Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

test. We're all set for 530. Okay.

good evening let's call to order the special planning commission meeting study session of 06 22 26 at 5 30 pm the city doesn't tolerate disruptive behavior in our meetings This planning commission meeting is considered a limited public forum, which means the commission can regulate the time, place, and manner of speech. Speaker comments must be limited to the agenda item being considered by the commission. If a speaker's comments are not related to an agenda item, the presiding officer will rule the speaker out of order. A speaker will not be ruled out of order because of disagreements with the content of their speech. location and online meeting details are available on the planning commission agenda use the show captions button to view the captions on zoom following the study session the regular planning commission meeting will begin at 7 pm we encourage the public to stay tuned and participate in the regular meeting recording officer may we please have the roll call commissioner segura result chair glasius present

Commissioner Davis.

Present.

Vice Chair Shukla.

Present.

Commissioner Pine.

Present.

We have five commissioners present and commissioners Fagoni and Cerrone absent.

Thank you. Moving on our next item, file number 26-0608, artificial turf policy study. This item is a study session. Study sessions are scheduled to provide in-depth information to the commission about a project or topic. No motions are made or votes taken during a study session. Is there a staff presentation?

Yes. Good evening, Chair, Vice Chair, and Commissioners. My name is Mansoor Nasser, Interim Director of Environmental Services. I'd like to introduce Madeleine Kerr, who will be making the presentation.

Good evening, everyone. I'm Madeleine Kerr. I'm an Environmental Programs Manager for the City of Sunnyville's Environmental Services. I oversee our Climate Action and Sustainability programs. And I'll also let Alex introduce himself.

Good evening. Chair and Commissioners, my name is Alex Jewell. I'm with Kimley Horne. My firm was hired by the City to help with the preparation of the study issue report. Joining me remotely tonight is Tom Diehl with CHA Consultants, who also contributed to the preparation of the report. Hello, everyone.

So for tonight's agenda it's pretty straightforward we're going to cover what the study topic was what the project overview and timeline are. What the Community engagement results were and we'll talk about the research findings in the report, as well as the recommendations, the reports, making and then what next steps in this process are. So this was funded as part of the study issue process, which has now been transformed into council priority projects process. So it was funded as study issue 24-01 as part of fiscal year 25-26 budget and had a budget of $150,000 to complete. If you're tracking this on the council priority project strategic work plan where they post updates, the new ID number is SU-2. environmental services department is the lead for this study but it's been heavily supported by department of public works library and recreation and community development departments we're scheduled for a study session with council on july 28th that will mark the end of this study period This study issue or council priority project came from the Sustainability Commission in response to concern that was raised by the community regarding environmental and health issues related to artificial turf. So that commission sponsored the study issue and it went through the process, was ranked and approved by council. When it was approved by council, it detailed a comparative analysis of artificial turf versus natural grass, including cost analysis with the ultimate goal of identifying recommendations for potential regulations around artificial turf in both the private and public use cases. Council did ask for an amendment later on, which was for an analysis of operations and maintenance of current natural grass field with recommendations for improving or optimizing those maintenance practices. This topic's been heavily debated in the community and is really complex. So we did want to cover some ground rules in terms of what we looked at as part of the study versus what we did not. So it included the comparative analysis between artificial turf and natural grass. And this was using currently available literature and research. So this consists of scientific peer-reviewed papers, case studies, and then information from industries. We completed the analysis of the current maintenance practices with an evaluation of optimal practices and then did collect community input on this topic. What we did not look at was any direct sampling or testing of surfaces in Sunnyvale or other places. We did not conduct any sampling ourselves. We did not complete a full analysis of recreational playing time demands and field availability. And then we did not do any modeling or quantification of environmental or health impacts of surface types. So that was not included in the scope and we did not have funding to do those items. Before we jump in, I've just been giving kind of an overview of Sunnyville Parks because there's a lot of the debate around this topic has to do with sports fields and their space within Sunnyville Parks. So the purpose of Sunnyville Parks are really multifaceted recreational opportunities, open space, community gathering, environmental benefits. And then as part of recreational opportunities, we have sports with 52 rentable fields across the nine city parks and 16 school sites. All those rentable fields are maintained by our park staff, but park staff maintain Sunnyvale Parks as an entire ecosystem of resources serving all these different needs of the community, right? So they're not maintaining athletic fields in particular different from the way that they're maintaining other open space areas. Something that's come up as a part of this study is what recommended hours of play are for natural grass fields versus other types of fields. And what we've discovered is some of our natural grass fields are exceeding recommendations. And so there's definitely some, we'll get into some discussion around that and just like recommendations for how we can move forward with better maintenance schedules and play time. Okay. Jumping into community engagement. So we had a handful of different ways that we looked to collect community input on this topic. And this was something that we started our study process off with. So we first hosted a focus group with key members of the public. So before we had launched this study issue, a lot of our community was really engaged in this topic. That was why it got brought up as a study issue. So we had a group community members and community groups who are really engaged already on the topic. We invited them to a focus groups. We had representatives from specific groups who had been reaching out to the city on this topic to come and have a discussion kind of about what their concerns were, what their focuses were and where we could really hone in on our efforts in conducting this policy review. We developed an online survey, did a tabling session at a farmer's market, and then hosted an in-person community workshop. And these three platforms were all different ways for us to collect input. We did try to focus our questions, structured them the same way, so that way the input that we collected was similar and easy to compare. For the community-wide workshop, when people arrived, they were assigned to a table. Each table had a different topic that we were focusing on for a period of time. So community members got divided up at each table, got to discuss that topic. So for example, playing time, environmental factors, health factors, and maintenance were the four topics. after a certain amount of time we would rotate everyone from the table so they got to every person got to go to each topic if they chose to and have a small discussion facilitated by our consultant team where they collected all the input either people could write it down themselves or the consultant could record it And if you pull up Appendix C of our report, you can find a really detailed recording of all of the input that was collected, whether people labeled things as pros, cons, or kind of a neutral in terms of their opinion on these topics. And what I have here on the slide is just a really high-level summary and takeaway. So for playing time, we saw that there was community members there who wanted to prioritize Sunnyvale residents playing time. We saw people who wanted to maximize general use of natural grass space, and then other people who wanted to maximize sports play time on natural grass. In the environmental factors table, we heard a lot about concerns for artificial turf, especially with the plastic pollution, heat island effect, and recyclability concerns. We also heard a lot about concerns for environmental impacts from mowing, fertilizer, and pesticide use on natural grass. In general, there was also a loss of, a concern for the loss of ecosystem biodiversity across all field types. On the health factors table, we heard a lot about concerns related to artificial turf, and those had to do with chemical heat and bacteria exposure the majority of the time. And then for maintenance, we heard mostly concerns around maintenance of natural grass, and in particular, quality of the fields, a call for better maintenance or increased quality to maximize playability of the fields, looking for people to be able to play longer on the grass fields that we have. So for our online community survey, I do want to emphasize that this is not a statistically significant survey. This was just a way for us to collect input from people who didn't want to attend any in-person events or didn't want to, you know, provide input in any other way. We did have 850 individual responses. This was hosted using the Open City Hall, OpenGov City Hall platform. So it does depend to a certain extent on people answering honestly. So we had questions like, if you live in Sunnyvale, do you play sports on Sunnyvale public fields? Do you own or have artificial turf installed in your house? So people had to answer honestly to those questions. And then this survey platform allows one answer per IP address. It also uses cookies to kind of track if people have submitted answers before. So it has some safeguards in the background to help ensure that we don't get people just resubmitting their responses multiple times. And this goes for either registered or unregistered answers. So when you are a registered user of this platform, your name and email address get recorded along with your answers. If you're unregistered, it's an anonymous submission. Even if it's an anonymous submission, you still aren't allowed to just click enter multiple times to submit multiple responses. So what we've got on this slide here is an overview of the general responses from some of the key questions that we asked. If you want to see the entire survey and the results, you can find that in Appendix D of the report. So we had a scale of very, moderately, slightly, or not concerned for a number of different questions related to environmental and health impacts of artificial turf versus natural grass. For artificial turf, we saw that 60% of respondents indicated that they were very or moderately concerned with environmental and health impacts, and 26% indicated not concerned. For natural grass, we had a lower percentage of very to moderately concerned about environmental impacts than an even lower percentage of that on health. We asked a question regarding where people fell on the spectrum of whether or not artificial turf should be regulated. We had a really even split between 40% generally restricted, 38% generally allowed, and 20% for specific use cases. We were able to cut the survey data and kind of look at if somebody responded saying that they lived in Sunnyvale, they indicated they lived in Sunnyvale, we could look at how they answered certain questions. So this slide has a couple examples of that. We didn't see a huge shift with people who lived in Sunnyvale versus people who didn't in terms of their response to the question around artificial turf being restricted. For users of Sunnyvale Public Fields, we did see some variances here. So for people who played on Sunnyvale Public Fields as part of a sports league versus just for recreational purposes, general recreational purposes, or for both, you can see that if people indicated as part of a sports league or both, that there was a higher number of people who indicated they think artificial turf should generally be allowed. So people who are using the fields for athletic purposes generally felt that way. For people who are using the field for recreation more broadly and not as part of a sports league, again, the results are a lot more evenly split there. For our private property questions, we asked whether or not people had artificial turf on their property and what the reasons for that were. So if people did not have artificial turf on their property, they had the ability to select all from the choices you see here on the slide. So those aren't gonna add up to 100%, but you can see that environmental and health concerns were the top two reasons that they didn't install it. Appearance was another one. People have never even considered it. And then for community members who rent or don't have control of landscaping or different things like that, they typically answered the not applicable or the other categories there. For the 112 responses that indicated they did have artificial turf on their property, generally they did not want to replace it. And generally they thought that the city should allow artificial turf. 18% did indicate they would replace it if they could. And then in terms of why those people were installing it, reduced water use and lower maintenance were the top reasons. So for our research findings, first we wanted to start off with just noting that the environmental impacts of artificial turf and natural grass that I have in this table here are impacts that we know are happening. So our research shows that, yes, we've got plastic pollution, chemical leaching, high carbon footprint, and then heat are concerns of artificial turf, particularly for impacts on the environment. Same thing for natural grass. We know we've got high water usage, potential for high chemical use, and a high carbon footprint for maintenance operations and activities. What is, where the research is lacking or harder for us to really follow is the quantification or correlation of that into human health impacts, right? So for example, we know plastic pollution is generally bad for people, but how much plastic pollution is happening from artificial turf and what the direct human health impacts of that are, are not quantified currently. So that's where there's a lot of, you know, it just gets a little bit blurry when you're trying to talk about human health impacts from these things that we generally know are bad, right? I would say chemical leaching, right? PFAS is a really hot topic for this. PFAS is a really new thing. It's hard for us to track and quantify. And so being able to directly correlate PFAS exposure from artificial turf to human health, there's not a lot of studies out there that have done that. The other thing to note when we're talking about these impacts is when we're looking at large fields for sports play, hours of play is a really big factor. So a lot of studies take into account the number or the hours of play. So instead of an impact per square foot or an impact per field, you can look at it by an impact per use, which could be like an impact per hour of play. So one study that we reviewed saw that if you're comparing just a field to field comparison, so maybe 150,000 square foot field of natural grass versus artificial turf, natural grass has the lower environmental greenhouse gas impact. But when you take into account hours of play, that's when artificial turf actually became the lower GHG impact. and so the what the study kind of saw was the break even is about 800 hours for natural grass and 1600 hours for artificial turf one of the things that we are looked at through the study was you know how long do we typically play on on these surfaces so there's a lot of variability in those numbers but on average what we see the recommendation for natural grass in the industry is 600 800 hours artificial turf can be played upwards of 2000 and over 2000 hours so there's a gap there between what your recommended to play on natural grass to keep the grass, you know, healthy and the quality of maintained versus artificial turf. So here's just a summary, again, of kind of what we found in terms of where there are impacts. So we know we have high water usage with natural grass. You do have chemical exposure and chemical leaching could happen on both surfaces for artificial turf. It's the material that it's made out of. For natural grass, it's applied to the surface of the material of grass. Increased heat and microplastic pollution are unique to artificial turf. And in fact, natural grass has a cooling effect instead of a heat positive effect. They both have greenhouse gas impacts. I kind of talked through those in the last slide. End of life and disposal. So for artificial turf, this is a pretty big one, whether or not it can be recycled is another really hot topic for this. So full recyclability, meaning converting artificial turf completely fully back into reusable artificial turf, right, that's not happening and that doesn't happen a lot in the recycling world in general, whether we get a full return to original product on recycling. There are some repurposing things happening, but in general, recycling for artificial turf there's very few facilities in the united states that that do this and there's really none in california so this is something that's very um new and emerging so if you hear about it it's it's rare and and um an improving piece of this technology for artificial turf something that the industry is working on but very new And then personal health and injury, so both surfaces, you have exposure to injury abrasions and different things like that. We did not find anything conclusive in the research to suggest one way or the other that playing, especially on a non-professional athletic field, right, that you're going to prone to more injury one way or the other. And with that, I'm going to hand it off to Alex to walk us through cost comparisons.

Thank you, Yvonne. In addition to the research that Madeline just described, we also did a cost comparison of artificial turf and natural grass and looked at what the costs are for installation maintenance of each type of field. So this slide has a lot of numbers on it. I'll just bring your attention to just a couple lines here. On the left-hand side, we have natural grass. On the right-hand side, we have artificial turf. About midway through the slide in the hot one of the highlighted lines, it shows that the. What is the cost the the average annual cost of natural grass over a 20 year period is about $130,000 and. For the same 20 year period, artificial turf would be about $185,000. If you go down, if you look at the bottom portion of the slide, we took those same costs and we looked at per hours of play. So we looked at the difference of number of hours that you can get between a natural grass field and an artificial turf field. and madeline briefly talked about this earlier in the presentation when you when because you can get so much more playing hours on artificial turf and uh compared to natural grass the the cost per per use is is different so um for artificial turf excuse me for natural grass it's about just under $300 per use and for artificial turf it's just under $100 per use part of our analysis looked at some recommendations that the city could do right now with its existing facilities with regard to natural grass to to help improve the field quality left hand side left hand side of the slide we talk about improving the irrigation systems the city's existing irrigation systems are decades old and have outlasted their useful life and so with by replacing those existing irrigation systems the cities would achieve improved water watering efficiency probably reduced water use through better better equipment um and and probably better coverage in terms of the irrigation of the existing fields also as madeline mentioned at the very beginning of the her presentation is that the city doesn't distinguish between open space and playing fields it's all considered open space and there are areas where sports activities take place within those within those open space areas and so one of the things we could do to we recommend to help improve the playing quality, the surface quality of those playing areas is to make a distinction in terms of how it's maintained. And so we recommend adjusting the mowing technique for those sports playing areas. And our recommendation consisted of breaking out the maintenance of those into two different modes or maybe two different teams of maintenance staff. And you have one team that would one mode where the sports fields get mode at an increased frequency, at least twice a week. And the grass is cut to a specific height to help improve the surface quality of that playing field as where the open space areas then would be mowed less frequently and at a different height where the quality isn't as critical for just general passive recreation, dog walking, pickup games, that type of thing. so our report included some recommendations for next steps and we came up with 10 recommendations that are included in the slide here our first recommendation was to prioritize and conserve natural grass of the city's existing fields help to maintain you know the existing conditions we did recommend one of the things we did look at and we we also recommend is establishing a pilot program where the city looks at doing what's called organic turf management and that's areas where you try to get increased playing hours by using a method of turf natural grass growing where you don't use pesticides, you don't use fertilizers, and you really focus on the soil health and through improved soil health. The case studies show that you might get more playing time, perhaps faster recovery of the grass after sports. You won't achieve the same number of hours as artificial turf, but you might achieve increased hours over what's currently being done. But we recommend the pilot study because, you know, you need to find the specific species and maintenance techniques and all that. And all that's going to vary from sites. It's hard to use case studies from other parts of the country or even other areas of the state that might not reflect the same conditions you would get here in Sunnyvale. We recommend that the city consider artificial turf only when you have high-use fields where it's determined necessary, where there's certain, not all parks are going to have the same level of play, but there might be some parks where the city experiences increased levels of play, and maybe those would be the locations where artificial turf might make sense because they could accommodate the demand for playing time. And in those cases where the city considers using artificial turf, we recommend that as part of that project that there be a lifecycle analysis that's conducted that looks at what are the materials that are being used for the production of artificial turf, and then what would be the end of life I guess end of life or end of cycle part of that as well, consideration for that as well. What would happen to that artificial turf mat once the city was done with it or it exceeded its useful life? One thing we looked at and considered as a recommendation is adaptive reuse. and what that is is maybe there are some areas in the city where it's underutilized or there's an opportunity to use artificial turf where natural grass just wouldn't be feasible so that might that might be an underutilized parking lot or the top of an existing parking garage where there's availability for that there isn't a great example of that over in brooklyn at UC Berkeley, the Ender Hill parking garage has a artificial turf field on top of the parking garage that's used for intramural sports and recreational games. When city does consider using artificial turf we recommend that the city implement best practices to contain surface water runoff and other drainage type concerns to limit the transfer of harmful materials that might come off of the artificial turf and then with regard to the private uh Private use the city recommends that Excuse me the report recommends that the city come up with some standards for the use of artificial turf that are consistent with regional priorities for water conservation and and also come up with a Standard for enforcement for that Next slide help implement these recommendations we came up with a flow chart or decision tree or steps the city could consider in making this decision um and throughout this you'll see that the the priority is is natural grass if if the artificial turf can't be done in a safe and in an appropriate way then artificial excuse me natural grass should be the default for that so As you go down through the slide, this chart is actually on two slides. We broke it up just so it'd be easier to read. But if it just walks you through and if artificial turf, if it's a high use area that natural grass can't keep up with demand, that might be a consideration for artificial turf. If artificial turf is considered, can it be implemented in a way where you can include those best management practices to limit the environmental impacts as well as health impacts? Can you get a high enough quality artificial turf materials and infills so that it helps minimize some of those impacts? Next slide, please. and then lastly you know if it makes if this is a place that you know can accommodate artificial turf you know go ahead and you know maybe that's a place to install it if it's not maybe keep the natural grass there but look for the adaptive reuse opportunities with that I'm going to turn it back over to Madeline

okay so in terms of next steps for this um study we've this is our last commission that we're presenting to with a study session just to collect input um our next step would be presenting to city council at the study session on july 28th so again it's going to be as a study session we're not taking any formal action there but rather collecting input um so we'll be summarizing for the council all the input we've received throughout this study session process we've received a number of comments from the commissions as well as the members of the public um you see there there it is so i do have a summary here from the parks and recreation commission as well as the sustainability commission um for what their feedback was in general parks and rec didn't support a complete ban they wanted to define what the high use or high demand field criteria was over 1,000 hours. They support users of the field determining the surface type and then also request that alternatives for natural grass fields such as improved drainage systems or different species of grass were considered as part of this decision tree process. from the sustainability commission they're requesting additional pilots be considered that they generally support the recommendation to prioritize and conserve natural grass they support the final bullet there from parks and recreation commission about requests for all additional alternatives requested environmental considerations are moved up in the decision tree and then they were looking for a more concrete recommendation from the private property recommendation that this report made. So with that, that's all the information we have to share with you tonight. And obviously, the private property one and development pieces are a little bit more relevant to this commission. But I appreciate you all listening to the entirety of the presentation. So we can take questions.

Thank you for the wonderful presentation. Now, I will now ask for questions from my colleagues. Commissioner Davis, please.

Thank you, Vice Chair. Thank you for the presentation. I did read the 170-page report as well. A couple of technical questions first. So if you could bring up slide 11. I had a question about the chart. Okay. On the second table, what does both mean between sports league and recreation? Does that mean people indicated that they use things as both for recreation and also as part of a sports league?

Correct. That they visit Sunnyville public fields for both purposes. So they might play in a sports league, but they also might picnic with their family there on weekends and things like that.

Okay. Okay. So then that means that we're almost evenly divided between, okay. Um, that's, uh, I'm really happy to see that. Um, done with this slide, so you can take that off if you want. I saw that we did the analysis on 148,500 square feet. What kind of field is that? Because that's like much bigger than a soccer field or a football field.

Yeah, we chose that size because it's actually two soccer fields side by side. So it allows for two soccer fields. It could also be configured to allow for other sports. So you could put a baseball diamond in a corner and there would be enough room for a baseball game. You couldn't have a baseball game and soccer going at the same time, but it would allow for that configuration. And just to give you some perspective, the Fair Oaks Park is slightly bigger than that. Okay.

Okay, so that's a good multi-sport figure. Okay, thank you. That's really helpful. I was going to ask about for the community engagement. It looks like we got a large number of responses from sports leagues. So was there outreach done to the different sports leagues? I can think of five off the top of my head in Sunnyvale.

Correct, yes.

Okay, all right. That's... That's really good to hear. Just for some history, I spent, I don't know, seven or eight years coaching youth sports on the boards of a couple of these leagues. Let's just say that the sentiment was not so happy with the city during those times. That was seven or eight years ago. And then I looked through the report. I was really happy to see that each field had at least a cursory inspection, someone going through. I will... They've gotten even worse, was my take from it. And that's really discouraging to see. A question for staff. Just for comparison, and this is maybe a little bit of a gotcha I should ask beforehand. Do we know what our annual deficit with the golf course is? My understanding is it's somewhere between 2 and 4 million. Does anyone know?

I don't know that.

We don't have this information.

Okay. I do know it's more than I'm very confident in saying it's more than 1.2 million, which would be the cost to fully fund the maintenance staff as you put in there. I think that would be instructive for Council to know my own personal priorities as I I tend to value children more as users of city services and so on because they can't speak for themselves and we're supposed to speak for them and take care of them and so on. So it strikes me as a bad look that we're running large deficits on the golf courses, which serves which serves a very small portion of the community while our fields are in terrible shape, are in terrible shape for especially our youth sports leagues. I guess, let's see, what else do I have on here? Those are my questions for now. And I know, I think we'll have some public comments. So I'll have some commentary after that, thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner. The next one is Commissioner Cerrone, please.

Thank you, Vice Chair, and thanks for the very detailed presentation and the study. I've certainly learned more about artificial turf than I ever wanted to know. And I know there's been an ongoing dialogue in the city about this and with the public. I have some questions, but I just want to comment that I I think in some ways the discussion is not framed properly our premise seems to be you know here's a park or parks and we can cover it with natural gas natural grass or artificial turf so now we discuss the pros and cons but according to the presentation uh the purpose of the city of sunnyvale's parks is to provide recreational opportunities open space community gathering places environmental benefits and connections throughout the park for residents of all ages. Now, regarding the impact of artificial turf on park usage, I've been to Fair Oaks Park, for example, a few times when there's no games being played, kind of late in the afternoon during the week, which is a beautiful facility, but when there's no games being played, my experience is it's completely empty. and maybe one person is kicking a ball around or something. There are signs posted on the fence around the field that say strictly prohibited, food, beverages other than water, dogs or pets, steaks, staked umbrella, tents or flags, glass bottles or containers, vehicles, chairs with straight legs, metal cleats or high-heeled shoes, golf, alcohol, any type of tobacco product, bicycling or skating, power-driven remote control vehicles, fires or barbecues. And of course there's no shade there. And these requirements would also prohibit volleyball, informal volleyball, which requires stakes in the ground. These requirements are driven by the artificial turf. So to me, this is no longer a park. It's a sports facility and Fair Oaks used to be a park. I used to work over there and was over there Quite a bit, but now it has become a dedicated sports facility for people who pay to reserve the fields Which you know arguably is a good use for some some members of the public But it's not usable open space the recreational opportunities are limited to organize sports teams And it is certainly not a community gathering space and does not provide connections throughout the city for residents of all ages and so i'm saying if we install artificial turf on a field we're losing a park or converting a park to a pay-to-play sports facility which may be a decision we want to make but sunnyvale has a target for uh it's a little confusing but it's a target of 5.34 acres of parkland per thousand residents uh and i you know i would I assume this sort of facility kind of removes the parkland from that inventory. So one question is, who gets the money from Fair Oaks Park reservations, for example? Where does that money go?

There might be some recreational staff available to answer that question, but I do not have answers. I'll see. And I know we've got Tracy online.

No, we haven't. It's Asus. It's Asus.

Excuse me. That was a long way to travel. Sorry, everybody. Hey, Sue Sorgosa, Deputy Director of Recreation Services. So all of our revenues go in the general fund. So that funds the, it goes back into LRS revenues. So all back in the general fund.

So the, but there's organizations or something who sponsor this or something. They don't get any money?

No, none of that goes back out to the organizations that reserve the field. It all goes into the general fund for the city.

Okay, thank you. Do we know how many residents or people in general participate in the organized sports that require this type of facility? And I'm thinking, for example, when my daughters played soccer, we would go to a grass field like Senegal Middle or Challenger School. There was a shed or a big tube with all the soccer equipment. that out set up the field play the games maybe several let's say soccer games uh and then at the end of the day when the final teams played they would take all that down and it went back to just being a grass field so you know it seems like it's a kind of a higher level of uh uh sports play that requires a field like this? Do we know what the percentage of people is who participate in that?

Can you rephrase your question?

Well, I'm saying that there's a lot of sports being played in parks all over the city, but it seems like Fair Oaks, for example, is kind of a higher caliber sports facility with the artificial turf that's fenced off and marked off and that not every team needs that kind of a Uh, facility and, and would want to pay for it. So I'm, I'm thinking there's a, you know, there's some subset of organized sports people who, so what percentage of solely instead of just going to a, you know, a park and setting up the equipment.

So just to make sure that I understand, Commissioner, are we talking about what you're looking for, maybe a percentage of the difference between people who go and play, let's say, pickup sports, like just recreationally walk out there and play rather than organized sports?

School teams or AYSO or whatever.

yeah so so what we can measure it are what the um uh organized and uh reserved fields uh so we can definitely we definitely have those numbers and tracy uh god is on the call she can she can speak to some of those numbers if if you guys want that for uh for the fields um but when it comes to recreational player pickup player people just showing up to play that those numbers we don't have, we would have to pretty much have a staff at every single site, every single park, every single hour of the day to measure exactly those numbers. So we can tell you more reservations and how many people use based on the reservations we have in the system.

Yeah. Well, thank you. I mean, we can come back to that later. Actually, I think that that's a separate issue that we don't have that information. And that's come up a lot of the park and rec meetings that we don't have numbers on that informal use. And I don't think we have to be at every every park all the time to, you know, like anything else, you can sample it right and get and get a feel for what is the informal use of these parks. Because right now, the paid Park use is the only one we have data on because they're paying, right? So we keep track of it that way. But if there's thousands of people with informal use and we're not capturing it all, then our decisions about how we use the parks or what facilities we install, you know, how do we make that decision? But that's kind of a separate issue. so um all right uh and i know somewhere in the study they say the synthetic fields would have a greater number of uses than natural grasses and i'm i think maybe that means a greater number of organized sports uses than natural grasses because clearly a grass field without all these restrictions would you would be able to do a lot more things. People would throw a Frisbee or whatever. So I guess my main point there is that installing artificial turf fundamentally changes the nature of the land use. If we paved the whole park and put in tennis courts, then you call it a tennis facility. You wouldn't pretend it's a park and nobody's gonna have a picnic at a tennis court, for example. Of course, the other issues, and this is what the study and the presentation focus on, is the health issues and environmental concerns. For recycling, I fully agree that all the plastics are an environment or a major health issue. We should be addressing it more seriously. But this particular plastic use, which needs to be replaced every 15 years or so, seems to me gets way more attention than it should. I'd be more concerned if most of us didn't drive to the meeting in cars that are mostly plastic and fill up our recycle bins with plastic every week. Sunnyvale generates an estimated 7,200 to 8,600 tons of plastic. plastic waste every year, which is a problem. I don't know that the artificial turf is that significant compared to that. And there's a lot of unnecessary plastic in packaging. We could focus on other things, which doesn't mean we shouldn't focus on this. You know, it's going overboard, maybe focusing on this to the exclusion of many other sources of plastic. Beyond the recycling, there's the health concerns, especially the PFAS toxicity, and Can we purchase PFAS-free artificial turf? And just a quick search, there were at least four vendors who claim PFAS-free turf. Is that something that's doable?

So my understanding is there are vendors who claim it, and I think that there's testing that you can do at the manufacturing level. So you could test because some of the issue is once you get out into the environment, there's ambient PFAS in the air. And so when you test it, when it's already here, it's exposed to PFAS that's just in the air. So there's testing that can occur at the manufacturing facility. However, there's maybe like 100 Tests you can do for pfas pfas and there's well over 100 different types of pfas pfas and i'll like alex add to that if needed.

You know part of our recommendations was that when when the city did consider artificial turf that you you do look at that life cycle analysis as part of that and the city could even go a step further in when a artificial turf field was was decided to be put in the city could put in specifications so what type of materials could be used and what type of materials could not be used as part of that um you know as part of the manufacturing and purchasing process right and and i i think that's exactly what we should do um

A major source of the air contamination seems to be from the infill. And I think it's somewhere that Palo Alto was replacing their rubber infill. And apparently some manufacturers require no infill at all. And I guess the rubber infill is a major cause of the dangerous heat. Anyway, there again, that's something that we should probably look at in terms of specifying the materials.

Just note, Fair Oaks has organic infill, so it's like cork or sand, things of that nature.

OK. For park usage, which is the other thing, playing time, it seems kind of improbable to me that artificial turf gets four times the playing hours compared to grass. Is Fair Oaks Park actually used six hours per weekday and 10 hours per weekend day? And grass can only tolerate two hours per day?

I'll let our recreational staff speak to the number of hours that we actually play on.

I think that's what we, well, right, that's what I mean. Reservable. Maybe it's available, those hours, but...

yeah yeah yeah well definitely available uh tracy god i think she she's on the line she's a recreation services manager who oversees reservations so she can probably speak to uh better when the actual reservations hours are

Hello. So if you're asking about Fair Oaks, generally, yeah, it's reservable from 5 to 10 at night. And because it is lighted, it is used pretty consistently on the weeknights. And on the weekends, it could be used up to 12 hours a day. Primarily a lot of our youth groups, sports groups, but then we also have a lot of adult leagues that play out there.

So you're saying the grass fields can only tolerate two hours per day?

The grass fields, so the two hours per day comes from the study. And so right now we don't have a limit on how long our grass fields can be rented, but generally they're pretty heavily used between 4 to 8 p.m. And that's mostly because we don't have lights at a lot of our grass fields and on the weekends.

And that would be four hours a day instead of two hours a day.

Yeah, generally. And it's also depending on the field, but usually I would say around four hours a day is when our grass fields are used.

right so that would compare to the analysis that would that would double the hours available for grass fields right so so um just a note on that right there's there's a lot of averages and ranges for recommended available calculated all that kind of stuff um yeah i'm not sure if you have my pocket slides by chance and if you could pull up slide 26 there's a table we put together that kind of walks through that so um Even if you go on the high end of what's recommended, so like our natural grass fields see 1,000 hours in some cases or over that, even if you go to the 1,000 hours, it's not meeting the 2,000 hours that we're seeing. So the next slide, Gia. Thank you.

yeah i think that's an important point i i just it seemed like there were a lot of variables in all these and i felt like the study which for good reason looks sort of a nominal grass field versus a nominal turf field but if you make choices on like what grass what turf or whatever you could dramatically change the ratio of those uh you know of the cost per hour or cost per person or however you want to characterize it.

So, right. So, so for example, if you upped, um, natural grass fields to like a thousand hours of, of play, you're getting closer to, I think I calculated out like $130, but you're still, still a bit over, um, the 90 something for artificial turf. Um, and then there was another point I was gonna make, and I can't remember it, but, um, Tom deal has his hand up or sub consultant. I'll let him speak.

yes sir if i could just mention that the two hours a day that is the industry recommendation to have a playable condition where people don't uh complain about the condition of the fields and and you know injuries and the fields becoming unplayable the grass wears out where the synthetic turf does not so that was where the two hours a day is the recommendation from the industry is only to use a grass field approximately 600 hours a year and then that you should be resting it during the growing season for six to eight weeks to let it rehabilitate and um if you talk to your maintenance staff your park staff you do not have the ability to close your fields really during the growing season and to allow them to grow so that's why there's a the concern of the condition

How do professional sports fields handle that? They don't close for six to eight weeks?

No, they just re-sod the field totally. But like a true stadium where a professional team plays or something, they limit the grass to about 200 hours a year, and then they'll re-sod the field. And the city doesn't have that. That's not an easy thing to do.

Okay. I mean, so they're... As we were saying, there's a lot of variables, and to me, it's not just grass or no grass. It's not just turf or no turf. There's a lot of variables in there. I had a question. The study says the city's current irrigation system has reached the end of its service life and requires replacement. Are we saying that the irrigation systems in all of the city parks are failing at the same time? When we renovate parks, we never replace the irrigation system?

When parks are renovated, the irrigation systems are replaced and updated. And so the irrigation systems are only getting updated along the renovation schedule. And so parks that haven't been renovated from what I understand, that's the majority of them have old irrigation systems. And so as part of the capital improvement projects process, we upgrade or renovate parks and upgrade the irrigation system. That's how it's occurring right now.

Okay. But we renovate parks on a regular schedule, right? I mean, all of the irrigation systems. Are most of the irrigation systems not working or not working well?

I can't speak to the quality of the parks and our public works director is not here tonight. But from what I understand is generally the majority of them are older and I'm not sure how frequent we renovate our parks. But from my understanding, there's a lag and a lot of the irrigation systems need to be upgraded.

okay yes when i spoke to yeah when i spoke to jim the public's works person he indicated that the majority of the irrigation systems that irrigate the playing fields are not in good condition and that's one of the biggest problems the other thing is the irrigation systems weren't designed specifically to irrigate a an athletic playing field as much as to irrigate open grass open space grass and there's a difference in how you would irrigate a playing surface as opposed to a park that's what our conversations were okay um so uh that's interesting and and you know the uh i looked at the observation report uh

attachment one, which looks at many of the parks, maybe all of them. The main conclusion for me looking at that was that we are poorly maintaining our grass fields. First of all, early February is possibly the worst time of year to evaluate the quality of a grass field, especially after rainy weather. And if the irrigation systems are failing, And the grass fields are not maintained as playing fields, but they're evaluated in terms of their playability. And then they were degraded by multiple other uses, including dogs and possibly volleyball players. So the artificial turf avoids this simply by

banning all other uses on the synthetic turf um the only use that would be banned on the synthetic turf would be um the dogs are typically definitely banned on synthetic turf and then driving any type of spike or something into the synthetic turf but you can play volleyball on synthetic turf there are rollable volleyball nets different communities do allow a lot of different activities on synthetic turf. I can't speak to why Fair Oaks has those rules. My assumption is because it's the only synthetic turf field in the city and they limit what is done.

Really? So do you think that's unique to Fair Oaks, these requirements?

Some of them, for sure. I did a project in Sandpoint, Idaho, and they have a two-week-long concert series on their synthetic turf field, and they put up tents and all kinds of things. But the field was designed to allow for that, and they cover it appropriately. Other parks, other agencies do movie nights in the park and things like that. They don't allow glass, but people could go out on the field and put down blankets and different things.

Are we doing that in Sunnyvale? I've never seen that.

I would probably defer to parks on that one. I'm not sure exactly what the rules would be for artificial turf. Tracy's on the call. Tracy, if you know of any of those rules and regulations and such, feel free to chime in here. Unfortunately, since we don't have that staff here, I can't really give you a good answer. We can take that and give you guys the answer after the meeting.

okay thanks um i mean so my question was was going to be if we if we fenced in the grass fields and maintain them as a plain surface with the appropriate irrigation and mowing regimen and prohibited you know again food beverages other than water dogs and pets steaks and so on uh what would they look like and i maybe you can't answer that but It seems like they might look a lot better than they do right now, which is getting a lot of use from multiple uses from the community.

I believe the condition of the fields would improve and the playability would improve. There still would be a limit to the number of hours that the grass could withstand before it needed to either be taken offline or arrested. But it would if the dogs were not on the fields and if, you know, they had better irrigation and that's why earlier Alex mentioned two different maintenance methods, a maintenance mode one and a maintenance mode two that could help improve the condition of your fields.

Okay, and... also on that observation there's a quote that i observed baseball multiple soccer teams practicing throughout the area and people just informally using the field this is the fair oaks artificial turf what does informally using the field mean in this context i i haven't seen that myself so when i was there there were people just there were people throwing frisbees there were people

just running around with their kids people were using it as if it was a park there wasn't it was uh i was there a couple of different times during the day but i was there during the day like typically if you go by an athletic field at on a monday through friday at 10 or 11 o'clock during the morning you wouldn't expect to see teams practicing during the school year because they're in school but there were people out there there were some individual people like coaching their kid just one-on-one you know running them through soccer drills or conditioning drills uh it appeared that there were people kind of doing their own tai chi or you know different activities And then when I went back at night, there were a lot of athletic games. And what I saw then, I believe there was softball or baseball being played at the same time. In a different part of the park, there was soccer being played.

Okay. And my final question is about, or maybe it's a comment, but at least the question of increased injury. I think the report said there was... Injury rates for PCL tears were significantly increased during competitions on turf as compared with the natural grass. I saw there was a presentation by one vendor that claimed their turf did not have increased injuries, but it seemed like that's an important point that we should understand in terms of whatever we purchase. That's all I have for now until we hear public comment. Thank you.

Thank you. Next one is Chair Iglesias, please.

Thank you, Vice Chair. Thank you so much for the presentation. Just a couple of things that I was hoping to talk about. First, I wanted to pressure test a little bit about the hours assumption. And the reason why is with artificial turf, obviously, it gets hot. And it gets much hotter quickly if it's 70, 80 degrees out. The turf itself is not bad. It could be that plus 20, plus 30, plus 40. And given the fact that the demand for turf during warmer periods also goes up, was that part of your analysis in selecting those usable hours?

Yes. So in speaking with our recreational staff, we haven't seen a large number of cancellations or practices and games not occurring because of heat. So that's something we've gotten a lot of feedback from the community on and I can let recreational staff speak more to that, but that's not comparable in terms of quantity of hours of cancellations from heat versus cancellations for rain or resting from grass.

So I want to push on that just a little bit, because I'm curious if we were to have artificial turf, um, and we have like a kid's soccer game and now the turf itself is 110 degrees, 115 degrees like that. Um, we don't really have a way of, of measuring that right now that I'm aware of. Is that, is that something that we've seen at the current park and do we have a way to also cool that down?

Yeah. So, um, uh, this actually came up at the last, uh, last commissioner meeting. So, um, each coach is able to determine the field condition on the time of play. And then they make the determination as to whether or not they cancel. And the reason for that is because conditions of the field can be different from one part of the day to the next it can be different from field to field etc just based on the environment what's out there is there a tree shade etc so we do really rely on the organizations and the coaches to make the call as to whether or not they're going to cancel something so maybe an eight o'clock soccer game on a hot summer's day in the morning nine o'clock ten o'clock playable playable playable they get to 12 too hot that coach that coach cancels um so it wasn't an outright cancel for the entire day but maybe that game was cancelled so if you have those types of cancellations that happen um within a reservation as opposed to the entire reservation um that we don't have the numbers for because we don't see that as a cancellation it might be one game um uh so It's not a perfect answer to your question, but it's just kind of what we know and what we've seen and what we've kind of seen anecdotally whenever we've rented the Fair Oaks Park.

Okay. And it's probably fair that if we were to look at average temperatures of the year, there'd be a certain number of days, if it was 30, if it was 60, if it was 90, that those days would probably be impaired. And so then the numbers that were presented would probably be a ceiling of what's possible if there aren't those days, but it's probably not likely. So, but I think that's a reasonable assumption, correct?

yeah i think we look at all the um uh the numbers we give in terms of how much the fields can be rented that's you know monday through friday if some if we got it from six to ten o'clock every single day and it was perfect conditions and and and saturday through sunday it was 12 hours a day with perfect conditions that that's how we do calculate the hours of availability increment weather we don't we don't really know how much is going to impact from year to year so we've given you what is possible

Okay, next point was, I just had a question about the approach for outreach. I think that the topic for artificial turf in Sunnyvale can be a little bit divisive. It can be a little bit polarizing. I'm curious, is the approach, does it include elements of education just about artificial turf and grass in general, kind of from an unbiased perspective? I'm curious if the general public is perceiving this as trying to pitch one way or the other. And then if there's any attempts to, to try and just also use parts of it for just like an introductory introduction of facts.

Uh, no, we did not have any kind of like educational outreach effort as part of the study itself. Did I answer your question?

That's my question. My only concern is that if I were to go up to random people on the street and ask them, like, you know, artificial turf, love it, hate it, I'm not sure that the results are going to give me something that I would necessarily want to build or support a policy around. Only in that my concern is that I think giving information in one way or the other, a balanced approach, I think would help. Because, you know, I care obviously about public comment. i know there are a lot of people in our in our public also take time to educate themselves and i'm not at all dismissing um their comments but i i think it's also important that that there's information that's that's brought i guess to kind of like to level the playing field puns semi-intended um about the conversation yeah and just say i guess other than the report itself right yeah Next, and I did want to talk a little bit more about the injury because I've read kind of both sides of it. I know that when it's natural grass, there can be a tendency to have like more hidden hazards that someone could get injured on, especially if the field gets a lot of use. Was there any research that you found that speaks to the types of injuries, especially for community type play versus more elite or professional play? no research that was done at the professional level and at the collegiate level but there really isn't any research that's done at the community level on on that okay and i do think it probably is important to differentiate that so then that's good to know um and then i just had a thought um so i really found the one slide you had about the different costs uh to be quite compelling especially when it came down to cost per hour um i'm curious if there there probably are ways that if we were to look at we're trying to avoid the harm it would come from artificial turf and environmental impact um are you aware of programs that almost could come even from the vendors themselves who sell it it's almost like they sell it's not like um carbon offsets to be clear but somewhere along the lines of finding ways to also take the resources that are saved from spending on maintenance of natural grass and of watering and maintaining that and then using that to sort of make up for the the impair the loss of the artificial turf did you see anything like that nothing specific what we do know is that that the industry is evolving right now in response to these type of concerns so like madeline mentioned like there are types of

artificial turf that like don't use PFAS or you know or maybe they are trying to make it more recyclable or something like that but um to specifically answer your question like we didn't see anything that like that but it does appear just from doing the research and looking on specific vendor websites it does look like there are advancements in that regard to the different type of materials we're using

Okay, and I just my thought is that the city has, there's a way to balance, obviously, there's conservation, there's avoiding, you know, support, consumption of plastics, and there's also being like financially prudent.

So I think that that's an interesting space to kind of look at further to see how that I can just add real quick, because I didn't mention this on that slide, the one the table that has the check marks next to the environmental health impact. So that was really looking at our current how we currently maintain and what types of grasses we're looking at an artificial turf same thing so there's mitigation actions you can take on both sides right you can mitigate chemical use by going organic on natural grass use electric leaf blowers things of that nature and you can mitigate some of the concerns with artificial turf those both come at additional costs so oftentimes if you're going to go the PFAS free or more recyclable or if you're going to go organic or whatever it's going to there's going to be some cost of change or cost of more staffing whatever it might be so the cost analysis is not considering those types of best management practices and what or mitigation pathways we could take and what those costs vary a lot and so they're not included as part of this and those would be considered on a project by project basis and so that's where that

um decision tree really comes in so as we're going you know looking at a park specifically what types of um best available technologies are there and and to mitigate these environmental and health concerns and what would that um cost be okay um and then just two two final points um one is actually about the decision tree i i thought um to me there's definitely a a good bias uh where you have to effectively go through five questions before you get to saying okay will you do artificial turf Um. So to me I thought that that created a higher standard to get to that point, and I think that's probably more consistent with generally what Sunnyvale strives to be as a as a community and city, and the things that we value. So I liked seeing that you that there you had to continue to prove that there wasn't a viable alternative for natural grass. And then I and I like the concept of approaching this where we we kind of separate our spaces of of how they're used like quite frankly i have a park in my house that isn't used for any type of recreation like like that athletic recreation and i i would hate for it to be artificial turf like i don't i don't think anyone's like oh man i want to go lay on an artificial turf right now that sounds really you know relaxing But if I'm, like, going to go and I'm going to play soccer, I'm going to play another sport, and there's a field that we're able to kind of keep that limited to, I think that, to me, seems like balance. So I appreciate that. That's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you, Chair. Our next one is Commissioner Payne.

Thank you. Just a couple couple comments and some questions. First, just on the 2 out just on the some of the points about fields. I have to echo the what my fellow commissioner said about 2 h seeming a bit unrealistically short for grass fields. I know that I've definitely played tournaments and grass fields for longer than 2 h, and I don't. These were well-maintained grass fields, I will specify, but I didn't recall the fields getting too awful after the first two hours. So it's definitely possible. Now, I will also just say that from an athlete perspective, there are pros and cons to both surfaces. The classic problem like one of the classic problems i've seen with turf fields is that there's lower friction, so if you're like a balls rolling on it will just keep rolling forever and on a grass field, it will usually not keep rolling forever usual stop and that's. Personally, usually from when I was doing I usually wanted the balls to stop, but I don't, but this is, but on the but, but the flip side of that is i've also had. had to suffer through cancellations of tournaments when the grass field got too wet to play because it was raining. So again, it's all trade-offs. I will say to Commissioner Ceroni, to another point raised by Commissioner Ceroni, in my experience, it is more true than not that artificial turf fields do have various restrictions about like food and drink and such than you would see on grass fields. This is anecdotal, but it comes from, it is from playing on various fields throughout the country. So it's not limited to California. I'll take a response on that.

uh mr deal i saw your hand was up oh thank you um i was just going to mention the two hours that i talk about that's on average per day and we were looking at a use of a field 40 hours i mean 40 weeks a year so we were assuming in my previous studies for instance that you know there were times of the year maybe over the christmas holidays uh bad weather cold months things like that where the fields weren't used. So we used an average of two hours a day for a natural grass field over 40 weeks. And the synthetic turf did not have a limit of two hours because it doesn't wear out. But I agree with you that a grass field, you could have a tournament all weekend long, but you can't have a tournament all weekend long every weekend and still have good grass. At some point,

most likely those fields that you played on were taken offline for a period of time to grow and rehabilitate that's my comment thank you thank you I I and I do think it's reasonable I think it would be clarifying just when this comes to City Council to actually make that clarifying point just to say that this is This is an amortization. This is an average. It's not meant to say you can only use it two hours in a given day because I think that will raise questions.

I also wanted to...

So that's kind of my anecdotal points. A couple more. I liked the... i like the discussion about open space versus sports fields i'd also really like to see that get extended into into an equity analysis because i think when and i don't necessarily know if that's for this instance study but when this keeps going through the process because uh this is i live very close to fair oaks park so a lot of this discussion has hit for home to me i i think there's a lot of i think I think we want to make sure that residents of Sunnyvale have access to nearby open space. And I think we also want, maybe it doesn't have to be quite as immediate, but we do want all residents of Sunnyvale to have access to sports fields. And I think it's great that we're trying to consider them separately. And I think we want to make sure that We kind of look at this from a broader urban planning perspective going forward to make sure that we're not kind of saying, okay, and all the sports fields are, you know, and all the, and we're just start saying, okay, and all the sports fields are near this part of the city and all the open spaces towards that's part of the city. And obviously, obviously we're not gonna do quite that grossly, but just even at a more granular level, making sure people keep having access. A few, so, A couple questions specifically first on the draft report attachment one page three. This is me being just being kind of annoying, but on the table of contents, it says field uses error bookmark not defined. Is this going to be fixed when this comes back to Council?

Yes, we can correct that.

Okay, thank you. And I wanted to actually look at the private some of the private you stuff because had some I think we because we as a planning Commission actually do more with that. There was there's some. There were discussed, there was a discussion at the heat impact of turf versus grass did see. I like a lot of what I was hearing about the adaptive use scenarios regarding putting in a turf field or something and somewhere where it would just be completely infeasible to do grass on top of a parking lot or something. But have we looked at the heat impacts or other pollutant impacts? And I feel like the heat impact would be a big one versus Like the concrete of a parking lot that kind of thing like we compared it to a grass field, but I was curious if we compared it to to concrete or some other use.

No, that wasn't included as part of the study.

Okay, I would just say that I think it would be I think it would be worth looking at for when considering adaptive use cases because I. I am Jen because. Her heat heat ion effect is something that I think is something we need to be very careful about and I. it's another reason why I think we want to make sure her filter distributed across the city, rather than concentrated frankly, but I would want to make sure that we aren't you know, making that worse if we're pregnant at like an adaptive use element somewhere. uh the other ques the other well this is going to be a couple questions but we're talking about turf use and private property uh did uh can you give us some examples of how people are using artificial turf from private property

Yeah. So from the responses I've seen, um, it it's often, if people had a really small patch of grass that they were having a hard time maintaining, they'd put artificial turf in, um, they'll put it kind of do multiple different types of surface covers. So there might be like some mulch, some artificial turf, some stepping stones or some gravel. So we had a handful of people who had, you know, they had a whole list of ground surface cover types that they selected, um, and their responses and yeah.

Okay, thank you have weekends have we have we done anything to encourage kind of alternative landscaping it for those scenarios like more drought more. More drought tolerant landscaping more kind of zero scaping that kind of thing just as a kind of a third option to either just having grass or turf.

So for single family residential homes, we do a lot of water conservation outreach and education and valley water no longer supports artificial turf as a water conservation measure. So that's something that they've released in a statement in terms of more like larger development or things other than single family residential. I'll let our assistant director for CDD maybe speak to some of the requirements that we have for that.

Yeah, thank you, Madeline. Matt Benoit, Assistant Director of CDD Community Development. We do have that policy in place that I think over some amount of time we are going to consider adding standards for artificial turf in private development. things we can look at you know go beyond you know we currently have maximums for paved surfaces for instance uh native landscaping requirements things like that and we just need to look more carefully at how uh to your point commissioner pine how uh artificial turf plays into those calculations and how and where it could best be used uh and supported We have seen private development build larger parks and bigger spaces that are then given to the community. And certainly in those instances, we would be looking at the standards put in place here tonight. But for a lot of those smaller, more interstitial spaces in private development, we'd have to look more carefully at how to handle those.

yeah thank you yeah because just my thought was that like obviously if you're talking about like a large development that's like a you know like either a private kind of something like a private park or a pub or what ends up becoming a public park essentially like we'd be more looking at the park kind of standards but just for the small just smaller uses i feel like if we couldn't if we could just be more encouraging people to look at you know more kind of ecologically friendly alternatives to just having a lawn than turf, because I feel like those alternatives exist and we should be encouraging them to the extent possible. So that's just, again, I don't know if that's part of this, but as you mentioned, it's something I'm glad to hear that we're looking at going forward. And I look forward to that coming back at some point.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Our next one is Commissioner Segura, please.

Thank you. Thank you so much for the presentation. I have a few things that I would like to bring up and ask some questions like, did you guys have any studies of how much emission it will cost to recycle all this turf?

So I believe in the research that we looked at the one study, so we didn't do a full quantification of emissions for artificial turf versus natural grass, but we cited that one study that looked at the field by field comparison and that included the full life cycle GHG impacts of artificial turf versus natural grass. So I believe recyclability or end of life disposal. was considered as part of that. And so that was the one that, you know, field by field comparison, artificial turf was a higher GHG. But then when you went by hours of play, that was where things started to vary, right?

Okay. Also, did you guys take in consideration repairs of artificial turf? because those can get damaged as well. Like people going out to the park, I don't know, I'll take a simple example. Even though it's not allowed in that area, they're taking a grill with them and can burn the grass and damage it or the turf. And then you need to repair it. I encountered the situation when somebody took something hard and put it on turf and damaged it, and then there is needs in repair. So because it's going to be open to the public, we don't have 100% control of what people will do in certain locations. So in that study, did you take any consideration for repairs of that nature?

yeah so our study did take into account like maintenance for an artificial turf it wasn't specific to any particular source of damage or just mostly wear and tear but it did the cost did take into account maintenance for the artificial turf what would you consider this maintenance because practically it's self-sufficient so what would you guys You consider those maintenance from people playing on it. The seams can sometimes come apart, so they need to be repaired.

Okay, another question that they have mainly the people that will be. um using it or let's say in fields playing fields will be kids and teenagers um and there is always release of gas from the turf and okay when somebody goes once in a while um to the park and there is some gas all around us anyways but did we check if there is anything for long usage of um that environment if it harms being harmful for kids or young kids yeah so that's where

I was trying to communicate the, there's a lot of research and quantification of the environmental impacts, but then correlating them directly to health impacts and like long-term impacts of exposure or playing on artificial turf. There's not a lot of studies done that can directly say one way or the other. There was one done for, like, the crumb rubber infill that concluded there were no long-term significant impacts. But, for example, PFAS and PFOS are supposed to be, you know, a bigger impact to children, right? We know that they have a larger impact to children, but there's no study that tells us that playing on artificial turf for 10 years will expose you to PFAS and have the, you know, XYZ health impacts. I'll let Alex add to that if there's anything to add, but it's just not a lot of correlated quantification happening for what the health impacts are.

OK. Also, do you guys know at what temperatures, when the study was done or whatever, the sources that you got the information from, at what temperatures they spoke about certain gas release? Because obviously, when the temperature is rising, it will release more gases than when it's colder. That's the nature of plastic and oil and whatnot. and one of my fears is that we don't get 100 the accurate data because obviously manufacturers trying to give a straight data but sometimes you don't get the extreme points that can affect us so do you know like at what temperatures it was the study was done

Yeah, that study wasn't specific to temperature. We did see research that off-gassing from these was a concern, but we didn't see any specific paper that identified a causation or correlation to that specific to artificial turf.

Two more things. When you guys did a survey with the people with outreach, um did you guys discuss or ask about um what they feel about comfort on actually sitting in a hot day on turf versus uh on grass can you repeat that what they actually felt they felt about it if if you had any input because obviously when it gets really hot i mean if it's a small area of turf is one thing, but if you look at large parks like Sarah Park or others, it's a large amount of turf. And if it's not just for play area like soccer field or baseball field, and it becomes larger area of turf, it can be maybe uncomfortable to the people who lives in Sunnyvale.

I don't think we had a question that specifically asked for what you're getting at. We had, you know, a lot of different questions that we asked that maybe kind of looked at that, you know, close to that, right? So we asked people generally how they felt about environmental and health impacts of artificial turf. We asked them if they play on Sunnyvale fields, what type of surface cover they play on. I don't know if we had a preference question. Let me double check.

Just to clarify, Commissioner, the artificial turf would only be for the sports playing field there wouldn't be artificial turf for a passive recreation area so where people would go and picnic and and relax and recreate we're not recommending any change to that that would that would remain natural grass it'd only be for the specific sports playing area i see um okay thank you thank you our next

Commissioner? Go ahead, please.

Thank you, Vice Chair. Thank you for your presentation. The question I had was, are the sports fields accessible for those with wheelchairs or power scooters? Are they allowed to go on there?

I don't have an answer to that question. Let me see if Recreation does.

I can see you're a little bit more familiar with the fields than I. Can you jump on that one?

Yeah, I would say sometimes there's some extracurricular sporting activities that the disabled community does. They'll do power chair soccer or I've never seen it, but wheelchair rugby. I'd be interested to see it myself. But I was just wondering if the city would be open to those fields potentially being used for that in the future. And there are different design considerations, such as the infill material. You want it a little bit different because of the wheelchair sinking. So it's just something I wanted to ask if maybe in the outreach, if it's possible to outreach to some of the local communities that do sporting activities geared towards disabled community, if they would be interested or potentially use these fields in the future. If so, then are there any adjustments that could be made to those fields to make them more accessible and more usable? But I think my first question is, is there a policy that people in powerchairs or wheelchairs can go onto those fields right now? I don't know if it would tear it up and things like that, if there's anything like that, but I do know that different types of materials have different thresholds.

Thank you. I could say we currently don't have a policy that I know of about not having wheelchairs or other wheels. I mean, generally, I want to say that there is a policy about not having bikes on fields just because it could damage the seams. Typically, when there's wheelchair sports that I've seen are always been inside gyms. And so we've not gotten a request for park use yet.

because a bicycle and a wheelchair would be similar right in some ways so might be something to look into yeah it's a great question okay thank you commissioner davis can i can i ask before i go second round thank you so i i have a questions um um i have questions about um the divisions between open space and playing fields. Do we have a person like total open space? We have the parks open space and the overlap of playing fields or something like that. And are you like how many people use it, use it open space and playing fields together? And I'm just trying to get some data. Do we have any data like that? from the city, old data or anything like that?

In terms of acreage, we could probably follow up with you regarding acreage of open space versus, you know, acreage of reservable fields. And then in terms of usage of them, right, we've discussed that the open space isn't tracked because the only thing that we're tracking is the reservations for the fields. So just people passing in and out of a park aren't being counted or tracked in any way.

Yeah, because as my commissioner was saying, the equity, so I want to know when the younger kids, when they come to open space to play fields with their coaches or teams, parents are there, all of them. with the dogs and with their babysitters or all of them are there to take the photographs and cheer them up. So I see, so they will be, so I just think that there is so much, there should be a dedicated sports field, but I think putting artificial turf um completely changes the experience of parents to bring their chairs they sit down there the dogs are running around so i think um i i think there are a lot of other things you have mentioned but this is like it's a community it's open space family space and i just think we are completely uh kind of restricting a lot of people when the certain number of like certain ages of kids play. So that's my one of the concern of putting the artificial turf will completely start creating boundaries where they are like not family space. It becomes very much like just kids space. So that's one. And I think we should have some data from like the total number parks open space versus how many people use uh from day i think i don't know it would be nice to have a survey done for like a whole week like different age group are using different parks i know it's very complicated but i think even it just um uh doing doing some analysis even for a week or just taking two parks and just even observation numbers or something could give some idea because I feel that I understand that there is a need of playing larger number of hours, but we can share the other cities facilities because um i remember my son was in the baseball team and we went around to different cities to play the the team they played against so like mountain view sunnyvale city there are a lot of sporting facilities that they can like switch over and we don't need to be planning everything just as a city, Sunnyvale city, and like that's what matters. So I think that's what, even if we compare the sporting facilities, just little bit boundaries, it can be part of the Sunnyvale resource. So that's, I don't know how you guys can do, but I really want to think little bit bigger than just like restricting and restricting just Sunnyvale and converting them into artificial turf boundary, because there is a lot of, I really have the concern about the, as my other commissioner was saying that recycling, because there is a big cost associated with it, because every 15 years you are going to remove them. and put new one, where will it go? And you want to use it somewhere else, but we don't have big parking garages that we can use it like San Francisco has or something. So that there is a big cost attached to that because you have to probably send it to other state. And so that is not included in part of the cost analysis of per hour. cost analysis of maintaining natural grass versus the artificial turf. So I would say that that is like you may not have number, but it is part of the cost associated with it. The second thing Third, I mean, it's about the residential, I'm talking about now the small residential, single family residential policy level. And I see that we have, our city has become very dense. Like people are increasing with the ADU and all. And now everybody's, I mean, not everybody, but many, many houses are, their busy lifestyle, they have the single family homes. So they're converting their front yard, backyard with artificial turf. And even in spite of having the policy, as you said, the West water, valley water or something has a drought tolerant subsidies that you can, but nobody utilizes it because they have, it's like they have a waiting line. and then they help you to plant the garden. And it's a lot of maintenance in the beginning. So I just think it hasn't been that successful as it intended to be. So I seriously think we should have some policy which is like we have the impervious and pervious like MDF single family guidelines or ordinance. I think we should definitely include the permeable spaces Priti Krishtel- about including artificial turf maybe there is a percentage that they can put it, but only. Priti Krishtel- percentage of their lot area so like maybe 30% of their lot area total so then they don't cover because i've seen houses, where. Priti Krishtel- They have completely covered backyard and front yard they completely removed all the top soil, they completely covered with them. the gravels, sub structures like making it where a lot of money spending to put artificial turf and pavers or the concrete. So there is the trees around it. has been um right now they're in a good condition but over the time they are going to die a lot of trees because they trim the trees and then there are no artificial turf around it so i don't know what the quality of it there is no water which can go through it it's just the rain water they don't have sprinkler system so i seriously think that in 10 years time we'll have all trees will be dead our city will be hot and that's what is happening in other countries And they are now replanting the tree, so I my worries are that because it's the infill artificial turf is coming so that's that's like two different things and then third one, I had this question about them. organic uh artificial turf like i know it's not much in the picture but they are uh it's um i don't know maybe we need to like make it a little bit tougher for them so then uh like so they have standards of what kind of material they are made up of so it's like they can use the cork uh this they are using the plastic so you know i think we should be I know we need for the high use sporting facilities we use the artificial turf, but for the other places, we should be asking for more. stringent or like there should be. They should prove it that what it is how long it will be, I think there should be higher standards, so I don't know I mean we. Sanibel is always been a model city like we always make it harder for, and this is a very controversial issues because look at our cities are they all want to preserve their open nature of grass. I'm just going to bring this out because when I was reading the history of a natural grass, how it started, there were woodlands and then they wanted to have their goats and all to see clear view and they started cutting it and making a natural grass and then Victorian era came and then people started playing and then natural grass came. And I mean, we are having all this impact of like completely I think we are now going to completely artificial turf and I'm really worried about it. So I think we should we should restrict it where there is a high facility or maybe share the facilities or make certain ground as artificial turf used day and night, like 24 hours open so everybody can rent it, use it. and have less kind of, and let the other open spaces as nature, but that's just my comments. So thank you. And I'm going to have the next one is commissioner Davis.

I'll try to keep this quick. Cause I know we're way over time. And so some things I'd like to, I guess, be taken to city council as feedback. I wanna thank commissioner Cerrone for pointing out that Once something becomes an athletic facility it's really pretty different from parks and it's not just artificial turf if you go to Sarah park where the baseball fields are that's pretty separate from the rest of the park if you go to rain or park with the hard scape. The fields are closed all the time. You generally cannot go on to the fields, you know they're not they're just not available as regular parkland is. ponderosa park actually the field, there has become basically unplayable because the access isn't restricted. and you have people with their dogs and so on so it used to be that we would go and practice at brawley because it's it's much less used and even though all the facilities are worse it was just easier to practice there so i think that's a distinction that needs to be pointed out that once you put in dedicated athletic facilities it does change the nature of the park and there's a big difference between something that's a dedicated athletic facility or a general park that we can use casually or occasionally as a sporting field, right? And we tend to do that to soccer more. But I know the soccer leagues, they tend to go more to the schools. And I think that's largely because there is a lot less park traffic on those large spaces. So that's something I think we need to make clear to city council when this goes to them. Also, there is a significant group within the city that thinks artificial turf should be banned because of environmental reasons, pure and simple. I don't. I don't agree with them, but it's something that you can anticipate people are going to speak about that you know it's a it's a terrible environmental thing. That needs to be addressed, they need to be listened to, they need to be taken seriously other concerns need to be addressed. The other thing is that we seem to have forgotten about the Twin Creeks facility, where I think we have 14 or 16 fields. I know it's owned by the county and leased out. I've spent a lot of time there. That actually provides a good experience for how artificial turf actually works within the city. So like when chairs... When the Chair was saying asking about the temperatures and so on i'm like oh yeah temperatures, not a not a can because of our experience my experience at twin creeks temperatures, not a concern in sunnyville actually it's too cold, all the time right. So I think the the twin creeks experience if you were to talk to them would be instructive as to how turf actually works in sunnyville long term in terms of playability. The quality of the surfaces. It got pretty I think it's been replaced recently it got pretty run down, but it was still being used just because it lit graded lit fields with perfect grade, even if it was concrete would still be more attractive than most of our parks. So, uh for for softball and baseball primarily right uh so those are the things um one maybe one clarification um the on the sports leagues people don't seem to and and maybe this is just as i was on the board of of it um the sports leagues they lease the fields at the parks they go and they get permits and they and i think what and They also spend a lot of parent hours maintaining the fields to keep them playable and so on. And I think if you went and did an analysis, you would find that you end up with a lot of permit requests at just a few parks. When I was on Sunnyville Metro's board, we actually cut down on our number of permits because we didn't have the, we just didn't have the enough parents to maintain all the fields that we had used in the past. And so there's a lot of, like unpaid labor that goes into maintaining the fields that are coming from the sports leagues. But that also means just because of the economics, I should say, you'll probably find that certain parks you're issuing a lot more permits for just because that's where the parents who can volunteer time to help maintain the fields are, right? So if you look at Raynor, Sarah, Ortega, those are the ones that jump out to me. You'll probably find that there are a lot of permits there. And then you go to other parks and there are like Lakewood, you'll probably find that there are no permits whatsoever. Okay, we're way over time, so I'll stop there.

Thank you. So I will go ahead and open the public comment on the specific item. Please submit a speaker card to the recording officer. Raise your digital hand now or dial star nine on a telephone to indicate you wish to speak. I will call on members of the public participating in person first, followed by remote participant. Speakers will have three minutes to speak. So we have Mary Brunkost. Please, please step forward. Thank you.

Good evening. Is this working? Okay. I urge the city to ban artificial turf in city parks and public spaces. Open fields serve the entire community, both recreational and organized sports. Artificial turf will have a fence around it with very restricted use, effectively shrinking the size of a usable park. Artificial turf does use water to cool it and maintain it, and it holds a lot of heat, which makes the fields unusable at certain times. It makes no sense to cater to a select group of users over the general population because what is the purpose of a park? I see no compelling evidence to justify the use of artificial turf, and I urge the city to ban it at city parks and public spaces. Shifting gears, going environmental now, like it or not, I am now speaking for the Sunnyvale Urban Forest Advocates. SUFA urges the city to ban artificial turf. Natural grass provides many environmental benefits and supports our ecosystem, which includes trees, insects, people, and everything in between. Natural grass also meets the goals of the Climate Action Plan. Please support natural grass. Thank you.

Thank you. Next one is Moni Diaz, please. Yes, I hope I pronounced it correctly.

Good evening. Can you hear me? Great. My name is Manny Diaz. I'm a consultant for Tecate Grass. I believe you folks got a letter over the weekend. Tecate Grass is the largest manufactured artificial turf in the U.S. and a global leader in artificial turf. And I want to share with you that making a comparison in the improvements that the artificial turf industry has made in the last few years. It's like our phones. Our phones... If you compare five years ago, 10 years, yes, five years ago are very different compared to today. A lot of improvements. Artificial turf is the same thing. Those of you, oh, you guys are too young, but artificial turf, it was called AstroTurf in Houston back in the 60s, I believe. It's changed. The whole industry has changed. Right now, there is product that doesn't have PFAS. We have one called Pivot. It came out three years ago. So it's very available right now. Matter of fact, we just installed one of the parks in San Jose. And also, on the recycling thing, that's something that our industry is moving towards more. Ducati Grass has a recycling facility in Louisiana. We just pulled out a sports field in Stanford. And so it's possible to recycle. and we're pushing the rest of the ventures to do the same thing. So we know that recycling is possible. It's more expensive for us folks, but everybody's going that way. It's like when people didn't want to recycle the plastic bags and that kind of stuff and then made recyclable, now everybody's doing it. Same thing with artificial turf. Now we're pushing more for the recycling. On the heat factor, 30 to 50 degrees, lower now on heat we took the infill out the cork out because that's the rubber that's what would heat up the field and uh so now with this product the one we have and there's others vendors that have similar products Now, because we don't have the infield cork anymore, it's 30 to 50 degrees cooler in the field. I went to the first presentation of the Parks and Rec Commission, and I believe that same question was asked about being too hot in the field, was there cancellations? And I believe staff, and staff, you guys can correct me, you indicated there was only two days last year that was lost, but it wasn't because of the turf. I think it was because of the air quality, hot days. And so anyways, I want to share with you that there's been a lot of improvements, and we think that it's a good alternative. Obviously, you can use it a lot more than natural grass. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Does anyone want to speak on this item before we hear from remote speakers? Remote speakers are want to limit their comments to the agenda item being considered. Speakers who are ruled out of the order will not be given another chance to speak on this item. The title of this agenda item is artificial turf policy study. Recording officer, do we have any remote participant wishing to speak on this item?

We do not vice chair.

Okay. So I will close the public comment. and that that concludes the uh this uh the special meeting meeting is adjourned and we'll have a planning commission regular meeting at 7 35.

Good evening. Let's call to order the Planning Commission meeting of June 22nd at 735 PM. The city does not tolerate disruptive behavior in our meetings. Sunnyvale prides itself on the rich diversity of our residents, and we are committed to creating a culture of belonging where members of our diverse community feel included, safe, and respected. This Planning Commission meeting is considered a limited public forum, which means the Commission can regulate the time, place, and manner of speech. Speaker comments must be limited to the agenda item being considered by the Commission for consent, calendar, or public hearing items. Speaker comments during oral communications must be limited to matters within the Commission's authority, which is generally referred to as within the Commission's subject matter jurisdiction. If a speaker's comments are not related to an agenda item, the presiding officer will rule the speaker as out of order. A speaker will not be ruled out of order because of a disagreement with the content of their speech. Location and online meeting details are available on the Planning Commission agenda. Use the show captions button to view captions on Zoom. Comments on matters not on the agenda must be submitted prior to the time I call the item for oral communications. Comments on agenda items must be submitted prior to the time I close the public hearing on the agenda item. Speakers are requested to keep their comments to the time period set for public comments for the agenda item, which will be strictly enforced. Guidelines are posted on the city's website and on the planning commission meeting agenda. Please join me in a salute to the flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Recording officer, will you please have the roll call?

Commissioner Cerrone.

Present.

Vice Chair Shukla.

Present.

Commissioner Segura. Present. Chair Iglesias.

Present.

Commissioner Pine. Present. Commissioner Davis.

Present.

Commissioner Fagoni.

Present.

We have seven commissioners present.

Thank you. All right. Next, we have a special order of the day being presented by the Honorable Mayor Klein.

Good evening, everyone. So it's my pleasure to be here today to award for basically celebrate to two of our commissioners for years terms of service and and you know, four years goes by relatively quick. um on on the commission you know for me i served here nine years and sat in your seats for you know over nine years and to me uh had a lot of fun you know a lot of from from a council standpoint a lot of authority is given into your hands and and you know for me i love the planning commission because you're making long-term uh commitments to the city long-term changes that many people will never see and it may not be done until long after your you leave this commission but to me you're making a positive impact and it's going you know and i just want to thank all of you first for you know lots of hours lots of uh thick packets that you've gone through lots of site visits you know the job of the planning commissioner isn't easy you're trying to envision uh a what a site looks like long before conceivably anything is actually there. So you have to have that foresight in trying to look at things from all sides, going through the conditions of approval, making sure that you know that contract between the city and the developer uh covers everything that the issues that you bring up as well as you know making sure that at the end of the day that contract looks good forever for all everyone involved and you know to me that that was always the fun thing of trying to look at a site and say oh How do the pedestrians utilize it? Where are cars parked? Where does the garbage can sit? All those sorts of things are critical as you're looking at the site. And especially over the last decade, we delegated, councils delegated so much authority to you that you doing a great job helps me sleep a little bit better at night. For me, I try to watch remotely every now and then, whether or not it's tape delayed or watching you live. But it's good to see that the city is in good hands with different views, the different things that you bring to the table. So I just want to say thank you to all of you. You know that that it is you are doing a critical job for the city and, you know, I don't take that lightly and, you know, the residents might not realize it, but but your hard work is making a difference for decades to come. James Heiting. Tonight we're here to honor, you know, basically two of your members. So Mike Cerrone and Nila Shukla, who have both served four-year terms. So so I just want to say thank you to the two of you, you know, for serving as in in leadership as well as just as commissioners, you know, being chair, being vice chair. you know it it isn't easy you know from from a resident standpoint you know the you're always being blamed for some of the decisions you make but but to me i want to thank all of you um for for trying to make as an independent decision and having different perspectives is part of that so so you know not having a 7-0 vote for everything shows that you have a difference of opinion And you're willing to state that even though that sometimes you're in the minority and that that is just as important as making sure the process goes forward. You know, every now and then, you know, we appeal something to counsel and and I do recommend to all of you that that if there are issues that. council should you did you think council should take another look at always feel free to reach out to me reach out to other council members because that's part of the process too you know as as all you know the the state has taken away a lot of your control a lot of the decision making but but sometimes bringing it to council for a second review sometimes means the developers listen a little bit better and make the project maybe just a tiny bit better in the long run and and that has value so so you know for for me um it's it's important that the the job of this commission is very important and so i just want to say thank you to to mike and nila uh come on forward and i just want to present these certificates to you for your terms of service come forward yes and give them all a round of applause congratulations thank you so much thank you thank you thank you Mike as always thank you so I I just want to thank all of you you know it's like it it is not easy at times and I know sometimes you have marathon meetings that go a lot longer than you would like but but your commitment to the city your your um agreement to be away from family maybe two or three nights a month uh is really appreciated and for me you know i i understand where you sit and understand that you are making a positive and better sunnyvale so thank you all always feel free to reach out and have a great evening tonight good night thank you so much mayor klein

All right, this brings us to oral communications. This is the public's opportunity to address the Commission on topics not listed on tonight's agenda. This section is limited to 15 minutes and may be extended or continued after the public hearings general business section of the meeting. Individuals and parents may only speak once during oral communications. This planning Commission meeting is a limited public forum and the Commission can regulate the time, place and manner of speech. Speaker comments listed during oral communications must be limited to matters within the Commission's authority. Again, that's the Commission subject matter jurisdiction. If a speaker's comments are outside of the commission's subject matter jurisdiction, the presiding officer will rule the speaker as out of order. This allows the commission to conduct its business in a reasonably efficient manner and protects the rights of other speakers. A speaker will not be ruled out of order because of a disagreement with the content of their speech. Please submit a speaker card to the recording officer, raise your digital hand now, or dial star nine, excuse me, star nine on a telephone to indicate that you wish to speak. I will call on members of the public participating in person first, followed by remote participants. And speakers will each have three minutes. Are there any speaker cards? We do not have them. All right. Thank you so much. Would anyone like to speak before we move to remote speakers? Seeing none. Recruiting officer, do we have any remote participants wishing to speak on oral communications?

We do not, Chair.

All right. Thank you. We'll go ahead and close oral communications. This brings us to the consent calendar. I'll go ahead and open public comment on consent calendar items, please submit a speaker card to the recording officer raise your digital hand now or dial star nine on a telephone to indicate the wish to speak. I will call on members of the public participating in person first followed by remote participants and speakers will have three minutes to speak, would anyone like to speak on consent calendar items before we move to remote speakers. All right, seeing none, recording officer, do we have any remote participants wishing to speak on this item?

No, we do not.

All right, thank you. I will go ahead and close public comment, and I will now ask for a motion from my colleagues. Commissioner Pine. Thank you, Chair. I move the consent calendar is submitted. Thank you. Commissioner Davis.

I second the motion.

Thank you. Recording officer, please conduct a vote.

The motion passes with six yeses and Chair Glass is abstaining.

thank you uh we have no new business or general uh items for this evening which brings us to non-agenda items and comments this portion of the agenda is for oral reports and announcements by Commissioners and staff to share for planning Commissioners do any Commissioners have any non-agenda items or comments all right seeing none staff playing officer do you have any non-agenda items or comments

I chair, thank you to quick items I wanted to mention that are coming up at the July 21 2026 City Council meeting that are of interest to planning Commission. The lower density residential objective design standards will be heard that evening that went to this Commission. Just about two months ago now and late April and then there also be the cow water well and water tank project at 800 Carlisle when be heard that night as well.

Great.

Thank you so much.

All right. At this point, it brings me great pleasure to announce. I thought I saw a hand up. Please, Commissioner.

I'm sorry. What date did you say that was? I didn't quite catch that. July 21st. July 21st. And I had one question. Sorry. Last week, I think the budget went before city council. We had a couple of recommendations. Do we know the outcome of that?

that i'm not aware of um yeah sorry i'll get back to you on that one commissioner davis thank you okay seeing no commissioner hands that brings us to adjournment want to thank everyone for participating tonight and i adjourn this meeting at 7 46 p.m thank you