Upfront PALO ALTO CITY COUNCIL CIVIC CENTER, 250 HAMILTON AVENUE BROADCAST LIVE ON KZSU, FM 90.1 CABLECAST LIVE ON GOVERNMENT ACCESS CHANNEL 26 *****************************************
THIS IS A SUMMARY OF COUNCIL AGENDA ITEMS. THE AGENDA WITH COMPLETE TITLES INCLUDING LEGAL DOCUMENTATION CAN BE VIEWED AT THE BELOW WEBPAGE: http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/knowzone/agendas/council.asp
(TENTATIVE) AGENDA – SPECIAL MEETING – COUNCIL CHAMBERS May 6, 2013 - 5:30 PM CLOSED SESSION 1. Mitchell Park 2. Potential Litigation SPECIAL ORDERS OF THE DAY 3. Community Presentation from the REACH Program 4. Proclamation Supporting May 2013 as Bike Month Including Bike to Work Day on May 9, 2013 5. Acknowledgement and Recognition of Development Center Improvements CONSENT 6. 2305 El Camino Real CUP – Request for Hearing 7. Appeal of Director’s Architectural Review Approval of the Co-location by AT&T Mobility LLC of One Pole-Mounted Wireless Communication Antenna and Equipment Boxes on the Existing Utility Pole Within the City’s Public Utility Easement on 3706 Carlson Circle 8. Extending SAP Sierra Infosys Contract 9. Proposed Resolution of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Confirming that the City Manager is Authorized to Report Greenhouse Gases Generated in Municipal and Utility Operations to Federal and State Agencies and to Participate in Cap and Trade Programs 10. Request for Authorization to Increase the Existing Blanket Purchase Order with Cooper Power systems, Inc. by $225,000 for Fiscal Year 2013 and to Approve a $225,000 Blanket Purchase order with Cooper Power Systems, Inc. for Fiscal Year 2014 for the Purchase of Padmount Switches 11. Recommendation to purchase eighteen (18) 5 year extended warranties for new Electrocardiogram (EKG) monitors for a not to exceed total of $93,000 12. Approval of a Contract with Advanced Design Consultants, Inc. In The Total Amount of $234,869 for Design of Mechanical, Electrical and Fire Life Safety Upgrades for the Lucie Stern Community Center Complex PF-09000 13. Second Reading Adoption of an Ordinance amending the Zoning Map to add the Ground Floor (GF) Combining District (regulated under PAMC Section 18.30(C)) to properties on the 600 block of Emerson Street zoned CD-C-P (Commercial-Downtown Community with Pedestrian Combining District) and street fronting ground floor spaces zoned CD-S-P (Commercial-Downtown Service with Pedestrian Combining District) (4/8/13 passed 6-3 Klein, Price, Shepherd no). 14. Second Reading Adoption of an Ordinance Amending Palo Alto Municipal Code Section 5.35 to Expand Plastic Bag Ban to Retail and Food Establishments, Require Retailers to Charge Fee for Paper Bag Use and Provision of Phased Implementation (Passed 4/15/2013, 8-0, Berman not participating) ACTION 15. Stanford Development Funds Project Allocation 16. Public Hearing for Business Improvement District levy of proposed assessments reauthorization 17. Public Hearing: Adoption of a Resolution Approving the Proposed Fiscal Year 2014 Community Development Block Grant Funding Allocations and the Draft 2014 Action Plan 18. Adoption of a Resolution Authorizing the Issuance and Sale of Second General Obligation Bonds For Measure N Projects in the Principal Amount of Not to Exceed $20,695,000, Authorizing and Directing the Execution of a Paying Agent Agreement, and Certain Other Related Documents, and Authorizing Official Actions Related Thereto 19. Management and Professional Compensation Plan
STANDING COMMITTEE MEETINGS The Infrastructure Committee will be meeting on Tuesday, May 7, 2013 at 4:00 P.M. to discuss; 1) Update on Public Safety Building. The Finance Committee will be meeting on Tuesday, May 7, 2013 at 6:00 PM to discuss: Budget Kickoff; Departments: Council Appointed Officers & Council, Office of Sustainability, Human Resources, Employee Benefits Funds, General Liability Fund, IT Department (Capital and Operating), Administrative Services, and Printing and Mailing Fund. The Regional Housing Mandate Committee will be meeting on Thursday, May 9, 2013 at 4:00 PM to discuss: 1) Recommendation of Housing Element, and 2) City of Palo Alto Response to Plan Area Final Draft and Draft Environmental Impact Report. The Finance Committee will be meeting on Thursday, May 9, 2013 at 6:00 PM to discuss: 1) Review of Human Services Resource Allocation Funding Recommendations for FY 2014, and 2) Budget Hearings for Community Services, Library, and Planning.
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News Digest Weekly, Palo Alto Online named ‘best in state’ The Palo Alto Weekly was honored April 27 as best large newsweekly in California and, for the fourth year in a row, PaloAltoOnline.com was named best news website in its category in an annual journalism competition. The prestigious General Excellence award and a dozen other honors were bestowed to the Weekly by the California Newspaper Publishers Association (CNPA). A panel of 35 journalists from states outside of California selected the winners, who were chosen from among journalists with daily, weekly and school newspapers. “This is a clear winner,” wrote the judges who selected the Weekly for the General Excellence award. “The depth and range of its coverage is impressive. ... The editors obviously take seriously their public service obligation.” The competition judges reviewed more than 4,000 entries and chose 450 award winners in the Better Newspapers contest. Overall, the Weekly received a company record of six first-place and seven second-place honors, competing against other weekly papers of its circulation size of 25,000 or more. In addition to group awards for its news and design departments, individual honors went to Gennady Sheyner, Chris Kenrick, Veronica Weber, Jay Thorwaldson, Carol Blitzer, Sue Dremann and Rebecca Wallace. In addition, the Weekly received honorable mentions in the categories of editorial comment, investigative reporting, sports section, sports story, special sports section, coverage of the environment, coverage of business/ technology, coverage of education, news photo, artistic photo, feature photo, sports photo and photo essay. N — Jocelyn Dong
Regional housing projections: ‘excessive’ Palo Alto, like other Bay Area municipalities, is now in the final stages of reviewing Plan Bay Area, a state-mandated vision document filled with strategies for reducing carbon emissions by 15 percent by 2040 and providing adequate housing to accommodate job growth. The goal is to make sure each community in the Bay Area provides its “fair share” of housing, thereby reducing the need for sprawl and the number of vehicles on state highways carrying just one person. The plan, which was released in March by the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, seeks to accommodate a projected increase of 2.1 million residents and 1.1 million jobs in the Bay Area in the period between 2010 and 2040. City Council members have consistently disagreed with the regional agencies about the growth projections, arguing that they are overstated and that the housing mandates cannot be reasonably met. On Wednesday night, May 1, the Planning and Transportation Commission took its own crack at Plan Bay Area and voiced similar concerns. The commission voted 5-0, with commissioners Alex Panelli and Greg Tanaka absent, to approve a letter from the city to ABAG challenging the agency’s approach for allocating housing and calling its projections “highly unrealistic and excessive.” Palo Alto, under the plan, would have to build 2,860 housing units over the next decade, growth that council members have long argued cannot be accommodated in a city with astronomical real estate prices and a shortage of undeveloped land. The city’s letter argues that expecting Palo Alto to increase its housing supply so significantly is “entirely unrealistic, and using such an assumption as the basis for growth scenarios and transportation investments will likely result in failure of the planning effort.” “What Plan Bay Area seems to be designed to do is make it impossible to drive in communities like Palo Alto, so people will be forced to essentially take transit that doesn’t exist,” Commissioner Arthur Keller said. “We’re forced to shoehorn into the techniques of the region instead of getting credit of what we’re actually accomplishing,” Keller said, adding that the plan’s process “doesn’t necessarily work for us.” N — Gennady Sheyner
Traffic delays expected on Foothill, Alma Those heading north on Foothill Expressway this weekend will be detoured at Hillview Avenue to make way for heavy equipment work on a gas line replacement in the area between Hillview and Page Mill Road. Both northbound lanes and the bike lane on Foothill will be closed starting at 9 p.m. on Friday, May 3, and ending at 5 a.m. on Monday, May 6, while workers using heavy excavation equipment install a transmission pipeline segment under Matadero Creek. Northbound traffic will be rerouted through Hillview and Deer Creek Road during the construction, but drivers should expect increased traffic in all directions in the area. Miranda Avenue, which runs parallel to Foothill in that segment, will remain open, but there will be extra traffic controls and flagmen directing cars in and out of the road’s entry points. In mid-May, workers will begin street-valve replacement work on Alma Street, slowing northbound traffic and causing some sidewalks and driveways to be dug up in the area between Colorado Avenue and Oregon Expressway. N — Eric Van Susteren
Matadero
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Verde Elementary School; north on Louis Road to Ohlone Elementary School and continuing to Oregon Avenue to the Oregon/101 overpass; or east on Colorado Avenue to Greer Park and the potential Matadero Canal/101 Underpass, and further south to the potential Stering Canal Trail, Adobe Creek Underpass and future Adobe Creek/101 Overpass. There is little traffic on these streets; they are already bike friendly; and the path would run in front of rather than behind homes, they noted. The alternative does not involve mid-block crossings but would require safe crossing at Middlefield Road, they said. A second alternative would travel from the California Avenue Underpass to North California Avenue along Louis Road to Oregon Avenue to the Oregon/101 Overpass. But city Chief Transportation Official Jaime Rodriguez said alternatives were considered during public meetings for the 2012 Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation. Midtown resident Sheri Furman, who lives next to the creek on Greer Road said the discussions didn’t include Midtown residents. Although the city held public meetings to discuss the bike master plan, none were held in Midtown where the trail would affect neighbors. Instead, they were (continued on next page)
Math
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The tutoring approach used in the study was also a factor in students’ improved performance, the scientists found. Tutoring included repeating problems in a sped-up fashion. Once kids are able to pull up answers to basic arithmetic problems automatically from memory, their brains can tackle more complex problems. “Memory resources provided by the hippocampal system create a scaffold for learning math in the developing brain. Our findings suggest that, while conceptual knowledge about numbers is necessary for math learning, repeated, sped practice and testing of simple number combinations is also needed to encode facts and encourage children’s reliance on retrieval — the most efficient strategy for answering simple arithmetic problems,” Menon said. The researchers will next compare brain structure and wiring in children with and without math learning disabilities. They want to analyze how brain wiring changes in response to tutoring and examine whether lowerperforming children’s brains can be exercised to help them learn math. Other Stanford co-authors included social science research assistants Anna Swigart and Caitlin Tenison; and postdoctoral scholars Dietsje Jolles and Miriam Rosenberg-Lee. A researcher at Vanderbilt University also collaborated on the work. The research was funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. N Staff Writer Sue Dremann can be emailed at sdremann@paweekly.com.