is significantly longer than building, and perhaps understandably so. They're dealing with commercial projects and larger project, different scope. Not a like for like comparison, but... Is there a way to look at this to see how you might eliminate planning review for a certain category of permits where it may be feasible? Maybe looking at competitively how are other cities doing this? And I guess the one approach to simplification is how do you make things faster? The other approach is how do you eliminate friction and reduce steps and reduce load on staff as well? And so maybe that's something to look at to see. Are there other cities doing things in certain ways where planning does not need to get involved and are there some best practices there that will eliminate that and reduce load as well? On the similar lines, ministerial approvals, looking at other cities, what they do versus what we do and how we might look at ministerial approvals as a way to simplify as well.

Sure, I mean, to the extent that building staff can also review the zoning requirements for setbacks and things like that, if that review can be done at a one-stop shop, planning can be eliminated from that review. But if the community continues to have a desire to ensure that buildings and structures meet setbacks and all the stuff that's in the zoning title is complied with, that review does not occur in the building department. They only look at the building code. So to the extent that those permits don't need to be reviewed for that, we don't need to look at plans.

Yeah, I'll leave the feedback at a high level, right? Look at the competitive data to see if there are opportunities and leave it at that.

All right, so I did have some comments on this. First one, absolutely agree with Commissioner Lindskog. I think when I was looking at this, I was thinking about where is the data? I think you are actually sitting on a lot of data from the applicant side on what are the total SLAs for a given project, and maybe for the longer ones, what is causing the delay? And I've spoken with staff about that before. So I understand why that data was not looked into because it would be a very manual exercise. You'd have to anonymize all the data and make sure that you're just not giving away any personal information. But to the extent that that could be done, I think it would actually, like there's no need to survey the public. Like you have the data right in front of you actually. It's looking at your Accela and seeing where did projects get stopped? What were the questions that people were asking? or what are the documents they were missing or things like that. So if there's a way to look into that data, I understand it would be a cleaning exercise to get through it, but I think you'd probably get a lot of the answers in terms of what is causing delays. I do think that I support the clear checklists and instant online permits. I think that's great. So I know one of the pain points that was listed was, or not the pain points, but the cause of delays was just that a lot of it is on the contractor end, on the applicant side. FULL DISCLOSURE, I'M CURRENTLY GOING THROUGH RENOVATION RIGHT NOW, AND EVERY TIME I THINK THERE'S AN ISSUE AND I REALIZE, OH, THAT WAS ACTUALLY ON THE GC'S END OR SOMETHING THAT THEY MISSED, THAT SAID, I THINK WHEN APPLICANTS ARE CONSISTENTLY MISSING THINGS, AGAIN, THIS IS LIKE WHERE ARE THE TRENDS, WHERE ARE THE THINGS CONSISTENTLY MISSED, AND IF THEY ARE, I THINK THAT WE, THE CITY, CAN ASK, how can we make that information easier for them to find and access? So one thing I noticed on our website is that when I go to find building permits, there is no one page for small home upgrades. And I think it's actually a little bit hard to find the permit form itself and all the associated checklists and requirements. And I've noticed for some other cities, it's a pretty clear flow. You go to a page that shows you renovations by home type. So like ADU, small home upgrade, major residential, things like that. So you sort the information by home upgrade type, and then within that you lead people to all their information. So I think there may be something that can be done with the website actually, and that would help free up staff because then you can, instead of fielding all these questions, you can just point them back to the website. So hopefully that would save you some time, and maybe helping clarify some of the code requirements as well. And then, you know, I would say to the extent that, I know it can be tricky, but to the extent that specificity can be increased on where needed, I think it's helpful for the customer. Like, you know, currently where the back and forth is happening for us is sometimes there's certain measurements that are needed, but the contractor did not provide those exact specific measurements. And so like the more clear that you can get, I actually think more information and more direction is better. And then, I think as a whole, I think staff is already doing a lot of work here. Oh, and the final one. So we had discussed this earlier, but if we can get better data on the turnaround times for different types of home permits, I think that would be really helpful because it sounds like not all of the permit types need streamlining. Some of them, if they're going through in two days, we can just move past that and just figure out which ones are. But yeah, I think as a whole, it's the whole user journey on both the applicant and the staff side of where we can speed things up. So those are my comments for now. Any other comments?

Yeah, I'd be happy to add some comments here. Thank you, Chair. So I would recommend if you do a follow-up survey to the applicants in particular and to residents to try and get AI to write the survey. Because AI can be pretty good at this if you can particularly give it some prompts to look at how do you simplify this from the perspective of the applicant and from the perspective of residents as the stakeholders. If they were the stakeholders, how would you simplify it and have AI write the survey? This is a pet peeve of mine. I see the surveys and I feel that didn't really ask the question if I were a resident or an applicant that I would like to see asked. And so would love to see some objective non-involved entity like an AI tool write the survey. So just something to look at. The other thing that I want to bring up is when I look at these permit streamlining efforts in progress, It may be worth looking at other things we should stop or deprioritize in order to focus on the things you need to do because there's so much ahead of you that you haven't even looked at yet because you don't have the applicant feedback and the resident feedback and maybe that wasn't the direction and we need to either give you direction here or otherwise. But I would encourage looking at what you stop doing as one of the things to simplify as well. And AI... Your benefits vary. It may hallucinate, it may do whatever. So if you ask the applicant whether AI is the single burning topic on their minds, they may tell you what really matters for them. So that's something. The other thing I'd add is it'd be good to get a clear benchmark on the experience with the consultant staff versus in-house staff. and use that data to make the case for whether the staffing has to be in-house for this critical function. We have a lot of other places that may not have the kind of impact that planning and building have on our city from a long-term perspective. So just looking at is it better to get in-house staff in certain cases because this is a critical function. So maybe that's something to look at. and I will yield my time so someone else can.

Sorry. Go ahead. Okay. I just have a quick comment. I do think we do need to do a survey because I agree there's a lot of data that's available in your databases. But it would be really interesting to see because I think there is a lot of data just when you talk to people into, oh, I got really confused when I did this and I know I may have missed something. So you're not going to get that kind of qualitative feedback just from looking through the admittedly extensive data you guys have. So getting that, I think, would be valuable. I would also really like to see if we can get a sense for how many people did not apply for permits because they thought it was scary or confusing, and what is the low-hanging fruit And or they don't know that they need a permit. Like, did you know you need a permit to replace a bathroom fan or or window? Right. It's like, oh, gosh, no, I don't think I do. But like, oh, OK. And if we made it really easy and it was cheap and online and instant, you know, like so getting that context, I think would be really interesting as well.

Just what you know, so I guess I'm sending out any type of survey to people's email that I have. Right. So I'm not going to be hitting anybody that hasn't come and visited us here. You get what I'm getting. I don't have everybody's email. I mean, I can put something on my Web site, but I have a survey on there that nobody puts anything on. So I want this to be meaningful. So, you know, if we're going to go down this. this thing which is fine it's you know the database i have is from the permit record kind of info right hitting the developers the contractors and the homeowners and getting some feedback so i mean i'm just throwing that out there where you know but the questions you're kind of after i hear you loud and clear yeah i think the city as a whole can solve that one well true yeah we have emails i guess

I just want to add to that comment really quickly. If you might consider removing the permit number so that the survey is anonymous and maybe also use some of the city outreach methods, you know, email and social media and so on. Hopefully you can get some more feedback there.

Commissioner Fung.

Yeah, I had a couple comments. So one of the things we talked about that I mentioned a little earlier were maybe kind of bidding up and categorizing some of the really common ones. I think that that would be a point of interest to the council. And I think that also, when it comes to setting your performance indicators, that you probably wouldn't have a special evidence if, for instance, solar installation was on the common list. That would be the areas where demonstrate that you excel. I think that there's a good feedback there because there are many, many things that your department would have to deal with. The common ones, those are the ones you really wanna put the focus on and emphasize. I think it was notable to me, at least, that there was a comment about your staffing being lower. So first of all, I would say the information you gave us around the consulting, your use of consulting is useful to have explicitly in that report. But I would also say this is also a good context to say what would another person mean, you know, the way that question is often asked is, what if I had a different tool? So the one that I'm sure that I can guarantee the one that the council wouldn't want you to say is, we'd like to replace the portal. Although I think, from the people, what you've heard here and what we've heard from you, that actually would probably be a high payoff thing. So I think that would definitely, you know, try to include some analysis on that about what would that mean if, you know, I'm sure that's going to be a big investment, you know, half a million bucks or a million bucks, right? What would that mean to your ability to, you know, to do your jobs and serve the public? I think that's it for me.

Commissioner Rao?

And I was going to add, you know, on this topic of outreach, we have our ATP members here. They seem to have done fantastic outreach. I see there are yard signs all over the city. Maybe the ATP team might share some best practices on how to get yard signs all over the city. And we might get some planning and building outreach through yard signs or whatever has worked for them. for the community, I guess low tech works. The other thing that might work is a banner on Stevens Creek for whatever reason people have to drive on Stevens Creek, they see the banner. So maybe those are low tech methods that might work.

I had one other comment, and I'm not sure how much this may apply to the small home upgrades versus larger ones, but a feedback I did receive from a general contractor was around sometimes the delays can happen when the plan check reviewer changes. So I'm not sure how often that happens with a small home upgrade, if it's not as much as more large things.

The turnaround time shouldn't be affected by any plan reviewer. So like our typical is the initial reviews 15 business day and then subsequent reviews are like 10.

And it sticks with the same person, I think was part of the question, right? Yeah, we don't switch it up.

Unless they go on vacation and then they- Happen to be gone and people are like, hey, Fong's on vacation.

I want my plan, then I'll dive in and do it. But otherwise you start it, you finish it. Yeah, that's the most efficient way, right? So-

Got it. Great. Any other feedback from commission?

Yeah, I do have one more. So I know we talked a little bit about what's in scope and what's out of scope, and certain things might be considered not a minor remodel or a simple remodel. And maybe that's an area that you might also look at to see if something is outside the definition. How do you pull it into the definition of simple remodel? Because if your processes are different for minor versus non-minor, are there projects that can be left shifted so that they also gain the benefit of this? Thank you.

If I can just comment quickly on that. That's why I asked for the list of what they're in consider minor versus not so that we as a body get a chance to give input on that.

Yep, I agree with that as well. Okay. And with that, then we will conclude the study session and we will move on to again, I flipped the order. So we will move to staff and commission reports next. Do we have any staff and commission reports?

I actually don't have a staff report for the commission. All right.

Any commission reports?

So no staff reports, but are there new projects that are in the pipeline that staff may want to talk about? Any new or any progress on?

there isn't anything that is ready for the commission's review at this time. So till that point, we can't really discuss the projects. All the projects that are on the city's website are currently in review.

And do we think ODS might be ODS?

At this point that project is a little bit on hold because we've kind of shifted our focus on the health and safety element and other project the housing element update so that has been on ice for a little bit but once we're able to get those two under our belt then we'll be shifting our priorities.

Any other commission reports?

Yeah, as a commission report, I want to reiterate the resident feedback that we got. The concern around going from a window remodel to a fence has severely undermined confidence in some of the ability to reach out. So we just need to think about that. Just want to share that feedback and make sure we can. I will follow up on staff's offer to see how we can help that incident out. That is not an isolated episode. I've had another episode or two where people have been really concerned about the scope expansion on what they thought was something they were starting with and went somewhere else beyond that. Thank you.

All right. Then we will move to future agenda setting. Any agenda requests?

Thank you, Chair. I would like to see if we can agendaize a panel session with applicants along the lines of what we just finished up, if there is a way to do a study session with applicants to get feedback, but not just as a survey, but in the presence of commissioners so that we can ask the applicants questions and we can have a more informed conversation. I don't know how we would agendaize that, but I will leave that for staff to consider. Maybe that's something we could do. Do I have a second?

I will second that, and I think we will discuss that with staff. Thank you. Thank you. Any other agenda requests? Yes.

Applicants for projects that come before the Planning Commission, or are we looking at smaller?

Small, that was in the context of the CWP, so looking at how do we simplify permits for single-family homes, yeah.

If I may ask a question about that, I mean, is that part of this project that was presented tonight, or is that a completely separate thing?

I don't know. I would leave that to staff's discretion on how you would treat that. But as an agenda item, I believe that just provides for some informed deliberation and study that would be for staff to then look into how you might want to use it.

Well, Commissioner Rao, perhaps would it make more sense to form a subcommittee to research applicant perspectives on small home upgrades? Is that kind of the intent?

I will leave that to the chair's discretion along with the staff.

Okay, so maybe we have this as an agenda item to either form a subcommittee on applicant perspectives or hold some form of study session.

Yeah, that's acceptable, thank you. You know, Chair, since the subject of streamlining permits for small home projects is the topic tonight, it may be appropriate to form a subcommittee now. if you're ready, rather than to agendize an item to form a subcommittee.

If that's something that we can approve the formation of now, I'd be open to that.

May I ask the city attorney a question? That agenda item was closed to my understanding. Are we reopening that?

It's a study session. I mean, sure. Chair, would you be willing to reopen the study session?

Yes, I would be willing to reopen the study session to discuss formation of a subcommittee.

Thank you.

Okay. So would the next step on this just to have a vote?

Yes. So I guess in that context, I move to propose the formation of a subcommittee for the study of applicant feedback in the context of single-family home permit simplification for minor remodels. Was that a second?

Yes, I had seconded it earlier, but I'll second it again. And it sounds like Commissioner Linscock has a comment.

No, I was just trying to understand. So are we talking kind of like doing focus groups with applicants of small...

Too early to say. You know, you would form a subcommittee, so you would take two folks and you vote to appoint them, and then those two would decide the format in which they're going to implement this process.

Got it, okay. Can I make one comment? I don't think it should just be single-family homes. It could be townhouses or condos. So I would suggest you modify that, just... Somehow. So accepted. Even apartment buildings, right?

Well, how about we limit it to R1 and R2? Is that okay?

Well, it should be limited to the item that's subject of the study session.

Okay. And that includes any small remodel, not just a single family home, correct?

Correct.

The subcommittee should review the presentation to see the limitations for what the item was about.

The agenda item, Vice Chair, says simplification of small home upgrades.

Is the purpose of the subcommittee to recommend, but everyone on the Planning Commission would participate in whatever format the subcommittee decides for the interaction with the residents? Is that what we're talking about?

As the mover of this motion, I would say this is no different than any other subcommittee. The subcommittee would come back to the Planning Commission and then the Commission Basin, and we may then make that a broader set of recommendations from the full commission.

So, sorry, can you restate the purpose of the subcommittee?

The purpose of the subcommittee is to bring back feedback from applicants for single-family home, small... small upgrades and the streamlining of those permits.

I think to clarify, it would not be single family home. It would be small home upgrades as defined by the study session.

Correct. By the building department. But the question is whether you're bringing back feedback from those people or whether you're bringing back a recommendation about collecting feedback.

Yeah, that's what I thought it was. Because I think we should all be involved in that hearing session, listening session. So if the purpose of the subcommittee is to come back with a recommendation on how we collect that feedback and then we all participate in that feedback session, I'm supportive of that. But if it's that the subcommittee would go gather that feedback and then bring it back to the Planning Commission, then I'm not supportive of that.

So originally, this item was suggested as a future agenda item, and I was advised to use a subcommittee. So I'm looking for guidance from all sides, though we have lost the building staff. So we've actually reopened the item in the absence of the staff that were here originally.

Personally, I would like the subcommittee to go out and gather the feedback because you are not gonna get applicants to come to this meeting or contractors to come to this meeting to give feedback. I mean, we would have to trust whoever's on the subcommittee to go and do the outreach.

And so as a point of inquiry to the CAO, I guess, do we need two motions, one to form a subcommittee and then to appoint members?

I'm candidly, I'm not sure how this body as a whole can go out there and solicit information that Commissioner Lindskog is suggesting, and so I'm a little baffled. I simply heard the suggestion to form a subcommittee on the item that's within what was discussed, and I thought my suggestion would just facilitate you know, handling this business now, but everyone's raising some really good questions in the discussion, and so maybe we should go back to square one and think this through a little more carefully. Perhaps the chair can discuss this with the liaison to come up with the best process to get this, because I do understand that obtaining the feedback of applicants and contractors is a critical piece of information to get. The question is, what's the best way to get that? I mean, candidly, if there were public comments from applicants and contractors, that would help solve part of the problem. So maybe it's a matter of... you know, better publicizing that this is item on the agenda? I don't know. So I'm gonna suggest, Chair, that we go back to future agenda. There's a motion, there's a second, and then, Chair, you can have this further discussion with the liaison as to how best to proceed.

Thank you, Attorney Wu. I withdraw my motion to form a subcommittee based on advice from the attorney, and we may go to future agenda items where I can re-propose the item.

All right, so we are reclosing the study session.

Well, before you close that, though, we did give direction to the building department to go out and collect that feedback. So there isn't any reason that you would do this in a subcommittee. I personally doubt that it would be possible to have a productive subcommittee that has balanced, you know, that gathers balanced feedback, you know, in a way that can be done better than what we've asked the building department to do. Otherwise, what you'll get is, I know this angry guy, right? We've had a number of kind of anecdotes here, which are, you know, the personal experience of the people on the Planning Commission, right? So to try to avoid that problem, I would just say, you know, we've given a clear direction to the building department.

All right, thank you. This has been an excellent discussion. We will reclose the study session, go back to future agenda setting, and it sounds like there was a motion to have this agendized as a future item that I will discuss with the staff liaison.

And so the item that was proposed in seconded remains, or do we need to restate the future agenda item one more time? Just to be clear, Commissioner, this is restated. I PROPOSED A FUTURE AGENDA ITEM TO HAVE A STUDY SESSION WITH A SELECTION OF APPLICANTS THAT MAY ALLOW FOR AN UNDERSTANDING OF THEIR PAIN POINTS IN THE PRESENCE OF COMMISSIONERS AND TO LEARN FROM THE STUDY SESSION ANY FURTHER IMPROVEMENTS WE MAY MAKE.

All right, and that was seconded by me. So thank you very much. This has been a good discussion. We will move on if there are no other future agenda setting items. Okay, we have a request for a five-minute break. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Bye. Bye.

Thank you very much, everyone. We will now return to the meeting and we are on agenda item three, which is the review of the draft active transportation plan to provide a recommendation to city council. And do we have a staff report?

We do, chair. And presentation. All right. Is it showing? No. All right. There we are. Good evening, Planning Commission. My name is Matthew Schroeder, Senior Transportation Planner, and I'm gonna provide an update on the ATP and where we're at in the process. So the last time we were before the Planning Commission was in February, where the Commission.

Through the chair, we don't see it on Zoom. Are you on Zoom?

I'm not on Zoom, I'm through the desk here.

Okay, we see it now, thank you. Okay, thank you.

So we were here last in February where the commission provided some feedback that was about the project prioritization criteria and the project list specifically. These recommendations were consistent with what we heard from the BPC, which was that the school proximity scoring might be overweighted and that division zero high injury network scoring should be increased. So we then went to the city council in April and communicated those recommendations from the commissions. We also presented all the phase two materials that were also presented to the BPC and planning commission. At that meeting as well, we walked the city council through what it would look like if they chose that recommended scoring approach. So projects that relied more heavily on the school proximity scoring would fall, whereas projects that naturally relied on the Vision Zero scoring would increase. And then if a project was located on a suggested route to school or a high injury network, those remain relatively flat. So at that meeting, council provided direction to staff to go and rescore the projects using the commission recommended scoring adjustment. So staff then went and rescored the projects as part of phase three. And the core of phase three was really just consolidating all of the work that had been developed in phases one and two, and putting that into a comprehensive document, the draft ATP, for public review. So the document, is comprised of all the materials that were developed in phases one and two, the existing conditions, the network recommendations, the public input received, and it's all consistent with the direction that council has provided throughout the course of the project. So the draft plan was available for public review for 30 days, and most of the comments we received were similar to the type of comments that we gathered in phases one and two. There were specific comments and requests for sidewalk gap closures. There were things that were actually outside the scope of the ATP, like, railroad right-of-way acquisition. There were a bunch of minor comments related to the style of the document, so request to change map symbology or choose a different image for a specific page. And then the only substantive change that was made was we added language in chapter one, really emphasizing the importance of e-bike and electric micromobility education, specifically for students. This was previously included in chapter six as a programmatic recommendation, but given the community's strong interest in the topic, we felt it was important to bring it forward in the plan, make it very visible and really emphasize that this is something that's a community priority. So the next steps are to go to the BPC for review and then to city council for adoption consideration in September. And the recommended action is to recommend that the city council adopt the active transportation plan.

Great, thank you David and Matthew. And we'll bring this back to the commission now. Any clarifying questions? All right. Well, I do if I'll go first. How many of these projects so you know, I the list is very extensive, hundreds of items. How many do we intend to get done within like a two to four year cycle?

There's no specific number. Project delivery will depend on a variety of factors. We'll look at what's possible within the pavement maintenance schedule, what grant opportunities are present and we could pursue, what is their community support of at the time, and ultimately project delivery is gonna depend on the council authorization and being able to move the project through the CIP process.

Okay, so Council looks at the list and they pick there. They're not necessarily going, you know, top down from highest number of points to lowest. They could literally pick from anywhere in the list.

That's correct.

I see. Okay, that's helpful. And so I vaguely recall this, but projects cannot get removed from this list once they're on it. Like if the community doesn't agree with them or anything, how does that work?

There's no reason that council would not be able to amend the plan to remove projects. It just doesn't make sense and it's very uncommon.

Okay, got it, thank you. And then my final question was on one of the pages it said the improvement costs are estimated at $43 million and I know that's probably a very high level estimate but does that include grant funding or not and what's behind that number?

So we had HMH as a sub to come up with those construction estimates and that's looking at all of the projects in the list and their total construction costs.

Okay, not including grant funding then, okay.

No, so that's just how much is it gonna cost if you wanted to go out and build all the projects in the list.

Got it, okay, thank you very much. Any other questions from Commission?

Yeah, I had a couple of questions, but just to clarify, isn't it, I think the majority of the bike path projects are some of the most efficient in terms of how much grant money we're able to get, if I remember correctly, is that right?

A lot of recently completed projects have been funded through grants.

Yeah, okay, so a couple of questions. One is, on page 86, which is the recommended transportation technology corridors, I noticed that Foothill Boulevard was not included, and then the lower half of Miller slash Wolff, so the second half of the south end of Miller, which I've driven on many times, and cars go really, really fast on that, and it's kind of crazy. Can you talk a little bit about why those two were excluded?

Yeah, so in the, when we were here last, I think, February 10th, the FEB 10 staff report kind of lays out the methodology for selecting those corridors, and it was first based off of looking at the Typology C intersections, which were the recommendations for traffic signal and control improvements, and then their relationship to the Vision Zero High Injury Network. and then once we had those established where within those corridors are their highest rates of collisions where the primary collision factor can be associated with red light running or some sort of confusion at the intersection and then lastly we looked at which intersections the city actually owns and maintains because that's going to determine our ability to actually put technology in the field

Okay, got it. And then I had one other question. Oh, yeah, the shared use path on the Union Pacific Railroad Trail. I think we would all love to see that happen as soon as possible. But I was just curious that you included it. Have you had any conversations with UPRR? Because last I checked, they weren't picking up the phone when we called.

No, there have been no new conversations with the railroad, but having a project like that included in a long-range plan is advantageous in the event that things change quickly.

Thank you.

Any other questions from Commission? Sorry, Vice Chair.

Oh, so I was wondering about the enforcement side of this. What kind of funding is needed to do more enforcement, especially of... Well, I'll give you an example. I crossed with the traffic signal on Pacifica and De Anza, and this car zoomed through, almost hitting me. The person driving it is in this room, actually. I won't name them. But... I know the sheriff does this kind of enforcement of walk signals and pedestrians on some intersections. How much money does it cost to do more of that type of enforcement? Is that hiring additional deputies or just redirecting their efforts?

That's a good question, Vice Chair. We don't have budgets calculated for increases in enforcement. I think initially it would be just having discussions with the sheriffs and directing them towards what we have heard or seen or experienced as being the problem areas of the city, and relying on their expertise as well to place their officers where they're most needed. And if we find that in the future we do need to supplement that, we can look at diving into the budget. As well, with the technology corridors, one of the tools there is red light photo enforcement and so staff is currently doing some research on other cities that have red light photo enforcement just to learn whatever we can about how it works with the thought of maybe one day if we implement those as one of our technology corridors hopefully that would relieve some of the burden on the sheriffs for red light running to focus efforts elsewhere. That remains to be seen. It's part of what we're studying.

Right, I mean, I see it in page 70 and other places, and so I presume there's no grants for that kind of thing like there is for actually physical projects like bike lanes.

Grant opportunities for projects like that are limited.

Okay, all right, thank you.

Commissioner Rao.

Can staff comment on which roads and how many will have street parking taken away if this is adopted?

none are going to have street parking immediately taken away that was addressed through the scoring criteria so we do know that there are projects that have potential impacts to certain roadways we don't know the full extent of what those impacts actually are but when we went to go score the projects because we knew that in certain areas we are going to have to remove on street parking in order to accommodate the improvement, those projects were automatically deducted 10 points. And then similarly, if there were any potential impacts to arterials, those projects were also deducted 10 points. So we don't know the full scope of what those impacts are, but we're trying to address that within the project prioritization process.

And how would we know and when would we know what the full impact of those are?

So through this plan, we also developed the project impact assessment guidelines, which were reviewed by the planning commission in February. And that states that if a project is initiated by council, and once we are at 30% design, those impacts are learned. We'll then present the findings to council. Council will make a judgment on whether or not further analysis is required to fully understand those impacts, what the traffic operations issues are as a result of the project, and then they can either discontinue the project, modify the design. So that is something that is also being proactively addressed through this plan.

And would we be getting grant funding if that 30% design stage council recommendation was to not proceed further? Would that be a cost borne by the general fund and by the city, or would that be something that is grant subsidized?

There's different types of grants. So there's grants that will fund design. So we can say that we want to pursue a specific program in order to bring a project at 30%. Just because we are going to make modifications to the design doesn't prevent us from being awarded that grant funding. And once we have a 100% design, It's regardless of what the initial project recommendation in the plan is, the mere fact that we're looking to secure grant funding will be awarded grant funding for a project, even if it went through that impact assessment.

And the process you just described has... our city ever used that and been successful to offset the cost of a thirty percent design uh... to only to decide that we will not proceed further and yet be offset by grant funds no so this is a new process that we're setting out and

I think there's a little bit of confusion here. So on the design side of things, if council initiates a project and says, hey, we want to look to see, they can even say, all right, at a conceptual level, what does this project look like? A 5%, 10% design. We can try and go and secure grant funding for that or 30%. That's a project in itself that... grant partner would look at an award, and then, you know, council will tell us, all right, you're at 30%. These impacts aren't acceptable. You need to change the design, and that's fine. And we'll go and bring the project to 100% in its new form, and then we'll go out and secure capital funding for the program through a separate grant program or funding for the project through a separate program.

And are we aware of any other cities that has used grant funding for 30% design level studies before the city chooses to actually proceed or not? Could staff comment on what is an approximate cost to the city if we should have to pay for a 30% design in order to determine if we proceed further or not?

It depends on the project. It depends on the project. Depending on the project, it is potentially something that could It could even be done at staff level or with just some very minimal consultant support. If we're just talking about a 30% design, not full construction documents, you just need a basic layout and some traffic analysis and the extent of which we could potentially even do in-house. If we did have to hire a consultant, we'd be probably looking at 10, maybe 20,000 on the high end, depending if we had a major roadway. But it wouldn't be a huge sum of money.

Thank you. And could staff remind me once again if we, I believe we assumed that we would be grant funded for this phase one, phase two, and the process to date, and we needed to accept the report in order to make sure those grants did actually pay out. Is that...

That's correct. So the ATP is being funded through our TDA3 allocation, which I think is what either Palo Alto or Mountain View is also doing. And in order to receive reimbursement, we need to complete the project.

Thank you. And so would you be able to clarify if council rejected this report, we would not get the grant funding, but we would have to accept in order to get the grant funding? Yes. But we could, but council could accept with certain, under what conditions could this be accepted with grant funding received?

Council just needs to adopt the active transportation plan.

Okay. Well, is there a difference between accepting a study or a report and adopting?

That might be a question for Michael. In my mind, no. It's the plan that the council has agreed will be the roadmap for active transportation for the next five or 10 years.

And that also might be a question we need to ask MTC staff who program TDA $3.

So if council decides to not adopt this plan, what is the cost of the general fund?

$315,000. Okay.

And adopting the plan means adopting all the projects in it, or?

Yeah, adopting the projects, adopting the programmatic recommendations. And again, these are just suggestions. And ultimately, all of the projects are going to be delivered through the CIP process.

And so the recommendation from this body and potentially from council could be that the report is adopted. but with a substantially modified recommended project list? I'm trying to understand, what is the parameters we can work under so as to not lose the plan?

The council can decide whatever project list they want to be included in the plan and call that an active transportation plan. But just to clarify, adopting the plan and 170 some odd projects, does not commit the city to completing 170 some odd projects at any time in the future. So we just need to have the plan. So council adopting the plan is not council's promise to complete the plan. We have an adopted bike plan, we have an adopted ped plan that has plenty of projects still unfinished or not even started because plans evolve over time, communities change, and MTC and the agencies understand that. So we just need a roadmap to get us in a direction. If it changes later, if the plan is not filled out, that's fine. We just need to have that roadmap in place. Thank you, Chair.

To clarify on Commissioner Rao's point, so this commission could adopt this plan, but with some recommendations for consideration by council, correct? Okay, I see. Any other questions? Commissioner Fung?

Yeah, actually, if I could ask a little, you talked about the rescoring that was done on projects that had things like removal of parking impact or removal of driving lanes. I'm curious whether... you know, the motivation for some of these projects, you know, is to get a positive, you know, safety outcome. And when you score something downward, that may have impact on the, you know, what you could deliver. And I'm curious, I wouldn't ask you to do it on everything, but I think it would actually be very useful if... if that were something that could be, that effect could be illustrated so that people could understand the scoring impact. In particular, I think this comes into play on the kind of really big projects that Commissioner Lenskog had brought up. I think that, maybe I'm wrong, you know, Foothill is probably driven by the fact that we don't control a lot of that the territory there, so maybe that's a different factor, but a Miller, that would be something where it's pretty much our choice and there's an impact that's coming from the changing the scaling model. And so I think that it's kind of interesting, if you look at the Vision Zero objectives, what was the effect of that downscoring by 10 points? I think that that actually would be a very useful thing to illustrate, at least in a couple, maybe that example. Just so that I remember one of the feedbacks that we had had was around these things that had to do with waiting. The waiting for schools had been very, very high in the previous thing. So I think that to make this effective, to maximize the effectiveness for the final adoption just maybe to understand a little bit deeper in illustrative cases of the effect of the scoring.

Any other clarifying questions from Commission?

Yes, Chair. I'm looking at this outreach phase, and thank you for all the sincere efforts that went into the outreach. I was happy to witness some of that. How During the outreach phase, did we communicate that to residents that we might be losing street parking? Was that explicitly stated during outreach to residents that we could lose street parking because of this project?

No, that was not communicated. Again, we don't know the full extent of what those impacts are. So it would be misleading to potentially misrepresent what is actually going to be built when we're just trying to gather public input about whether or not people support these kinds of improvements. And again, we tried to address those impacts with the project scoring. So understanding that on certain roadways, parking removal is going to be required and that project is going to be deducted and ranked appropriately on the project list as a result of that and again we have the project impact assessment guidelines which try and mitigate those impacts whenever possible but do you think the outreach could have asked a question with all of the caveats you just paraphrased you know is there a way that outreach could have occurred with all of those caveats included It's just not something that's typically done in an active transportation plan when we're looking at, all right, at a very high level, given the width of the roadway, what's possible here? And you lay out, okay, this is a project that's gonna provide the maximum safety benefits within what's available to us. So, Those conversations about impacts happen later when we're at the design phase, and that's when the community will provide their input and council will make a determination on, all right, is this something that we want to do, understanding that we have differing public opinion on this specific project.

Do staff believe that that disclosure may have materially altered the feedback that you could have received during outreach?

I don't. I was at all those outreach events and you saw me. You saw me at, I don't know, six maybe, several at the Senior Center. And candidly, people were very supportive of the projects, of the plan, of wanting to make the city more walkable and bikeable and those conversations about impacts and what those mean and the realities come later when council is going to be making those decisions. So I don't think the outreach was impacted by not fully disclosing the fact that there are potential impacts that are currently unknown. Thank you.

If I could just add, I think we're kind of unfairly picking on parking as an impact as well. It's getting a lot of discussion here, but you know, every project potentially has some impact to somebody about something. You know, parking might impact half a dozen projects. Other projects like trails might go behind residences and there might be those kind of impacts and we haven't discussed those or never have in the past. You know, Ragnar Creek Trail 60, 70 people would have said that's going to be a very big impact. Not parking, but an impact. Turns out it wasn't. No one's complained about it since the trail opened. So every project potentially has something that's going to affect somebody. And that's something that we would flesh out as Matt is saying, you know, when it gets to the point that it's being considered for inclusion in a CIP or if it gets to that point, you know, 30% design phase and we will determine what the impacts are, whether it's parking or something else and make that disclosure to the affected parties.

Thank you. I appreciate the perspective, but I was there in many of those outreach events, and it is my belief the seniors would have reacted differently had they been asked the right questions, including with all of the caveats, if they'd been told, you might see some parking impacts that would have impacted the feedback we got from the seniors.

Yeah, the last thing I'll add is this plan in comparison to the 2016 plan is way less ambitious in terms of the actual network recommendations. So the 2016 plan had envisioned class four bike lanes all the way on Stelling, all the way on Blaney, all the way, I want to say Homestead. And we've kind of really pulled back from that, understanding that there's a lot of driveways there, and those projects are going to be both technically challenging and from a community perspective, you know, deliverability is going to depend on public buy-in, and those could be potentially contentious. So when we came up with these network recommendations, we were very mindful to limit those impacts whenever possible.

Thank you. I will leave my time for other commissioners.

Vice Chair?

So when you have an item with a lot of dislikes, like on page 30, the Kim Street and Ragnar Creek Trail intersection, did all those dislikes, were those all from people whose properties back up to the trail? I mean, could we, like David said, we saw the same thing with the part of the trail that's been completed and now, Nobody complains about it, everybody uses it. So I'm just wondering where all those dislikes came from on that item.

Yeah, I think that map came from phase one. That's since been removed from the final draft because it's kind of confusing to read. A couple of the maps were removed, so we have the final draft document that was included as part of the packet. But to your point, yes, that is when you looked at the written comments, there were comments from folks along the creek there who were concerned about the impacts.

Any other questions? Commissioner Rao?

Yeah, I want to go back to are staff able to quantify if you have a certain number of streets where you think we could lose parking? It's not confirmed, but do you think we might lose parking?

Yeah, we know what those are.

How many streets do we think we could lose street parking?

I think it's three. I think there are Stelling, portions of Stelling, not all of Stelling. Blaney, portions of Blaney. And Miller, south of Stevens Creek and north of Cayo de Barcelona.

So to play that back, portions of Stelling could lose street parking. Yeah. Portions of Blaney could lose street parking. And what was the other one?

Miller.

And portions of Miller could lose street parking. Is there any targeted outreach like we do with planning and building to do a thousand feet radius impact notice? Have we done any sort of outreach to those potentially identified projects where they might want to provide additional feedback to the outreach?

These are just concepts. If in the event that council chooses to move forward with those as a project, again, that's stuff that will be addressed with our project impact assessment in the event that council looks at those parking impacts and says you know what the safety benefits of this project outweigh the on-street parking impacts and we're gonna move forward with the design there would be extensive outreach to those residents to notify them of the full extent of the impacts so they could be aware of the process and the project

And are there any scenarios where a project may not actually be its own CIP and therefore could actually proceed without coming back to council?

There may be times when minor striping improvements would happen, but none of those would be projects with impacts. Those projects, understanding the community dynamic and public feelings towards things like that, all of those projects would go through the city council for them to decide on whether or not that's something they want to pursue.

And using a recent example, were floating bus stops a CIP project?

Yes, that was part of Stevens Creek Boulevard 2A and 2B.

Help me understand that. So it was part of the Stevens Creek Boulevard 2A, 2B?

Sorry, that's phase 2A and phase 2B of the class four separated bikeway project on Stevens Creek Boulevard.

And so the CIP was the overall phase 2A, phase 2B project, not the floating bus stop itself. Correct.

The floating bus stop was a component of the larger project.

And so in this particular report, the identified three streets that we just mentioned, would they be part of a larger project such that residents may not notice that there is impact of street parking because some larger project was adopted?

No, they would be, because of that being the component, they would go to council.

So any street parking removal will go to council?

Yes, it has to go to council regardless because removal of street parking requires an ordinance and a modification of the municipal code. But even aside from that, the project itself would come to city council for approval before that time.

Are there scenarios besides the buffered bike lane or the class four bike lane where we would still lose street parking because the street is not broad enough to both accommodate parking and a Buffered bike lane, I guess.

Not a separated bike lane, but a buffered bike lane. The three that Matt mentioned are the only streets in the plan that we foresee could potentially impact on street parking.

And those are separated bike lanes?

No. The Miller project, I believe, is just a Class 2 bike lane, standard bike lane, and then Stelling is a combination of Class 4 and Class 2B, and similarly with Blaney. But Blaney would be Class 4 over the highway and then Class 2B through the residential.

Is there a map you might project while you're describing that? It's really hard to... both visualize and follow. I don't know if you have a map in your presentation or the staff report that can be shared as you're answering that question.

Yeah, I can look into the staff report.

While he's looking, Chair, at some point we should move on for deliberation. But before then, take public comment.

yeah i think we if it may take him a while let's break for public comments city clerk do we have any public comments we have one request to speak virtually jennifer griffin welcome jennifer uh thank you very much can you all hear me yes we can hear you okay thank you uh thanks to everyone to staff and everyone in the city for participating to try to make

our active transportation plan a good one, that the main goal of this is that everyone is safe. And I think that we have had a lot of discussion about that, lots of different input, lots of different plans to make sure that Cupertino has a robust plan that will make sure that everyone and everything is safe it's a it's very very difficult and there's a lot of external and internal pressures with this type of thing but i think that there has been a lot of work good work done to try to make sure that everyone is being heard in that regard um i will just make a few comments i have been extremely concerned about children on e-bikes i think i have mentioned this before there have been many many accidents in other cities and in in areas i i'm in santa cruz a lot down at the rio del mar beach areas and i cannot even begin to tell you what i have seen down there we have 10 year olds on e-bikes speeding up and down rio del mar beach with no helmets doing wheelies and they're going fast, so I'm not sure what type of class bike that is. I have seen adults too exhibiting extremely poor judgment. I mean, crossing in front of traffic where there's no crossing area, no helmets, riding recklessly in and out of traffic. So I'm not blaming children. Adults have been doing this too. One of the problems is that I do not see a lot of enforcement, but then again, it's difficult to enforce something like this. I hope in Cupertino that there can be a robust education of schools to make sure that children that are riding e-bikes or scooters or something with a motor that they know what they're up against and that their parents realize potentially the risk that they are taking if the children are not properly educated. I think that we can make this safer. One of the cities recently has said that no children under 12 years old can ride e-bikes to school. I think the city said no child under 12 could be on an e-bike. that's a bit drastic but then again that is one of my main concerns the other thing is making sure that traffic flows smoothly we um we want to make sure everyone can drive and be safe and whatever you're doing please be safe thank you thank you jennifer we have no remaining requests to speak chair thank you so we'll bring it back i think staff have you found the answer we have the map up now so if we can share screen

So here we have the network recommendations map, which is included on page 62. We'll start on Miller, which... Can you include the chair?

Yes. Okay, there we go. I think there's a lag in the string up on Zoom, so I was going to say we might want to...

So on Miller here, we have the standard bike lane, which is just the parallel striping north of Coyote, Barcelona, south of Stevens Creek. Over here on Blaney, we have buffered bike lanes all the way to the overcrossing of 280 and connecting to Homestead. And then we have a continuation of the existing buffered bike lane on Stelling down to Prospect. And again, only class four over interstate I-280.

And so when you say we don't know if we might lose parking, what does that really mean?

It means we don't know the number of parking stalls that were moved in order to build the project.

So we know we will lose parking, we just don't know how many.

Correct.

Oh, so does the state require that cities dedicate part of the public streets? For parking lots if there's not sufficient off street parking Why are we no concerned about You know, it's great to have a parking space but you know, we maintain those streets we spend money on paving them and I'm just concerned about You know, the cities are very limited in imposing parking mandates, parking minimums on new projects. And I don't want to be encouraging developers to say, oh, we're not going to include enough parking because we're just, you know, our residents can just park their excess cars out on the street and the city's not going to ever want to use that space. real estate for something different like a bike lane. I just don't like the whole idea of exporting parking onto public streets and this goes with ADUs as well. You can't require parking for ADUs, but you lose the off-street parking if it's ADUs in a garage. And yet, I don't like the whole expectation that, we'll just export all these extra cars onto the streets instead of using them for the public benefit. So I guess I differ a lot with one of my fellow commissioners on that.

All right, do we have any other questions?

Yes, Chair. So can staff guide us on this recommended programs versus encouraged? What is the difference between these and how should we view them while adopting this or making recommendations?

Can you please clarify that point?

I'm looking at the final draft. It has a section called recommended programs with a number of policies and then there's a set of encouragement programs with a number of recommendations.

Yeah, so those are just the programmatic recommendations, and they're broken out into different categories. So I think there's education, engineering, enforcement, and another that I'm blanking on, but they're all under the umbrella of programmatic recommendations, things that are non-infrastructure projects.

And where in this category list is technology-based enforcement, such as speeding cameras and red light cameras?

It's probably in enforcement. Let me see, though.

I see tickets and bike patrols and targeted. I am seeing enforcement, but I only see three categories here, which is traffic tickets, bike patrols, and Target. Okay. So this is a large report. Is there sections that we should ignore and focus on other sections?

Are you specifically asking about red light cameras?

Yes, red light cameras, speeding cameras were not part of the enforcement. I guess I'm on page 70 of this report.

Right, but they are contained as projects within the technology corridor section of the... Okay.

All right, I think we're probably ready to move on to comments. So any comments from the commission? Commissioner Linscott?

Okay, so a couple of comments. One is, well actually it's also a question. So are all parking spaces the same? Are some used and not used? Or are they all like used?

There's different utilization across the city. That's something that we would learn as part of the 30% when we do the impact assessment and do a in the field parking utilization survey.

Okay. So, but it's safe to say not all parking spaces in the city are always used.

depending on the time of day.

Correct. Okay. Thank you. So I guess my comments on this is I actually want to commend the staff. I think you guys have done a really good job of trying to listen to all the feedback you've gotten over the last year now from three constituent bodies and plus the public. and balancing all of that, rejiggering the scores based on all the feedback you got, and trying to come up with a plan that satisfies all the competing requests you've been given. Yeah, I mean, it's like you said, it's nowhere near as ambitious a plan as the previous one, but, you know, times change. So I think, you know, you guys have done a really good job with this plan, so I just want to commend you guys on that. Beyond that, yeah, I mean, I think I asked a lot of the questions I had, so I think I'm good otherwise.

Any other comments? Commissioner Funk?

Sure, I'll echo that as well. I think that I felt that the update is responsive to the feedback that we had given, maybe with that one caveat in the area that I had commented on before, I don't know that it's necessarily your charge to solve the political problem of coming up with a set of recommendations. There is no mechanism other than to have a waiting and it seems like it's sensible, seems like it's applied. I think that these particular changes, we're very responsive to the varying feedback that you're getting. I would just say that when it comes for adoption, if there's a mechanism through which you can illustrate the effect, what is the effect of making this weighting change so that people have visibility on that? I think that would be, That would be really the only addition I would say. Also, I think I'd ask some questions about e-bikes. It's amazing to me how the e-bike map can look so different than the bike map. I would love to talk to you about that sometime. It's funny to me. I don't really see how that could be. Again, I found it to be very interesting. Something new on every page. Thank you.

Great, I'd like to make my comment. So I agree with the commission. I think there's some excellent projects here and I know that a lot of work has gone into it. I think the pedestrian improvements especially will, you know, I hear feedback from the community about concerns about crossings and I think that that'll be really helpful. And I think for me, the one area that if we were to make a recommendation to council that I would like to maybe caveat or recommend that council potentially reconsider is since the last time that we saw this report, we have seen an evacuation study. And I think we have seen a lot of concern from the community around their ability to get out from the west side safely. We've even seen... community resident made traffic reports and evacuation reports. And so we know there's a lot of concern from the west side and their ability to get out. And specifically, I'm looking at Foothill. In the evacuation study, there are portions of Foothill that are multiples over capacity from a volume to capacity standpoint. And so I think knowing this new information that we have now, and I understand that this is an active transportation report, and it doesn't quite look into evacuation, but at the same time, I don't feel like we should look at transportation in isolation without considering the other factors that impact our roadways and what we might want to, for example, be able to use emergency shoulder lanes for in the event of an evacuation. MY MAIN ASK WOULD BE IF THIS COMMISSION IS IN AGREEMENT THAT WE MAKE A RECOMMENDATION THAT COUNCIL MAY WANT TO REVISIT SOME OF THE ITEMS THAT, SOME OF THE LIST ITEMS THAT IMPACT THE WEST SIDE. THAT'S MY COMMENT. ANY OTHER COMMENTS? COMMISSIONER RAU?

YEAH, CHAIR. THE WEST SIDE IS A VERY BROAD TERM AS SOMEONE THAT LIVES THERE, SO I DON'T KNOW THAT WE Depends on what is west side, could be west above, could be west of De Anza, but let me just sort of offer up that the sidewalks would be, in general, a very good project. Are there sidewalks proposed on Schofield Drive? I know there's a lot of projects here, but is Schofield and De Anza?

If there's sidewalk absent, there's sidewalk proposed.

Okay. So in general, I'm supportive of sidewalks where feasible. Is there a distinction the report makes between where a sidewalk could be constructed without loss of homeowner property versus where we'd have to encroach into homeowner property? For example, the section of McLellan opposite Monta Vista High, is that a section that you'd have to encroach into homeowner property? Is there a distinction that's been made?

No, again, that's a level of specificity that's beyond this report. We do make a distinction and make clear that there are certain neighborhoods within the city that have a self-designation as semi-rural, which exempts them from some sidewalk requirements. So again, that is a level of detail that's beyond this high level document.

Yeah, so in general, I'm supportive of sidewalk improvements, except where we may lose homeowner property, where I think we need to be a little bit more careful in applying judgment to those scenarios. I know it's a balancing act, but I would be supportive of sidewalks more broadly. I'm supportive of the pedestrian scale lighting, and obviously much of the pedestrian improvements. Have staff clarified which of these pedestrian improvements would need a no right turn on red?

No, again, this is such a high-level plan, and when you're looking at a specific intersection, that kind of detail would be learned once a project has been initiated and we have a consultant on board to look at what makes the most sense from an engineering perspective.

However, out of the categories that you had, where you had, I think, recommendations, right? Was that the category? Yeah, engineering-recommended programs. I think you had certain programs around re-engineering the intersections. I think it was curb extensions at intersections. Would curb extensions imply a no-right turn on red?

No, and we do have a programmatic recommendation to look at right on red, but the program recommendation, when you read the description, makes clear that right on red would only be allowed if it's clear that there's not going to be any negative impact to traffic operations.

Pedestrian improvements generally don't trigger no right turn on red restrictions as well. Generally, it's either because of A particular bike facility or other safety concerns not directly related to pedestrians. I don't think we've, I can't think of a location in Cupertino with a no right turn on red due to pedestrians, except maybe Bob McClellan with the scramble phase.

And how about curb extensions?

They don't trigger no right on red either.

Would they impede right turns on red because of a curb extension?

I mean, if it's a single lane approach and there is a car at the intersection on a red light waiting to proceed straight forward but can't because the light's red and there's a car behind him that wants to turn right but physically can't because he's blocking the lane, he won't be able to turn right. But if the car that wants to turn right is at the front of the line and it's a red light, he can turn right.

So if we take the example of, let's just say, Stelling and Stevens Creek, that is an intersection today that allows for right turns on red traffic, is able to make right turns on red to the extent that you don't have the limitation you described. Would the proposed projects under this engineering recommended programs impact Stelling and Stevens Creek's ability to make right turns on red?

Again, we don't know. These are just concepts. And if there are impacts, they'll be presented before council, and council will make a judgment call on is this okay or is it not okay.

Will every one of the projects listed here, I know there are several pages worth of projects in this list, will every one of them go back to council for recommendation and direction?

As Matt mentioned earlier, smaller projects that may only involve striping or minor improvements probably would not because it would be clear that there would be no impacts. Anything larger than that would probably necessarily go to council if only because there would be a budget request involved.

So if you adopted a non-separated bike lane project, but it could be implemented using just striping, and it could result in loss of parking, would that go to council?

Yes.

And that is not just a loss of parking that's causing a loss of parking, but it would still go to council. It's not a CIP, though.

But it probably would be a CIP because a project like that would be of a scope where it would take more money than we could just accomplish with our operating budget. So it would most likely go to council. But because of... What we've put in the ATP about projects that would potentially have parking impacts would be evaluated at the 30% level and go to council. This would fall under that category. And so we would go to council. It doesn't matter if it's a concrete buffer or a stripe buffer or what the physical improvement is that triggers the loss of parking.

THE PROJECTS THAT HAVE BEEN COMPLETED RECENTLY WHERE WE WERE ABLE TO DO THEM AS PART OF THE PAVEMENT MAINTENANCE PROJECT OR PROGRAM, THOSE WERE THE CRISTO RAY BIKE LANES AND THE RODRIGUEZ BIKE LANES. essentially existing conditions, but we realize we can make improvements there. Similarly, when looking at this plan, the projects that we would look at when resurfacing streets would be the Bike Boulevard projects. So where can we lay down those shero markings? That's what we're talking about.

I will leave my time.

Are there any other comments? Vice Chair.

So on Bollinger where one side is San Jose, what's San Jose's position on this bike lane project?

We haven't had a conversation as part of this plan with them, but they were previously supportive of the Safe Streets for All grant that we were previously awarded. So I would imagine that we would have the same support in the future for a project like this. But again, that's a project that would go through council approval and authorization.

Okay, and on the very eastern side here, you have something going through Lawrence Middy Park and going across or under 280 or over 280?

Yeah, that would be under 280 to connect to Stevens Creek.

So that's an existing underpass, right? Yeah. Okay. And you don't go any further east into San Jose, I guess. Okay. Okay. Yeah, that's my questions. Thank you.

Any other comments or questions? Thank you, Chair.

So I'm looking at this bike network and there's a fairly large number of buffered bike lane projects. But you only mentioned three where we could lose street parking. Are we saying the rest of them would narrow the lanes and therefore we would not lose street parking?

No, I was mistaken earlier. So Bollinger would also be that, would go through the same process. When looking at other projects with impacts, non-parking related, I think it's Mariani and Lazaneo, the center left turn lane there, in order to accommodate the bike lanes, we would need to eliminate those. And as far as I can recall, those are all the roadways.

Okay, so which of these projects would lead to lane removal?

A lane reduction? None of them.

No lane reductions.

Well, we don't know. So Bollinger, again, potentially could. Um, but that would be part of a study and similar to, you know, what we were going to look at under the safe streets for all grant that we, we previously were awarded. We would look at several, um, concepts, one of which would be a removal of a lane, and that would go through a large public process and city council and, um, everybody would be aware and have a chance to, So that's one potential project that would remove a lane. And then as Matt just mentioned, Mariani near De Anza, if we were to put bike lanes on that street near the De Anza intersection, There would be one of the, I think it's a left turn lane that would potentially need to be removed just because there physically isn't enough space for a bike lane. It wouldn't be any parking removal because there's no parking there now. But it would be a turn lane that would potentially be removed. And that's also something that we would have to study the capacity of the intersection.

How about Rainbow between Stelling and De Anza? Is that? think there's a proposed buffer bike lane on rainbow yeah the consultant didn't communicate that there would be impacts on rainbow that's a pretty wide roadway yeah we could we could most likely accommodate a buffer bike lane or something similar to that on rainbow without impacting the parking and let me caveat the question without impacting parking and without lane reduction So you could obviously keep parking but lose a lane.

We would not lose a lane. OK. Yeah, so again, let me reiterate a point. Any project that has a parking or a lane reduction impact, regardless of if we're talking about it right now, if it's on the plan and it has one of those impacts, would go to council with the impact.

And given staff has seen all of the feedback that you have received through written comments and public comments and extended amount of feedback, do you believe there is public sentiment that would like to not see lane reduction or do you believe lane reduction is actually a good thing?

I personally believe there's plenty of appetite for making these types of safety improvements around the city.

With lane reductions?

Yes, if necessary. Again, we would do the outreach and go to council, but my own experience, probably Matt's as well, is that I've not received much, if any, negative feedback regarding lane reductions. We haven't done many of them. And similarly with parking removal.

And staff have seen the feedback you've received in written comments and public comments over the course of the various projects that you've had in the recent?

Yes.

Okay, and you believe lane reduction is, okay, thank you.

Any other comments, if I share?

So the lane reduction, how many inches is each lane reduced?

Well, I think when we're talking about lane reduction, we mean lane removal.

Oh, lane removal. Okay, I was thinking like on De Anza, I think the lanes got a little bit narrower, didn't they?

Some of them got narrower, some of them got wider.

Okay, and so how much narrower did those get? Like half a foot or?

It varies, some half a foot.

Okay. And I'm looking back to Bollinger. So I'm thinking of Palo Alto where they kind of encourage people to use the bike Boulevard on Bryant, which goes all the way into Mountain View and discourage, kind of people from using the really busy street like Alma Avenue. So I'm just thinking, you know, Bollinger is really not that pleasant of a street to bike on if people know that there's the alternative of the bike boulevard, including Regnard Creek and Cala de Barcelona and Barnhart, whatever. So do we... Any education campaign to say, hey, you know, you really might want to think about using the bike boulevard instead of these major arterials?

That could be something that we would consider as part of a plan if we were going to do something like that, absolutely. Okay.

Any other comments? Yes, Chair. Yes.

So can staff talk about the time sensitivity of moving this through its process? Is there any particular timing to making sure the grant is actually received versus not received?

I would need to confirm with MTC staff to understand what our obligations are under TDA3. We had provided a project timeline, and I'm not familiar with MTC requirements as they relate to TDA3 projects.

And is this the final round of reviews you expect? I know it's never final, but do you, is it your belief that this is the final round and it goes to council for final approval?

Yes, absolutely. When we went to council in April, the feedback we got was very positive. The only recommendation that they had was regarding doing the relative weighting, the criteria based on what the commissions had recommended. That was pretty much the only comment, and we did that. So I'm confident that we've got a document that the council is going to be pleased with.

And is this already on the calendar for council?

I believe it's tentatively scheduled. These things have a way of shifting.

Do you know what that date is?

September 14th, I think.

Okay, September 14th. So that's less than six weeks away before we have a new council that comes in with an election. Is that right? September 14th? Correct. Okay. Is there any reason to do this six weeks sooner rather than wait to see a new council and what they might and what the direction might be from a new council six weeks later?

Not that I can see. We've gone through a very intensive process of full discussions with commissions three times each. Council will be the third time. Extensive public outreach. It's kind of time to wrap this up and move on with delivering projects.

But staff does observe that we could have, we do have two council members changing and potentially we could have three council members changing.

Councils change, yes, but we have work to do.

But a project of this magnitude that lasts for a decade, do we believe should be adopted six months, I mean six weeks before three or five council members could potentially be changed?

Again, my opinion is that we're ready to adopt.

Chair, I want to recommend maybe taking a motion and then to facilitate further discussion.

Yes, I would like to make a motion that the Planning Commission adopt the draft resolution recommending that the City Council adopt the Active Transportation Plan, but with the additional note that Council rethink or reevaluate projects that might impact evacuation risk in very high fire hazard zones. And that would be my motion.

I will second that for the purpose of discussion.

If I can just make a quick comment on that. As I think staff has repeatedly told us over and over and over again, these are concepts. These are not real projects yet. And when the actual projects come in front of us, Each project will be evaluated in terms of its impact on evacuation routes. I mean, I'm looking at a lot of the projects on the west side. A buffered bike lane is just paint on the ground. It doesn't impact evacuation. So it seems premature to be, I don't know what we are asking the council to do because there's no specifics yet. So it feels premature to be making that kind of recommendation.

I will answer that. So there is a proposal for a separated bike lane on Foothill Boulevard, which would narrow the lane it would render the shoulder lane of that road unusable in the event of an evacuation. And for me, this is really just, I feel that we have a responsibility to acknowledge when we approve this entire plan that we have noted that there is a risk with one of these recommendations that it's not that I, approve all of this without even considering any other safety ramifications, because the truth is I do think that we have a responsibility to acknowledge these things. So that is where I'm going with that. And the report does not really mention evacuation risk anywhere, and so that is why I am calling it out separately for the public record that we are aware that some of these projects have that impact.

and so would the chair accept a friendly amendment to consider smaller sized motions rather than make the adoption as its own motion but to consider smaller motions so we can deal with the individual changes that we would like to see

How would you propose that working? That we just approve the entire thing in one motion?

I would just omit the adopt the project part and state the rest of your motion. So I believe you read out your motion. If you just left out the adopt part, we would just tackle that one piece and then we could do a few more.

All right. So I have a little different comment. So first of all, I wish there was a like button because I really didn't think your comment was appropriate. And I wonder whether if we make a recommendation, I think that I think that would be useful is in the context of how this decision, of how the recommendation is made, if there was a scoring mechanism that measured these projects against the evacuation routes, but that that not be something that has to be done before it comes to council. So I think the recommendation is you would have a report like that, that would be something that would come into consideration when the projects actually move forward. I think that is important, and with all due respect, Commissioner Linscott, I think it is important enough to recognize that we, that we wanted to make that recommendation.

Yeah, no, to clarify my comment, I don't mean to say evacuation is not important, and I think your recommendation is absolutely correct. So I think what I was reacting to was the wording that said to maybe strike projects that are on the west side, but if we have a motion that says add evacuation routes as a criteria in evaluating these projects, I'm 100% in agreement with that.

Yeah.

So I wouldn't recommend that we change, ask them to change the weighting that was done to date, just that there be a recommendation that they develop an addendum.

I would be open to that. So I will amend the motion to, let me think about this, that council consider an addendum weighting that considers the impact to evacuation risk of any project.

I'll second that.

And so, Chair, that would send it right back to the drawing board to do more work to add an addendum, is that right?

No, I think, I mean, what, you know, within our appendices, one of the ones, I don't know if it would be the one where we talk about the 30% design or a different one. We'd have to look and see the appropriate place. We could add language somewhere to that effect that, you know, every project, regardless, I mean, even when they don't have parking impacts, I mean, any project would also be considered in light of impacts to, you know, potential evacuation routes.

So kind of like an overlay, right?

Yeah, we'll figure out how to do it before we get to the council.

Yeah, I don't know. I don't think you even need to complete that before. I think it just needs to be, you present the report as you have today, with whatever changes that might come up here, but as it is today, with the intent to develop a scoring system that would become part of this recommendation down the line.

Sorry, are you recommending that an actual criteria be added that provides a particular score in terms of impact to evacuate? Because I don't know how that would ever be able to be evaluated quantitatively. I think it would be more of a quantitative discussion once we consider a project that you know, is this something that could affect evacuation routes and how do we determine that impact? But I don't know how it would be included as a criteria.

Okay. Well, I mean, that's interesting, Red, because I would think that what that would be is if you have a proposed project, then there would be an overlay over the mechanism, you know, the pathways that people believe would be the evacuation routes. And then you measure the impact. So, you know, so realistically, something that's way on the east side probably doesn't have... doesn't have a scoring effect, whereas, you know, the change on Foothill, you know, on the southern part of Foothill would be... Yeah, it would probably only be a small handful of projects that... Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think the important part really is, I agree very much with your sentiment that this is at a point where it's ready to go, so I wouldn't want this to be a barrier, but at the same time, You know, I think that you'll certainly get back to the council, you're gonna have the same question. You know, if you're talking about changes, you know, making a significant change on Stelling or, you know, on Bubb or on Foothill, then it would be, have you considered what the evacuation effect is?

Great, so are we ready to maybe have a vote on this?

No, no, we are not ready to have a vote here. The motion was still a discussion stage. I'm not ready to have a vote. So could staff talk about the changes around Finch Avenue, around Cupertino High? There's a number of changes where separated bikeways are proposed. How does it affect the school drop where people do pause by the curb to drop people off without impeding traffic behind them?

Again, this is just a concept, something similar to the Lawson Bikeway project. We would work closely with the high school district to deliver the project to minimize impacts to traffic circulation and pick up and drop off. And it's a pure concept. So we're talking about unknowns.

So more broadly, how do we believe the school drop will be affected around any of our schools from the proposed? We don't know. we would we would look at that do we have any preliminary assessment of what the impacts might be no no okay chair i'm going to make a substitute motion okay and i'm going to make a substitute motion that the project be excluded from the proposed separated right lanes and the streets that were specified that could lose parking. I believe there were three streets that were mentioned.

Sorry, I think that what we had wanted to do, if you're going to make a substitute motion on an entirely different topic, I think we should have motions on individual items. Let's get this motion done and then we'll move on to your separate motion next. It sounds like it's on a very different topic, if that's okay.

That would probably be okay. If you can read your motion one more time.

THE MOTION WAS NOT RELATED TO THE OVERALL ADOPTION OF THE ATP. IT WAS THAT COUNCIL CONSIDER AN ADDITIONAL, WELL, ACTUALLY, SORRY, LET ME THINK ABOUT THIS. SO AFTER OUR DISCUSSION, IT WAS THIS WOULD BE A MOTION THAT COUNCIL consider an additional, is it, did we call it like a matrix or just a, it's not a matrix, it's a, how would you describe what we discussed?

I would, I think the best place to put what you were talking about would be in the project impact assessment guidelines where we make clear that for certain projects with those kinds of sensitivities that they undergo some sort of evacuation route analysis as part of, you know, the project delivery process.

Okay.

So we can build that out.

Okay. So my motion would be that we add on a modification to the active transportation plan that factors in the impact of evacuation risk in very high fire hazard zones. That was my motion. I'll second that. And City Clerk, may we please have a vote? Thank you.

Can I ask, so you were not adopting the proposal as submitted? That would be a separate... Yeah, so this is an addendum, not...

Yes, we're voting on the addendum.

Okay.

Yes, thank you.

Do you guys understand me?

The motion carries unanimously. All right, thank you. And now, Commissioner Rao, you may make your also addendum motion.

And I want to reiterate, you know, supportive of much of what is in the report for the sidewalk improvements. I think the sidewalks are critical. Safety in the absence of sidewalk is a huge issue. I walk on Schofield. I walk on many of these sidewalks that you mentioned, Alcalde, Fortel. McClellan it is scary to walk on some of these now. We may not be able to lose Land that blocks to homeowners, so I would I would make a motion that we exclude from the report Any recommended projects that impact? Street parking Lane reduction and introduce separated bike lanes. So three things, street parking, lane reduction, and separated bike lanes.

Can I just clarify, do we have the authority as a planning commission to exclude, or are you recommending that we recommend that council excludes?

Yes. The motion would be to recommend that council exclude from the report any projects that impact street parking, cause lane reduction, or involve separated bikeways.

Okay. I'll second that.

Okay.

Could we have a vote? I would just comment here that we have talked about the fact that any project in that category would come back for evaluation as part of the CIP. So I don't think this is necessary.

The motion fails with Chair Kasol Chiron and Commissioner Rao voting yes.

All right, and so I, do you have any other motions?

Yes, I'm going to attempt to try and see if we can do this differently. I'm going to propose a motion that we exclude, could staff help me out here, what were the three streets I had, Blaney, Miller, and what was the third you had?

We had Blaney, Miller, Stelling, and Bollinger all with potential impacts, as well as the center turn lanes on Mariani and Lazanillo.

Okay. So I'm gonna make a motion that we exclude the projects that would potentially impact parking on Blaney, on Miller, Bollinger, and Stelling from this report, or recommend that council exclude these from the report. Do I have a second?

I think I have a sense of how commission will vote on this. I mean, I will always second it.

Okay, could we have a vote, please?

THE MOTION FAILS.

CAN I MAKE A MOTION NOW? I'M GOING TO MAKE A MOTION THAT THE PLANNING COMMISSION ADOPT THE DRAFT RESOLUTION RECOMMENDING THAT THE CITY COUNCIL ADOPT THE ACTIVE TRANSPORTATION PLAN AS RECOMMENDED BY STAFF.

I'LL SECOND.

All right, may we have a vote, please?

Chair, I thought we were doing many motions to work through the recommendations in the doc. We haven't finished through that yet, so maybe consider some substitute motion here.

I would like to... You'll know after we do this vote? Yeah, exactly.

Let's cut to the chase. Let's vote.

Well, we could have a substitute motion if we had a second. So we haven't made a motion. We don't have a second yet.

I think the motion was seconded, right, by the vice chair? You know, maybe for, to help this be a little bit more efficient, if you could discuss what other substitute motions you were thinking of making, because I think I have a sense of how they might end up, and I'd rather...

Yes, I would want to explicitly make a motion here just so we have on the record how we stand on these various streets and neighborhood impacts that we are going to be causing and what our positions on these are. And so with that in mind, I would like to make a substitute motion that we exclude the proposed bike lane project around Finch Avenue and the related streets around Cupertino High.

You know, I understand where you're going with this, and I think out of respect for the others on this commission and their time, I think we know that we don't have consensus on this. We've already had two failed motions, and so I think I'd rather just, I think the point has been made.

I'm making the motion. Do we have a second? If we do not have a second, let the minutes reflect. The motion was made and no second exists. Is there a second for the motion that we not impact the streets around Cupertino High with a proposed bike lane that may impact School Drop and Pick? Is there a second for that?

Yeah, like I said, you know, I think I would, you know, I can read the sentiment of this commission, so I will not second it.

I will hope the city clerk reflects the motion occurred and the motion failed. Thank you.

Are we ready to vote? Yes, we are.

Could the chair once again repeat the motion on the table that we're voting on?

I believe the motion was just to approve the draft resolution. That's adopted.

It was presented.

Adopt the draft resolution.

Adopt the draft resolution, yes.

The motion carried with Commissioner Rao voting no. All right. Thank you very much.

So I think that concludes our agenda items and the meeting is adjourned.