June 25, 2019 Joint Meeting of Mountain View City Council and Shoreline Regional Park Community

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Mayor Lisa Matichak: And we will start with the pledge of allegiance, if you will join me for that. Pledge allegiance to the flat. of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, but it never can, just as thrall. Next is roll call, if our city clerk will announce attendance?

[00:00:31] City Clerk: All council members are present.

[00:00:32] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Thank you. And now. We have a proclamation, um, to recognize our city attorney, Jenny Quinn, on her retirement, and I'd like to have her join me here at the lectern. Actually, I really don't want to. Um, I think all of us kind of feel like, do we really, are we really gonna do this? So before I read this, I want to officially give this to you on behalf of the council and everyone else at the city. Thank you. Okay, here we go. Whereas, Jenny L. Quinn joined the city of Mountain View as a senior deputy city attorney in 1995, and was appointed as the city attorney in 2010. And whereas Jenny has provided expert legal advice and guidance to the city council and staff, helping craft solutions to complex issues that reflect both legal requirements, and the city's values and priorities. And whereas Jenny has drafted countless city ordinances to address important community issues, including mobile food vending, massage, smoking, medical marijuana, minimum wage, below market rate, housing, short term rentals, tenant relocation, business licenses, and cannabis operations. And whereas Janny has made significant contributions to long range planning documents that will shape the community for years to come, such as the 2030 General Plan and the North Bay Shore, El Camino Real, San Antonio, and East Wisman Precise Plans. And whereas Jenny has supported many facility and infrastructure projects. Benefiting our residents, such as the Graham Reservoir, the childcare center, Fire Station 5, and the community center, and whereas Jenny was instrumental in development of agreements with the school districts, such as transfer of development rights framework with the Los Altos School district, a condition providing teacher and staff housing for Mountain View Wisman, school district, and city employees, at 777 West Middlefield Road, and a district agreement preserving community use of Cooper Park, and the creation of the Shoreline Educational Enhancement JPA. And whereas Jenny has been essential to the interpretation and implementation of the community stabilization and fair rent act. And whereas Jenny has played a critical role in the creation of various regional partnerships, such as the Silicon Valley Regional Interruptability Authority, and Silicon Valley Clean Energy, and whereas Jenny was instrumental in the operation of the overside board, and the dissolution of the revitalization authority. And whereas Jenny has negotiated complex leases and development agreements to achieve city objectives for effective land use, community amenities, and stable city finances, including Shoreline Amphitheater, 369 North Westman, Michaels, Moffat Gateway, also known as Ameswell, Hope Street, Lots, and Charleston East. And whereas Jannie has provided leadership to the city attorney's office, managing a high volume of responsibilities.

[00:04:20] Unknown Speaker: True. True, very true.

[00:04:23] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Such as claims, lawsuits, legal research, public records requests, and contract review. And whereas Jenny is active in legal organizations serving as co president of the Bay Area City Attorneys Association, and as peninsula representative on the League Advocacy Committee, attending and presenting at conferences, and participating in training opportunities to enhance her knowledge and skills. And whereas Jenny is recognized by peers and colleagues for her work ethic.

[00:04:50] Unknown Speaker: Yes.

[00:04:52] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Attention to detail, ability to multitask, passion for the law, quick thinking, and selflessly assisting other staff in a supportive manner. And whereas, after 24 years of dedication, I'm going to add the very hard work, instead of just hard work, and loyalty to the city of Mountain View, Jenny will retire on August 2, 2019. And whereas Jenny's colleagues think the world of her will miss her and wish her the very best. Now, therefore, I, Lisa Mattachek, mayor of the city of Mountain View, along with my colleagues on the city council and city staff, do hereby express gratitude and appreciation to Jenny L. Quinn for her many, many contributions to the city of Mountain View. Signed and sailed this 25th day of June, 2019. I'm getting all choked out, me too. Thank you so much.

[00:06:05] City Attorney Jannie Quinn: Well, I usually am not on this side of the diet, but, um, I would just like to thank you all. Everyone that's here, my sister that came. Hi to my mom, my husband, and my friends. I didn't think I would get this choked up. It's a rather surreal moment to reach this point, and I just have felt so honored, am privileged to be the city attorney for the city of Mountain View. And my 2 little teammates here. Lynette and Kara, thank you for coming. And the department head team, I absolutely loved working with you and Dan and Audrey. It has just been an absolute joy. So, um, hard to believe that this is my last official council meeting tonight, and I have so enjoyed working with the city council and your energy and your zest, even at 3 o'clock in the morning, to try and do what you think is best for our community has made my job, um, very fulfilling, and I'm just so grateful for this opportunity. And thank you very much.

[00:07:53] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay, next on the agenda is the consent calendar, and these items will be approved by one motion, unless any member of the council or audience wishes to remove the item for discussion. Council member McAllister.

[00:08:09] Councilmember John McAlister: I just wanted to make a comment on 4.3 and 4.18 if... I had a question on 4.18.

[00:08:23] Mayor Lisa Matichak: You have a question on 418?

[00:08:25] Councilmember John McAlister: 4.18. Yeah.

[00:08:26] Mayor Lisa Matichak: If it's a question, go ahead.

[00:08:28] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay, the question is... how much there was a comment in 4.18 that we're spending money for... outside contractors, and counsel questions, I asked, how much do we pay for outside consultants? And I, there was no number there. And I was wondering if we could get a, not tonight, or maybe how much do we spend on outside contractors or consultants?

[00:08:54] City Manager Dan Rich: Because, and I didn't say that we track that information. That's a very broad category. We can certainly run through our financial system, I believe, all outside professional consultants, or, I mean, there's different categorizations, but there's a professional contracts or something. I will tell you right now, it'll be a very large number, and we'll cover a very wide swath of stuff. But so it's a little challenging without putting it in context, but we can certainly run that number.

[00:09:25] Councilmember John McAlister: I'd appreciate that.

[00:09:27] Mayor Lisa Matichak: And the other council members wishing to pull an item? Oh, do we have...

[00:09:31] Assistant Public Works Director Greg Hosfeld: It's got a little context. Greg Hosfeld, Assistant Public Works director. This is really representative of the outside costs that we incur. In this case, it's for electrical services. We don't have on staff, the specialized capabilities, and we want the electrical maintenance work and replacement to be performed really safely, and that's not training we have. We do have a vacant electrician position, which we're hoping to feel very shortly. So you'll see that kind of expense drop down quite a bit. once that electrician's on staff. But most of the contracts that we use in public services like this one are really highly technical services or periodic things or things like water quality and testing the water quality samples that we just can't do in-house.

[00:10:13] Councilmember John McAlister: Now, yeah, I appreciate that. It wasn't specifically to this one particular, it was a broader question, because I read that, and I go, oh, and I just said, well, how much do we spend on contractors, and that's why.

[00:10:23] Assistant Public Works Director Greg Hosfeld: I want to give a little context on what we're doing in public services. Thank you.

[00:10:28] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay, I would like to pull item 4.4 and just make a comment on this one, and this is the ordinance relating to the parking of vehicles that discharge domestic sewage on the public right away. The first time we discussed this ordinance, as part of the motion, there was a lot more to this. And we didn't separate this, separate out this particular ordinance, and so I voted no on it, but I am very supportive of this more narrowly scoped part of that motion. And so, while it says, I voted no, now I will be voting yes on this one.

[00:11:08] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Any other comments from council members?

[00:11:10] Councilmember John McAlister: I have 4.3 I was gonna make the comment on.

[00:11:13] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Go ahead.

[00:11:14] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. And then public comment, yeah. Oh, you want me to go first, but Go ahead. Okay, so I am on 4.3, it's amendment to the cannabis business regulation, and I'm going to vote no on this particular item, because it says prohibit storefront retail cannabis businesses. I thought I did support the motion when it came through, but I think that... We should have at least maybe thought of putting a moratorium on cannabis retail stores to see how it went, and as we experiment, go down the journey of having cannabis in our city, it might have been an opportunity to, if we had the moratorium, we could have come back easier to redo the ordinance, but to, I was always against the outright band of storefront. I don't care if it's down. I mean, I didn't care if it was downtown or anywhere else in the city, but I thought it still was a needed opportunity to bring that product to this market for convenience of our residence. So I will be vending, no, on 4.3.

[00:12:20] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Are there any members of the public that wish to pull an item? Okay, saying none. Before we take a vote, before we take action on the consent calendar, I need to read the following. In accordance with brand act requirements that the city council orally report a summary of any council action on salaries, salary schedules, or fringe benefits for the city's department heads, the specific recommendations to be approved by the city council regarding the department's head, regarding the department heads, are as follows. As a result of reopener discussions with represented employees on the topics of cost of living adjustments and one time leave hours in fiscal year 2019, 2020, the 3rd year of a 3 year agreement. The following adjustments for executive staff are being reported in compliance with Brown Act requirements. Like SEIU and the unrepresented miscellaneous employees, the salary ranges for the miscellaneous department heads, and the fire chief will be increased in fiscal year, 2019, 2020, by 2% above the 2019, 2020, cost of living adjustment, in the current agreement. Like employees in the police officers' association, the salary range for the police chief will be increased in fiscal year 2019, 2020, by one.5% above, the 2019, 2020 cost of living adjustment in the current agreement, and the police chief will receive 21 hours of one time leave on July 1, 2020. So we have a motion by council member Ramirez.

[00:14:08] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you. So I...

[00:14:10] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Go ahead.

[00:14:11] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: I moved to approve...

[00:14:13] Public Speaker: Excuse me if I may. I'm sorry. I'm a member of the public who would like to pull 4.15, who's just come up, so I just wanted to mention that to the mayor.

[00:14:21] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay. Okay. Okay. Bye. Thank you.

[00:14:28] Public Speaker: So members, sorry for, uh, delayed entry here. So, I've spoken to you in the past about the importance of taking diet, diet as part of an essential program of environmental sustainability. So, I know 4.15 deals with additional funding for the Cadmus Group to extend the study of environmental sustainability. One reason, items like diet and other important areas are often missing from sustainability analyses or because the way the analysis is done. What they've typically done in the past is called a production-based analysis or production inventory, and that only counts emissions that are generated within the purview of Mountain View within our geographic bubble. In my opinion, that's a very short-sighted way of looking at emissions. We need to consider the end-to-end emissions based on our choices that we make. So that's a full lifecycle accounting is also called a consumption-based inventory. So I would like to ask you to, in any further analysis, to insist that we get a consumption-based analysis rather than a production-based analysis. So we get a more realistic measure of the impact of our choices, and we can advise our residents on sustainability the best way. Thank you.

[00:15:48] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Did you also have an item from the consent calendar?

[00:15:54] Jane Horton: Okay. Jane Horton, Mountain View, Resident, also talking about 4.15. And I was the lead in the sustainability task force for the circular economy group, and we also recommended the city of Mountain View do a consumption based inventory, and this isn't related, again, to the Cadmus group. When Oakland, before they did a consumption based inventory, they thought that the port of Oakland was their highest generator of carbon footprint. And after they did a consumption based inventory, they realized the construction was really their biggest generator. And here, in Mountain View, where we have North Bay Shore, we have East Swisman, we have so many construction sites pending projects pending. I think that I don't know, but now we show that transportation is our biggest generation of a carbon footprint. But it could well be, if we went to a consumption-based inventory where we looked at, where these products are generated and the transportation involved and everything else, it could be that we might want to change our thinking. I don't know if that's true or not, but other places who've gone to a consumption based inventory realize that they might need to think things differently. So with the Cadmus group and the money that's going for it. I would hope that we might consider a consumption based inventory instead of a production-based inventory. Thank you.

[00:17:38] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member Hicks, did you have a question for?

[00:17:41] Councilmember Alison Hicks: No, I was just going to thank the speakers for their for their input, and I think that that's something that will be that we will be looking at.

[00:17:52] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay, so we're back to the motion by council member Ramirez. Council member of Clarks now in the queue.

[00:17:59] Councilmember Chris Clark: Oh, just before you read all the red ink. I just wanted to, um, just comment, not poll on 4.3. Council member McAllister, um, made some good points. I think, you know, I'm not going to register a no vote on this. I think, you know, we all worked hard to craft a compromise that night, and, you know, I'll honor my, honor my commitment to that. But I, because I trust my colleagues that, you know, will, this will come back in a year and will, you know, stick to our commitment to review how everything's going next spring. So as uncomfortable as it is for me to support this specific ordinance, I think, as part of the compromise that I committed to support. I think I don't, I just wanted to make that comment, but I'll still support the overall consent calendar and that item. Thank you. Now.

[00:18:54] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Okay, thank you. I move to approve the consent calendar, including 4.2. Adopt a resolution, authorizing the city manager, or his designee to amend the moratorium, sorry, memorandum, of understanding between Eagles and the city, for the period of July 1st, 2017 through June 30th, 2020, and revised the city's salary plan to reflect these compensation changes, to be read in title only, further reading waived, adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager, or his designee, to amend the memorandum of understanding between International Association of Firefighters, local 1965 and the city, for the the period of July 1st, 2017 through June 30th, 2020, and revise the city's salary plan to reflect these compensation, compensation changes to be read in title only, further reading waived, adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager or his designee to amend the memorandum of understanding between Mountain View Police Officers Association and the city for the period of July 1st, 2017 through June 30th, 2020, and revise the city's salary plan to reflect these compensation changes to be read entitled only further being waived. Sorry. Adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager or his designee to amend the memorandum of understanding between service employees, international union, local 521 in the city for the period of July 1st, 2017 through June 30th, 2020, and revise the city's salary plan to reflect these compensation changes, to be read in title only, further reading waived. Adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager or is designated to modify compensation for unrepresented confidential employees, fire managers, police managers, department heads, and hourly employees for the period of July 1st, 2019 through June 30th, 2020, and revise the city's salary plan to reflect these compensation changes, to be read a title only further reading waived. 4.3, adopt an ordinance amending cannabis regulations in Article 5, division 2, in Article 6, divisions 2, and 3, of chapter 36, to amend land use, and permitting requirements to prohibit storefront retail cannabis businesses within the city, to be read entitled only further reading waived. Adopt an ordinance amending section 1970.one to chapter 19, division 2 of the Mountain View city code related to the parking of vehicles that discharge domestic sewage on the public right of way, to be read entitled only further reading wave. Adopt an ordinance amending Article 14 of chapter 36 of the Mountain View City code, sections 36.40 to 36.40.70 regarding the below market rate housing program, to be read entitled only further reading waived. Adopt a resolution amending the below market rate housing program, administrative guidelines associated with the ordinance, amending the below market rate housing program, Mountain View City Code, sections 36.40 to 36.40.70. Adopt a resolution amending the city of Mountain View master fee schedule to modify the below market rate housing program in lieu fees, to be read entitled only further reading waived, adopt a resolution authorizing the public works director or his designee to apply for grant funds for the recycled water feasibility study update, to be read entitled only further reading waived.

[00:22:16] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Vice Mayor Obe Koga?

[00:22:19] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you. I am happy to 2nd the motion, and I just wanted to make a quick comment on item 4.2 much of the red ink that Councilman Maria Ramirez, this red has to do with that item, and for those of in the audience, This is regarding our employee compensation. And we had what we would call a reopener of their existing contracts. Fortunately, I'm very proud of our city for taking a very prudent and cautious approach when it comes to expenditures. And, you know, during the lean times, which now is almost 10 years ago. We had some challenges, and at that time, our employees came forward and helped us in containing costs, and it was always my hope that someday we would be able to recognize that, and reward, if you'd like to say, that, um, and, um, we were in a position this year to do so. And so we reopened the contracts and we were able to offer a little more of a cola, a cost of living increase. And so I just wanted to, on behalf of my colleagues, I think I speak for all of us here. Thank all of our employees, our city employees, our entire organization, for one year hard work and dedication to this community, too, for, you know, being a real partners and collaborating. And when times are tough, you know, we get together and get through them. And when times are a little better, I'm glad that we're able to share in that as well. So, I just want to offer my thanks to our staff. Thank you.

[00:24:06] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. So we have emotion by council member Ramirez and a 2nd by Vice Mayor Abi Koka. And we'll call the question. That consent calendar passes unanimously. except for that you, Council member McAllister, registered the no vote on 4.3. Thank you. Okay, we are on to item five, which is Oro communications from the public. This portion of the meeting is reserved for persons wishing to address the council on any matter not on the agenda. Speakers are allowed to speak on any topic for up to three minutes during this section, and state law prohibits the council from acting on non agenda items.

[00:24:57] Don Lecter: Good evening. My name's Don Lecter, I'm 25 plus years resident in Mountain View. I'm here tonight to formally protest. The recent water rate and wastewater rate increases. All right? So, I don't have all those facts exactly right, I don't think, but it's my understanding that on the 18th, the council passed on a consent calendar, water rate increases, without a prop to 18 hearing. Okay? And apparently, they weren't high enough to do that. So residents really didn't have a knife chance to weigh the situation, all right? But I'd like to make a formal protest against the council's decision to increase the water rates and the wastewater rates, and I'd like it to show in the minutes. All right. And the reasons, some of the reasons are from where I gather information and the information's so so, maybe. But I read The Daily Post, and I read some of the local newspapers carefully. And, um, and the Daily Post reported, at one point, that there was just about a million dollars surplus over the city budget the last time. Over 100, I'm sorry, $100 million surplus over the city budget. That was in the paper. And also, in one of the papers, they said that the city of Mountain View was able to charge the city of East Palo Alto $50 million for water credits, not water, but water credits. All right, so, nebulous about the exact accuracy of the numbers, but at any rate, there's a lot of money there that came in, based on the water system that we have. All right? And I think that money, some of that money, I would think, should perhaps offset some of the resident cost for water, when there's that kind of money floating around because of the water system. So, I think they, um, I think just the idea of having it on the consent calendar and not having any discussions, because I tell you what, the, the water, you know, I have a large lot, okay? And so I have two water meters, and, you know, it's, like, $56 just for meter fees. Not for any water, just for meter fees. And my bills, you know, they might run a thousand or more dollars, you know, uh, you know, for two month period, sometimes higher, because of, you know, this for one person, but I do have a big lot, and it's all agricultural. So, you know, I get charged with sewer bill, that's very high, too, and the waters all be recyculated. But anyway, I think it's a big question, that it hurts. Thank you. It hurts low end renders. Thank you.

[00:28:04] Unknown Speaker: Thank you. Mr. Lecher, before... Mr. Lester? Fletcher. Mr. Lecher, can I point out something? So that $100 million surplus, this is more of an accounting transfer to another, and I think former neighbor, for mayor, Inks, could help explain that, how that counting works. And we didn't give East, East Palo Alto, $50 million. They gave us $5 million, not $50 million, but it was $5 million. Five million, still a lot of money. It's still a chunk of change. But I just wanted to make sure that anybody at home... I appreciate that. But the $100 million. It's more of an accounting thing, but we could take that up, and I say, former Mayor Inc is very well versed in our budget, and he could be able to help you out. Oh, well... Thank you. Thank you for coming. All right. But the five million was to offset penalties, or, actually, I forget the exact term, minimum purchase fees that we need to pay. So it's not like we got that $5 million.

[00:29:03] John Inks: Good evening, counsel. John Inks, Showers Drive. I believe that Margaret and I were on the same council that hired you. I remember that quite a while back. But I was a council candidate in the election last year. A campaign marred by widespread spray paint battleism and theft, my campaign science. And based on a video that I showed you at the March 26 meeting, about two and a half hours into the meeting, it caught Joe Lopez. At 3:40 in the morning, and the 100 block of Church Street, spray painting, and stealing my yard signs. Based on the police report from that incident, the district attorney prosecuted him for vandalism and theft charges, misdemeanors. He was convicted in superior court, sentenced to two years probation, 80 hours of community service, equivalent to 10 days in jail, and a small fine. Since then, this case has not been resolved yet. They're still going back and forth with the district attorney and the homeowner regarding damage to the property. So, in the meantime, Joe Lopez continues to come and lecture you and others about your moral obligation, someone that doesn't even recognize a civic obligation to respect free speech. In any case, still more to come regarding justice for Joe Lopez. Thank you.

[00:30:19] Mayor Lisa Matichak: So anyone else who wishes to address the council on items that are not on the agenda? Okay, seeing none, we'll close this portion of the meeting. And we will move on to item 7.one, which is an urgency ordinance establishing a temporary moratorium on shared mobility devices in the city of Mountain View. We'll start with a staff presentation.

[00:30:45] Assistant Public Works Director Dawn Cameron: Thank you. Good evening, Madam Mayor, and members of the council. I'm Dawn Cameron. assistant Public Works director. We're here tonight to recommend at the council adopt an urgency ordinance for a temporary moratorium on commercial operations of shared mobility devices in Mountain View. The city has experience with bike share operations. However, the latest trend in mobility options is scooter share. Like bike shares, scooters can serve shorter distances such as first and last mile trips. Operators are interested because scooters appear to generate a high number of riders per day per scooter, and therefore may be financially viable. However, as experienced in cities throughout the country and locally, without regulations, scooter share can present safety and nuisance concerns with parking that may block sidewalks and pedestrian ramps, riding on sidewalks, which is prohibited under the California vehicle code, and other user behavior issues. The city has been receiving inquiries from a number of scooter share operators. And staff has been asking them to please hold off on deploying scooters in the city until we have an opportunity to work with the council to discuss scooter share pilot program with appropriate regulations. At the same time, we're very aware that other cities have had scooters appearing on their sidewalks literally overnight without any kind of city approval. Therefore, we are recommending a temporary moratorium as a stopgap measure until regulations and a permanent program can be established. The key provisions of the urgency ordinance include defining shared mobility devices as both bicycles and scooters. It will temporarily prohibit commercial operations of these shared mobility devices. Bike share pilot program permit holders would be exempt, as well as it excludes operations not available to the general public, namely employer provided bicycles to their employees. Should an operator decide to set up business in the city without city approval, The ordinance author authorizes city staff to remove these devices from the public right away and public property. Our next step in looking at shared mobility devices is to continue developing a scooter share regulatory framework. And in fact, tomorrow night, we will be presenting to the bicycle and pedestrian advisory committee a concept for a scooter share program for discussion. We plan to return to the council in the fall for a study session where we will discuss a scooter share pilot, regulatory requirements, as well as present an evaluation of the bike share pilot program. This bike share will be useful for the council to discuss the future a bike share in the city. And we can use lessons learned from the bike share to inform our scooter share pilot program. With council concurrence. In early 2020, we would seek to launch a scooter share pilot program. After the conclusion of the pilot, we would want to do a thorough evaluation for what worked well, and what the challenges were, and then use this for the council to consider an ordinance for long term deployment of shared mobility devices in the city. Until that time, we do recommend that you adopt the ordinance. Happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you.

[00:34:14] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member Clark?

[00:34:15] Councilmember Chris Clark: Still have two on the exclusion of operations not available to the general public. Does that include individually owned scooters, as long as they're following all the existing rules, someone who owns one individually, would?

[00:34:31] Assistant Public Works Director Dawn Cameron: That's correct. Yes.

[00:34:32] Councilmember Chris Clark: And then with the exclusion of the, of the bike share of pilot program, or the bike share companies are now actually just swapping scooters for bikes, would they would they still be, are they allowed to swap, if they're exempt? Are they allowed to swap the scooters for bikes or are they stuck?

[00:34:54] Assistant Public Works Director Dawn Cameron: No, any permit that they pull from the city related to bike share is solely for the purpose of operating a bike share program in the city at this time?

[00:35:03] Councilmember Chris Clark: So it specifies their bicycles?

[00:35:05] Assistant Public Works Director Dawn Cameron: Yes. Yes, it does.

[00:35:06] Councilmember Chris Clark: Okay, thanks.

[00:35:08] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member McAllister?

[00:35:10] Councilmember John McAlister: And you talked with the city of San Jose and how they're, um, paralleling the use of and forming, forming their policies.

[00:35:20] Assistant Public Works Director Dawn Cameron: We're monitoring what's happening in San Jose. We've, um, we reached out to them recently, but have not heard back on how things are going, but we plan to continue to see how things are going in San Jose to help inform develop of regulations potentially for Mountain View.

[00:35:37] Unknown Speaker: And the city attorney's office has been keeping in touch with the San Jose city attorney's office about their regulate their regulations or actually the operation of the shared mobility devices without the benefit of permits. And then they're doing a catch up to actually do a permitting scheme after they've had the e-scooters already on the street. So that's one of the reasons that the city attorney's offices joining in their recommendation for a moratorium while we do our own regulations to prevent the proliferation of these devices without any kind of regulatory or permanent scheme.

[00:36:13] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Are there any questions from council members? Okay. We will then open this up for public input. Is there anyone who wishes to address the council on this topic? Okay, seeing none. We'll close the public input portion and bring it back to council for discussion and action. Council member Clark.

[00:36:41] Councilmember Chris Clark: Um, you know, I'll just say, I, I, I understand why we're going in this direction, and I, I think I can support the urgency ordinance. I'll just say that my preference would be that we would sort of allow the... The folks who played by the rules and already registered under the... the bike share of pilot program, who we've had, you know, good rapports with and who've been, um, at least the ones who've been operating within the rules, the flexibility to, you know, offer east covers under the exact same framework as bike share. But I also, with summer break, don't expect staff to do a whole bunch of work and change everything around. So, and that's probably just my own individual feeling, but barring that, I think as long as we can have a program up and running in a short period of time, I think I'm generally okay with the urgency ordinance.

[00:37:37] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member McAllister?

[00:37:39] Councilmember John McAlister: I will not be supporting the motion. Uh, I've seen... the city going through three or...

[00:37:45] Mayor Lisa Matichak: There's no motion yet.

[00:37:47] Councilmember John McAlister: Of this particular item, Thank you. for the correction. I will not support this particular item. Um, I've seen bike shares come and go in this city, and they we worked hard to get them. At points, people were paying for them, and then the city managers came along and tried to get one of some other groups, and they seemed not to work well. But I think we have enough knowledge and ability to simply transfer some of the shared bikes, uh, guidelines or ordinances to be able to take in scooters. I think we should be able to work in conjunction with the scooter operators and allow them to operate as we develop this particular ordinance and guidelines. I was in Austin when this CDC report came out, and I was asking around various people when I was there, and if you know the audience of Austin, it's a college town. And associated with college town is a little looser approach to lifestyle. And so that's a comedy at that, and you mentioned some of that in there. And that's what I asked staff about it. Do you think our demographics are similar, and I would say, no, we're not a college town, but, and so that's why you had a large incident of bodies being injured. So I would like the council to potentially consider not adopting this moratorium and work concurrently in parallel with the scooter companies and as long as and as a little right along with what council member. Clark said is that those who came in with the bicycle programs have pretty much demonstrated that they can do liability and follow the rules, and I think they should have an opportunity to, again, work in parallel and get this ordinance available to them.

[00:39:46] Unknown Speaker: If I may add some additional information, Some of the preliminary results of not only the bike share, eval, but looking at what's happened with scooter shares, another city, is one of the things we, staff does not feel will work well is the free floating parking system that we have allowed for bike share. It's quite evident that for scooter share, it's if we want to avoid those nuisance and safety issues that other cities have experienced. We're going to have to be more proactive in defining parking areas for the scooters, geofenced areas, public places, and then work with the operators, to get them to see if they can not only train and educate users to use them, but how they are going to help enforce that. So that has been one of the reasons staff hasn't just come right on and said. Let's just expand the same rules for bike share to scooter share is we're seeing, and we're going to be recommending that we have much more diligent parking regulations related to the scooters, and it's going to take more staff time to identify those parking sites.

[00:40:50] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member Hicks.

[00:40:53] Councilmember Alison Hicks: So, given that the scooter parking problems were in the staff report, and given that this was a temporary moratorium to, I guess, early 2020 is what you were thinking. I was going to make a motion. I'll make a motion to adopt an urgency ordinance. Do I read the whole thing? An urgency ordinance of the city of Mountain View establishing a temporary moratorium on shared mobility devices, to be read entitled only further reading waived.

[00:41:28] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. So we have a motion by council member Hicks and a 2nd by Vice Mayor Abbe Koga. Is there any further discussion? Okay, then we'll call the question. And that passes 61 with Council member McAllister. No. Thank you. We will now move on to item 7.2, which is formation of a council subcommittee to consider revisions to the community stabilization and Fair Rent Act, the CSFRA. And we will start with a brief staff presentation.

[00:42:19] Housing and Neighborhood Services Manager Tim Wong: Oh, yeah. So, good evening, Madam Mayor, members of the council. My name is Tim Wong and I'm the Housing and Neighborhood Services Manager. There is no slide presentation tonight, but, uh, just a brief staff presentation. So, as you know, in 2016, the community stability and Fair Rent Act was passed by Mountain View voters, which limit rent increases while providing fair rates of returns for landlords, and in 2018, the Mountain View homeowner, renter, and taxpayer protection initiative, which would amend the current CS Safari, was accepted by the council. The date of when this initiative would be placed on the ballot has yet to be determined, probably either March of 2020 or November of 2020. And so in, to be consistent with the council goal to review the CSFRA, staff is recommending that the council form a CSFRA subcommittee to review certain aspects of the CSFRA, and if there's any potential amendments that the council would like to pursue in regards to a city sponsored amendment to the CSFRA. And the subcommittee would meet during the council recess and report back to the council in fall. So that concludes staff's recommendation to form a CSFRA subcommittee. and to elect 3 members to serve on the subcommittee.

[00:44:02] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. So, I just want to make sure that we are all clear on what this subcommittee would do. Um, and it's my understanding that the subcommittee would um, come up with a list of topics that we might want to consider. Um, but not necessarily analyze those and come up with a recommendation. They would also do some outreach to get input from, like, the rental housing committee, um, tenants, landlords, um, different folks, you know, in the community, um, but it would not be to, like, draft, um, and ordinance. It would be, what are the topics that we might want to look at, and then staff can start working on those, correct? Awesome. So I just wanted to make sure, folks, were clear on what that was. Council member McAllister.

[00:44:59] Councilmember John McAlister: Was this the outcome of council direction, one of its potential goals, or is this independent of that?

[00:45:07] Housing and Neighborhood Services Manager Tim Wong: It is consistent with the council goal to review the CSFR.

[00:45:10] Unknown Speaker: Okay. It's a project. It was an explicit council goal, and it was, in addition to that, it was an item eight, specifically to come back for the creation of a subcommittee to get the ball rolling because of the summer break.

[00:45:23] Councilmember John McAlister: But are they coming back with recommend?

[00:45:25] Mayor Lisa Matichak: So I just wanted to clarify the mayors, that they're not coming back with any kind of recommendations. I would assume they would come back with a list of areas that we might want to look at, along with, well, I guess, staff might have done some analysis by that point. But it wouldn't be any, like, draft language.

[00:45:47] Councilmember John McAlister: Why not?

[00:45:49] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Because that would be our responsibility. They councils.

[00:45:53] City Manager Dan Rich: I would suggest that you look at this as a phased approach. The subcommittees, initial task, phase one, so to speak, would be, you know, use the summer break to look at potential items, you know, maybe talk, but the pros and cons of different items for discussion, maybe some public output, and then come back to the council early in the fall with their recommendations of these are the one to 10, you know, components of the law that we'd like to work on, get counsel to agree to that work plan. And then, at that point, council can either decide to keep the subcommittee, to do the kind of roll up your sleeves, component of it, just like the revenue measure subcommittee, was kind of in the trenches and the details, but ultimately brought it back to council. Or in the fall, you could say these are the items we want to do and turn it over to staff to simply go draft or do whatever you choose at that point. So I think you can decide at that point, you know, what phase 2 looks like.

[00:46:53] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member Hicks.

[00:46:56] Councilmember Alison Hicks: I have flexibility over the summer and some interest in serving on the committee.

[00:47:01] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Uh, you were in the queue, did you? Oh. Nice, Mary, I'll be coca.

[00:47:10] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you. So, I was gonna respond, but, um, city manager. They're responding for me in terms of what it was what I was envisioning is how this would move forward. But, um, you know, over the years or so, we've had some input already on areas we might want to see, look at, I think, before the city attorney leaves, retires officially. I think she has some input to provide. And so the thought was that we could start this in the summer. knowing that one of the ballot measure deadlines, if we were one of the election deadlines would be December, early December. So, um, knowing how this process will take a while, especially in terms of getting input from the community, stakeholders, is probably a good idea to start in the summer. So we could at least gather the list of areas we want to look at. I understand the RHC is interested in providing input, so perhaps we could arrange that and start some of the stakeholder outreach meetings, but by the fall, we can come back with a list for this council to decide exactly what areas they would like to look at change or reforming. Um, and, um, since I brought this up during goal setting. I would be happy to serve on the committee as well.

[00:48:46] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Are there any other council members who wish to speak on this or any of the council members have interest in this? Okay, so before we um, do interest, um, we will open this up for public comment. Are there any members of the public who wish to speak on this item? Well, please come up to the Microphone. Be sure to fill out a blue card, either before or after you speak, and leave it with our city clerk, and you'll have, um, each speaker will have three minutes, and you'll hear a join.

[00:49:32] Annie: Members of the council, good evening. My name is Annie, and I moved to Mountain View with my family four years ago. I work for a nonprofit that provides after school, French language classes at Mountain View schools, Montaloma, and Gabriella Mistra elementary schools. My oldest daughter was in kindergarten at Torakov last year, and will be entering first grade, um, this year, and her brother will be entering kindergarten in one year's time. We live in a multifamily rental complex. covered by the CSFRA, and have been very grateful to the stability that the measure has brought to our community. We know virtually all of our neighbors, among whom there are at least eight young families, and a senior retiree, as well as working couples. Our children... Our children's laughter ring through the courtyards, they play at Ranksdorf Park, with the children who live in RV, um... who live in RVs. We value the diversity of the community, and which would be further under threat, without the crucial protections of the CSFRA. All of our families in our complex, our saving, their hard earned money, for a down payment. And this would not be possible or much harder without the protections of the CSFRA. In the meanwhile, we are doing all that we can now to build and strengthen our community ties. Our complex. At our complex, we really know each other. We hold monthly literature groups, we talk with each other about politics. Each autumn, we hold a special mid autumn, moon festival for our neighbors, that features music, potluck, children's performances, shadow puppet theater, and a children's lantern parade through our neighborhood. And we can do all of that. Knowing that the community we build will be here next year. I urge you to keep the core protections of CS Safari. Thank you.

[00:52:15] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Next, please.

[00:52:21] Public Speaker: Good evening, Sargemont, Mountain View residents. One thing I didn't hear in your discussion is, you know, transparency for that subcommittee, you know, whether your meetings will be held in public, and I don't know that every single meeting has to be held in public, but I think for transparency. I think that whoever is on that subcommittee should have published agendas, so that the public can see who you've talked to, to make sure that you reached out everywhere and to make sure that not one single group has a night side influence on your derivation. Thank you.

[00:53:02] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Is anyone else who wishes to address the council on this topic? Okay, saying then, we'll close the public input portion. I just want to say that all of the subcommittee meetings will be public meetings. Um, where anyone can attend. Okay. So back to, we've got 2 people who have expressed interest. Is there anyone else, council member Ramirez?

[00:53:30] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you. Given the proposed scope. I'm comfortable serving on the committee. I have a little bit more time over the summer. So I can make that commitment work.

[00:53:45] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Anyone else?

[00:53:51] Unknown Speaker: I'm open to... if you all wish, I'm open to doing it, too. Um... since I don't have to run for reelection... if it makes it easier for you all. Just sort of an unbiased, unbiased person, if you want.

[00:54:13] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay, anyone else? Okay, so here's kind of my dilemma. Our council policy says that the mayor makes the appointments, to subcommittees, but that has not always been our practice. So, um, Another practice we've done is, um, somebody makes motion at this meeting and we vote on it. So, um, Are you making a motion?

[00:54:50] Unknown Speaker: I'm fine with that. I think maybe at some point we might want to revisit the council policy, um, to give us the flexibility maybe that we want, um, because our practice has been different than what I read. So, I'm fine if you want to make a motion. Or did you want to go through the appointment review committee?

[00:55:12] Mayor Lisa Matichak: It just says the mayor.

[00:55:14] Unknown Speaker: Okay. I'm fine with you making an appointment, but I'll make a motion if you like. You guys have a preference? Okay, I'll just wait.

[00:55:31] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member McAllister.

[00:55:32] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay, I recommend that, uh, for this subcommittee, the council member, Ramirez, council member, vice mayor, uh, Koga, and vice and council member, Clark, be, uh, the members, and I'm picking them because they've had some experience with the, uh, prior deals, and we would have a balance of opinions on that particular issue.

[00:55:56] Mayor Lisa Matichak: So we have a motion by council member McAllister, and I'll second the motion. Is there any discussion on that? Council member Kamei.

[00:56:03] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thanks. So I'll be supporting the motion with the parameters that the mayor laid out. I think it's really important to be as clear as possible and that this is just, I think, part of being able to facilitate discussion, um, which is very difficult with the Brown Heck. So this subcommittee could be a way to, um, you know, uh, openly discuss things, which it sounds like um, all those who would be members, um, want to do. So thank you.

[00:56:36] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Any other comments?

[00:56:39] Unknown Speaker: I will just add that I think we should refer this to the CPPC to take a look at that council policy. to see if we want to change it at all.

[00:56:51] Mayor Lisa Matichak: We can do that. Okay. Any further discussion on the motion? Okay, call the question. That passes unanimously. Thank you.

[00:57:13] City Staff: So, if counsel wanted to provide direction to refer to the CPC, You could do that now, or you could do it as an item eight, or at some future date.

[00:57:25] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Vice mayor, I'll be Koga.

[00:57:26] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: I think, yeah, I'll just go ahead and make the motion that we refer to the council procedures committee, the policy on appointments, and providing flexibility for that to happen other than the mayor. Yeah. A13, uh, policy A13 on appointments by the mayor or other.

[00:57:55] Mayor Lisa Matichak: So we have a motion by the vice mayor, second by council member Ramirez. We'll call that question. Do you have any comments? Do we open that up for public input?

[00:58:08] City Staff: Yeah, emotions not even really necessary. You can just direct staff. Okay. It's essentially an item eight, but earlier than item eight. You are just providing direction, direct. something.

[00:58:18] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay. Well, cancel the motion. Thank you. Breakout.

[00:58:32] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay. Okay. That, uh, finishes that item. So we are onto... 8.1, which is public draft of East Misbon Precise Plan and Draft Environmental Impact Report. And we will start with a staff presentation. Yeah, it's introduced. Uh, Council member Hicks.

[00:59:15] Councilmember Alison Hicks: I will be recusing myself to this, from this item due to my husband's former work in this, in the East Wisman area.

[00:59:25] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Cancel member McAllister has a question.

[00:59:36] Councilmember John McAlister: Uh, I need some clarity on how we doing that. I may have a potential conflict, and I just like to get direction on if they're gonna bifurcate some of these, uh, the question on the TDRs related to the LASD.

[00:59:52] Unknown Speaker: Council member McAllister. When we get to that point in the discussion, Eric and I will work to be able to identify and segment, if possible, that question.

[01:00:01] Councilmember John McAlister: Um, able to sit now?

[01:00:03] Unknown Speaker: Yes.

[01:00:03] Councilmember John McAlister: Stay? Okay, thank you.

[01:00:07] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay, I'll start with the Stafford part. Or the staff presentation.

[01:00:13] Eric Anderson: Thank you very much, Mayor Matachek. Thank you, city council. This is the East Wisdom Precise Plan, public draft and environmental impact report. My name is Eric Anderson. So this slide shows where we're at in the process. We have released the public draft of the precise plan and the EIR. We're looking forward to a fall adoption of the plan. We have a thick agenda for the council tonight. We're going to talk a little bit about the EIR first. We have some, then we have some specific questions for the city council. And then we're seeking confirmation on some staff recommendations based on some topical points that the city council asked for some analysis on at the last study session. So, an overview of the draft environmental impact report, it was released in early June, there are two impacts identified, both related to transportation. One of them is vehicle miles traveled, the other is transit delay. Due to recent state law, the EIR does not use sequa traditional sequa terminology to discuss intersection and freeway congestion impacts. It does identify those effects as deficiencies. The city has not yet adopted sequel thresholds for VMT, but the project team developed ad hoc thresholds based on recent state guidelines for that purpose. The first major question for the council tonight regards office growth alternatives. Council directed staff to study two office growth alternatives back in 2017. These are the draft precise plan and the reduced office alternatives. In addition, staff developed a middle ground alternative called the TDR bonus alternative that addresses how TDR projects may be considered under a reduced office alternative. The TDR bonus alternative would allow a bonus of up to 0.25 FAR for projects taking part in citywide transfer of development right programs. These bonuses would be authorized through a gatekeeper process, like the LASD TDR program. And it would allow the LASD TDR projects in the area to move forward as they've been proposed. Projects would not generally be able to build at that intensity. The alternatives affect three different standards in the precise plan. The first is the maximum floor area ratio in the south employment area. The second is the amount of office development in the development reserve, and the third is the ratio of housing to office square footage that's required under the job's housing linkage program. The staff report includes a detailed alternatives analysis for these options, identifying issues that may affect council's decision. So the first question for council tonight is which office growth alternative does the council support? The EPC recommendation was the TDR bonus alternative, and this was based on concern about impacts from office growth and jobs housing balance, but moderating that concern with desire to see the TDR projects moving forward. The next question is which deliberative bodies should have recommendation authority over bonus FAR projects. The Draft East Wisman precise plan is based on the North Bayshore precise plan, which designates the zoning administrator as the recommendation authority for bonus FAR projects. This is different from the San Antonio and El Camino real precise plans, which designate the EPC as the recommendation authority on these projects. The question for counsel is should the EPC or the ZA be the recommending body? And the EPC recommended that the EPC do that. The next question regards to the base residential FAR. The base and bonus FAR structure gives the city more discretion to review and approve high quality projects at higher densities. The current base FAR is based on analysis done for the North Bay Shore precise plan, to encourage the provision of community benefits, affordable housing, and school strategies. If the base FAR is raised, fewer projects may provide these benefits. However, a higher base FAR may result in more projects with streamlined review, more feasible higher density development, and base FARs that are more consistent with the targets and character of the character areas. New base FARs would need more study, so staff is seeking direction on if this is something the city wishes to consider. The EPC recommended that the base FAR should remain as they are. For each of the next topics, staff has proposed a recommended direction and is seeking council input on if that direction should be modified. The 1st is an issue the city council has already seen. A new street is proposed to cross the light rail tracks. That's street C, shown with the red circle on the map here. A new at Great Street Crossing would affect light rail performance. So the VTA would not support this new street. In addition, several surrounding property owners are concerned about how a new street may affect their development feasibility. Previously, staff told the council that we would make a recommendation on this issue once the traffic analysis was completed. So that analysis is done and has found that these streets are not necessary to mitigate LOS deficiencies in the area. Therefore, staff is recommending replacement of street C with a grade separated multi-use path. This was also identified as a mitigation measure in the draft environmental impact report. Further, since none of the streets are necessary to address LOS deficiencies, staff is recommending that additional flexibility should be provided in the precise plan to build greenways instead of public streets, if the applicant can work with other property owners and resolve any public vehicle access or utility issues in the area. The EPC recommended that the first point that Street C become a grade separated multi-use path, but recommended no on the flexibility for PED bike connections instead of public streets. Throughout Mountain View's zoning ordinance and precise plans, office and industrial areas do not count structured parking to floor area ratio, but residential and mixed use areas do. This is based on the character of the areas. The methodology of calculating FAR, and likely building design. Public comment recommended not counting parking to residential FAR, but staff does not recommend this, since it would affect assumptions that filter throughout the precise plan. However, staff can add a maximum FAR for parking bulk to the employment areas. This would be based on maximum possible parking floor area from typical office development in the plan. The EPC agreed with this approach. The job housing linkage program has received a lot of discussion. One element is the floor area transfer program where residential development is allowed to sell demolished floor area to other office developers in the area. Public comment has expressed concern about how restrictive and detailed this section of the precise plan is. While staff stands behind the intent of the procedures. Staff agrees that the language in the program is detailed, and recommends creating a companion document for those details, and continuing to meet with developers to identify additional ideas for how to implement the program. EPC recommended the staff recommendation, but some of them also discussed a housing credit idea to add flexibility to the floor area transfer program. The character area targets are intended to guide future decision makers about how to grow with a balanced mix of office, residential, open space, neighborhood commercial and mix of unit sizes. It also affects the timing and location of that balanced growth. Public comment has expressed concern that some of the targets are too low or too precise, especially for office in the mixed use area, and that there are too many 2 bedroom and larger units in the proposed unit mix. Staff recommendation is to go back and clarify the targets as a guideline, and to based off of council direction to refine some of these targets for additional flexibility and to foresee other opportunities for how to grow more flexibly. The EPC agreed. Council also requested discussion of community benefits. This section combines two sections from the staff report, but Council is welcome to discuss them separately or is one. Public facilities and public art. Public facilities are generally created through a detailed, detailed CIP process prior to construction. In addition, operational costs must be weighed prior to developing any public community facility. This is better suited outside the development review process. However, land can be provided through the Community Benefits program. For public art, there are guidelines throughout the plan, but it's not required anywhere. There are a lot of inputs to the design of open spaces and setback areas. So staff does not recommend, uh, public art in any specific location, uh, but can augment the guidelines and community benefits for public art, for uh, the provision of public art on public land, uh, for example, in parks. The EPC agreed with this recommendation, and also added some additional ideas for public benefits. Excuse me. Push the wrong button. Including community gardens and other community benefits. The council also requested discussion of active priority frontage setbacks. The purpose of the active priority frontage standards is to have a separate standard that encourages the creation of active uses, such as commercial uses, residential lobby spaces, and residential amenity areas. These provide an interesting pedestrian environment because they're encouraged to be transparent and open to the sidewalk. They also provide visual cues about the location of entrances and commercial spaces. And they encourage creation of neighborhood commercial spaces in the long run. They are encouraged. They are allowed smaller setbacks in the precise plan. Additional setback is allowed, but the minimum staff does not recommend increasing the minimum in order to maintain this pedestrian interest at the sidewalk. Staff's recommendation was to provide clearer diagrams and clearer language in the precise plan about the intent of the active priority frontage. The EPC agreed, but also added that the precise plan could add more guidance to create human scaled streets and variation along the facade. So this slide shows the summary of the recommendations provided in the staff report. As I said, the EPC agreed with all of the staff recommendations, except for that second item there, about PEDBite connections instead of public streets. In addition, staff conducted a human rights analysis, consistent with the pilot program for human rights analysis, studying housing displacement, housing affordability, social equity, and economic prosperity of the precise plan, there is no direct housing displacement, except potentially one single family home. The job's housing balance more or less maintains the status quo of the city, depending on the option that the council adopts tonight, of course. A 1000 affordable units are potentially created by the precise plan. Nearby neighborhoods that may be more affected by the precise plan than other citywide neighborhoods are fairly similar to the city as a whole, as far as demographics, age, and income. And small businesses may be displaced by new development in the precise plan. Next steps include continued work on the school strategy. Staff is planning to come back to council for a study session on that in the fall. ER comments will be received through July 22nd, and adoption of this precise plan is expected in the fall. This concludes staff's presentation. Here's a summary of the questions, and topics for council deliberation tonight. I'll take a moment to introduce our team who are here. We have Troy Reinhalder, with Reiming Associates, our principal consultant. We have Libby Seifel, our economic consultant. We also have some sequel consultants out in the audience. We have Amy Ashton, with David Powers, and Dan Rubens, with Farren Pierce. So they are all available to help answer questions about the precise plan. Thank you.

[01:14:38] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Since this is a study session, we will open this up for public comment before the council ask questions and deliberates. So, um, can I see a show of hands of how many folks want to speak tonight? Okay, um, each speaker will have 3 minutes, and if you can be sure to fill out a blue car before or after you speak and leave it with our city clerk. And if you haven't been here in a while, we have the new feature where at the end of the time, there's a chime.

[01:15:12] Lisa Moore: So, uh, good evening, Madam Mayor, council members, I appreciate the opportunity to speak. My name is Lisa Moore, and I live on Flynn Avenue. First, I would like to start by thanking Eric Anderson. I think he's been very supportive of the neighborhood engagement throughout this process. So I want to say thank you. So, I'd like to make 3 points about the East Quisman precise plan. First, I think it's critical that it be bikeable and walkable. So I've given these comments before at other meetings. In particular, to have the multi-use bicycle and pedestrian path that connects from the Hetch Hetchy Trail, over through Logue and on to Maud. And to do this requires, um, an underpass or overpass, underpass is probably better under VTA. I want to, you know, request that we really work to get that because otherwise you don't have the commute through to the office area. Next, I'd like to request that we put in more lighted pedestrian crosswalks, particularly across Ellis, Middlefield, Maud and Logue. There's a lot of traffic on those streets, and the lighted crosswalks make them much safer. Next, the village center, um, at, um, Middlefield and North Westman. It's a segment of property that is being discussed as residential. I know it's still being considered residential, are able to be residential in this state of the current state of the plan. It comes into, it intersects Flynn Avenue, a residential block. So I just want to speak. I live right next door to this property, and I think it's very important that it stays residential, which is the character of the street, and will, I don't want to introduce commercial traffic along Flynn Avenue. So, and then, finally, different topic on community benefits. I think it would be a great benefit to the Wagonwheel Neighborhood Association if we could have the power and telephone lines put underground along North Whisman. We've got just this mess of lines going overhead. So anyway, those are my comments. Thank you.

[01:17:35] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Next please.

[01:17:40] Jessica Spiser: Hi there. Mayor Matachek, Vice Mayor Abbe Koga. I am Jessica Spiser. I am the president of Los Altos School District Board of Trustees. Just wanted to let you guys know some great news. Last Wednesday, we unanimously approved the purchase of uh, a property on the corner of San Ant- uh, excuse me, uh, California Street in showers in the San Antonio Precise Plan area, um, from Federal Royalty. The deal is expected to close on November 13th, 2019. The purchase is a huge win, and we'll achieve the following for our deserving community, a 2 acre city run park in the center of an increasingly vibrant San Antonio precise plan area, a new 4.5 acre joint use community open space with a range of master planned recreation facilities and a new, much needed neighborhood serving school. I cannot emphasize enough how thankful we are, the board and staff is for your partnership, in adopting this TDR program, and contributing the Park and Lou funds. Without these, quite simply, Los Altos school district would not be able to entertain this purchase at all. 50% of our anticipated TDR revenue is expected to come from projects in the East Whisman precise plan area, and it is critical that we know that such projects are on track for us to complete the closing in November. Please consider this tonight in your discussions. Thank you.

[01:19:17] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Next, please.

[01:19:23] Jane Horton: Jane Horton, Mountain View resident on Whisman Road, so this is right across the street from where I live, and Lisa Moore really said most of the things that I wanted to say about the walkability and the bike ability. I also really wanted to emphasize that when Wisman Road was modified and there was a median put down the middle of the road, we were told at that time that the utilities would be buried underground. And then somehow, the money was not available for that to happen. And, um, I really think it is important if we're going to be working on this East Wisman project that the utilities are put underground. They're going to be doing all this work anyway. And I'd like to see that included with it. I'm really excited about this plan. I think having 5000 units of housing with a 1000 affordable housing units is really great. And I urge that this happen as soon as possible, while we still have a good market to do all of this, because it's really important for the city, to add housing and all the environmental aspects of this are very exciting, the walkability and merging the business with the residential. I'm, as a person that's going to be affected by this. I think it's a great plan, and I hope we move forward with this as quickly as we can. Thank you.

[01:20:51] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Next, please.

[01:20:55] Kathleen Wortham: Good evening. Madam Mayor, Madam Vice Mayor, and Honorable Council members, my name is Kathleen Wortham, and I represent the Silicon Valley Leadership Group this evening. The Silicon Valley Leadership Group commends the city of Mountain View for their diligence in preparing the draft East Wisbon precise plan, as well as the efforts to create a complete community that promotes transit oriented development. Mountain View has been a leader in housing production, which I know all of you know, and we're also very excited about, and we're excited by the opportunity to plan for 4900 new homes. We are also excited to see that the draft plan includes a significant portion of affordable homes, as we know that it is integral to bread housing at all income levels. Leadership Group believes that in order to meet these goals in the East Wisman Besides Plan area, we need to make adjustments to a few of the design standards, namely, the low base residential FAR, low building heights, lack of density specifically around the middle field station, and the wide trails, mid block breaks, and some of the street cross sections are design standards, which inhibit the feasibility of projects within the planning area currently. By themselves, these standards would be a workable challenge to developers. However, when combined they seem to make projects infeasible. We encourage ongoing discussions with developers and landowners within the planning area to make sure that the ultimate goal of a complete community with sustainable housing and office is built. Additionally, we appreciate the goals to form a mixed use community within the mixed use character area. To see that vision come to fruition, we would like to see the inclusion of more office square footage within the mixed use character area. This will help the city of Mountain View to reach the goal of seeing a mixed use area as well as helping the city achieve the job's housing balance. stated within the planning area. Leadership group is very excited for this opportunity for housing, economic development, and complete communities within the city of Mountain View. Thank you.

[01:22:47] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Before you go, council member McAllister has a question for you.

[01:22:50] Councilmember John McAlister: Yes. Thank you for coming out tonight. advocating for this project. We always appreciate all input. But our question for you is, with your corporate partners, which you're a lobby agency for corporations, have you gone back to your corporate members and asked them to increase the mixed use on their own properties, to build their own workforce housing?

[01:23:17] Kathleen Wortham: To clarify, you're asking if I personally have?

[01:23:19] Councilmember John McAlister: Your organization.

[01:23:21] Kathleen Wortham: Or organization? represent them. We're happy to have those conversations, and we could talk more about that offline.

[01:23:26] Councilmember John McAlister: But have you done that in the past, or to say, you know, you're building your new office complex, we'll add some housing or affordable housing to help reduce the housing crisis?

[01:23:37] Kathleen Wortham: Yeah, as far as I know, we have not, but I'm also fairly new to the organization, so happy to discuss further.

[01:23:44] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay, thank you.

[01:23:46] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Next please.

[01:23:57] David Conklin: Good evening, Mayor Matachek, Vice Mayor Abby Koga, council members. staff, and members of the public. My name is David Conklin and I'm with Renault and Handley. We're the property manager for Handley Management Corporation. The managing general partner for several properties in the East Whisman Plan area. Henley Management Corporation is well positioned to support residential development in the planning area, through the conversion of some of its existing R&D inventory to housing, as it seeks to develop high intensity office projects. We encourage the council to maintain flexibility in the jobs, housing, linkage program to ensure that program guidelines, are not so rigid so as to limit housing creation, and the modernization of the office space inventory. We support staff's willingness to meet with developers to craft suitable guidelines, which will support their ability to deliver both. In closing, thank you for casting a bold vision for sustainable balanced growth in the East Wisman area. The precise plan will set the East Whisman area on a course to become one of the more desirable places to live and work in Silicon Valley. We look forward to the planned adoption later this fall. Thank you.

[01:25:25] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Next please.

[01:25:30] Public Speaker: Good evening, Sergeant Mountain View residents. So I had free comments on that topic. The first one is to echo some previous comments about bike and pedestrian access throughout the blocks. They was mentioned that maybe because of the traffic study, the cross streets may not be needed for traffic, but I think they are very much needed for pedestrian and bike facilities because it's easy to go around a large block in a car, not so if you walk or bike. So by any means, you know, put some paths, I mean, all throughout the blocks. The 2nd comment is around public art. So I fully support public arts. I'm not so sure it's wise to count it as a community benefit. For starter, that's very difficult to assess the value of art, that's, by definition, very subjective. I think that instead you should make it a requirement of any project of a certain size and so on. And also no offense to the planning department or VPC. The art project should be reviewed by the visual arts committee, not by planners. The 3rd command has to do with schools and the TDRs. So I wanted to echo the comments from Jessica. I think it's the city and the school district should be, you know, loaded for all the efforts to develop schools as part of a balance planning. So it's not just about jobs and housing, we need schools. So there is greatly large it there. But it's very important to be persistent and to see it through. and consistent. So I think by try to put as few strings as possible on the TDRs to push this one through. That's important, obviously, for the San Antonio IRA so that we can get a school there. But it's also important for the future schools that will need to deliver in North Bayshore and East Westman. We need to show that, you know, the whole city will be behind this for the future. Thank you.

[01:27:39] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Next place.

[01:27:44] Deb Hennigson: Hello, Madam Mayor, and the CV council members. I'm Deb Hennigson, celebrating my 20th year as Mountain View resident. And I'm here to represent the Mountain View Coalition for Sustainable Planning and our lead on the East Wisman Precise Plan, Cliff Chambers, who couldn't be here tonight. As we said in our letter, there's lots to like in this plan, and the ideas we support most are, obviously, the new housing units, the affordable ratio, and the mixed use character areas. In particular, our members would like to encourage you to move the job's housing linkage concepts and direction to a separate document that can be more flexible and less constrained by the precise plan process, as staff has already suggested. We really like the concept of the linkage generally, but we agree with staff that the actual wording needs more work and should be done separately. We also support more flexibility on the exact location of office square footage within the plan area. We think this will be necessary to ensure the housing actually gets built. The city can encourage office and residential developers to partner with each other, to maximize the number of new housing units, and one mechanism to encourage those partnerships is flexibility in allocating the office square footage. MVCSP members would also like to see higher density land uses around the middle field PTA light rail station. We especially encourage you to allow and promote increased height and true mixed use projects all around the VTA station. Mixed use means office and retail and housing to create a viable neighborhood to support those retail business owners. In general, you know, we've found that, as we've observed the discussions, especially around the North Bay Shore precise plan, that developers won't build housing unless it provides sufficient financial return, which requires greater density. Dense housing leads to having fewer cars, because the offices can be near because the residential can be near our jobs and shops and transit. And retail and transit only thrive when they have customers throughout the day and into the evening. That is, near dense areas of both jobs and housing. So our mutual goal of vibrant, walkable, environmentally sound communities requires greater density and taller buildings, particularly near the middle field VTA station. And that will create a mixed use, vibrant character area that will intermingle jobs housing and retail, and that is livable and an exciting place to be for Mountain View's future. Thank you so much.

[01:30:15] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Next, please.

[01:30:22] John Hickey: Good evening, Mayor. Council members. It is a pleasure to be here tonight. I'm John Hickey. Director of Entitlements and Planning with Summer Hill Housing Group. Summer Hill has submitted several letters already on the draft plan, and that covered a number of topics, but I would just want to focus on 3 issues this evening. First, we ask that the plan allow substantial flexibility and design standards, particularly with regards to things like building setbacks, the on-site streets and Paseos and the open space. Properties in the plan area obviously vary substantially in size and shape, and requirements that might be quite feasible on one site might be completely unnecessary or totally impracticable on another site. We ask that the plan, instead of focusing on the strict application of the design guidelines, focus on the intent of them, in order to ensure that the projects are better overall. Second thing I want to talk about for a 2nd is the school district strategy. As discussed in the staff report, and we've had these conversations before, we believe and agree with staff that the city should develop clear uniform guidelines and expectations for school contributions rather than expecting these developers to enter into ad hoc project by project agreements. However, in order to actually achieve the new housing, the new homes in East Whisman, the voluntary contributions to the school districts need to be fully credited, fully counted towards the community benefit requirement. I think as we're experiencing in North Bay Shore, the combination of fees and construction costs and land prices is turning into a one, two, three punch that many residential projects just can't bear. To manage the fees and ensure that the new homes actually get built, as I say, we would like the school voluntary school contributions to be fully credited towards the community benefit requirement. Third thing I want to talk about briefly is the base FAR. We request that the base FAR for residential be increased from one.0 to 2.5. I think we've discussed previously a base of one.0 really would only allow a maximum density of about 20 to 25 units per acre, which is simply not going to achieve the 4,900 units that the precise plan calls for. East Westman, as you know, it's transit oriented, it's near major employers, and the city really should be calling for density in the range of 50 to 75 units per acre, as it's done in some other precise plan areas. And to achieve this, we believe that FAR of 2.5 is appropriate. And we'd also say that we don't think that this would discourage the larger projects as suggested in the staff report, we think it would actually encourage them, because it would make larger projects more financially feasible. Again, appreciate the opportunity to comment tonight, and I have to answer any questions.

[01:33:21] Mayor Lisa Matichak: We have one for you. before you leave. Council member McAllister.

[01:33:25] Councilmember John McAlister: Yeah, so if we took the base far from one point one point to 2.5, would it be sort of a logic to increase our BMR units from 15% to a higher level since you're going to be able to spread that out over more units?

[01:33:44] John Hickey: Well, I think that would be counterproductive, actually, because the point is that, as I was saying, the combination of the land prices and the construction costs and the fees is becoming more than some residential projects can bear, and I think that if you really want to have the housing units be built, there needs to be an acknowledgment of that, and simply transferring the cost from the community benefit fee to more affordable housing doesn't make the projects anymore viable.

[01:34:11] Councilmember John McAlister: But you are increasing your density, so those BMR units could be disbursed costs over more years.

[01:34:16] John Hickey: Absolutely. That, I think, is part of the discussion in the staff report, and where I would actually diverge from what the staff report was saying. I don't think you will be looking at a higher density. I think you will be looking at developers trying to achieve the residential targets that are in the precise plan. It's just a question of whether or not they will be financially able to do so. So, for example, you know, a project that might be proposed to have 2.9 FAR, um, that that's there, it's going to be proposed, regardless of whether it's, you know, a one. base or a 2.5 base. just a question of whether or not it'll actually ever get built, because if it's a one.0 base, It simply might not be viable.

[01:34:55] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Next, please. Bye.

[01:35:04] Mitch Mankin: This on? Yeah, a room. Thank you, Mayor Medichek. Vice Mayor Abbe Koga, and City Council, always the opportunity to speak tonight. My name is Mitch Mankin. I here from Silicon Valley at home, voice of affordable housing in Silicon Valley. And we strongly support the plans goal, 5000 new homes, 20% of them affordable, and the vision of transforming is office park into a mixed-used, mixed income, complete neighborhood. Um, We think that the production of housing and the affordable housing opportunities in East Westman are sort of some of the most important public benefits the plan creates. And in order to for it to be implemented as envisioned, we have, we believe that the city council should closely examine the policy mechanisms that are involved in shaping housing development to make sure they made the overall goals. So to that end, we support 3 modifications in particular. The 1st one would be to consider an increase in base residential FAR close to the BTA station, which would spur transit oriented higher density housing development. And that should be done in a way that balances increasing the feasibility without undermining overall affordable housing production. The current base, FAR, of 110 is sufficient for like low slung sprawling development. But those provide less affordable housing, less housing overall. So we're hoping that you'll consider higher levels in studying those. Secondly, to allow flexibility in the job's housing linkage strategies and plantation, which would permit creative partnerships between leveraging office development rights to support residential development. We support staff recommendation over increasing this flexibility. We also think that the EPC recommendation is worth looking at, the housing credit system that would allow people, the residential developers to hold onto the credit for a longer period after the housing is constructed. And then the 3rd recommendation we'd make is that the city start a city wide process for right sizing, open space fees, and, um, on multifamily developments, as well as playing the local school strategy, which I understand is already underway. Um, as the staff presentation mentioned. And that would better address the city's needs, but also create more certainty around costs, which would enable more residential development to advance. So in conclusion, this great opportunity to create a transit oriented neighborhood, which has homeless for people of all incomes. And I think these suggested modifications will aid in that goal.

[01:37:18] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Before you leave Council member McAllister has a question for you?

[01:37:22] Mitch Mankin: Always.

[01:37:24] Councilmember John McAlister: Hi, thank you for coming. Hey, I got a question about the linkage of housing with jobs.

[01:37:30] Public Speaker: Sure.

[01:37:32] Councilmember John McAlister: If we required or suggested that these corporations or buildings would add the housing on top of their office space, you think that would be a good way to help solve the linkage? So if they put five stories of office, they could put five stories of residential, and therefore, we sort of get a better linkage to the balance of housing and jobs.

[01:37:53] Public Speaker: Seems like that would be allowed in the linkage fee, I differ to staff for more.

[01:37:57] Councilmember John McAlister: No, but I mean... But I mean, you guys are, I think, tank artists, or you always ask about, you know, developing and advocating for something. I just, if you guys had thought about that before and talked about it with some of your developers or other cities to say, hey, here's one way we can increase the housing and make a smaller footprint. So I was just curious if you have ever thought about doing that.

[01:38:18] Public Speaker: Yeah, so in the past, we've advocated, well, you were there in North Bay Shore, for integrating housing into areas that are currently office only, such as North Bay Shore, obviously, there's a lot of housing is scheduled to be built there. Um, In the same building. I don't know the exact implications of that in terms of mixed use in the same structure. usually, especially when there's affordable housing involved. It actually makes more sense to build separately. If you're using any kind of tax credits, you're not gonna be wanting to mix those constructions. You actually can in most cases. In terms of market residential development, it should be possible. Um, but maybe some of the people who actually do the building in the room, I'd be able to better answer that question.

[01:39:01] Councilmember John McAlister: But if it's a bold area, it wouldn't be nice that if that round, that light rail station, we went higher and denser, we could put all those integrated into mixed a true mixed use complex.

[01:39:12] Public Speaker: Right. Well, that would be the idea behind increasing the base FAR to increase more, like, heights around the area on the area. So you have more trans oriented development. Once again, we don't actually, as an organization, we don't build the housing. So I would defer to people who are having to build it.

[01:39:28] Councilmember John McAlister: Well, I think that makes sense to do office and residential in the same building. Okay, hey, thank you for coming.

[01:39:33] Public Speaker: Great, thank you.

[01:39:34] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. So, anyone else from the public who wishes to provide us with input on this topic? Okay, seeing none will close the public input portion. and bring it back to council, and let's start with questions. Oh, do we need to? Well, I was just gonna ask, Mr. Anderson, if the council starts with which office growth alternative, does the city council support that that would potentially involve a discussion of the Los Altos School District transfer development rights, correct?

[01:40:07] Mr. Anderson: That's right.

[01:40:08] Mayor Lisa Matichak: And is that the makes sense to start with that one first? That's the first question. I don't know if counsel has any general questions before doing that. that may inform that conversation for the benefit of other council members. So should we, um, ask questions other than around that topic, and then, um, we'll address both questions around, uh, the Question number one, and take a vote on that, or take, give direction on that, and council member McAllister can leave for those 2 parts. So general questions 1st and then council member McAllister could leave. will ask questions about, um, which office uh, strategy we prefer, and then he can come back. Does that work?

[01:40:57] Unknown Speaker: That would work.

[01:40:58] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay. So questions other than around the office square footage alternative. Council member Ramirez.

[01:41:07] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you Mayor. Two quick questions. First, do you happen to have a slide with the character areas and the intensities specifically? It might be easier to ask this question with the visual aid. And while you look for it, I could ask the other question. Just to clarify, the answer to the 2nd question regarding community benefits suggests that staff will come back to council with a recommendation for what I had called a methodology for calculating the community benefits or determining them. So the 2 that were described here as a value per square foot, and through negotiation. So do we, or is the expectation that the council will make a decision on which process to use in the fall?

[01:42:16] Mr. Anderson: So, the community benefits discussion is... The staff report laid out the community benefits discussion as a conversation around the types of things that the council wants to see included in the list in the draft precise plan. If there are other topics that the council wants to see addressed in the final precise plan, including the methodology for determining community benefits value, or determining the community benefits requirement for specific projects, there will be an opportunity, you know, that you can make those comments and staff can study. based on that direction, the best way to provide that language and propose language in the fall.

[01:43:09] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Okay. Thank you. And then, regarding the character areas. I can't remember if I've asked this question before, but since I can't remember the answer, I'll ask it again. So, the mixed use area, so the hype map is sort of analogous to this, the mixed use area has a high intensity core around the station, and then there's sort of a medium intensity mixed use area north of that. And then we go into high intensity, uh, employment use or office use. And I've never fully understood why there's a medium intensity, um, sort of bunched in between 2 high-end intensity uses that is not adjacent to an established, you know, residential neighborhood, for instance. So what is what is staff's rationale for having that medium intensity between the 2 high intensity areas in the plan.

[01:44:11] Mr. Anderson: Sure. So part of it is about kind of the kind of walkshed from the light rail stations early on in the process, there was analysis done about how, you know, the distance that people have to walk from those light rail stations. And it doesn't seem very far on the map, but, you know, that distance from the middlefield station up to that line is further than the transit center to California Street. Um, you know, here downtown. So if you, um, those, those distances are pretty large. And so having that transition towards that lower intensity, um, it acknowledges the fact of focusing the growth around and the intensity around the light rail station. The other thing that isn't clear from the language, the high intensity language, or from this map, is that actually the FARs do step down from south to north. So the max, the maximum FAR around the middlefield light rail station is 3.5, then it goes down to maximum of 2.5, and then you go down to a maximum of one.0 in the office area. And we set up the character areas, um, early on, we, you know, we ask counsel to kind of endorse the character areas. And the mixed use character area really is envisioned as more intensively used space. The office character area is envisioned more as office campuses, so with more open area between buildings and potentially taller, skinnier buildings. So that's why the heights in feet may be higher in the office side rather than the mixed use side. So it is, there is a pattern to it. It's just not necessarily clearly reflected in the maps.

[01:46:14] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Great. Thank you.

[01:46:16] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member Clark.

[01:46:19] Councilmember Chris Clark: Um, So first, just so I understand, the process in the fall, um, based on tonight, would we have, would we have one more sort of study session or public meeting before final approval, or would you bring everything back with a final approval on one meeting? Just curious.

[01:46:39] Mr. Anderson: We're currently scheduled to come back with one meeting for final approval.

[01:46:44] Councilmember Chris Clark: Okay. So I guess if you were to do that, you would, based on what happens tonight, you might incorporate some different options into the final. Okay. So we wouldn't just have to take whatever you've.

[01:46:58] Mr. Anderson: Yes, we can come back with options if the council asks us to.

[01:47:02] Councilmember Chris Clark: Okay. Um, For the, the, um, I generally like the, um, so the proposal you have on the parking structure of AR where you've sort of found a way to sort of consider the massing in it without disrupting too much the current, um, way that you're calculating things, would you, I guess from my perspective, I'm not as worried about anything as underground, in frank way, I want to encourage underground parking. So would you only look at the visible mass in like full floors? Okay. And then on the Village Center, FAR, I know you talked about, you know, if we were to increase the base FAR, we need to look at things more broadly, but on the Village Center, FAR specifically in the staff report, you had just a couple sentences or a paragraph about that, would going from .9 to one. just to match everything else, would that trigger, you know, a significant amount of additional study or would that be generally acceptable? Because you mentioned that .9 sort of came from, you know, low density row homes, and I was just curious if I know that one. would make a huge difference, but just in the for the sake of making everything uniform, if that would be super impactful or not.

[01:48:21] Mr. Anderson: If uniformity is a more important policy goal for counsel, then it could be done. Um, you know, we'd, I don't think I can give a final answer, you know, right now at, at, um, you know, in a study session setting, but we can look at it and see what any potential ramifications are on other parts of the precise plan or sequa or other issues.

[01:48:46] Councilmember Chris Clark: Okay. Yeah, I just think from looking at it at a high level, I would think that generally like a mixed use center would have the same or higher FAR than, you know, like a standard office area, but I also understand this particular village center is a little closer to residential area. So I, okay. Thanks.

[01:49:04] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member McAllister?

[01:49:05] Councilmember John McAlister: Yeah, I had a question on the public art. And... Why? Could it be considered to be a requirement? I heard one of the surge mentioned that making it a requirement for commercial properties, and, uh, Why can't we just do that?

[01:49:24] Mr. Anderson: Oh, you can. Certainly, the council can direct staff to including it as a requirement in certain locations or under certain conditions. Um, the staff recommendation was to, you know, include it in all of the guidelines and recommendations, uh, and, um, guidelines for the plan, uh, so that it is seen as uh, one of a menu of options for uh, how a site could could program its its open area.

[01:49:55] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay, and so being not making it part of community benefits, it would still, it would be considered part of the development. And the open space, not part of community benefits.

[01:50:08] Mr. Anderson: So it's already a guideline that it be included as part of private property, you know, private open space. So that's why staff isn't recommending that it be a community benefit just to provide public art. right? The public art, if it's going to be a community benefit, it should be dedicated to the city as part of a public park. So that's kind of how we do community benefits, which is over and above the standard requirements and guidelines.

[01:50:41] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay, so, you know, here's an opportunity. a lot is being developed, and here's an opportunity to get a variety of whatever art, and I'd still like to see it required versus a guideline. And, you know, we are required as a city for any project over a $1000000 of publics. We're required to do that. So I think we're sort of setting the stage that if we're required to put it in certain areas. I'd like to see it in this, and if we are trying to be bold and dynamic and make these, this Eastridge, I mean, East... Slip of the tongue there, guys. East Wisman, you know, to really make it pop, that would be a requirement to really have those open spaces as people can walk by and enjoy that. So I'd like to see you consider baking that a requirement. The other question I had is on the setbacks. I had the question and the council questions. And I was looking at your diagram, you know, when I look at areas that make it active pedestrian active, I don't see a 5 foot, and the sidewalk was, what, 8 foot in these things. And you had a diagram in here. Yeah, so and if you look at the public sidewalk, you probably have some trees and some of they think. I look at wider pedestrian walkways. And so Why do you think only 5 foot wide? What's wrong with making it wider? Because if you look at it, you got 2 people on one side and one person on a single side. Instead of having, you know, 3 or 4 people able to walk down comfortably and when you really see activities when the sidewalks are wider or the streets are wider and people can feel not pressed in. So why are we looking at just a 5 foot and not broader?

[01:52:33] Mr. Anderson: So the actual walking area is between 8 and 15 feet. Um, that's the sidewalk width from the curb to the back of the public sidewalk.

[01:52:45] Councilmember John McAlister: Right. Okay, so but if you I'm looking at your diagram, you're gonna have some. streetwork, some trees, some shrubs or so forth. And so, but I'm say, unencumbered, meaning you can just, here you got a tree, so people are whining. And so yes, it's this big, but why can't it be bigger to make it?

[01:53:02] Mr. Anderson: So the precise plan, you know, it varies depending on which street. I think middle field, it's among the biggest, and I think the standard on middle field is an 8 foot walking path that's unencumbered by streets or tree wells or by tree wells or planters or amenities or anything. That 8 feet has to be open. And then in some areas, you can redesign those tree wells, so they're more of a, um, instead of a planter, more of a tree well condition, so that there's more even wider walking surface around them, kind of like we have on some of the cross streets downtown. Um, and then, um, the, that setback area. So the the 5 feet between the that back of the public walkway and the building face would be minimum 5 feet. And that is the space where private development can put their amenities and tables and chairs and things.

[01:54:01] Unknown Speaker: For Y5? Why can't it be eight? I mean, how do I was reading how you came up to 5 and it didn't really say, you know, it could be bigger because it'd be smaller, but, you know, when...

[01:54:13] Mr. Anderson: Yeah, it's a minimum. And the purpose of the minimum is to guarantee that if a new use comes into that space and decides, well, suddenly I want tables, or suddenly I want to put my bike rocks out there, they're not forced to obstruct the public sidewalk to do that. So that 5 foot is the minimum necessary for those range of amenities for that use.

[01:54:40] Unknown Speaker: But then you're, okay, but I still see you then compressing those people out into a narrower sidewalk, and that's why I'm concerned about, you know, you go to Washington. You know, I just know Washington, DC, we go to the conference and the sidewalks are really large, wide or Europe or wide. And yet we're still keeping this idea of active use, narrow. You park a bicycle or table with chairs, you're pushing those people out into a smaller section. And here's an opportunity to really make it pedestrian active. And, you know, like I'm thinking of Ellis Street walking down that. And, or a middle field is not really going to be that popular of a street because it's traffic land oriented, but the other side streets are wider. I mean, you're making the Paseos. And those side streets, 30, 35 feet, wide, why can't you make the sidewalks 10 feet wider? I mean, you know.

[01:55:34] City Staff: If I may add, after years of reviewing projects, what we're saying is, the minimum is 5 feet. And on a project by project basis, what we do is we work with people to see where the entries are, we work to add plazas, we look at where restaurants are, we add more space there. And so it's a delicate balance between trying to create that connection between the pedestrian and the building, and also making sure there's enough space. Once you start making the space larger and larger, and you'll notice this, that connection between the building and the pedestrian at that ground level that we're trying to keep interesting starts going away. And many urban designers will tell you that it starts becoming what you call dead space because you no longer are interacting with the building at that ground level. So many of these are, um, they're almost numbers you come to after taking a look at, at the way humans interact. And it's a part science and part art. And so we set minimums, but we also have a review process where we look at projects and make sure that depending on the kind of project, we will probably look for more setbacks in certain areas of the project. So, um, I know that the urban designers have been working pretty hard on this, and it's a, it's a best practices approach to this. The wider and wider you make it. You start sort of losing the pedestrian interest. So we're looking at potentially close to 20 feet between the curb and the building and sometimes more, depending on whether you can create an entryway or a little plaza or a little restaurant area.

[01:57:28] Unknown Speaker: Okay. We'll keep going with this, but... The what new development around here have we done that we've done the 5 foot and has that affected when you say it's diminished the walking activity of something? example. And the other, when I'll finish with this and then I'll get off this topic is, is there a height that says, okay, if you're 95 feet, is it going to be more of a setback versus a smaller building?

[01:58:00] City Staff: So an example of a project is one that was recently done on El Camino. Well, actually, the Grey Star one, that has the Pete's on the corner of El Camino. So that El Camino sidewalk between the curb and the building face is probably about the same as what we're talking about on middle field. It may be a little smaller than what we're talking about on Middlefield.

[01:58:26] Unknown Speaker: Well, Ellis have the same type of set?

[01:58:28] City Staff: No, I see. Yeah, similar on Ellis too.

[01:58:29] Unknown Speaker: Okay, thank you.

[01:58:32] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member Kumei.

[01:58:33] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you. One of the things noted was EPC talking about pursuing a housing credit program. I was wondering if you could share a little bit more about that and I may have gotten lost in the mix, um, in terms of what that is, but I think a couple people in public comment alluded to it too. So I was just wondering if you could, you know, give us a little bit more information about that thought process.

[01:58:59] City Staff: Sure. So the, um, one thing that we've heard a lot from the community about the floor area transfer is that it sets too strict a limit on how long a residential developer can hold on to the value of that demolished floor area. And part of the intent to that limit is to really tie the value, so those funds, to the construction of that project itself, right? We were concerned about it looking like that value is just kind of going into the pockets of the residential developers or going to some housing development in Sunnyvale or San Jose or something, right? Now, there could be other arguments for it, for them being able to hold onto that value and use it for financing. We'd need to discuss that more with the developers. But the housing credit would allow them to hold on to that value for a longer period of time after they've completed construction. As yet undetermined period of time. We'd have to discuss the, you know, kind of what's appropriate, given economic cycles and building cycles and everything.

[02:00:14] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Right. I remember a little bit of this conversation. It's hard when it's been so many years. I'm like, which study session does that? So, and how long do they have to hold on to it now again?

[02:00:27] City Staff: So under the draft plan, they have to use it by the time they've gotten to 50% occupancy.

[02:00:32] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: 50% occupancy. Okay, right. Okay. Thank you for the reminder. Appreciate it. So I had a couple questions. On one of the questions that I sent in is question number three about the economic analysis. Um, I was wondering if you could add a little bit more to the answer in terms of, It says here, as studied, returns on residential development are less than our analytical targets under current economic conditions and development costs. And then it goes on. It's like halfway down the page on page seven. Does that mean that right now, the returns, um, are such that... It is, um, there is not, or is marginally, uh, economical, and what's the impact on development? Would we see any? Would we not see any? You could just add more to that answer. That would be great.

[02:01:41] City Staff: Yeah, I may have to ask our economist to step in, and I'll try to say what I think I understand. You know, we have some modeling assumptions about, you know, typical development in East Wisman, and we go through all of these different scenarios and assumptions and try to see under what circumstances, the projects, hit a point of kind of target return on investment. And in most cases, under what we would consider current conditions for land costs, fees, and construction costs. We don't hit those target, return on investments in our modeling. Now, we are not assuming things like jobs housing linkage and how that may support residential development. Um, we're also, um, you know, we're assuming a, you know, small average parcel size. So some economies of scale may make things a little bit more rosy. That being said, this is also consistent with what we found in North Bayshore, you know, using different parcel sizes and different, some different assumptions, construction costs, fees, and land costs really are combining to make residential development a challenge. Now, your follow up question, what does this mean for the feasibility, the precise plan? Um, you know, we, uh, One of the, the goals of a precise plan is that it will work under multiple economic conditions, and right now, we're just modeling today, right? We're modeling a very specific economic condition today, and it could change in a year or 2 years or something. So that's one thing where we can be more, you know, we can hedge a little bit on the analysis that we're doing right now. It can also help inform some ways where we, you know, the city can look at things like the school strategy and park fees and things like that, how they may be implemented, either through the precise plan or other mechanisms. Um, I don't know if you have anything to add or

[02:04:00] City Staff: I think the precise plan also acknowledges that, um, office is sort of the currency, and that there has to be a linkage between the housing and the office, um, and to that extent, um, you know, um, the partnering is will is required sometimes, you know, in order to make both both projects work from an economic perspective. I mean, this is where the economic cycles, they could sort of take that synergy from one to the other. Many of us have seen cycles where office was not, the currency and residential was. And so precise plans are long term, and this is a snapshot in time. And we do have to recognize that. But I think we've tried to set it up for, um, a system that can, that could, hopefully weather, and we can certainly bring back more information if the council wants us to look at additional issues.

[02:05:01] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: So you did look at different economic conditions, to determine that it can weather changes from today.

[02:05:12] City Staff: No, I don't believe we did. I think I think we looked at, and maybe Libby can add more information, or Eric can. I think we looked at what it is today. Yeah.

[02:05:22] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay. Council member McAllister has a follow up question.

[02:05:25] Councilmember John McAlister: I just had a quick question. Quick, quick. What's the analytical targets that you were talking about, a rate of return? Uh, 5%?

[02:05:37] Economist Libby: 5.25%, 5.5% return on cost, and then we were looking at developer margins, probably minimum 12%, trying. Oops, sorry. Uh-oh. Sorry, for apartment development, we were looking at between a 5.25% and a 5.5% return on cost, which is measured by net operating income over development cost. Alongside of that, we were also trying to hit some kind of threshold return, some percentage return, which is a difference between the value of the property once built and the development cost. So, and there, I would say, we were trying to get to a 15% return for a larger, um, apartment development, but maybe 12% return on cost at the very minimum and trying to go up from there. since many developers need more of a cushion to deal with economic uncertainty, particularly in a market like now, where we know there's more uncertainty. On the condominium side, we were looking at thresholds that are measured by percentage of cost percentage of cost. So, in other words, like a 12% of 15% margin.

[02:06:54] Councilmember John McAlister: So you're saying right now it's 5%, but you're trying to get to a 15% is ideal.

[02:06:59] Economist Libby: Um, 12%? Oh, sorry. There are 2 different measurements that are typically used. So sometimes it's called a return on cost or a yield on cost for apartment buildings, and that's measured by the income that the property produces, the net operating income divided by the development cost. So you can kind of think of it like an interest return or a stock equity return at like 5.5%. Okay. That's that measurement. And that measurement has to be sufficiently greater than the value that you think you can get from that property. So, if you think, existing rates right now, capitalization rates, a cap rate is something that's used to determine value, if you think that existing cap rate is somewhere around 4.25% or 4.5%, wherever you think it is, you have to have a differential between that cap rate and the return on cost. And that's your margin, that's your return or your margin.

[02:07:58] Councilmember John McAlister: Do you anticipate rent increases? So what you, I mean, it's a snapshot, but is it a snapshot over five, 10 years or?

[02:08:08] Economist Libby: All of our models were static models, being as of today, we did look at what I would say is a relatively ambitious rental rate for new development. given that it's an untested neighborhood right now, and you don't have the neighborhood amenities, but we did look at rents that were pretty comparable to downtown rents, where you already have an established amenity package and a transit access, you know, that's maybe an improved transit access. So I would say, if anything, our rents were on the ambitious side.

[02:08:44] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay, but that's, so your rate is just again for one period, not over.

[02:08:49] Economist Libby: Correct. It was looking. The analysis we did was in 2018, so it was looking at our best judgment of where we thought rents were as of 2018.

[02:08:59] Councilmember John McAlister: Do you do a model that shows it over more than one year?

[02:09:06] Economist Libby: No, well, it's looking at it, like stabilization. So a theoretical stabilization, assuming current costs and current rents, which is a typical kind of back of the envelope way that feasibility is tested by the development community, without going into a more detailed internal rate of return cash flow model that looks over time. So we looked at it just on a simple static model, like current, as of today.

[02:09:34] Councilmember John McAlister: Thank you.

[02:09:36] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Thank you. I have a couple other questions. I sent in the question about light rail, what would happen to the precise plan, if, right, light rail, uh, it goes away. But I was wondering, what assumptions did we assume about ridership of people who live in the East Westman area, um, in terms of, like, what percent would take light rail versus drive versus walk bike?

[02:10:13] City Staff: Can I look at my transportation consultant on this one? Dan?

[02:10:19] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: And I apologize for not sending these in. We were pretty busy this week. And some of the questions I came up with this afternoon after our morning meeting.

[02:10:46] Consultant Dan: Um, give me just a moment here. So we have assumed kind of about an 8% to 10% transit ridership. That's kind of the base condition, without the East was a precise plan that goes up to Around 20% with the precise plan. So when you add in the residential and the office.

[02:11:14] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: So you're assuming 8 to 10%? That's important. When now? Going to 20%?

[02:11:22] Consultant Dan: Yes. And you can clarify.

[02:11:28] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: So that's all transit, not just light rail.

[02:11:31] Consultant Dan: Yeah, so that would be the commuter vehicles, buses, the shuttle buses, the light rail, and so on.

[02:11:37] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Do you break it down to just light rail?

[02:11:40] Consultant Dan: No,

[02:11:40] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: okay. Thank you.

[02:11:42] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay. Did you have a question about that?

[02:11:46] Unknown Speaker: Well, yeah. Okay, you're using the information from 2015. I'm somewhat familiar with the information from 2019, and writership has going down since 2015. So if you have some more accurate information, that might be helpful. Thank you.

[02:12:05] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thanks. I'm sorry, my questions are kind of, lots of different topic here. I sent in the question about unbundled parking, and was surprised by the answer. On page 10 of the staff report, it says the plan also requires unbundled parking. But in the precise plan, it's... Wait, but in the... Wait, the answer came back saying, we don't require unbundled parking.

[02:12:37] City Staff: Yeah, I think the staff report did not characterize it accurately. It's permissive in the precise plan, but it's one of a menu of required items. So you do have to provide some monetary incentive to residents not to drive. And so it is a, it is part of a menu of, like I said, required items. We expect applicants to use it, but it's not required, and it's permissive. So the precise plan. Other than that strip of about the closest, you know, 5 or 600 feet from Wisman road that we call the buffer area, it's limited in that area, but it's not limited anywhere else in the precise plan.

[02:13:35] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay. They made a question sent in by folks from the Sierra Club about surface parking, and they were suggesting that the precise plan, say that all surface parking have permeable surface. And I did not go back to the precise plan to try to find whether or not that's a requirement. Is that in there at all, or would you recommend that, or was it?

[02:14:04] City Staff: It's not. We already have requirements that new hardscape be, you know, treated through the, you know, through swales and so on. So that's already a requirement. Um, rather than going into storm drains. Um, I'd have to ask others who may know that the technology better than I do about what the difference is between swales and permeable paving is. I don't know if anybody here tried you.

[02:14:41] City Staff: The permeable paving has...

[02:14:43] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Could you come up to the microphone?

[02:14:50] City Staff: Real bull paving has a fairly significant cost associated with it, um, wears swales are a bit more targeted solution. It may depend on the project's topography, the size of the parking lot, which method would be preferable or more cost effective. So it might not be necessary to specify it as an overall requirement. but rather as part of a package of ways to achieve the goal, which is to minimize runoff.

[02:15:15] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay.

[02:15:17] City Staff: I would just add that we have C3 requirements that public works works really hard on with the intent of making sure that all the water on the site is contained on the site. And so, um, developers have to come up with, um, the best way to achieve that, and we do that through site planning. And sometimes it's permeable pavers. Sometimes, you know, they may not do that, but they'll do swales. And so it's, I think the goal is achieved.

[02:15:45] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay.

[02:15:46] City Staff: We already have that as a requirement.

[02:15:48] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay. Let's see, in the traffic analysis. The additional traffic that is generated. Uh, what land use is generated that additional traffic. Is it office? Is it residential? Is it um... Is that in the EIR?

[02:16:18] City Staff: It's not, I don't believe the, you know, I'm sure our transportation consultant can, you know, provide a more precise answer than this, but I don't believe the model, um, well, the model does differentiate between residential trips and office trips. And certainly, there's a directional difference. But the outcome, in terms of number of trips, it's not grossly one more than the other, right, in terms of the net new trips. It's not, I don't think you can say that if you took out all the office, you know, you'd solve all the traffic problems, you know, or if you took out all the residential, you'd solve all the traffic problems.

[02:17:07] Mayor Lisa Matichak: What internalization rate is assumed? I know we have that. Um, Dan, do you have that off on your tables?

[02:17:37] Consultant: So, the internalization of residence is around 40% with the project.

[02:17:45] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay. That's pretty high. What was the assumption in North Bayshore? I thought it was like 30, was it?

[02:17:54] Consultant: It was 27. That's what we studied in the IR.

[02:17:57] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay.

[02:17:58] Consultant: You ultimately approved of something closer to 35 to 40.

[02:18:01] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay.

[02:18:02] Consultant: Smaller household size and all that. And reduce parking.

[02:18:06] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay. Okay, thank you. And then, um, let's see. One of the, uh, items that I brought up, uh, when we were going through this last time was the, who does the approval, which body. And I think my comment was not clear. I was not referring to just bonus FAR. I was also referring to base FAR. I just wanna clarify that. And so, you know, in North Bay Shore, we're expecting most of the development to happen in a master plan fashion. And we make the decision on what's the approving body, the reviewing and approving bodies. At the time the master plan is done. But in East Wisman, do we expect very many master plans? We're not really requiring them. Would we expect any? I've heard of one.

[02:19:15] City Staff: Yeah, we're requiring them in the village center and in the area around Maude and Clyde. There may be other opportunities where a developer may elect to do a master plan, but not really required in other locations.

[02:19:34] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay, so when we have the same requirement in this precise plan that says that the at the time the master plan is approved, we would decide what the reviewing body is.

[02:19:45] City Staff: Okay.

[02:19:46] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay, um, Council member McAllister.

[02:19:49] Councilmember John McAlister: Yeah, you mentioned internalization. And did you see, and did you say something, the bigger the units, the higher their internalization, like a 3 bedroom, 2 bedrooms, has a better internalization than a studio and one bedroom? Because you mentioned that as you sort of finished off, and I just want clarity on that. Because you said North Bay Shore has smaller, and this one has bigger.

[02:20:12] Consultant: Yeah, so what I was referring to for North Bay Shores, there was a series of assumptions about the household size and the parking supply. So what we studied in the EIR identified the impacts for intersections was the smaller household size was kind of a standard parking rate, but ultimately what you elected to adopt in the precise plan was the smaller household size and the reduced parking for the residential. And so by doing that, having less parking supply available, you would increase the internalization.

[02:20:45] Councilmember John McAlister: Well, what about O'Hare and East Wizman, where we're looking at 3 and 4 bedrooms. Would that, you know, I don't know about how the parking's, but you have more larger units in here. Would that then increase the internalization, right?

[02:21:01] Consultant: Can you say that one more time?

[02:21:03] Councilmember John McAlister: With more 2 and 3 bedroom, larger families, would that increase the internalization rate for this particular area?

[02:21:17] Consultant: Maybe. What we've studied is the higher end of what Mountain View is achieving right now in terms of lib work percentages. You're kind of at the 40% is your high number. So adding more large homes, unless you're adding more workers into those homes. It may not increase the internalization.

[02:21:39] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay, thank you.

[02:21:41] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay, any other questions from council members? Okay, seeing none. Um, this is where we would start with question staff question one. And so, Council member McAllister, did you have something you wanted to say?

[02:22:02] Councilmember John McAlister: I will be recusing myself on this particular instance because of the potential of conflict of having a lease financial interest with the Los Altos School District.

[02:22:13] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Okay, are there any questions, both from council members, before we get to responding to question one. And question one is... Yep, which office alternative do we support? Which office growth alternative does the city council support? Yep. And on, I always go back to the staff report, but it's also in the slide here. But it's on staff report, page 14 and 15. So if there's no questions about that, If folks just want to give their perspective. And we'll keep track, and then we'll summarize at the end of this study session. Or maybe we'll do some summary as we go. Anyone care to start? Thank you, Vice Mayor. We can always count on you.

[02:23:14] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: I didn't have any questions. I guess I'll start talking now, so I am fine with a new alternative. I think that works as a good balance between the 2 other plan options we had. And so, yeah, I'll go with the TDR bonus.

[02:23:33] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Council member Kame.

[02:23:37] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Um, I'm also fine with the TDR bonus, um, both the TDR bonus, the new alternative, as well as what the draft precise plan, um, those 2 um, are fine with me. I, you know, I want to make sure that the TDRs go forward and both of those options, I feel like, enables us to go forward.

[02:24:02] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Also, um, support the TDR bonus option. Council member Ramirez.

[02:24:13] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Uh, thank you. I'm going to support the TDR bonus alternative as well. I don't want to belabor the point too much, but I do have sort of a philosophical concern about the sort of the additional office space we're allocating to TDR projects. The only reason I'm comfortable with it is because it's going to be subject to the community benefit requirement, but, um, you know, I, it feels like, um, you know, allocating additional office space to projects that already get additional office space because of the TDRs. I just, you know, I'm not enthusiastic about that, but I'll support it as a reasonable compromise.

[02:24:59] Councilmember Alison Hicks: Yeah, I can't say I'm totally enthusiastic about it. Um, but, uh, I feel like it's the compromise.

[02:25:07] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Can't remember Clark.

[02:25:10] Councilmember Chris Clark: My first choice would just be to stick with the draft precise plan and do the TDRs within that envelope, but, um, I'm in the minority on that one, so... I don't think I think the draft alternative is not the end of the world either, so I think it's fine.

[02:25:29] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay, so, um, The majority supports the TDR bonus. alternative. Okay, so before, let's see. question number two, but we can get council member McAllister back. And again, I just want to clarify that I wanted this to come back so we could talk about not just the bonus far, but also the base for the review process for that. For any of it.

[02:26:10] City Staff: Sorry? Can we incorporate that in addressing number two, or did you want to bring that as a step?

[02:26:17] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay. Yeah, I would, sorry, yes, I would incorporate that into number two.

[02:26:21] City Staff: Great, thank you. So question number 2 is... A lot of paper here today. Should the EPC or the ZAB, the recommending body to the city council on bonus far,

[02:26:37] Mayor Lisa Matichak: and I would add, um, who should be the recommending body, or the approving body? Yeah, see, this isn't, I feel like this is definitely not what I intended. So, for me, if you go to the table on page 18...

[02:26:56] Unknown Speaker: Staff report, please.

[02:26:58] Mayor Lisa Matichak: The staff report, sorry, yes. Where it says, um, for base fire projects, DRC recommendations, ZA, final action, and then bonus fire projects, um, The DRC, and then the question that staff ask, was it is the ZA or the EPC, um, and then council final action. But I had a question about both of those. So, my preference would be that, um, even for base far projects, that the council is the final action, and I say that because, um, I think it's important to get public input, and the DRC and the ZA meet at times that are not convenient for the public. And also because some projects that have recently been improved. There's some pretty big ones. They were not approved at a council meeting, and I've certainly heard from a lot of residents about their concern about those projects. And I think we should have the public meeting at a time when people can attend. Council member Clark.

[02:28:18] Councilmember Chris Clark: Yeah, so I'm, um, I feel a little different way. I think the whole point of doing a precise plan is to, you know, get to the point where there's certain things under a base level and, um, you know, entitlement that doesn't need to come to us and, you know, doesn't part of this is doing all the work up front so that we don't necessarily have to test staff and us with doing everything associated with the with, um, you know, council approval for everything. So, um, I I, and I might be fine, you know, changing the time. I think a better way to address that would be to change the times of the ZA or DRC meetings to better accommodate the public. I think we would get this. I hear the same complaints from folks, even of projects that we approve. It's just one of those things where, like, they don't really pay attention until there's shovels in the ground, and then they realize what's going on, whether there was a public meeting at a convenient time or not. So they're all noticed the same way they would be for a council or a ZAE. So, um, anyway, I, I think, um, I think the, I, I would be okay with the bonus FAR projects, um, Just, my personal preference would be sticking with the North Bay Shore framework, um, just because I think the, the whole, especially for the residential projects, just because I think the whole point of that was to help streamline the residential project themselves, and then we could certainly look at the master plans, which I think was the most significant impact. But if folks would prefer that the EPC see those, I'm fine with that too.

[02:29:53] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member Ramirez?

[02:29:54] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you. I have a quick question for staff. So, for our projects up to the base FAR discretionary, So do we, if it were to go to council as the final authority? You know, what do we have? What sort of the leverage that we have to deny a project that goes up to the base FAR?

[02:30:18] City Staff: So up to the base FAR? There's still discretion over details, you know, design and compliance with standards and things like that. There's limited discretion over the project itself. So that's the whole point of base FAR is basically a, um, a promise to the property owner that they can at least build that, right? I don't know if the city attorney would have anything to add on that.

[02:30:48] City Attorney Jannie Quinn: No, other than residential might be even less discretion than the office building, but I think you captured it well.

[02:30:55] City Staff: Maybe not a promise, but a clear set, a clear framework that a code compliant project. There'd be pretty limited discretion on the details.

[02:31:04] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: So no exceptions or variances?

[02:31:11] City Staff: Well, then it wouldn't fit within the framework that's been established.

[02:31:19] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Any other comments, Council member McAllister?

[02:31:22] Councilmember John McAlister: Yeah, I put in the question about, could they change their time and on, uh, question number 20 for Mr. Council member Clark, so they did respond with changing the time, 'cause I thought, well, I'd like to change the time, so that would have been interesting. I support the mayor on this one particular one, because even though we give up the specific deadline guidelines. This community is very aware of any kind of development in the area, or throughout the city, and they, you know, the buck stops with us, and even though it might be a minor project, or following the guidelines specifically, we're still gonna get public input one way or the other on that, and East Wisman is a new area that we're putting in a new precise plan. It could be some challenges of implementing some new innovative strategies here, and I'd say, you know, we could probably change it down the road, but I would, like, initially start that the council reviews it to see how it goes, and then we can always change it a little bit. But this is going to be a bit one of our major change areas, and I like to see us have a little bit of a lot more say into it until it's proven that it can work.

[02:32:42] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Others? Council member Ramirez?

[02:32:45] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you. The only concern I would have about bringing base FAR projects to council is, because we have, it sounds like very little discretion over the review, it may feel very unsatisfactory for members of the public who come to us seeking substantial changes or community benefits. So I'm if we had greater leverage or discretion to make changes. I'd be more interested, but if it's just to review it and approve it, then I'm not sure what the value at is. But for bonus FAR projects, I would be interested in EPC review since there is the community benefit component. And I like the idea of soliciting community input on what those public benefits should be.

[02:33:39] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Yeah, not everyone commented on that. If I could circle back, council member, McAllister. For bonus far, would you want EPC or ZA? EPC.

[02:33:49] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Vice mayor, Abi Coca.

[02:33:54] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you. So, for bonus, for our projects. I also support APC review. I actually thought all of our precise plans had that, so I was a little surprised to see North Bay sure goes to ZA. Um, but, I know, Council Final Action was the, the big, the big issue at that time. Um, based off of our projects, uh, I, you know, I think, and I guess this is a question, if it, um, if it conforms, then is there a way to let it through to the ZA, but if there's, like, let's say there's like a number of variants, or sorry, exception requests, um, that would that ever come to the council or could it come to the council?

[02:34:45] City Staff: So the zoning administrator always has the authority to defer to counsel and forward projects to counsel.

[02:34:53] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Okay. So that authority always exists. It's not associated with a level of exceptions or a threshold of project size or anything like that. So it's just up to the CA to decide if it's controversy. How do they decide?

[02:35:15] City Staff: It's decided by the ZA in the public hearing setting of the ZA meeting, but it is also decided, you know, internally by, you know, with lots of staff discussion.

[02:35:29] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Okay. I'm trying to find some kind of middle ground here on the base of AR because I do think that, you know, if you conform, then there's the idea is to streamline and that's the argument I've been making, frankly, of following the precise plan and not doing gatekeepers. So I feel like I have to stick with that, but, um, you know, if there is a project that does have a lot of exceptions, and I think that is something that we should, this council should look at, as well as, um, you know, and I'm, I'm trying to go back to remember what the North Bay Shore, um, discussion was, but, um, you know, perhaps because we have exist, an existing neighborhoods in this area close by. And that those would be the sensitive projects that I would be most concerned of. So, um, you know, those perhaps should come to council for more review. And I don't know if there's some way to carve that out, but, um, like maybe going to the character areas or some, something and looking at where those existing neighborhoods are and what, yeah, what projects in those areas, um, are coming and we, those could come to council. And maybe it's just, you know, a recommendation to the ZA, one way we could do that. But I do think that if it's pretty much conforming and there's, you know, no existing neighborhoods, it should be able to get streamlined through. So I don't think I don't know if that helps at all. Thanks.

[02:37:09] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member Kamei.

[02:37:10] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thank you. So for the 1st question. Um, yes. I think you should go to EPC review. And for the base. I mean, I feel torn for many of the reasons my colleagues mentioned in terms of wanting to have that oversight and public input, but also wanting to be able to streamline. Um, you know, I think, and, you know, in another attempt to do a compromise, you know, I would be interested, and I know that this question was asked by Councilman McAllister, you know, perhaps when, if when a project comes forward, if we could try to move the time and see if that does elicit any type of additional public, um, uh, input, you know, and then we can just kind of see. Um, I know that that there are implications to that. But I, But I do agree, and that's why I recommend that it should go to EPC that, you know, we do need that input and even that notice and that reminder to folks sometimes, um, that projects are coming forward. Um, So I don't know if that's something that can we can explore. Those 2 different things.

[02:38:27] Mayor Lisa Matichak: So, um, the question about EPC related to the bonus far.

[02:38:32] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Right. So I'm talking I'm talking about the for the base. I sorry. Right. Yeah. If we could look. So for the Z, A, hearing that may happen for base FAR projects, one of the questions was asking if we could move the meeting time was my understanding. And I am trying to ask if we could, yes, if we could look into perhaps doing that, um, to see if we, if in moving the time, we would be able to get that same public comment that we hope to get when we have projects go forward to EPC. That was my connection.

[02:39:14] City Manager Dan Rich: Just a few comments, if I could. So, just, as noted on page 18, all of our other precise plans for base, go to DRCNZA. So, you know, it would be an anomaly to do it differently, and I would just caution you with the increasing length of our meetings lately if every project comes to council that might become somewhat overwhelming. Having said that, I would ask a question of staff, either tonight, or to come back to you, with whether or not there might be some criteria we could come up with, you know, as the vice mayor suggested that under certain circumstances, any exception, or a certain number of exceptions, or a certain size, or something like that, there would be a threshold for what would be brought to you, but otherwise, it would be to ZA. And let me just correct the record. The downtown precise plan does require council review of all new buildings. That said, I think we can certainly look at what we've heard, and see if we can balance between wanting to streamline, and as the vice mayor said reward projects for coming within the precise point requirements, and then seeing, you know, if there is as many exceptions, we could sort of change the process and put them more into a bonus FAR track. or something different so we can we can review that.

[02:40:46] Councilmember Chris Clark: If I can make a suggestion just as an example. So if something, it was in North Bay Shore, so it wasn't quite as impact. There's, you know, the mobile home park and neighborhood, but, you know, some like Microsoft developed under the base FAR, right? I think something of that magnitude along Wisman Road would probably maybe warrant a little bit more public input, whether it's a later ZA meeting or a council meeting or something like that versus, you know, a much smaller project that isn't near the, I'm sure you can figure that out. That was just one example that popped into mind, like something of that magnitude should probably definitely have some extra.

[02:41:26] City Manager Dan Rich: You know, the zoning ordinance always allows us the ability to kind of gauge that and bring it. And I know that in my career, we've done that. I've done that a few times. And very often, we try to anticipate many of the issues. But we'll, so that definitely we do. I know that. But then we can also look at what we can build into the process. So we're trying to balance, trying to keep these generally not changing from precise plan to precise plan, but keeping a balance of some streamlining with the ability for the EPC to review and the council to review. So we'll come back with some suggestions.

[02:42:07] Mayor Lisa Matichak: So I could, um, live with that. But I agree with council member Clark, I think the Microsoft Project, that did not come to council, and that was a very, very large project. And so in addition to number of exceptions, I think, the magnitude of the project would be one of the criteria I'd be looking for. So it sounds like we do want the EPC to review bonus far, and that staff will come back to us on what to do about review for other projects that are base FAR. Okay. Um...

[02:42:50] City Staff: Yes. Follow up with one quick question based on the EPC recommendation. They did ask that staff study something similar, which was that maybe some larger projects be recommended by the PC, but other smaller projects not need to go through the EPC, even if they are bonus FAR. Is that something that you're interested in seeing or is that you want all the bonus FAR projects to go through the EPC? Or should we study it and come back with options?

[02:43:29] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Vice mayor, Obay Koga?

[02:43:31] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank. Question on that, I guess. And I don't know if it ties into one, if there was another question on it, but I'm trying to remember, does the community benefits discussion happen at that time?

[02:43:47] City Staff: So the community benefits is always associated with bonus FAR.

[02:43:51] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: So then, is it in this diagram, or the options, if it went to the ZA, then the ZA would accept the community benefits?

[02:44:00] City Staff: Would make a recommendation to counsel.

[02:44:02] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Okay. Community. And then we would, the council would just say yes or no to the benefits, but not the project.

[02:44:08] City Staff: Uh, no, no, bonus FAR, the council would have would have authority to always review bonus FAR projects.

[02:44:15] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Okay. This was specifically about the recommendation. Would it go through EPC or? So who would see the first round? Okay. So you're saying that for smaller projects, the EPC was looking at allowing the ZA too?

[02:44:31] City Staff: As an auction, yeah. Smaller bonus far projects. Exactly.

[02:44:35] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: I'm open to that.

[02:44:37] Unknown Speaker: Yeah, I'm open to that too, if they're the ones that suggested it.

[02:44:42] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay. Okay, moving right along. Question number three. And this is the question regarding the base FAR for residential. Council member of Ramirez.

[02:45:03] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you. So I'm not supportive of increasing the base FAR, simply because that deprives us of the mechanism that we are using to secure community benefits. And if the concern is the cost of development or development, feasibility, I would be interested in exploring community benefit methodologies that could be sensitive to the cost of development. But I want to retain the key mechanism for actually getting the community benefits that we're envisioning for this area. And the challenge I have with increasing the base FER is by definition, that means we are sacrificing that ability.

[02:45:52] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member Clark?

[02:45:54] Councilmember Chris Clark: I have a slightly different perspective. So, hearkening back to sort of doing the precise plan generally, you know, if you're studying the base FAR such that most people aren't going to, especially in residential, offices totally different story for me. But I'm residential, if you're studying the base level, if AR is such that most people aren't going to develop at the base FAR, they're going to go for something with bonus FAR and community benefits, then that's great. You get the community benefits. But It's all going to come back to us, and it's all going to go the same, basically the same process a gatekeeper would have gone through. And so we're, in my mind, I get the desire for the community benefits. I would personally rather look at higher bonus or higher base FAR with requirements on sustainability and all those things that we might, um, like higher level requirements on certain things, um, then I would setting, you know, uh, a pretty low base FAR that probably that may or probably won't work in other economic conditions because then it's all just going to come back to us and it's all just going to be a negotiation. And I get to the desire for all those community benefits, and that's really nice, and I could, totally do that with certain master plans or certain really large projects, but I just, I think, for me, the whole point of spending all this time on this was to establish a base level FAR under which people in a streamlined manner can build residential, especially via the job's housing linkage. And I think I'm just not confident that the base level FAR, where we're setting it, is really going to have much development under it. I think most things are going to end up coming to us for a community benefit discussion, and that's great in terms of community benefits in times like this. It's not going to be so great, frankly from a, I think, from a workload perspective. And it may not work very well in a couple years, and then we have to revisit this whole thing. But, um, that's, that's sort of the flip side of it. I see both sides of it. I just, I think for me, the whole point of doing this would be to establish a base level FAR under which it's feasible to develop, and meet really high and stringent criteria without having to get into a prolonged community benefit discussion with her negotiation with council.

[02:48:29] Unknown Speaker: So quick question for Steph on that. Um, I can't remember if this was in the staff report or the questions, but wasn't one of the reasons for the current level of base FAR, not just for community benefits, but also for, um, making our plan more attractive than using the state density bonus law. And I see a nodding head in back of you.

[02:48:56] Steph: Yes, that's part of it. That's one of the inputs to the process. You know, we have an option that goes over and above the state density bonus, which we're allowed to do, and part of that is we ask for more affordable housing than the state density bonus would ask for, but we're also asking for school strategy, community benefits, and other things. So, yes, we've structured it in order to provide incentives and requirements that go over and above the state density bonus.

[02:49:36] Unknown Speaker: So if we raised the base FAR, the state density bonus might be more attractive, and we would lose the opportunity to get the community benefits and other things that we're looking for.

[02:49:51] Steph: Yes.

[02:49:51] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay. Vice mayor Abbe Koga?

[02:49:55] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you. Um, so I was looking at the chart on page 20 of the staff report that has the state density bonus, um, number. So, um, in light of that, I, I don't know, like for the one.0, I don't know if we need to go to one. 35, but like if we were to do it at one. 25 does staff think that's, I mean, reasonable enough that we'd get benefits and, and then can we, um, just require a school, strategy or, you know, like a whatever, X times the state.

[02:50:42] City Staff: No, we can't require a school strategy. Even if we, so it would only be through a bonus if they are. That the only mechanism. voluntary agreement in exchange for hire FAR.

[02:50:55] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: So, could we do at least, or require... So, this is for affordable housing. So how could that translate? If we did a higher FAR, let's say, one. 25 How would that compare or match with the state density bonus? Because they get extra percent or FAR, and we have to give them a very exception.

[02:51:28] City Staff: Right, 35, 35% increased density.

[02:51:32] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: So if we were to say, okay, you can do one.25, then what could we require? Or can we?

[02:51:42] City Staff: Well, typically, the base is the floor, where we don't... Right. So we require the community benefits after the floor. So you need to establish a floor in order to be able to require the community benefits.

[02:51:55] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Because I'm trying to find that, you know, comparable to a state what the state density bonus does. So I'm really okay to go higher, but as council member Clark said, you know, if we could require something to this.

[02:52:14] City Staff: One of the quirks of the state density bonus is that they calculate the affordable housing requirement on the base? So any bonus units, you get without providing any afford- additional affordable units. So if you're looking for an equivalent number of affordable units provided, you're actually the state density bonus, you would provide fewer affordable units under almost any scenario as a proportion of the total units built.

[02:52:47] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: So even at like a higher one. 25, let's say, would there still be incentive to go to the state density bonus?

[02:52:56] City Staff: So it'd have to be one higher than one.35. I think the higher you raise the base, the less incentive there will be to go to the bonus FAR, because at some point, it's gonna make more sense to provide the affordable housing at the base, FAR, and then take the bonus units on top of it. Like the state allows versus going with our program and providing community benefits. So, I think it's a hard question to figure out exactly where to go. And it's hard to tell you because having reviewed some state density bonus projects, there are waivers and concessions that you have to give, and the waivers are unlimited. So, um, you have to look at projects, you know, it can go up as high as being unlimited. So it's hard to say, uh, a project's going to look like this with the state density. bonus. All you can say is they can go 35% above. The density, and then everything else could be a waiver. Other development standards. So, again, coming back to the point, the higher you raise the base, the more attractive it is to use state density bonus, and the fewer projects, you will have requiring community benefits. That's not to say we're lobbying for one or the other. It's just a point of consideration.

[02:54:22] Unknown Speaker: So along the same lines. Does staff feel like the base, FARs that we have now, are the highest they can be without sort of tipping over to, uh, making it more attractive, to use the state density bonus. Or is there any wiggle room there?

[02:54:53] City Staff: I don't think that can be answered with any real precision. Um, I think the... the question, you know, I'll try kind of framing the question, in a way, that maybe will help. You know, the public has consistently, or the public comment in the development community, have consistently been recommending this 2.5 number as the base FAR. I think we can say with some certainty that that would encourage less use of the bonus FAR, and I think that's part of the intent, right, is that they want more projects to be allowed to go through without using the, or to be, to be allowed and to be developed without using the bonus FAR process. So I think that distinction is clear. And then you have to kind of ask yourself, um, you know, the difference between one and one.2 or one.25. If it doesn't, if it's, if it's not making a difference in terms of the number of projects that are coming through at base or the, part of the point of the public comment is that it more closely matches the vision and the number of units and the, you know, 2.5 more closely matches the target, um, you know, one. 2 isn't really getting you closer to those goals. So it really isn't an incremental question. It's really a question of, um, you know, the, are you willing to accept a significant loss in number of projects that are providing bonus FAR?

[02:56:38] Unknown Speaker: Um, thank you. Um, So, in the other precise plan areas, um, like El Camino, I feel like we've been pretty successful with our bonus FAR program and because I know a lot of projects did come in at one. 85. So what is, you know, what's the argument, I guess, for East Wisman to have a higher base than in our other areas of the city?

[02:57:08] City Staff: Okay, so there are a few big differences here. One difference is that based on the adoption of the general plan in 2012, the city approved, a one.85 FAR, in El Camino and San Antonio, in the general plan. And so that sets the foundation for density bonus. So that's one key issue here. We have an opportunity, in this case, to be sensitive to that issue and that input and that kind of comparison of different project types, through our general plan amendment today. So it is a little bit different. In El Camino, we kind of hit a sweet spot going from one.35 to one.85. Um, you know, there's a construction type that's really optimized at that one. AR and it really is, there's a really clear relationship between that additional density and increased profitability to the developer. That relationship isn't quite as clear when you're going up to the intensities that we're talking about 2.5, 3.5, because you're crossing across multiple different kinds of construction types, and there are a lot of different kind of economic inputs when you're doing that. So that's a little different. Um, the, um, So, and and also, I think with the North Bay Shore, or with North Bay Shore and East Whisman, we are contemplating a kind of more, um, with the school strategy, uh, specifically, we're contemplating what could be more, um, uh, extensive uh, community benefits and, um, other obligations on the bonus FAR projects. So even if those were applied to El Camino projects, that could affect the feasibility in that uplift of the bonus FAR.

[02:59:23] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member Ramirez?

[02:59:25] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you. Another way, not to confuse the issue further, but I'm really reluctant to lose the mechanism that I think is essential to secure the benefits and amenities that we need, but if, again, we're concerned about development feasibility, because of incurred costs from all of the amenities we're seeking, I would be interested in maybe having staff sort of do some additional economic feasibility analysis to see, you know, what is sort of the aggregate cost that we could impose before we start seriously impacting development feasibility. and then using that to develop some methodology or calculation that is then sort of sensitive to changes in the economic cycle. So if, for instance, right now, you know, we can we can impose, you know, an aggregate value of, I don't know, just totally arbitrarily, you know, a $100,000 per unit or something, then, you know, we can use that, we can, we can, we can self-impose a limit so we can't get more than that because at that point, we know we are making development infeasible. And then, you know, if we do a check in every 2 years, at 3 years, we may find that that number goes up or down. But at the very least, we have, we have a mechanism that can ensure that we're still getting the amenities that we need or, you know, most of them, but we have a built in stop gap, so we're not, we're not just imposing, you know, the voluntary school contribution on top of the community benefits on top of affordable housing and park bees and everything that just in the aggregate is so immense that it makes, you know, any kind of development impractical. That was a lot of words. I don't know if I made any sense at all, but I, you know, I think sort of summarizing this mechanism is important, and we're asking for a lot, which I think is appropriate. But if there's a way we can sort of meter that or be sensitive to economic realities, and I think that would be helpful and moderating our ask.

[03:01:44] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Did you have comments on that? Looks like you were going to before you started writing.

[03:01:49] Eric Anderson: Yeah. Well, I was just gonna say that you run the risk. That was the intent of the community benefits analysis that we did for El Camino, and we are scoped to do that and still do that for office in East Wisman, and we'll come back with some more analysis on that. in the future. I think the question that that brings up is, you know, what happens if that feasibility threshold crosses below fees and other requirements that live outside the East Wisman precise plan. So park fees and or what happens when it goes outside of land costs and construction costs that we can't control as a city. So those are the types of things that we would need to that we really do have to consider in doing that analysis. And it's one of the things that makes that analysis challenging in this particular economic environment and location.

[03:02:54] City Manager Dan Rich: But just to add to that, and Martin and Libby may correct my faulty memory, but we have this conversation about North Bay Shore about a year ago, and my recollection of the analysis was, is we could eliminate every city fee, and it still wouldn't pencil, so to speak. So, you know, there are a lot of different factors and different economic cycles that will make a difference. The other point I would make, and Eric, again, correct me if I'm wrong, which I probably am. This isn't the only tool in the precise plan. I mean, we have the linkage and other strategies that are supposed to all work together, so it's not just about what the base FAR is.

[03:03:32] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Vice mayor Abi Coca?

[03:03:34] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Thank you. So, um, to register my straw vote. Um, I'm fine with, uh, the current base FAR, um, I just am mindful that, you know, this was the analysis done. It was a point in time. And again, you know, I said this many times, but 15 years ago, we were seeing that residential was much more lucrative than commercial land. So it's the economic cycle and, you know, we want something that can last through not just this point in time, but through a long time. So, um, I'm fine with going forward with this and see where it goes. Although I will say with the village center, um, and I'm fine, okay, if it helps to just, make it all the same and do one. 0 My other thought to that too, is that we, since we're expecting retail, and I guess that it looks like retail is not necessarily a benefit, I mean, it's a benefit, community benefit, more than a financial benefit to the developer. So if that, and I don't know if that, if one is even enough, sufficient, but I'm willing to go a little higher in the village center since we are expecting retail there. So yeah, if we want to just round it up to one, that's fine or higher, if you think we need to.

[03:04:59] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Vice mayor. I sorry. Um, Council member, come A.

[03:05:04] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: It's okay. It's okay. You know, I had an interest in where council member Ramirez was trying to go, but then it sounded like that was a can of worms. Although the city manager didn't use that term, nor the nor do Mr. Anderson. Um, so, you know, I think for me, I'm more inclined to go the way that the vice mayor was saying, which is, uh, keep the bass FAR, um, exploring, um, the FAR and the village center. Um, I also think we, you know, I don't know if now is the time to talk about it, but I think we also got, um, some public, uh, comment as well as, you know, written comments about looking at increasing that VR near the middle field VTA um, station. And I would also be interested in that. I don't know if now is the time to register that. But um, I wanted to do so.

[03:05:59] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member Clark?

[03:06:01] Councilmember Chris Clark: So, folks, we're talking, I think, um, and Councilman Ramirez specifically, I don't think staff needs to do a whole bunch of additional analysis. I think really, and I trust whatever council's in place at the time to adjust their expectations based on the economic need at the time. I think what I realize is part of the discussion is my real issue is more process-based. So, I just don't want, I don't want to disincentivize utilizing, you know, this tool set of community benefit, um, incentives that we're creating here. All I, but I don't want is for every single one of those to basically be a two-year gatekeeper negotiation of what those community benefits are because they're just not defined. And, um, so if we can come up with a really, and I think we are, if we can come up with a really defined, here are the school strategy options that are acceptable to counsel in this current economic environment. Here are, here's what's acceptable in terms of sustainability, and, you know, it's, it's not always a guessing game, and if you can put those components together, then it's not going to take you 3 years to get entitlements. Then I'm perfectly fine with the current base FAR. I get what I really don't want is It's a constant moving target, and it's basically just a constant negotiation, and no one, one project is has a totally different community benefit expectation than another. So as long as as what comes back to us in the fall has those strategies, whether it's school strategy or other things or menu of options, sort of clearly defined in terms of here are the community benefit buckets that are acceptable to us. And if you can put these pieces of the puzzle together, we'll generally be on board with it and aren't going to throw make a huge fuss, then that's fine with me. I just, I think I just didn't want to get into a, you know, someplace down the line where basically everything is this long protracted negotiation, and no one has certainty about what is and is acceptable, because I think at the end of the day, it's really what folks want is, what, what can I be certain will pass muster?

[03:08:17] Unknown Speaker: That is the plan, right? to come back in the fall with a more defined school strategy and value of community benefits.

[03:08:26] City Staff: Absolutely. Yeah, and and certainly that's what we found with El Camino and San Antonio is that subsequent projects do go through faster.

[03:08:40] Councilmember Alison Hicks: There you go. Oh, I'd be fine with the one.0 in the village center. If we want to study, I don't think we should just change it tonight, but I think if that's not going to have a massive impact and it helps incentivize retail development, then I would generally be okay with that.

[03:08:58] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Cancel everything, McAllister.

[03:08:59] Councilmember John McAlister: Staff recommendation.

[03:09:03] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay, so, I... I've gone round around over this one, but, um, I feel like we need to make sure we are building a complete neighborhood, um, with the daily goods and services and other amenities, parks, uh, things that make for a great quality of life for folks who are going to live in East Wisman. And in order to do that, we have to get the infrastructure built to support that. So, I am fine leaving the base FAR as it is for now. As has been said, we can always revisit it if things are not working as we had thought they would be working. And I'm also okay if we want to look at increasing the base FAR to a one.0 in the village center. To me, it doesn't seem like a huge increase. So I'm fine looking at that. So I think I basically, what I just said is also the majority view of the council. Okay. Did folks need a break before we go to the next set or do you want to power on? Okay. Okay. Just asking. So the next section is the section the staff was seeking confirmation of, and the list is on page 21 in the staff report.

[03:10:48] Unknown Speaker: Well, as some people, yeah, these are seeking confirmation versus... You could do it all with a show of hands, and we could wrap it up quickly.

[03:10:55] Unknown Speaker: I mean, I was actually, I was sort of going there. I mean, others might have individual comments, but I generally agree with the EPC on all of these. The only question that I really had was on the parking, and I just wanted to... I like sort of the strategy for prose. I just wanted to make sure, I want to encourage folks there to do underground parking, especially since there's contaminated dirt, and it's hard to do, so I just, I don't want to count that against them, or if anything, count that in their favor. Maybe it's a credit toward whatever massing is above ground. I don't know, but I just don't want to penalize someone for going underground is really what I, so as long as it's the visual massing of it, That's fine with me.

[03:11:37] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member McAllister?

[03:11:39] Councilmember John McAlister: Yeah, I'm going back to the artsy parts of me. And, uh, Community benefits, public facilities, and public art. Whereas if we can make it required in non-city property, I'd like to see is go that direction because the way prices are going there, I think we're going to get the $1000000 construction on in our public areas, but I'd like to see anything that's required or that we can enhance the quality in that area. I would like that part of public art. Here, you know, I was reading where some of the recommendations from our, from the letter, and they wanted to reduce or include... certain areas is towards their public open space and so forth like that. So, I mean, that would be a great place to say, well, consider it, but you have to put in some, you know, water fountains, or, you know, that could be, or decorative seating, or something along those lines that could be sort of an artsy type feel, or a set of just blank trees and a bench. So that's why I would like to see art required in the precise plan to be part of the pro world.

[03:13:01] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Others? Vice mayor, Abi Koga?

[03:13:04] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Uh, yes, so I'm fine with the recommendations for the rest of the items, and, um, yeah, I guess I was intending that with the parking, it would be above ground parking. So, to confirm that, and, um...

[03:13:25] City Staff: Just to clarify, did you mean the, for the 2nd item under vehicle access across light rail and other public street, do you mean the EPC recommendation or the staff recommendations?

[03:13:35] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: So I'm looking at this chart, the APC recommendation is grade separated.

[03:13:45] City Staff: No, the EPC and staff agreed to grades separate street C.

[03:13:49] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Okay.

[03:13:51] City Staff: as a multi-use path. Staff was proposing to allow additional flexibility throughout the precise plan for all public streets, that if all the property owners affected by the street can get together and propose a master plan that shows that... It can work with just bike pad, that we could allow that.

[03:14:13] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: I'm actually fine with that. I would like to see more bike ped connections.

[03:14:18] Unknown Speaker: I am too.

[03:14:19] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: I forgot that. There was a disconnect between staff and EPC on that, so... Um, and then... there was one. one. Oh, character area target. So, is this, you're recommending that you'll refine the targets based on public input? Is that so you'll come back with potential modifications to the character areas?

[03:14:48] City Staff: Yeah, so if, um, you know, based on the public input, which included things like at increasing the, um, the office area in the central, uh, allowing flex or not allowing, but um, describing more flexibility for other character areas, uh, and other character area targets, and including the the unit mix. Um, or even some of the public comment was to, um, you know, strip the office targets from the character areas in, you know, and just just focus on the neighborhood commercial and the office and the open space and other amenities in the character area targets. So those were things that were teed up by the community. If council has any thoughts on those now, that would be helpful. Or if you just want staff to come back with some options or a kind of different framework that provides more flexibility, you can direct us to do that as well.

[03:15:53] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Great. So, yes, I did have, my interest was, I think some flexibility is fine to moving it. I think the interest was to move it into the middle field station area, but, um, if we were to do that, I would actually pull it from the south employment area rather than the north. I thought that the argument for having employee higher density employment area, you know, long 101, frankly, closer to the freeway, so people don't have to drive in further into the neighborhood, made a lot of sense to me. So I would try to keep it, um, keep the North and, um, and then if we, you know, wanted to look at pulling some of it. towards the transit, then I take it from the south. And I think that's it. Thank you.

[03:16:48] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member McAllister.

[03:16:50] Councilmember John McAlister: Who's paying for the great, who would pay for the great separation for light, under light rail?

[03:16:55] City Staff: It would be community benefits, or, um, if the council wanted to prioritize it as part of a, um, uh, Let's see. Trying to think if we can make a nexus argument. We could we'd have to think about if we could make a nexus argument for it. And if that's the case, then we could bake it into an impact fee for the East Wisman area.

[03:17:22] Councilmember John McAlister: We used to have a TOD for anybody that was building close to the light rail. Do we still have that fee now?

[03:17:29] City Staff: That's being turned into the East Wisman community benefit program. So it serves fundamentally the same purpose.

[03:17:36] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay, because I remember those fees were directed towards traffic improvement streets and so forth like that. Which one would be more beneficial? Which more we could bang for the buck?

[03:17:51] City Staff: So the the impact fee would apply to all development, including base development, potentially, you know, potentially anything that would generate trips. So we would be forced to consider it for neighborhood commercial, even though, even if, so from there, a council would have to reduce it, and the city would have to cover any of those costs from reducing it. based on a kind of an equitable sharing of the impact based on trips. So there are risks that the city would have to cover shortfalls associated with an impact fee. Community benefits, you know, our initial analysis is that there is a lot of profitability from office development, and we can ask for a lot of community benefits. the LinkedIn project, provided some pretty significant community benefits, just as an example. that council's already seen. So I, you know, just from here, I would assume you would get more from the community benefits.

[03:19:07] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay, for some reason, it just feels like that's something we can get grants for from various agencies.

[03:19:12] City Staff: That's another source. Sure.

[03:19:14] Councilmember John McAlister: Yeah. And then... I harped on it before. I used the word heart, but activated streets. I'll still have to, I've been... Martin knows that I've been talking about that six years ago, so... already, I was probably talking to you about that when you were back here when I was on the EPC, so, uh, but that's still a concern of mine.

[03:19:42] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay, I'm waiting for... Oh, Council member today.

[03:19:44] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Oh. I was waiting for others to go.

[03:19:47] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Go ahead.

[03:19:48] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Okay. Um, so would... I mean, would you like us to comment on each one of these items, or just kind of highlight things, or what's most helpful to Steph?

[03:19:58] Mayor Lisa Matichak: I would say of the list on page 21 of the staff report. If you agree with all of those or if there's exceptions. Okay. It seems like most people are saying, I agree with everything, and then I want to add...

[03:20:12] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Well, that's why that's why I was asking because I was focusing on the thing that I wanted to add. Or the thing that I've been trying to talk about. Although I will give comment on the, I do like the flex of the staff recommendation for the flexibility for the pet bike connections. I like that. Um, for the character, and I'm fine with the parking, the job's housing linkage, for comments on the character area targets. One of the things that I have talked about, I feel previously was, you know, the ability to look at, um, not only the village center, but other nodes. So I feel like the middle field station could perhaps be a node, and then, um, the Ellis Fairchild, whether there's already the specialties there. And I think I've talked about that. Um, and I see possibility for for good activation and circulation in that area. Um, but I think we can also kind of capitalize on how we can try to make those, um, activation points and not just push people to the village center. Um, you know, if we're talking about, um, you know, council member, McAllister's talking about making it really pedestrian friendly. Um, you know, I would like to see the ability for people, if they live closer to the middle field station, to be able to, you know, go there rather than have to, you know, go to the village center for any type of amenity, right? The idea is per the mayor's point is creating a complete community. And that means being able to hopefully, you know, walk to a lot of things. Um, So I think that's the only thing that I was thinking about adding, um, fine with the community benefits, um, and the active frontage setbacks. Thank you.

[03:22:14] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member Ramirez?

[03:22:15] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Thank you. So similarly, I support the staff recommendations for pretty much all of these, for the character area targets. I'm also interested in sort of greater flexibility and the allocation distribution of of office to the extent that's feasible and desirable for the community benefits. I, you know, want to reiterate my strong support for public facilities to the extent we're able to get some land dedications for them. You know, this area is going to bear the brunt of a great deal of development, and I think it's a good opportunity to secure some facilities. I also agree with council member McAllister on the public art. I wouldn't want that to be a community benefit, or to count against the community benefit, because I don't think that value is analogous to the value of, for instance, dedication of land for public facilities or some of the other amenities that we've envisioned, so exploring a requirement to the extent that's feasible. I'm interested in. Um, and that's, that's all. Thank you.

[03:23:39] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. So, let's see. I also agree with almost all of staff's recommendations on this list. I want to emphasize a couple things. And that is, I agree that we should have flexibility in the character areas. Um, sort of have a, the same uh, idea that the vice mer had, but I would say I would move the density, actually, for offices, toward 237 and Central Expressway, because there's already so much congestion on 101, I actually would like to see maybe more on other streets. Instead of putting it all on 101. So, I actually think, and that keeps it away from, like, the residential area in the existing residential area, because it's a little bit further away. So, um, I think the point is, I'm open to, actually, quite a bit of flexibility when it comes to the character areas. And I would support somehow encouraging or requiring public art, but I agree with council member Ramirez. I don't think I would have that as a community benefit. But I certainly would like to see more in the area. And I do, I think it would be good to take a look at how we might regulate the parking structures, but not change the, how we, whether or not it's included or not included in FAR. I've given up on that after 10 years of saying, why do we do that? Why do we sometimes include parking of AR? So if there's some way to control the massing, I think that would be good. Okay, are there any other comments before I...? No, um, on just, um, these that staff was seeking confirmation on. Because in general, I feel like I heard, um, we're pretty good with all of those staff recommendations, um, with, uh, additional character flexibility. I think staff was already planning on that. Um, taking a look at how we get more public art, and, um, looking at parking massing. And I'd say those were the ones that I heard the most. There were some other comments made, but I didn't hear the majority. speak to those. Vice mayor.

[03:26:16] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Final question and maybe you covered it and I stepped out, but there were some public comments about the undergrounding of utilities on Wisman Road. What is the status of that, do you know? Was that a public, our city project that, um, we would have done or was it part of a development?

[03:26:38] City Staff: Yeah, I'll defer to Renee Gunn from public works on that. Or thank you. Renee.

[03:26:44] Renee Gunn, Public Works: So I'm not familiar with the previous project on what happened there with the medians and the undergrounding. I can tell you if there's a project that comes in that requires any sort of track map, so they're doing a subdivision, condos, dividing, anything. It is standard for public works to ask for those lines to be undergrounded. And it could be part of a community benefit that a developer do a longer section of it.

[03:27:11] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Great. I would be open to that. I remember it would usually, as a requirement of development projects, then I don't know, yeah, what happened there, but if we need to get it done somehow. And I mean, I would be open to making it a part of it, community benefit, just for, I think that's important, so.

[03:27:33] City Staff: So, um, I think the project that one of the speakers was referring to was um, a city project to do the medians, um, rather than a development of the properties that are next to the overhead lines. And, um, I think I wouldn't expect any of those along Wisman, with the exception of maybe one, to be redeveloped in the near future, although there is a development agreement on one of them, the quad. And I don't know if, but that has development agreement already approved plan. We can provide some background and go back and research what was or wasn't said or talked about in the past. Just the other. is, generally, those public undergrounding projects are done with PG&E Rule 20 A money. It takes a number of years to amass them. They can only be used on certain streets, and there's prioritization, so we can check and see whether or not Wisman might be on a future list for that as well.

[03:28:33] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you. Council member... Well, I have the microphone. I just wanted to clarify, um, I might have missed some people, but on the specific issue where staff and EPC had a difference of opinion on flexibility. I heard three explicit agreements with staff, and there were some generic global on staffs, but I just wanted to make sure there's majority on that specific issue.

[03:29:00] Unknown Speaker: Yes. Uh huh.

[03:29:04] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member of America, are you in the Q, or did I just forget to...

[03:29:09] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: No, I wanted to just very briefly thank staff for the report and presentation. It had occurred to me after the last study session that we dumped a bunch of stuff on you. And I thought you did a great...

[03:29:22] Unknown Speaker: We would never do that.

[03:29:23] Councilmember Lucas Ramirez: Right. It just, you know, I don't think I fully appreciated sort of how overwhelming that might have felt. Like, we want to review all of these different aspects of the precise plan, and I thought you did a great job coming back with us for, you know, with specific recommendations and sort of opportunities for targeted review and revision. So thank you very much.

[03:29:45] Mayor Lisa Matichak: So are there any other comments? Uh, council member, McAllister?

[03:29:51] Councilmember John McAlister: Yeah, I don't know if the increasing the height at the middle field station came up from anybody. But I support that as... But it would have to be a mixed use unit. I would really like to see. One of our innovative developers come along with a true mixed use building of retail office and residential along the sides, but we could get a couple of...

[03:30:20] City Staff: I think as we review the flexibility of character area targets and the need to kind of focus it on certain nodes, we can also review heights and come back with whether we are gonna recommend any changes, but we'd have to go back and take a look at what that means.

[03:30:35] Councilmember John McAlister: Right. I was talking with the applicant today, and what does the FAA height limit over in that area be?

[03:30:46] City Staff: So it's a little weird.

[03:30:49] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay, that's awesome.

[03:30:50] City Staff: Yeah, it's roughly flat relative to sea level, but the ground level rises towards the south. So, um, you know, off the top of my head, I think, closest to Moffat Field, which, again, is totally counterintuitive. The maximum heights are on the order of 140, 150 feet. Um, closer to middle field road, farther from Moffat Field, the maximum heights are closer to 110 feet. So the maximum height actually decreases the farther you get from Moffat Field.

[03:31:27] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. Well, if you come along, I would support anything that was innovative and allow the height to go up on that.

[03:31:35] Unknown Speaker: Well, are those the height limits because of the airport?

[03:31:39] City Staff: Of the airport? Yeah. Yeah.

[03:31:42] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Uh, I had, um, a couple more comments. We did receive a letter from the Sierra Club, and I do want to see if there's support for incorporating their comments about bird safe design, and that's on section 3.11, page 94 of the precise plan. And they wanted, they suggested that we delete that there's any exceptions to bird safe design requirements, and I would be supportive of that. And also to include a sentence about facade treatments. And that would be to prohibit the visibility of landscape areas behind glass, like in an atrium. I was wondering if there's support for that council member, McAllister.

[03:32:34] Councilmember John McAlister: Well, I had a question. I mean, it's a great idea. But we keep having this issue coming up over to this this precise plan, this area, this year. Can we just come out with a blanket policy that it incorporates everything, or is it has to be always specific to this site and this site, North Bay, or just... Just say it once and for all. This is the best practices and just incorporate it automatically into everything.

[03:33:02] City Staff: Request the city for bird's safe design?

[03:33:04] Councilmember John McAlister: Yeah.

[03:33:05] City Staff: That's a project. that supports the goal, but it was also, if it could be built into the building code, right? Um, because it was, uh, yeah, sort of added that on.

[03:33:17] Councilmember John McAlister: So can we maybe advance that goal center? I mean.

[03:33:21] City Staff: Yeah, we're gonna review it as part of the building code, so...

[03:33:26] Councilmember John McAlister: But for this precise plan, though.

[03:33:28] City Staff: If it applies to all buildings, then it would apply. automatically there. Okay. But I'm not sure this, I guess, and my recommendation would be, this would be in the building code, as part of the bird safe design, if we're not going to incorporate it into the precise plan, but I don't know if this level of detail.

[03:33:50] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Well, actually, these will be two different things. I'd want to take out the fact that you could have an exception, um, from the precise plan, and then build in the other part into the building code.

[03:34:02] City Staff: I think we'll try to figure out the best way to incorporate that, because the precise plan, and the building code may be synced up, in which case we should be fine. We can just refer the code.

[03:34:14] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay. And then my other, Chris, did you have a comment? That one?

[03:34:20] Councilmember Chris Clark: Yeah, so I just, I pulled up that language to see if it was, if it was a blanket exception, then I would be fine with that, but it specifically says the, the exception would only be allowed in the case of where a qualified biologist indicates that the proposed construction will not pose a collision hazard to birds, like, with all due respect to the Sierra club, I'm not going to argue with a biologist, who, a qualified biologist, who says that I can't predict building technology 5 or 10 years from now. So we've always sort of built in mechanisms by which there can be exceptions for folks who utilize innovative approaches to things. And I just, I think just stripping that out would be a mistake.

[03:35:08] Mayor Lisa Matichak: I have one more thing, too. Um, traffic. And I know I need to spend more time with the EIR, to understand this, but I am very concerned about, even though we're moving to VMT, the level of service and the impact this precise plan has on the level of service. Not only at intersections within the city, but in intersections outside of the city, and, you know, I get that the freeways are out of our control. But it really does concern me that there's such an impact on intersections within our city and surrounding cities. And I am wondering if that means we need to take a look at, um, the intersections that we monitor to adjust the TDM requirements and the trip. um based upon this information. So next time we talk about this. Um, I'll be wanting to talk about that, or else I can meet with you all separately.

[03:36:24] City Staff: Yeah, I mean, our hope is the next time we talk about this will bring back the things you're asking for, but we're gonna be looking for final approval, so if there's direction or clarity, I would hate to sort of have new things coming up in the fall. So if there's something specific you want us to look at or come back with, I think now would be the best time to get that direction.

[03:36:48] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Yeah, I'm not sure what I would direct staff to do, but I am concerned about the impact. And I, you know, if it can be addressed by the monitoring that's done at the intersections and the TDM requirements, the trips in and out of the individual parking lots. Um, I'd be interested in knowing that, if that can help.

[03:37:12] City Staff: Just as a clarification, when you say monitoring of intersections, are you looking at LOS counts? Is that what you... I mean, when you say, let's say, TDM monitoring, we understand. Typically, I think we're moving more towards getting annual reports. So we have a good sense of how each project's doing. where we have them submit those and review those. But when you meant the intersections, you meant reviewing LOS.

[03:37:40] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Yeah, so aren't we looking? Actually, I wasn't sure if it was LOS or if it was just volume, because there's a whole bunch of intersections. I can't remember how many around the area that we were looking at and the volume of traffic at those intersection. was driving the, um, maximum trip counts into the individual projects. Can that, in any way, help address the impact on intersections from an LOS perspective?

[03:38:13] City Staff: So it is, we are looking at it from an LOS perspective. That is the perspective that we're using. There are limits to how low we can go in TDM, and the peak hour trip generation, and we're there. So, you know, at this point, if you are concerned about the LOS effects and impacts and deficiencies, really the best, you know, the land use growth and mix is the, you know, one option for that. Now, one thing you did say is, um, the monitoring locations, and we can definitely look at the, um, the, um, a more flexible approach to assigning, um, intersections that are monitored when, um, so, for example, when a bonus FAR project comes through, we're going to be doing these traffic studies, and we can set this expectation of these are the intersections we really want to look at and make sure that, Traffic is not affecting those intersections either from this project or other regional growth generally. So we can look at options for how to make that monitoring process more flexible to encompass more intersections. over time.

[03:39:37] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Is that going to be able, though, to address, um, the issue? Of...

[03:39:44] City Staff: It would inform council decision making on the bonus FAR projects.

[03:39:48] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay. Okay.

[03:39:51] City Staff: And I would, um, remind counsel, I think you picked the medium density, um, option for the TDR bonus, and the EIR is based on maximum, so, um, I think we might realize some reductions. to the land use decision.

[03:40:08] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay. Okay. Council member McAllister.

[03:40:12] Councilmember John McAlister: Yeah, so, all these developments, the buildings, they're gonna be... Required or encouraged to be platinum buildings?

[03:40:21] City Staff: Yeah, the bonus FAR office projects, yeah.

[03:40:23] Councilmember John McAlister: So the question comes up is the purple pipe. And there's been some comments that maybe in the interim, we can work with Sunnyvale to get it, or I did see a project that we were going to do public works, was going to try to bring Purple Pipe over south of one to 101, but that's going to be built with a bridge, so there could be some delay in that. So.

[03:40:49] City Staff: I'm going to let Ms. Gunn answer that question.

[03:40:52] Ms. Gunn: Thank you. So on the consent calendar tonight, you approved some changes to the scope of work and the feasibility study, the recycle of the water, master plan, feasibility study update. So that's obviously just starting. Um, and that's going to include expanding the purple pipe down to the East Whisman area and gaining us through the mass, Moffat, NASA area. So, we unfortunately think that it's going to be 5 years or so until we can get purple pipe in the recycled water down to East Wisman. But at that point in time, we can be serving all of the East Westman area with your appropriate amount of recycled water. But until that time, they can apply for other lead points that are in those categories. And they can, per building code, they're required to do dual plumbing and to have their irrigation system ready for us when we get there with recycled water. So they could build in anticipation of getting there and still get the points.

[03:42:00] Councilmember John McAlister: My understanding of the lead credits is no. The water has to actually be available for them to get the lead points. Well, then, what... The idea of tying in was Sunnyvale.

[03:42:15] Ms. Gunn: So, we have allowed, we're working on an agreement for LinkedIn to tie in with Sunnyvale, but that is because LinkedIn's purple pipe is on Sunday, on LinkedIn's frontage. It is in mod right there. It's a very long and difficult process, including us going to Lavco. to allow that to happen.

[03:42:38] Unknown Speaker: And Lavco is... I know what it is, but people don't know what it is. You know I don't like acronyms, so...

[03:42:48] Ms. Gunn: And, uh, so, staff is not supportive of expanding that beyond this one project that we've allowed.

[03:42:56] Councilmember John McAlister: Well, it isn't. When you say this one project, are you talking?

[03:42:59] Ms. Gunn: And project. I'm sorry? The LinkedIn project.

[03:43:01] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. But it could be beneficial for East Wisman, though. It could be beneficial.

[03:43:07] Councilmember John McAlister: Okay. And... So is it still possible that you could explore joint costs or something like that, instead of waiting five years?

[03:43:18] Ms. Gunn: It's a possibility to explore it. I think it's a much larger item, and probably as long of a process as it is for us to get there.

[03:43:28] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay. Thank you. Anything else?

[03:43:40] City Staff: So, I did hear a few ideas teed up by council members. Um, you know, it doesn't, uh, specifically increasing height, uh, bird safe design, uh, modifications, and, um, different monitoring, uh, techniques, um, and, uh, as recommendations for things to study in the precise plan. Are those things that generally have council support to continue to study, or should we...

[03:44:19] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Sorry, sorry, maybe I think I'm gonna ask, is there anyone who doesn't want to further discuss or have staff look at those?

[03:44:28] Councilmember Chris Clark: I think all those things are fine. I think referring ultimately to whatever birds say design ordinance we come up with is fine. I would be fine with that. But my assumption is that that might include some ability for someone to propose something that is bird safe, but isn't. enumerated in that, but I'm not going to die on this hill. This is... So I think in general, yeah.

[03:44:55] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay. And the other comments? Did you have a...

[03:45:01] Unknown Speaker: I just want to make sure the experts over there have clarity. There were a lot of items mentioned by individual council members in it, so it's important to make sure that we're spending our time on that that has majority support.

[03:45:14] City Staff: I think your recent confirmation of that. Sounds good.

[03:45:20] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Okay. Thank you so much, and I want to echo council member Ramirez's comments. Last time we absolutely came up with a bunch of topics, and I appreciate you dividing them the way you did. It really helped us have that discussion. So thank you. Okay, so we will close that item. And we are onto item eight, which is council staff committee reports. Are there any... Vice mayor, I'll be coca.

[03:45:52] Vice Mayor Margaret Abe-Koga: Um, this isn't a report, but in light of this being our city attorney's final meeting, um, and I didn't get to say it earlier, I just want to, um, extend my thanks for 10 plus years of, um, being our city attorney, I, I, you know, I take pride that I was part of the hiring, um, council, and, um, we, um, will certainly, will see your shoes will be extremely hard to feel if, at all all, Um, but thank you so much for your dedication, your hard work laid into the hours. Your council, your wise counsel of us, and frankly, your friendship. And, um, we will really miss you, but wish you all the best for a wonderful retirement. And please keep in touch. Thanks.

[03:46:47] City Attorney Jannie Quinn: Thank you very much.

[03:46:49] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member McAllister.

[03:46:51] Councilmember John McAlister: I wasn't gonna go down there, but I figure the greatest gift that I could give you. Was acknowledging that I had a conflict of interest without you telling me about it. And so you accomplished a goal that's hard to do, but same concurrences, but your words have touched me. Um, so... and your actions, too. But I was going to make a comment about our VTA, we had a meeting last Friday. It was, uh, one... So, you hear, there's, uh... About the labor strike is one issue that came up, but, uh, the VTA board has the issue. It's best and last offer. The unions have heard it, and they took them about a couple of days to figure, take a vote. They still haven't come back with us with their final decision. So it's an interesting transition right now. And what else did we do? Okay, EVT, I also get received a grand jury report. If you heard that, it's rather scolding, as the paper says, about the operations of the board and some of their projects that they're doing. So take a look at that if you want to hear about what's happening at VTA. And what else was happening at VTA? That's exciting. Oh, they came out with a, the biggest, one of the biggest hurdles with VTA and BART was that they came was a general operating agreement, and they have a preliminary one, and so they are moving forward with that, and hopefully they'll get that resolved. In a couple of months, which was one of the big hang ups is how who was going to operate it, and that was, once that agreement is finalized, then Bart will take over all the operations, and we'll start that thing running. They're still working out on the details of how much money we pay for them. But it is a progress that's been in the year, in years in making, try to get it, but they finally came to a working agreement on the operating agreement. So hopefully that will move that BART project along.

[03:48:57] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Council member Kamei.

[03:48:58] Councilmember Ellen Kamei: Great, thanks. I also want to just voice my thanks to Jannie. I know that working, my work with you in my council member capacity hasn't been that long, but have known you of the 6 years I was on EPC, and I just find you to be a joy and a delight, and so knowledgeable. And I've worked in various areas of the public sector my entire career till now. And I can just see the amount of care and mentorship that you have, um, with your staff and with all of us actually, um, coaching us into our roles or continually coaching as a council member, McAllister shows us. And it's deeply appreciated, and you've made your mark on Mountain View, and I am just so happy to have had the chance to work with you even for a short time.

[03:49:52] Mayor Lisa Matichak: You guys are gonna make me cry, and I'm really trying to hold it together. So, for the final time, we'll ask the city attorney if there's a closed session report.

[03:50:07] City Attorney Jannie Quinn: Well, we did, in fact, have a closed session today, a rather long one, and direction was provided, but no action was taken, so there's no other closed session report. Thank you. last words.

[03:50:23] Mayor Lisa Matichak: So tonight, um, we are going to adjourn the meeting in honor of our retiring city attorney, Jenny Quinn, and, um, I do want to sincerely thank you for everything that you've done for the council, city staff, and our community, as has been said, um, we so appreciate what you have done, um, and your contributions to making this such a wonderful, wonderful community. And I know we will miss you and we wish you well in your next adventure. And as has been said, keep in touch. because we'd love to find out what happens. And thank you again.

[03:51:05] City Attorney Jannie Quinn: Well, thank you, all, and I am going to miss you, and I am going to think about you on Tuesday nights.

[03:51:12] Unknown Speaker: Tell the truth, counselor. Tell the truth. She's not dead yet. We have another month of service will be getting out of her. Yeah, we do.

[03:51:24] Mayor Lisa Matichak: So, we will adjourn the meeting at... 10, let's see, 23. And our next meeting is... sort of, oh, sorry. Oh my gosh, I completely forgot.

[03:51:35] Unknown Speaker: Yes, I'm sorry, our next meeting will be held on Tuesday, July 23rd, 2019 at 6 p.m. in the Plaza Conference room, 500 Castro Street.

[03:51:44] Mayor Lisa Matichak: Thank you for reminding me.

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