Planning & Transportation Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. I'd like to call to order this regular meeting of the Planning and Transportation Commission for Wednesday, May 27th, 2026. Could we call the roll, please? Yes.

Chair Chang? Here. Chair Gee? Here. Commissioner Aiken? Here. Commissioner Peterson? Here. Commissioner Heckman? Commissioner James? Here. Commissioner Templeton? For the record, we have quorum.

Okay, so I just wanted to make an announcement that both Commissioner Templeton and Commissioner Heckman are running late and they will be listening in to the meeting. And then we'll read it out into the record once they arrive. So do we have any agenda changes, additions, or deletions?

Um, they just one note that there was an item that was previously going to be on the agenda item for in regards to parking programs update that is not going to be heard this evening.

Great. And so now we have in person, the next agenda item is in person public comment. So there will be time for public comments that are not related to items on the agenda at the end of the meeting via Zoom. So right now it's in person public comments on items that are not otherwise on the agenda. And do we have any comment cards?

And to the chair, we have not received any public comment cards.

okay great thank you so on to city official reports assistant director thank you

We'll jump in and take a look at your upcoming meetings. Take a moment to share the screen. Your next meeting is scheduled for June 10. And at this time, the item that's scheduled for that is the special setback on Hanson Way for the property at 3300 El Camino Real. On June 24th at this time we don't have any items scheduled and we do expect to to cancel that meeting. In addition, I wanted to note that we have been asked to shift from the current practice to summary and action minutes instead of verbatim minutes for consistency with council and other boards, commissions, and committees. So we have sent some in for verbatim minutes. The April meetings will will still include that. But starting with your May meetings, they will be shifted over to summary and action minutes. Next slide. for council uh some recent updates so on may 18th there were three approvals the coverly conceptual master plan the addition of 150 one of the two parcels involved in the project at 156 california avenue was added to the housing element housing inventory sites inventory and the project at old trace road 4130 old trace road that tentative map was pulled from consent and discussed but it was approved On June 1st, next week, we expect City Council to discuss Senate Bill 79 and the Downtown Housing Plan and give staff direction to move forward. They've been provided with two draft ordinances, both the urgency ordinance versions and a longer-term version, but we do expect that work will then come to Planning Commission for formal adoption, likely over the summer. but we will have some time with the urgency ordinance in place if they do proceed with that plan. After that, we've got a Economic Development Committee meeting. They will be discussing the retail ordinance again. They will also be taking a look at the shrink wrap rule item that was discussed by the Planning Commission, so that's on June 3rd. For both of those items, the staff reports are written that if we get a unanimous recommendation from the Economic Development Committee, then it would go to council on consent rather than a discussion item and only discussed if pulled. And then on June 8, City Council will be discussing the San Antonio Road area plan and the additional work staff has done since their study session in April. With that, I've completed my presentation, but I'm available to answer questions. We also do have a representative from the Transportation Department who can speak and give an update

I was for Ms. Armour. I have one question from Vice Chair Gee.

Thank you, Chair. I had two questions. So one is that I was wondering when the language of the cup early ballot measure is going to be discussed at council and if that's going to be in the next couple of meetings. That will be on June 8th. Okay. Thank you. Just because I thought that was coming up, I didn't see it in your report. And then I have a second question about the parking item that got moved. And maybe this is a question for transportation. That's not scheduled tentatively for any of our coming meetings yet.

We have not set a new date for that.

Thank you.

All right. I think that wraps it for questions for you for now, at least, Ms. Armour. Mr. Asay.

Thank you, Chair and Commissioners. My name is Ozzie Arce, Senior Transportation Planner with the Office of Transportation with my May 27th, 2026 updates. Next slide, please. Starting with the Churchill Avenue temporary closure analysis on Monday, May 11th, the City Council continued deliberations on the potential temporary closure of Churchill Avenue at Grade Rail Crossing. This was a continued item from April 15th, 2026. At this May 11th meeting, the City Council directed staff to work with the Palo Alto Unified School District on a cost-sharing agreement to secure long-term crossing guards at all railroad crossings and to bring the JET Foundation back to the Rail Committee this year with data-driven safety strategies for all four crossings. We are also focused on speeding up the timeline for quiet zone implementation, especially at Churchill Avenue, and working closely with Caltrain to explore extra gate and enclosure options to maximize safety. Next slide, please. Moving on to our next update, we recently celebrated the official construction kickoff for the Newell Road bridge replacement project on Thursday, May 21st. We hosted a start of construction celebration right at the bridge site. This project is a highly collaborative regional effort, and we were joined by officials from East Palo Alto, Caltrans, Valley Water, and several other regional partners. The event went incredibly well and featured official remarks, great photo opportunities, and an unveiling of a brand new 3D rendering of what the finished product will look like. Very cool. To give you some quick background on the project, we are replacing a functionally obsolete concrete bridge that was originally built in 1911. This is a major investment spanning 18 months, and the replacement bridge will include two 10-foot vehicle travel lanes, two four-foot shoulders, and two pedestrian sidewalks and crosswalks. Lastly, construction work officially begins on June 1st, and we are very glad to have successfully launched this important infrastructure project alongside our regional partners, and we look forward to keeping the community updated as construction progresses over the next year and a half. Next slide, please. A quick report out on this year's Bike 2 Wherever Days and Energizer Station celebrations. I presented on these last month. There were several Energizer Stations across Palo Alto on Thursday, May 14th. It was a beautiful day. Tote bags were distributed. Encouragement and the popular iBike Palo Alto shirts were also distributed. And even bike chains were oiled up. uh specific to the energizer station at bryant and homer which is where i volunteered so it's the data point i have we served increased number year over year this year we had 170 cyclists stop at our station and saw another 118 others ride by without stopping that's nearly 300 cyclists moving through this just this one intersection in a three-hour window so we want to thank all of our organizers volunteers and the silicon valley bicycle coalition for putting on a great event for bike month. And lastly, before I close, next slide. A couple notes here, the study session on your agenda that was scheduled for tonight, the parking programs update and downtown parking modernization, initiatives specific to downtown will not be heard tonight because the oot staff needs to carry out additional internal coordination as well as coordination with downtown stakeholders so stay tuned for more on that and then my second note here is i plan to attend the next ptc meeting on june 10th because the second ptc meeting is canceled in june So I just wanted to give the commission a heads up about that. And that concludes my updates for May 27, 2026. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Oster. Does anybody have questions? We've got one from Commissioner James, then Aiken, then Gee.

Excuse me. So my question is, A little tangential to the new bridge, but my understanding is the new bridge is a is a key component once it's replaced in further. Modifications reconstruction of that channel. My question is actually outside of transportation, but I know that we were all very concerned about the Valley Waters maintenance corridor and easement there. I would love for us to find a way to make sure that as the design moves forward for that next phase, that that is addressed and that we find a solution. It is the perfect time to find a solution to that vexing problem of the five foot easement that's necessary for the Valley's maintenance and see if we can find a different way. If it's being updated, if that channel is being updated, It would be very easy for that to slip through because it's not about the primary reason of flooding, but I would like to know if there is some way that we can flag that so that it is included in the design for that. Does that make sense?

It makes sense to me and what we can do is follow up with public work staff, probably their project manager to at least send that note as an item for consideration.

I think that'd be great. And I think I was a little hard on the public works staff when they sort of brought that up. In retrospect, I feel a little bit bad about that. I think I was asking them to solve a question that was largely about jurisdiction and it was more of a political issue. But I think at this point where that's being redesigned, it could be a design issue. It could be an engineering issue. And we could engineer ourselves out of that problem. At least that's my hope. But I think it would be very easy for it to slip by and not get included in that discussion. in that redesign effort. And I would love for us to find a way to do that. I mean, I don't know if my colleagues agree with me, but that would be my wish.

We can certainly circle back if we have more information to share on that. Thank you.

Okay. Commissioner Aiken.

Thank you, Chair. Congratulations on the Newell Bridge and the Bike to Anywhere Day. I noticed there are pneumatic tubes out on the 1100 block of Waverly. Do you know what project that might be associated with?

Short answer is no off the top of my head, but we can certainly look into that.

Okay, not critical, just curious. That's it, thank you.

uh commissioner or vice chair g thank you chair i had a question actually that's not relative related to your report here but related to a comment i heard from a town hall meeting and actually i see chief transportation official low behind you and so she might know what i'm referring to about the chamalis feedback i actually didn't know very much about this project prior to a public comment mentioning about it i was just wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about it

Sure. Is this on? Okay. Our Chief Transportation Official, Rhea Hood-Barrett-Lowe. So the Chimalus Path is a concept. I wonder if, are you able to pull up Google Maps? If you can go to the corner of El Camino and Chimalus, it's C-H-I-M-A-L-U-S. So it's actually an easement on three Stanford-owned properties that goes between El Camino and Ballpark Path. And the easement is for Valley Water, but the properties are all owned by Stanford. Stanford is open to the project there. either way. And this was a concept that's come up several times in council meetings. And so it was added both to the bicycle pedestrian transportation plan. And then when we're going through the CIP process, it was also added to the CIP in response to those council requests. Sorry, on the fly here.

Just another point to add, it also became a more important project, priority project more recently when council made the decision to move forward with the El Dorado Avenue bike pad under crossing and trying to make that link across El Camino to this easement.

So Sam is just gonna share the visual. You can see at the moment it looks like a green corridor between the residential area there on the right side of the screen and then that section of Stanford Research Park on the left side.

Is there a way for us to like, can you point out where the start and the end of this project would be like, cause you're describing what is a line, right?

So you can go up a little bit, Sam to El Camino. So it would start there. Um, and I don't, I can't see what street that is. Is that Matadero?

Fernando.

Oh, Fernando. And so then you, and then you continue down, follow the green down to the other end. Keep on going. And oh, there we are. So you see there's kind of like a, looks like an arrow of trees. And that's where the ballpark path has a kind of an acute angle on it. It would join right at that, the point of that bend there.

That makes sense. Thank you. And then kind of as a general follow-up, relative to the BPTP, is this one of the fewer projects that have begun kicking off? I know that we had kind of a whole list, but do we know, is there a prioritization exercise that has been performed there already on the priority projects?

This project?

No, so you're saying this is from the BPTP, right?

Yes, it's on the list for the BPTP.

So have we begun executing on any or like planning at least for any of the other BPTP projects or have we done a prioritization exercise on those yet?

Yes, the BPTP has tiers of priorities. And so there are some that are moving forward. based on grants and opportunities. And so, for example, we need to repave East Bay Shore Road this year, and there's a line on the BPTP. And so we are putting together a really quick design to throw in so that it gets done as part of the repaving. That's kind of the cheapest way to build out the BPTP. And then there's other projects that have grant funding.

so if those ones are moving forward already thank you um just maybe an interesting point it could be cool to incorporate some of this in the report that you guys provide because i heard about this through a community members but it was really cool to see that some of the projects are already kicking off thank you thank you next up we have commissioner peterson thank you so i was in

There you go. I was impressed with the, I guess it's, I don't know if you call it building information model or transportation information model, a bridge information model, but that visualization. So I have a couple questions on those. So from your standpoint, was it useful in your decision making process? Like, I don't know, did you have to actually pay for that out of your budget or did the contractor do that on their own?

I don't think the city led on that effort, but I'm not entirely sure where the rendering came from. I know it was just part of the celebration, but I don't have any more details on it.

And it was granite construction. I mean, if granite, you ever hear this again, they're the cavemen of the construction industry. I worked there. I know this company. It's not where I expected to see a beautiful visualization like that.

Oh. We do have, go ahead. Hi, my name is Holly Boyd. I'm the assistant director of public works. Yes. Yes, so we coordinated with the granite construction on that rendering and we each paid for half.

You paid for half, okay.

The city contributed half the funding for that.

And then one last question. Was there any big insight that came from it that, you know, every project something would have gone wrong, but that just through the process of building that visualization, you were able to kind of prevent something that you wouldn't have seen otherwise?

I think we used it more as a visual aid. I mean, Granite is professional. They actually, we worked with them on our Highway 101 bike bridge a few years ago. I think it was more for the community to see how, what the bridge would look like and how involved it is inside the creek bed and everything. So to see the piles go in and the big the larger bridge structure that will be there once it's done. So I think it was more for community outreach than it was for granite.

And it was cool because it did show the process of the construction. It wasn't just the end of what it's going to look like. It was cool. So I appreciate the effort that you put into that and everybody else that worked on it. Thank you.

Thank you. Seeing no other lights, I've got a question. This is for, well, maybe maybe Ms. Lowe would be able to answer this best. But I noticed that in the CIP item that we're gonna be seeing next, there's an item for the Creston Park traffic calming item. And so I wanted to find out what the status is on that.

If this is information from the next report.

It's not from the next report. It's just that it triggered the question. Yes.

Yeah, so. Given the council schedules, the council agendas, unfortunately it's been pushed to the next fiscal year. So it was on the docket, it kept on, it's been bumped several times. It was on the docket for I think the 15th of June and a number of other items got bumped and that ended up getting pushed to the next fiscal year to go to council.

okay and so it's the questions also triggered by a public comment that we received this week to the planning commission um and i guess the member of the public was asking to be please updated on the status but they haven't received any updates is that because no date has been set yet or we don't know what the date is but we can respond to them and let them know that unfortunately it's been pushed

okay thank you very much and then has the design been finalized for that project or is it still so we will go to council that's part of the question for council do we want to move forward with 100 design understood thank you are there other questions

Okay, I think that's it. So that brings us to our first action item tonight, which is the review and recommendation to the finance committee and the city council on the proposed 27 to 31 capital improvement plan and comprehensive plan compliance of that proposal. Could we have the staff report please?

Yes, thank you. And I would like to introduce our newest planner in our long-range planning team. Leslie Velasquez is going to be presenting for this item this evening.

Good evening. Tonight, I will be presenting on the 2027 capital improvement projects. We also have representatives online and in person from various departments, including transportation, public works, community services, utilities, and administrative services to answer more specific questions about the capital improvement projects. Next slide, please. The purpose of this item is to review the new capital improvement projects for consistency with Palo Alto's comprehensive plan, a process which takes place every year. Next slide, please. There are 217 active capital improvement projects in total with 189 existing CIPs. These 189 existing CIPs have been previously reviewed for consistency with the comprehensive plan and therefore do not require additional review. There are 28 new CIPs. One of these is a placeholder project or an administrative project that also does not require review for consistency with the comprehensive plan. The other 27 new CIPs, which do require review for consistency with the comprehensive plan, include 17 projects related to the natural environment element of the comprehensive plan, two related to the community services and facilities element, seven related to the transportation element, and one related to the land use and community design element. Next slide, please. The two CIPs related to community services and facilities have to do with investing in and improving recreational centers and facilities. Next slide, please. The seven CIPs related to transportation involve projects to improve transportation infrastructure including bike and pedestrian infrastructure. Next slide, please. The one CIP related to land use and community design focuses on improvements to the Palo Alto Airport. Next slide, please. These natural environment-related CIPs are focused on improvements to water infrastructure and city vehicles. Next slide, please. These are the rest of the natural environment-related CIPs and are focused on improvements to the city's electrical system and grid. Next slide, please. Finally, as previously mentioned, there's one placeholder CIP which accounts for estimated administrative costs, including salary and benefit costs of city staff assigned to manage information technology fund CIPs. Next slide, please. Our recommended motion is to recommend to the finance committee and the city council that the proposed 2027 to 2031 capital improvement projects listed in attachment A are consistent with the comprehensive plan 2030 policies and programs. I'm available for questions as are other representatives from different departments. Thank you.

Thank you so much for the presentation, your first presentation at the VTC. So I saw that Commissioner Templeton has her hand raised. And so...

So we did get clarification from our city, assistant city attorney that since she's joining just due to a delay that she's had to come late, that this was something where she can participate once she has joined us rather than online.

Okay. All right. Okay, do we have any clarifying questions for staff before we take public comment? No clarifying questions. I see no lights. Okay, then I think we can just move on into, oh, sorry, are there public comments?

Through the Chair, we have not received any public comment cards, and there's no request from any members of the public to speak.

Okay, great, thank you. So then I think we can just move on to discussion. So if anybody would like to start, please light it up. Okay, we'll start with Commissioner Aiken, then Peterson.

Thank you, Chair. As usual with this item, I have some detailed questions which you should have received already. So back at page 19, item WS20001, this does seem consistent with policy in 4.1, as is noted. But how is it associated with program in 4.13.2, which is about stormwater?

Yeah, I think that project and then a couple other ones some other commissioners noted that the sort of program noted in the table didn't quite match because the program identified as related to stormwater and the project's more related to just wastewater and drinking water infrastructure. And that we agree with that upon looking sort of more deeply into it. So we can just remove that from the table and correct that. But overall, the other primary comp plan goal and primary comp plan policy identified for those projects matches. So I think it's just the program that is inconsistent.

Thank you, that's the way I would interpret it too.

Yeah, and we'll note that not all projects have programs associated and so that's fine just to remove it.

Good. I would have suggested that if you hadn't suggested it already. So I have exactly the same issue with WS27000, just to make sure that's on the record. All right. Also on packet page 19, WS27001. This is another issue of the same kind. So is it consistent with program in 4.10.1?

Yes. Yeah, we would do the same thing for that project as well.

Great, thank you, and that's all I have.

Okay, Commissioner Peterson.

So the question I have on these is, and I sent it by email, hopefully it came in early enough, is which of these are prevailing wage public works and which of these are not? I know it seems on the surface they all would be obviously public works, but the prevailing wage requirements are a little bit more choppy than that.

I don't have that information. It may be that some of our representatives from other departments may have additional information about their projects, it looks like.

We'll start with Public Works. Just for the record, Commissioner Templeton has been able to join us in person now in chambers.

Thank you. Okay, just to answer your question, per our, I think, Munich code, anything over $25,000 in a public works contract, and that public works is just a type. So any utilities, parks, facilities, public works has to be prevailing wage.

And then is there anything on here that's under 25,000? That's kind of what I was looking for was if there was something that was some de minimis type work that was on here, and I didn't see anything.

I'm not aware of anything. At least public works department doesn't have anything under 25,000. I don't think utilities does. I'm not aware of community services and or transportation, anything under 25,000 either.

I saw like one circuit panel that maybe was, but I mean, I wasn't gonna dig that far in there. Okay, thank you.

I don't see other lights, so I guess I will ask my questions. I'd just like to note that I think we're keeping many of the CIPs, the new CIPs, in the natural environment section of the, or using the natural environment section of the comp plan as rationale for it, but for future versions of the comp plan, when we're working on a new comp plan, it might make sense to have a category that is more directly related to utilities and providing excellent utilities and maintenance because it's not necessarily intuitive for the public to see a bunch of utility maintenance things and then link that to the natural environment. So that's just for us to note in the future. And then I did have a question. Oh, I wanted to say that I was really excited to see the quiet zone improvements In there for SCIP this time, the TR 2700 or 27,000, because we all know about the impact of the train noise and how difficult it is for our community on a regular basis, but also more recently because of the mental health issues. So really, really excited that that is there. Similarly, I'm thrilled to see the TR 2700 which was the funding for small scale improvements through where when the feedback comes in through 311 and requests, from the community because for a long time, the commission has been wanting to have these kind of quick hits. And so I'm really excited about that one. And then Commissioner Aiken mentioned the inconsistencies that I also saw, but that will be solved. And then I did want to just comment that year after year, we have a vehicle equipment placement item, and that one is VR 310000. And it lists the rationale for that as clean and healthful air. But really replacing the scheduled maintenance for our vehicle fleet, to me, isn't just because of clean and healthful air. That's a really good reason to do it, but it's not the primary reason for the for updating our vehicle fleet. The rationale also was provided to be N5.2, which is about vehicle idling. So I'm not sure that that makes sense to include it all. Clean and healthful air maybe is reasonable, but seems like a little bit of a stretch. And I would just suggest that it would make more sense to say that it was C1, which is about delivering community services effectively and efficiently, or C3, which is recognizing the intrinsic value and everyday importance of our parks, community centers, libraries, civic buildings, and cultural assets by investing in their maintenance and improvement. That said, I did want to ask staff, like, is it important that we keep the same rationale as in the past, just for consistency? This is not the first year that we've had the regular vehicle maintenance item. It's just the first year I noticed this kind of rationale that was a little bit of a stretch to me.

Yeah, I can't, obviously, since I just started, I can't really speak to the rationale of the past, but I think, yeah, the thinking is just that you know, when you're improving vehicles and fleets, that is obviously going to have, you know, improved reductions in emissions and, like, improved sustainability outcomes. So I think that was kind of the rationale there. But, yeah, I can't speak to sort of how it was, like, originally designated because I wasn't the person who did that. Is it something that we can change?

Or is it not a good idea to change it for administrative reasons? I'm not sure.

Can you change it? I think we can look into it, since this isn't the final version, see if there's adjustments that could be made.

OK, regardless, I think we should take off the comment on the, I can't remember what they're called, but the 5.2, which is about idling, because that doesn't really make sense. Got it. OK, thanks. And now it's Commissioner Templeton's turn.

Oh, sorry, I don't know. I must have accidentally pressed it when I sat down, but I'm happy to join in. I just wanted to confirm that I've been here since before the meeting started when you called it to order. I wasn't yet promoted to panelist, but Ms. Armour wanted to correct the record.

So if you would like to use, there's a limit on the number of Just Cause you can use each year, but if you would like to use that to correct the records, you may. I don't know what you're referring to, but you're saying that- Sorry, I'll defer to our assistant city attorney.

So under the Brown Act, virtual attendance is not allowed ordinarily unless you have an exception. One of those exceptions in this case would be what's called Just Cause for virtual participation, which can include a variety of things which we've consulted online and I think you meet. But you're limited to the number of Just Cause virtual appearances every year. And in this case, It might be as few as two, but I can confirm that later. So if you would like to use one of those, we certainly can put you on the record as doing that, but that's really up to you.

And the state is limiting whether or not we can use Just Cause and dial into our meetings?

Yes.

And that's not a choice the city is making?

No, that's state law. And it's only two? I would have to confirm it's based on the number of meetings you have every year.

Okay. Well, we didn't miss any votes, so I guess it doesn't really matter, but I think that's highly objectionable, and I hope the city is fighting the state for that. Thank you.

Okay. Commissioner Aiken.

I just wanted to add a thank you. The detailed descriptions of the electrical grid projects, those are intrinsically interesting to some of us. But more importantly, it really helps us explain to the public what's going on. So that level of detail is much appreciated. Thank you.

Okay, I did have one more question as I don't see anybody else. So when I totaled up, again, this is the first year that I remember seeing this many projects that are for upgrading our grid and for water supply. So this is the first time I remember seeing such large numbers for utility projects. So I was totaling them up. And I saw that the proposed CIP uses of the electric fund are about 320 million, but then the sources are about 184 million. So I just wanted to ask if staff knows why there's that difference, or is there gonna be a $200 million funding shortage?

Good evening. Hi, Alan Curatori, Director of Utilities. So that is a great catch. We're actually bonding all these projects. So that is the outside funding. So we get funding internally from our rate payers and also from that bonding. So that's what you'll see. We're also staging those projects over time. There's a three-year window to use those bonds. So our first tranche of bonds will be about $80 to $90 million that we're going out with, a total of about $300 million. And excellent catch in terms of the number of projects. So our electric grid modernization is looking at a significant reinvestment in our grid. And we've broken those up by each project that we can. So it's manageable, it's achievable, and we can track it. So that's our main function. So you'll see a series of projects over time, probably around 19 projects on the grid mod program, looking at upgrading our substations, reconductoring our sub transmission, upgrades to our distribution infrastructure. So that way we can track it and we can also show that in our bonds and in terms of the payment.

thank you so much i'm so glad staff was here to answer that because it makes so much sense um to understand it that way and i was looking at the kind of funding plan and it seemed that there was a very clear plan for you know what we're doing in each year and again thank you for the detailed descriptions that sort of indicated why something that wasn't going to be done for many many years needed to start now because of equipment ordering and all of that so thank you very much thank you So again, because again, I just wanted to flag for the PTC because we will be involved in the next comp plan. I think that there's a lot of confusion in the public in terms of understanding why say our budget for natural environment looks so large. And I think people don't realize that the lion's share of that quote unquote natural environment budget is actually because of our utility. And I think people also don't realize sometimes that we are unique. in the area for owning our own utility and so our budget is a little bit different from neighboring cities and so that's why i think it's important that eventually when we redo the comp plan that we find a way to make that clear and more transparent to the public all right that's it for me so i don't see any other lights would somebody like to make a motion vice churchy

Sure. I'm trying something new out. I've emailed Sam and Jennifer the motion that I would like to make so we can have it on screen so we can all take a look at it.

And I have not received it. Did you just?

I sent it like five seconds ago when I pressed my little button.

In this case, oh here, it has just come through.

Okay, so feedback is to work on timing of that, so. I'll read it aloud while Sam is pulling it up. So I move the staff recommendation with the adjustments made by Commissioner Aiken on the removal of relevant comprehensive items as discussed and for the staff to look into adjustments made by Chair Chang on the vehicle maintenance rationale.

Do we have a second? Second. All right. Do we have additional discussion? Commissioner James.

I'm just wondering, did you want to add something about looking into how things are categorized in this natural environment going forward? Or is this not the right place to include that?

I think staff can maybe

answer that question yeah yeah i can jump into that that that is um what that element of the the comp plan is called so it's something um as suggested by chair chang that could be considered when we next update the comp plan at this point that is the appropriate reference because that's where those policies are thank you okay uh any additional discussion all right mr travera could you take the vote please

Yes. Commissioner Aiken? Yes. Commissioner James? Yes. Commissioner Peterson? Yes. Commissioner Templeton?

Yes.

Vice Chair Gee? Yes. Chair Chang? Yes. Motion carries 6-0.

Okay. With that, I think we move on to our next item. of the evening, which is a study session to review the City of Palo Alto Pro Housing Designation Program application. Can we have the staff presentation, please?

Yes, thank you. We have Julia Knight, who is available on Zoom to make the presentation for this item now.

Wonderful. Thank you, Assistant Director Armour. Good evening, Planning and Transportation Commission members and chair. My name is Julia Knight. I'm a senior program manager and happy to present tonight's Pro Housing Designation application materials. Next slide, please. This is a brief presentation. For tonight's study session, we'll cover the Pro Housing Designation program background, the application requirements, Palo Alto's specific policies and self-scoring summary, the opportunities for public engagement that we're offering in this process and answer any questions or respond to any comments you or the public may have. Next slide, please. The Primal Housing Designation Program was established by the state as part of the 2019-2020 Budget Act. It's administered by the California Housing Department, Department of Housing and Community Development, HCD. And the goal of the program is to acknowledge jurisdictions that have housing policies that exceed state law, essentially that accelerate housing production. And the benefit of getting this designation is that you, as a jurisdiction, become eligible for additional infrastructure funding and grants, and you become more competitive for existing programs. We have a number of peer jurisdictions in the peninsula that earned the designation already, including Redwood City, Sunnyvale, and Mountain View. And there are about 74 jurisdictions statewide that have earned the designation so far, and we hope to join them. Next slide, please. The program is noncompetitive, which means any jurisdiction that can demonstrate through the application that they have sufficient policies in support of housing production and acceleration receives the designation. The designation is good for three years, at which point you need to reapply, basically demonstrating that you are still exceeding state law in pro-housing protection policies. As part of the application requirement, you need to provide documentation that you're in compliance with all of the state laws, of course, and that your housing element is in compliance as well. The meat of the presentation, so to speak, is a self-scoring sheet that staff and jurisdictions put together outlining policies that fall into different categories that are provided by the state demonstrating our pro-housing programs. And the materials are reviewed on a rolling basis. So any jurisdiction can apply anytime. And Palo Alto is applying now because city council has made this a priority for this year. Great. We're going to target 30 or more points in the different specific policy areas that I mentioned included in the application process. And we can receive points for both enacted and proposed policies. And my understanding is that for the proposed policies, you just need to have those documented as things that are on the books with key milestones and good intent to execute. And that if for some reason those were not enacted later, that would just be considered in the next round of the application process when you reapply. You would not include those in your next application. So you can get points for ones that are proposed with good intent to carry out. Next slide, please. This is a quick summary of our scoring that staff has put together, and we've worked carefully with the city attorney's office and a number of other teams within the city to make sure this is all in good shape, and we've also worked carefully with HCD on courtesy reviews to make sure that the programs we are putting forward in each of these four categories are compliant in HCD's eyes, and they have confirmed that they are, on the whole, very much compliant, and therefore, we think we're very likely to get the designation, which is great. The four categories are generally land use, housing production, acceleration timelines, reduction in construction development costs, and direct financial subsidies for affordable housing. There are a few examples listed here of the different types of programs we're highlighting in each of those categories, everything from our great work with the CDBG program to our focus areas and affordable housing incentive programs, all of our great ADU, JADU work, and a number of our policies around affordable housing and supporting affordable housing development. So altogether, we are targeting a score of 41 points, which is a comfortable threshold above the 30-point minimum that is required in order to earn the designation. Next slide, please. It is important that there is a diligent public participation process as part of this application. That is a requirement from the state. So far, we have posted the materials online for public review as of May 18th. We also have printed copies available at our development center at 285 Hamilton Ave. And then we also had a listening and info session last week. We have tonight's study session with you all. It's another opportunity to gather public input and there is an online comment form which there's a little snapshot of on this slide that will be available through the end of the public comment period June 17th if anyone wants to provide comments online. through that form. Next slide, please. We will be targeting a mid-June consideration of a resolution by city council, which will authorize the city manager to finalize and submit the draft materials that we're reviewing today. And then after the close of the public review period, which is anticipated to end June 17, but if there are significant changes to the materials, we will extend it another seven days. But after that, we will submit the application, assuming council has authorized city manager to do so. And then we expect to hear back from HCD on the preliminary review materials by the end of the summer. And typically HCD will then work with jurisdictions and staff to finalize the materials further and fine tune them. So we expect there to be a little bit of back and forth with HCD starting, you know, maybe late August after they've completed their initial review. and think we are on track for crossing our fingers a positive designation determination in the fall. Thank you so much. Next slide, please. My contact information is here if you have any questions, and I really appreciate everyone's input and the time tonight. So thank you so much.

Thank you, Ms. Knight. So do commissioners have any clarifying questions before we move to public comment? Commissioner Aiken and then Vice Chair Gee.

I think you've answered my question, but I just wanted to confirm. So for the policies that involve numeric targets that we might need to adjust in the future, I noted that is particularly important for a 1B, 1D, 1G, 1I. I gather that we present to HCD a snapshot of what our enacted policies and intent are, and that then is used as is until the next review some years down the road?

Yes, that's my understanding, yes.

Okay, thank you.

Vice Chair G?

I sent in a couple questions to staff, and so I'm just going to ask those questions so the rest of the commissioners get the answers to these questions. So for the projects that are proposed, by what extent are we committing ourselves to implementing them? Suppose if we pull it out and decide no longer to pursue the project, how would that impact our application?

So if it happens between now and June 17, we would adjust the points we're requesting from HCD. But if it happens after we, in theory, receive a positive pro-designation status in the fall, it doesn't impact our designation. Our designation is good for three years. It would impact what policies we would include in our reapplication to renew our designation three years out.

Yeah, my question is less about the impact on the pro-housing designation, but more about let's just take a pick on item 1L, the one about the San Antonio Road Area Plan. We are seeing that we're proposing 3,800 to 7,400 units in the build out, but for whatever reason, our San Antonio Road Area Plan finishes and we only decide to do, I don't know, 2,000 units. is that lock by submitting this information as part of our application to HCD does this bind us to performing the 3800 to 7400 unit build out on San Antonio road no it's framed clearly as proposed policy and therefore can be adjusted later thank you and then my second question is about the buffer so how much buffer do we think we should maintain since 42 points is quite a bit over the 30 so what does staff's take on that

We're at 41 points, and we think that's a good. No, no, no, just in case it wasn't clear. The thinking on that is that it's good to have a little additional buffer. We have looked at what some of our peer jurisdictions have done, and most of them are applying with numbers in the 40s. HCD does keep track of your ultimate total score. And so I believe, I can double check this, but I believe that they look at that as part of the funding and grant infrastructure competitiveness. So if we apply and get 40 points of the 41, that might make us more competitive for some of these infrastructure grants that are available to pro-housing designations districts than if we only applied with 30 points, if that makes sense.

Thank you, that was helpful. And then as a follow up, you both mentioned just now as well as in your presentation about our neighboring peer districts like Mountain View and Los Altos that have received this. Can you point to specific incentives that they were able to receive due to their pro-housing designation? Like, oh, Mountain View got this grant that they normally wouldn't have been able to get. Can we talk about concrete benefits here? Because it's a little bit hard to understand. We are improved competitiveness, but what does that actually mean?

I can offer some general figures, and I don't have any specific to our peer jurisdictions, but I would be happy to follow up with those later. So since 2022, I believe, the state has issued about $56 million in pro-housing incentive program grants. So those are dollars that only pro-housing designated jurisdictions have access to. So that is, you know, $56 million across jurisdictions. the 74 now designated districts. So it's, uh, you know, a pretty nice chunk of money, especially when you look at how expensive affordable housing projects are and things like that. Um, specifically it'll support, it'll also make us more competitive, competitive for ASIC, um, which is the affordable communities, sustainable communities. I forgot that right. But, um, affordable housing, sustainable communities, uh, grant, uh, which is great for like our nonprofit developers. It would allow them when they're developing projects in Palo Alto to have a more competitive edge over other jurisdictions or competing for those same dollars for affordable housing projects. And then the local housing trust fund is more competitive. Many of the grants that go through the incentive program, which is the new program that we don't have access to. Many of those are, $1 to $5 million, or half a million to $5 million. So they're a pretty good chunk. If you think about our Lot T project, for example, our affordable housing project on Lot T, we're anticipating a request from the nonprofit developers for a city contribution of about $5 million. So some of these grants we would now have access to could help supplement those in significant ways.

That's helpful. Just to reiterate what you said, there's a $56 million pool that it's just for pro housing designated jurisdictions. And then there's other grant projects of which if you happen to have pro housing designation, you get a little bit of a bump, but you're also competing with what we could apply normally, but we get a little bit of a boost in this process. Is that correct?

Yes, that's correct. And the way the $56 million works through the Pro Housing Incentive Program is that they issue NOFA's Notice of Funding Availability. So they've put out like three different big buckets of money that only Pro Housing Designation applications have been able to compete for in the past. So they've done three or four of those, totaling $56 million over the last few years. We expect another one will come up soon and we'll be able to apply for it this time if we get our designation.

Thank you. And one last question about this, which is you mentioned that there are 74 jurisdictions with this designation. How many jurisdictions are there in California? Just so that we have a rough estimate, because if, for example, there were only 75 and we're the only one that's not getting it right, that would feel pretty different than like there are 5000 jurisdictions in 74. I'm just trying to understand the competitive advantage that we're going to get here.

Let me double check. I believe it's in the 300s. So, you know, it would be competitive.

Okay, thank you. I think that was helpful, hopefully, for others.

Thank you, Vice Chair Gee. Commissioner Peterson.

Thank you, Chair. So I want to commend staff on this. effort. I think this is actually a great demonstration of the good work that we've done in Palo Alto. And I like to see that everything has been checked. There was no category that was essentially left unchecked as not in process. I had expected that we somewhere had there was some holes in our system. In your assessment going through this, do you think there's, where do we need to do work for the next three years? Or do you think we're good where we are, we just need to keep doing what we're doing?

I think doing what we're doing is great. And I think making sure that we do follow through on these proposed policies, that would be my recommendation.

And then I saw that we have a 2024 annual report by the Palo Alto Transportation Management Association.

Yes.

And so this is incredibly helpful to really understand as a commission, at least for me as a commissioner, the thought process of most of the transportation, I guess, users of Palo Alto, you know, people's commuting into Palo Alto or transportation within Palo Alto. And I think some of the insight in here really comes into the use of bikes and walking and public transportation. Is that a specific focus of the TMA?

I believe so. We may still have some of our transportation colleagues here, but that is attached to this report because it supports one of the programs and demonstrates the number of users benefiting from are like commuter change incentive programs. And it's like one of the very, very few things that there's not an online URL hosted for, so we had to append the entire document. So that's why it's there and maybe looks like a bigger part of the application than the other items. But everything else is just linked, and HCD wants all the documentation they can get to confirm that these programs are both on the books, but also making a difference. They want to understand the metrics.

The TMA, interesting enough, is one of the only city programs that just going through California Avenue to the different businesses and talking with the business owners and employees that somebody mentioned to me as being one of the most critical components of Palo Alto, that if you work in Palo Alto, you can apply for subsidized transit passes. And I think that helps bring employees into Palo Alto. And then on page 96, I noticed that if you look at the figure four here, they call it the bike love geofence boundaries. But Palo Alto has the single largest contiguous bike area. from the entire peninsula all the way down to Santa Clara. I don't think that shows in our application that not only did we get the two or three points, but if we could take more points, I think we're owed 50 points because we are certainly doing better just by graphic four alone. I do appreciate this and I appreciate all your work on this. Thank you.

Absolutely. And thank you for your comments. And I wish we could get more points for that. That would be great. Unfortunately, we're sort of capped by the way the scoring sheet works, scoring criteria from the state. But that is something great to keep in mind. And I think staff can continue to highlight that as we think about all of our future land use planning. I'll also just quickly circle back to a previous question. It looks like we have over 400 member cities

in the state and then if you start including like little townships and things it gets up to 1200. thank you uh so i don't see other clarifying questions so i just have one quick one before we check if there's any public comment um so staff had mentioned that as part of the public uh engagement process that there was a community meeting on may 20th was there any substantial feedback or at that meeting or otherwise

From last week on the 20th?

Correct.

No, there was not substantial feedback. It was a very small attendance group. But we did try to promote this commission study session as well. And this discussion was included in our Uplift Local last week. So we were hoping that... We might hear more from the community tonight.

Okay, thank you. So now let's check in to see if there are any public comments. Have we received any comment cards or is there any online?

We have not received any public comment cards and if there's any members on Zoom that would like to speak to this item, I invite you to raise your hand. We have no raised hands on Zoom either.

Okay, great, so that means we can bring it back to the commission for discussion. So we'll start with Commissioner Templeton. Thank you very much. And then Commissioner James.

Yeah, I think it's fantastic that we can be designated or apply for designation so that we can get more affordable housing grants. I think this is a problem. It's very hard to build affordable housing in Palo Alto and this is one of the ways to get to a solution. So I appreciate your questions really brought that clarity out that this is important for us to do as a city because it helps us reach our goals that I think pretty unanimously everybody wants to build more affordable housing. So I think this is great and great, great work. Thank you. Commissioner James.

I would like to echo that. I think this is terrific that we have this opportunity and I absolutely support that we're applying for this pro-housing designation both for the practical reasons of being potentially able to get more grant money, but also I think there's a reputational piece to this. And I mean, I've listened to talk shows where Palo Alto is kind of a favorite punching bag of pro-housing advocates, and no issue with the pro-housing advocates, but they tend to ignore some of the things that make it complicated here, some of the free market realities that we face that some other neighboring communities don't. And so I think the reputational piece is important both to the world and maybe to HCD. When I look around Palo Alto, I see a very, very rich tradition of affordable housing that goes back decades. I can walk out this door two or three blocks and encounter two of them that I think are remarkable examples. I think some of the new some of the new affordable housing projects, particularly the ones that the city has skin in, some taxpayer money in, I think are like shining examples of this. So I'm eager for us to do more of what is our tradition and to meet these challenges to our standards. So I hope this gets us there. Thank you.

Thank you. Commissioner Aiken.

Thank you, Chair. So Category 1B appears to refer to our interim and urgency ordinances for implementing SB 79. So I'm curious as to how this constitutes a local pro-housing policy, given that essentially something for this purpose is required.

Excellent question. Thank you, Commissioner. The way the SB 79 law is written is that the SB 79 based zoning from the state basically will apply unless the jurisdiction passes local zoning laws that exceed what SB 79 requires. And so we are doing that. We're taking that approach or planning to at least. As of July 1, the City of Palo Alto is proactively choosing to provide zoning that is in excess of what would be required by SB 79. And so we're hopeful that we'll receive those points. But the application does not ride on them. And so if the HCD decides that isn't a great fit, we still think we will receive the designation.

Okay, thank you. I suppose I must have misread the ordinance that was proposed. It wasn't clear to me that it exceeded SB 79, but if it does, then that certainly makes sense.

So I'll clarify that the draft ordinance that's going to be discussed next week by council meets the requirements of SB 79 that all of the parcels be zoned to at least 50% of what would be allowed if it just went into effect. It also will mean that at the time of our next housing element process, we will then be looking at updating those to do the full capacity is my understanding of it. So it's one process that falls within the state law.

Okay, so it's forward looking to a time when policy will exceed SB 79. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Second, I noticed that the response to category 3E, which is on packet page 67, involves BBTP, but BBTP is still in some sense awaiting final adoption. So it's not mentioned on the list of proposed policies on packet page 53, should it be?

Could be. I'm happy to add it. I was debating that too. Because it will be, knock on wood, knock on wood, it will be enacted by the time we apply at the end of June. So I was going back and forth on that. But I'm hoping that it sounded like council was supposed to look at this in June. And so if council passes it in June, then we will just take that enacted off of the scoring sheet. and have it just be proposed. If it doesn't pass, then we would maybe just rework that a little and be sure to include it in the prior appendix.

OK. Since implementation has phased, I think you probably have the flexibility to do that sort of thing. But I just wanted to make sure that it was documented in a way that was obvious to everyone reading the material. And I think my other- Thank you.

We can definitely tweak that.

Okay, thank you. Thank you, Ms. Knight. I believe my other questions have already been addressed. So that's all I have for now.

Vice Chair G. I think I would say that I very much agree with my fellow commissioners. I think, thank you, Ms. Knight, for highlighting the amount of money that we would be getting. I think in a potential future staff report, that could be something that would be included already in it. So that would help provide some additional context for what we're looking at tonight. And I also want to agree with what Commissioner Peterson said in that I think this is very thorough and we're all really, as well as what Commissioner Templin said, that we're all really excited about the funding that would come through and supporting low-income housing City Council Chambers, Here in the city and then one other comment I had is it could be helpful potentially to include. City Council Chambers, The number, the number of points that are from already enacted projects, just to have kind of that contrast in case we happen to not finish our proposed. City Council Chambers, I think my quick count of that was 26 but some of the projects are enacted slash proposed so a little bit hard to separate those numbers out, but I think that could just be helpful for as a reference point, thank you.

City Council Chambers, Thank you. Okay, so I think we've all done our first rounds. Before I go for a second round, I'm going to chime in with my thoughts. Echo what everybody said. This is fantastic that we will be eligible for funds that we wouldn't otherwise be eligible for. And I really think what Commissioner James said, I mean, just really well said about Palo Alto's history of being an affordable housing leader in the area. So I had a question sort of in the details of this. So for example, for where right now we have a waiver of city development fees for 100% affordable developments. If we were to make slight edits to that, such that we said that we're only gonna give that waiver to 100% affordable developments that are at 80% of AMI, Is that something that would change our points or is it just something that we wouldn't include at all even in a future update? Like what is it, what are the implications?

So I'm just trying to make sure I frame correctly where we are today. I believe that where we are today is that it's for 80% or below.

no right now right now uh our waivers are for 100 120 percent and there's been extensive discussions both at city council and commission about what that means in terms of actual on the ground affordability for some member of the public who actually wants affordable housing yeah thank you thank you yeah i wasn't um wasn't sure so thank you for clarifying that um i don't think it would affect our points uh

To be honest, it may be that we would adjust our wording in our future application when we reapply for redesignation, assuming we get designation the first time around. But I don't think it would affect that. And there are a bunch of different ways to qualify for those points. And there are categories that we haven't included, that we haven't competed for in this application that we could always consider competing for additionally. So I think we're still safe, even if we adjust to that.

okay thank you and then similarly if we were to adjust our san antonio housing plan numbers um so this is one one l i think that was the one item that gave me a lot of pause because i don't think that there has been buy-in either from the public or from the pdc or from the council on what those numbers should be or what the range should be so if we were to just you know, adjust it lower, would that matter?

I think so. It's really about the intent of trying to upzone. So that category is about zoning and showing that we are actively looking at our zoning and trying to adjust it to encourage more housing. HCD asked us when we did like our courtesy review to provide numbers wherever possible. It's clear that those are preliminary numbers and it's clear that the plan isn't expected to be up to adopted until 2028. So I don't think anyone's holding our feet to the fire on this, but it's a demonstration of good intent.

okay great thank you so much because i asked this because our hands as a city are so tied by what we've said that we're going to do in the housing element as it should be but therefore we were very careful about what we promised in the housing element, because if we didn't meet those, if we didn't meet that implementation deadline for the programs, we would be penalized for it. And so I just want to make sure that for this, per housing designation is very different from the housing element, correct? In other words, we're not bound by any of this.

No, and this is a elective program, we do not need to provide a pro housing designation application. Like a housing element is required by the state, you have to do that it has to be in compliance, they check up on it with an annual report. This is very much an elective, if you want to optional program, where they're trying to just acknowledge and reward cities that are going above and beyond.

Thank you, and I agree with Commissioner Peterson who thinks we should get 50 points for some of these things. Okay, so then we have Commissioner James, then Templeton, is that right? Okay, go ahead Commissioner James.

Well, can I keep more praise on instead of asking questions at this point?

I love praise.

Go for it. Yeah. So I just want to kind of acknowledge that it sort of breaks my heart that the state feels like it has to require standards for dealing with encampments, homeless encampments, and that that's just assumed. But I am impressed that the city has aligned their resources with where those needs are. And I'm thinking about Home Key and the RV lots, and I think a lot of credit is due that we are spending our money where our needs are. So I say that with a little emotion, but it just seems tragic that the state assumes that we have encampments. I would also sort of like to heap praise on the PATM. I don't love their acronym, but I think there's a lot of other things. Bike love. I love that whole program, and I love the branding on it. I love their communication, and I just love how we're doing pilot programs, gathering data, so that we kind of understand what's going on and we can promote sort of alternative means of people getting to where they need to go at a lower cost with less pollution. And so I am just so impressed with how they think about those problems from a strategy standpoint, from a tactical standpoint, and they just approach it with real smart business sense in my view. So I think they deserve a sort of call out, that's all.

Thank you. Commissioner Tomlinson.

Thank you. Yeah, I am thinking about earlier tonight when you mentioned the encampments we have. So I think it's okay for the state to say we have them because we do. I mean, it's unfortunate and that's why we wanna get these housing grants. So I wanna acknowledge because I think you feel very powerful about that and I think this is a great step in the right direction. So I, Wanted to ask Ms. Knight about how different the numbers that are in this proposed list are from the housing element. Do you think they're hugely different? Or I'm trying to gauge, because I've heard some comments about it and I just want to know, like these are possible in the housing element or not? Is this a departure from that? Or maybe if it's a struggle to answer, I'm more asking, did you make these numbers up or are they based on something?

They're not made up. They are things numbers have been presented in public meetings to planning and transportation commission in some cases to city council to the community as early for in the case of San Antonio area plan as early projections. So they are things that are documented as part of our discussion. And that's why we include them to show the state we're taking this seriously. That's right. That's all. That's fine. Senior. Yeah, go ahead. I was just going to say, Assistant Director Armour, do you have anything you want to add to that? You're more familiar with some of the housing element details.

Yeah, that's fine. It's consistent.

That's what I thought. I think it's great. And then the other question for you, Ms. Knight, is, is this approval a snapshot, or are we kind of operating on a... like uh like a bank account like we can't go below a certain threshold ever at any point in time or or if it's a snapshot and it is approved when we present it and then we present it again some some years later the threshold is 30 points and so any year that we apply and are able to confirm that we've earned 30 points in all four different policy areas that are required we can receive the designation the redesignation we're not But it's not per day or per decision. It's not ongoing. It's per application, right?

And the approval is correct. The approval, if we receive the designation, is good for three years. It's not something that needs to be

That's what I wanted to hear. So I think that some of the anxiety that you've heard in the questioning here may be addressed en masse through that answer. So I'm not only providing it for us, but I hope that in the future that you can make that clear because We do a lot of things that are legally binding and we're trying to understand what is happening because this is a little different than some of the things that we see. Making sure that clarification at the time, this is our intention, we're presenting it, here's the points we have documented from our intentions and then we'll see you in three years kind of thing. Anyway, I thought that might be useful. framing for some people on the commission. It's certainly helpful for me. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you for that feedback.

Yes, so now jumping off Commissioner Templeton's question, I actually have kind of the opposite of what I was previously saying, which is we have 41 points in this application, and that would be good for hypothetically three years. But one thing that caught my attention was that during your presentation, you had said that if you have more points, you're given even higher preferential treatment, right? So suppose we become the most pro-housing jurisdiction in the state and we're going to like 75, 50, 75 points, right? We're like through the roof. Is there any way that we could say, hey, this year we're going to add an addendum and now we're so much higher so that we can try to get more of those grants, right? Because I think what you're hearing from the commission is that we're very excited about getting this funding and any ways that we could potentially get more of it is, exciting. And so is that a possibility for us to submit these addendums to get more points?

So you're asking whether we have to wait three years to apply for housing again, or whether we could submit a new application sooner than that?

Yes.

Miss Knight, do you know the answer to that?

I believe we could. I don't know if there would be an addendum. I think it probably would be a reapplication. There's a little like asterisk here that it's three, it expires like three years on January 1 after you apply. So we're actually looking at like 30 months at this point, for whatever that's worth. So it's a little bit closer. If that helps, we could probably fold in more of the good work we're doing then. But I'm happy to follow up with HCD. They'd probably be you know, excited to have this level of enthusiasm in their program.

Yeah, I'm not saying that we will get there. I'm just saying I think that's something that our council and others could think about if we see tangible benefits of at 40 points, we're getting a third of the applications in, but at 50 points, we'd be getting two thirds of the application of the grants that we're looking at. So I think that's something to think about. I didn't want to put you on the spot to answer the specific questions around that. but I just kind of want to throw that idea out there as a potential way to get more of this money. And then I also want to echo what Commissioner Peterson and Commissioner James have said about how this is such a great collection of the work that the planning department has done. And I think this also could be something useful to give to new commissioners to be like, here are all the things that we are doing, because I think it's really hard actually to go read through you can read through the comprehensive plan you can say okay like here are some of the areas but what are the tactical programs and these kinds of programs it was really cool to see across my first year to be like oh I saw this come to the through the PTC and now I see here oh there's this other project that I haven't seen yet because I've only been one year but we the staff's been working on behind the scenes so I think that was really cool and And I also want to jump on Commissioner Peterson's question and maybe Ms. Armour can elaborate further about areas that we could see potential more projects or plans to get more points hypothetically. Like where are we missing, right? Compared to maybe your experience in other jurisdictions or Ms. Knight, if you want to opine on what some programs that are peer jurisdictions are doing that you're not seeing in our application.

I can I director Armour do you want to speak to that I I can start and then um if you've got anything to add feel free to jump in um this actually is the first pro-housing designation that I've worked on so I don't have experience with it with other organizations but in planning we love to look at what other jurisdictions are doing and getting ideas from that we did a lot of that with housing element for example as we were trying to move that forward and get that completed so I anticipate that with this first application, we're looking at what are we already doing, already planning to do, since our plate's pretty full at the moment, but that we would continue to look for other opportunities, especially a year or year and a half from now when we're looking to reapply. I don't have any specific examples to discuss tonight, though.

One example I'll provide is that If you look at the enhancement factors that are available on top of the base category points, there are certain enhancement factors we're applying for and I think we're likely to get. There are other enhancement factors we didn't apply for because we didn't think we had policies that aligned with that. But other jurisdictions have gotten those. That's why they're there. A lot of those are tied to environmental and social justice issues. So that is an area for potential growth if we wanted to try to focus on

adding those enhancement factors in a future application okay i think that was helpful and also i remember your presentation you listed four major areas right one through four and how many points that we're getting across these so also something to think about in areas that we are not getting as many points in to be an area for kind of the low hanging fruit if we want to pursue additional programs thank you thank you commissioner templeton

Thank you. I just wanted to give some, just went through college application process context to what you're asking for, for a little bit of a comic relief here tonight. But I think he's asking us to have a brag sheet and that goes nicely with Commissioner James' reputation comments. So maybe that's not a planning staff, but perhaps a comment the planning staff could give to the communications team about how to talk about the great stuff we're doing. and raise our profile here. Thank you.

Thank you, commissioners, for those comments. I don't see anything else. So would somebody like to make a motion?

We do not need a motion on this. Oh, right, because it's a study session.

Although there was a recommendation that we were supposed to give. So I think you've got it, though.

Yes, we've heard your strong support for this. We've heard your comments and suggestions and questions. So thank you very much.

Great. thank you all right so then the fastest meeting ever our next uh our next item is commissioner questions comments announcements or future meetings and agendas so does anybody have any comments and if we don't i know that there's one thing that we want to discuss from last time vice chair g

Thank you, Chair. So I have two comments. So one is that although we didn't quite get the technology to work today, one thing that I am thinking about is for when we do have those motions that are really complex, especially if we're going through ordinances where it's like, I want to make the language on section two, subsection D, subsection two to have all of the items written out. And so one thing I'm trying to do is keep a list of that and email that to staff so that we can at least see it. I think we also get really tired of the verbal regurgitation of all of it after a time. So I think that's something that I'm personally trying to do. And I also encourage if anyone else has any ideas to improve the process there. So that's one comment I have. And the second comment I had is during pre-meeting we had discussion with Assistant Director Armour about how we can collaborate and make these meetings a little bit more efficient in terms of questions. And one thing that we've discussed potentially is to have, if you have questions that can be sent before Monday at 8 a.m. to get those in, and then staff will try their best to have some kind of response as needed before the meeting, if that would be helpful. And then, no, Ms. Armour, if you want to comment a little bit more on that.

Yeah, it will depend somewhat on workload and the character of the questions, but I recognize that it could be helpful to have written answers to some questions in advance of the meeting as you all are preparing for the discussion. And so the possibility, if we get those questions over the weekend, that we might be able to put together kind of a desk item or an addendum to the original report to provide some of those answers.

we can give that a try see if it's helpful yeah jumping on that too i think something that triggered this was that when i came to pre-meeting ms armor was like oh well we had other commissioners already emailed that question so if it's also helpful for staff to know this is a point of interest for many commissioners for them to help potentially elucidate some more so for example for the stream quarter protection ordinance if people are really interested in a in Edgewood or Esther Clark Park if there are a lot of questions about that getting those in ahead of time could help staff also provide more detailed information up here so they're not doing as much research on the fly uh okay Commissioner Templeton and then Peterson thanks um yeah I I

I think we're still experiencing some kind of brokenness in how staff is communicating with us. The same symptoms we're having about not getting the one-on-one emails that other commissions and boards and council get, but also being able to, if you get a good question from a commissioner, then don't respond to them directly, respond to all of us with the answer to that question. I think that would be one way to handle it. But I'm wondering if you can tell us, like, have you made any progress at all on trying to get that fixed with the Right now we're having the batched emails instead of the emails coming in.

In terms of the comments from the public and having it come through? Yes. Yeah, that is the process that we've worked with the clerk's department to implement. Sam, I don't know if you've got anything to add in terms of... And that process is only for us or...? In terms of, you know, the public comment needs to be posted publicly as well so that...

When does it need to be posted publicly?

We try to do it at a regular time so that you've got the information the same and the public has the same information.

Okay, so you can't have it go to us as it trickles in and then post a batch within seven days or whatever before the meeting.

I asked... Yes, I asked Councillor Yang about this and he said that essentially technically it's supposed to be immediate. And so that is why I guess we have technical limitations that are preventing this.

Are all boards getting the same treatment?

That I do not know.

Because I'm pretty sure it comes in, I thought I heard differently from members of other boards. Anyway, if that's...

I can check the other liaisons to see if we're doing this consistently.

It would be nice because getting it in a batch is different than getting an email. So if you have an email, a set of emails that have come in and you can see it from each individual, you can read who it's from and have the context and like reading it in a batch, it's always just...

It also allows us to reply.

It does and... and to group things and to sort things so we can read them together. Like there's a lot of benefits from a process perspective. And I don't believe that there is an actual technical limitation. And if there is an understanding amongst our council team that there is some other limitation, it would be nice to understand that in a way that we can accept.

So as we've mentioned before, my understanding is that if we're providing you public comment, we're supposed to be providing it to the public at the same time. But I will double check on the questions you've brought up. Even that, there's no technical limitation. The internet is instantaneous.

So this is like, what I'm trying to say is, that is a solvable problem. It can be published as soon as an email comes in. So just throwing that out there. Anyway, at the very least, it would be nice, and I think this one has no question about whether it can be implemented. If a commissioner sends in a question and you want all the commissioners to know the answer, you could send it all to all of us.

um that might be one easy way to solve the suggestion from vice chair yeah up until this point i've accepted those questions and shared them with the project planner to have them be prepared to answer at the hearing but i am open to seeing how it would work to provide some responses in writing again just like the public comment we do want to make that available to the public as well as to the commissioners and so What I'd be doing is I'd be preparing it as supplemental information that gets published on the web and you would receive an email when that's available. You can't reply to Commissioner questions without also publishing it on the website? If we're providing additional information that should be available to the members of the public as well.

So this is a change in policy or maybe I don't know if it's a change in how we've been operating because I think we're trying to tighten up our My understanding is that our staff are doing the hard work of trying to tighten up our processes to be more in compliance with what is required.

I think transparency is really important. Solving this... if you could have those emails automatically batched up and automatically published at the end of the every day then you could still reply to us and it would be compliant and transparent anyway we don't have to solve that problem here just just wanted to chime in and say i think that the suggestion to be communicating with all of the commissioners may save you time and i think that would be helpful thank you

all right uh commissioner peterson so i want to agree with uh commissioner gee on the um the putting up the the information i think that's a great idea and i appreciate that you are uh bringing new technology in here that i think probably is taken as uh normal everywhere else but here we're like you put the question on the overhead we're like wow that's The motion. So I want to plus one that. I think that's a great idea. And then I think on Commissioner Templeton and then for staff as well, having been a staff member, SEIU member at the county and being expected to be the fire hose of information to, you know, from our little department and certainly being more of a trickle of information. I think from my standpoint, Because everybody is probably using AI agents and so staff is still functioning by agreement non AI for the most part, whereas we come in with the AI so we're expecting that information to be hitting us. And I realized this was becoming key when I sat down in a professor's office and he asked me what I thought of a recent paper that had been submitted. and then he motioned to his board above him and he was querying the paper with an AI agent and is no longer reading papers and is going through papers like that where we used to actually read them. So I think It's possibly necessary that as all the commissioners, we ingest information at a fast pace now, is that maybe putting in a request either for additional staff or making that available for overtime or even overtime working from home while, you know, trying to keep up with the commissioners. Because I'm assuming staff is probably usually limited to eight hours a day. And like, you could work, want to work more, but you're actually not allowed to work more than, you know, you can't work eight hours in one minute.

It all needs to be part of the budget.

Is there anything we could do to help on that budget if we all wave the flag or like, hey, we would like more hours, more budget for our staff so they can put in the extra hour a day or something?

It's not something we're asking for at this time.

Okay.

How about a technological solution to the instant posting problem?

if you have suggested programs that could be used for that we will check in with our at department and clerks to see what functionality there might be for the website at this point i'm not aware of anything that we currently have available in-house but feel free to email me with suggestions chemistry or vice churchy

Yeah, so I'll jump on that and say I'm happy to talk to staff about some of that. But also jumping on what Commissioner Peterson has said about the AI generation, I do want to applaud staff for sending out the report that Commissioner James and I have written about our conference. And so you should have that out mostly generated by AI proofread by both of us. So not proofread by staff, so I will admit that. And we're happy to answer questions because staff did not write this.

And staff is happy to answer questions too on the subjects to make sure it's consistent with our understanding.

Defer to staff about expertise on any of the laws or any of the concrete areas where staff is an expert. If you have any questions about things that happened specifically at the conference and also information shared by peer jurisdictions, we're happy to answer those questions. So feel free to read that report and send questions to us. Thank you.

And all commissioners can go on that. If you didn't go already, you could ask for next year.

Yeah, we highly recommend. And then, Chair, I did have a question. I got carried away commanding everybody else. Go ahead, Commissioner. Citizen Director Armour, on California Avenue, the old Nuthouse, I don't know if you're familiar with the It's very famous, should probably be a museum of tech, but it seems to be under construction. My understanding was it was going to be demolished. It was going to be a bagel house. It was going to be a bakery. Has something changed on that? I know that's probably not your responsibility to know every little address, but if you had some rumors on what's going on there.

I don't know of anything to share at this point.

Okay, thank you.

All right, I think that's it. So I know that what we were going to discuss to follow up on what we brought up last time was whether we wanted to try and schedule a break for the commission. And I spoke to Assistant Director Armour and staff is nervous about having a break scheduled in because there may be urgent issues that we don't know about right now. And we don't want the commission to be the reason that something is delayed by two weeks. So one thing I did wanna note is that we do have a break coming up in like an unscheduled break, but one in June. because there isn't anything scheduled for that meeting and wanted to get your thoughts on all of this because we do have all seven of us here so that if a commissioner is missing or even three commissioners are missing we can still have a meeting and so as we should always do we should I think maybe to ensure that we don't hold up an application that is time sensitive, that we just go ahead and schedule our lives as we would, and then operate that way. But I would like to hear what everybody thinks about this. Go ahead, Commissioner Templeton.

Yes, thank you for bringing that up. Staff regularly is worried that we're gonna interfere with something and we have never once interfered on our end with our planning. Taking Christmas break or taking a summer break has never caused a problem. In fact, when we plan for it, it caused less of a problem. So I know that there is this sense that we should all be nonstop, but we don't have to be, and we can choose to coordinate. Now, if we're not coordinated, that's okay, but I want to just push back on this because I do believe that if something big is coming up, we can put something back on the calendar or have an emergency meeting, but every time, We try and talk about having a break that we can schedule to be with our families and to take time for ourselves. This concern comes up and I just want to protect that time. So I want to put it out there that certainly I really hope that we don't have any late December special meetings like we have had the previous years, and I do think that if we happen to align on time off in August, then we should say so, so that staff can plan around it, and so that we don't hold anything up, and that they are able to put something forward before that break or immediately thereafter and plan better. Because really it's all about planning and courtesy and working with our staff and making sure that everybody's clear on who's going to be here and when. With that said, I think right now the Q4 schedule looks pretty good. I do feel like it's unlikely that none of us is going to take any time off this summer. But

So I think maybe what we can do is right now, to the extent that we, we might not all know what our schedules are, but at the end of last meeting, we had suggested that we come to this meeting with where we think we might, either we already have something planned, in which case we should have already told staff that we have it planned, or that we're thinking about something we can share that amongst each other right now, if we can go ahead and do that.

Yeah, I agree. I think I did mention last week that I won't be here on the 26th and it's not reflected in the schedule of August. So we should note that. And it looks like the 10th is not happening. Is that right? You're talking about- June 10th? No, June 24th is not- June 24th. Okay. All right.

Wait, Ms. Armour, normally you don't confirm or you haven't confirmed that a meeting will get cancelled until the meeting immediately before that one?

I generally do wait because if something were to come up and we had enough time to do the legal noticing that was required, I like to preserve that as an opportunity. If it's desirable to the Commission, I feel comfortable stating that June 24th would not occur at this time.

Perfect. That's just I want to double check for your case based on precedent. Correct.

So it is true. I generally try and wait until it's clear there's no way we could get something on because sometimes we're rushing it to get it at the last minute to keep something moving forward.

And is that because it's hard to uncancel something, right? For whatever the...

scheduled meetings correct if we were to cancel it then we'd have to do a special meeting and i also don't like telling you guys that you're going to have that free time and you can schedule something else and then say oops never mind I'd rather have it on your calendar. And I'd be interested to hear your preference as well. But my default would be to leave it on your calendar until I know it really isn't needed.

How do you feel at all about if you know that we're going to miss a meeting, that you then have a buffer? If you do it in advance, then you have a buffer to move the urgent thing either the week before or the week after. Does that work, the meeting before, the meeting after? So for example, if, now I'm just looking at my own schedule, so this is a hypothetical, but if the 26th were canceled and you knew it and you had something coming down the pipeline, you could plan it for the August 12th or September 9th, right?

So is it helpful to know? so so we we do try to keep the different meetings balanced so for example if there was a possibility of something that that might be needed on the 24th you know you could defer it to of june you could potentially defer it to july 10th except that i know that we currently already have two things targeting that date and i try not to put more than two items on your agenda unless they are short items

So I think that's reasonable, but I'm just trying to balance with the message that you gave our team during pre-meeting. Like is it useful to know this is to have everybody out in the same or you want to have a possibility all the time? It is very useful to know.

If I knew that we were going to have three people absent for one of our meetings, which is why we ask for that as soon as you know when you're gonna miss a meeting. If I knew that we would have three commissioners absent, I might try and adjust the schedule to make sure that more can participate. But I'd like to have the opportunity if something really did need to move forward and the other agendas were already full. to not cancel that if we do have a quorum.

Are the August and September agendas already full?

I don't, we don't always know ahead of time. That's okay, but they're not yet full.

So you could still do all the balancing you need to do.

Assuming we don't have more than those agendas can handle.

How are you going to get things, council's going to be out for a month too. How are you going to get more things on that that you don't know about yet?

things do come in that are unexpected or we get a resubmittal and therefore we can bring the project forward more quickly. So for example, the project on forest, well you have seen that there are times that I try and give you a heads up on the things that are coming up on agendas and they change.

I think you're hedging and I think it's manageable if people want to take a time off. I'm just pushing back on that.

I appreciate that perspective.

Okay, so with that, why don't we just right now, as a commission, planning, let's see if people have plans. If they don't, or if they all land scattershot everywhere, then it's moot. So that's all we need to do. All right, so can we just go down the line? Mr. James, or if we can loop back to you, Mr. James, if you look puzzled. Okay, go ahead.

I think I will be traveling on July 8th, and maybe traveling, I don't have a date in August, but I'm sorry I didn't bring that.

But another time in August probably.

Okay, Mr. G. I am likely traveling on July 8th. Don't know yet if I can attend remotely.

Okay. I am traveling on June 24th and conveniently there's nothing on that. Yeah, I was going to join remotely. So that's it for me that I know of right now. Commissioner Peterson.

The Petersons are not the kind of people who plan in advance, kind of wake up in the morning and we're like, hey, let's go to Santa Cruz and come back in a week so we can work around the city.

Commissioner Aiken. I also have nothing formally scheduled. If anything happens, it would likely be the last two weeks of July or the first two weeks of August.

Well, based on that, based on that, we are a little bit scattershot, although there may be two of us. So there's two of us for July 8th and two of us, possibly, possibly two of us for the end of August. And so I'd have to check in with Commissioner Heckman, but I'm not sure that it makes sense.

I don't know. I just want to throw out there, people don't have firm plans because we haven't canceled. So that's all I'm saying. And it's OK. If you guys don't want to take a summer break, that's OK. I'm throwing it out there because in eight years, first of all, inevitably something's canceled. Now we're having something canceled in June. But secondly, August is a beast. It always is. And so that's up to you. But that's my advice, is if you really do need a break in summer, Claim it now because staff will roll right through. And that's, because that's what they, they have things that we need to do for them. So like.

Well, so maybe more explicitly, does, like I know that I will not be traveling in August. Will anybody else be, or I won't be taking a break in August. Will anybody else be taking a break in August?

I will. Okay, yes. The 26th.

And it sounds like Commissioner Aiken will as well. I won't know until two weeks before the wilderness permits open up.

So you can't plan anyway, got it. Okay, and then commissioners G and James haven't chimed in. August.

Don't plan to travel in August.

Okay, so I think we're not lining up if that's okay.

That is okay and we can always change our minds. We certainly can. If something materializes. But it's worth asking and I encourage everybody to think about this every year because we have to, accept the reality there are it's going to happen August is going to come up and you're going to be like dang it we talked about this and that's okay but it helps staff if we can plan in advance thank you yeah thank you for bringing it up okay um so then our yeah we have to do virtual public comment I'm just checking if we have minutes to approve as well

Okay, so our last item of the evening is virtual public comments. So, Mr. Gervais, are there any hands raised for items that are not, that were not on the agenda?

If there's any members of the public that would like to speak for virtual public comments, now is the time to raise your hand. And I see none.

Okay, so then we are adjourned. Thank you, everyone.