Housing and traffic, the two topics that have dominated Palo Alto's political and policy debates for the past year, will remain the leading priorities in 2017, council members agreed during their annual retreat Saturday.
In addition, the council voted to retain for another year the priorities of "infrastructure" and "healthy city/healthy community" and to add "budget and finance" to the list.
The council's discussion and vote came in the aftermath of a new citizens survey showing rising anxieties citywide about new development, a lack of housing options, worsening gridlock and inadequate public transportation. A year ago, the council acknowledged these issues and challenges when it adopted a broad, wordy and wide-ranging priority called "Built environment: housing, parking and livability with particular emphasis on mobility."
Now, many of these themes remain, albeit in a different format. Housing and traffic have been broken out as separate priorities, a formatting change that drew opposition from council members Karen Holman and Lydia Kou. With their dissent, the council approved its five 2017 priorities by a 7-2 vote.
Newly elected Councilmen Adrian Fine and Greg Tanaka both favored getting away from the "built environment" priority, which Tanaka said is too nebulous and generic. Fine agreed.
"I think it's way too big of a grab bag," Fine said. "We'd do ourselves well by splitting that apart."
The council's policy defines priorities as topics that will receive "particular, unusual and significant attention during the year." Everyone agreed that traffic and housing fit this mold. But unlike most of her colleagues, Holman argued that the two topics should remain together under the "built environment" priority, which she said also touches on things like parking, mobility and building design.
Each of these themes, she said, touches on the influences and the impacts of the built environment.
Some of her colleagues agreed. Councilman Tom DuBois proposed a priority list that was like Mayor Greg Scharff's but kept housing and traffic together under "built environment." His motion failed, with Holman, Kou and Filseth supporting it.
The bare majority favored simplicity. Scharff, who made the motion to adopt the five priorities, said the existing priority "built environment" sounds too "jargony."
"I think we want to communicate clearly with the public, and those do," Scharff said.
On other issues, there was no disagreement. Infrastructure remains on the list, with the council planning to retain its focus on building a new police headquarters, rebuilding two fire stations and constructing a new bike and pedestrian bridge over U.S. Highway 101, a project championed by Vice Mayor Liz Kniss.
"Healthy city/healthy community," a vague and ever-changing priority that was introduced by Holman and Kniss two years ago is about to undergo another iteration. Last year, the council pointed to this priority to justify policy decisions ranging from encouraging bike lanes to expanding the smoking ban. On Saturday, council members pointed to "healthy city" as a priority that could encompass a variety of issues from trees to airplane noise to civil rights, a subject that Cory Wolbach said should be a priority.
"The world has changed around us and I think it's worth -- with one of our priorities -- to say the context has changed, we have to be dynamic, we have to be flexible," Wolbach said. "How will we focus with a little more staff and council time on making sure that human rights and civil rights are really well protected in Palo Alto?
"How can we demonstrate being a leader in that in the same way we've been a leader in other areas?"
Meanwhile, the council's other 2016 priority -- completion of the Comprehensive Plan -- was omitted from this year's list, despite the fact that the plan remains far from complete. The council plans to vote on the plan -- the city's land-use bible -- later this year. Given its planned completion later this year, the council agreed that it didn't need to be a separate priority. Scharff called the plan "pretty much a done deal" and said he doesn't see a problem getting it done this year.
While the council ultimately adopted its priority list, it's not yet clear exactly what types of projects will flow from this list. The retreat ran late, which led the council to defer its discussion about projects that would fall under each priority to a future date.
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Comments
Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on Feb 1, 2017 at 9:05 am
on Feb 1, 2017 at 9:05 am
I think that traffic and infrastructure are the most important things to most Palo Alto residents. Housing is a completely different item as there is no likelihood that more housing will solve the traffic or infrastructure concerns. Housing may be the topic making the most noise, but more housing is not solving traffic and would cause more demands on our already out of date infrastructure.
Water, street conditions, parking and traffic (two different topics imo), public transportation, sewers, cell phone and internet coverage, and even recreation availability, are all part of the infrastructure that would be compromised if it is not put as a higher priority on our CCs list. More residents would mean more demands for these infrastructure items to be improved.
Midtown
on Feb 1, 2017 at 12:47 pm
on Feb 1, 2017 at 12:47 pm
More housing will only make traffic and parking worse. Please don't create more houses. I know there are loud voices from folks that want to live in Palo Alto but can't afford it, to push for cheaper mass housing. Please do not do that, it would just make the situation worse. Similarly adding more offices makes congestion and traffic worse.
College Terrace
on Feb 1, 2017 at 4:57 pm
on Feb 1, 2017 at 4:57 pm
Three new houses went up on my street in the last few years. Each of them has significant code violations and the city was notified by the neighbors and did nothing about it. I'm more concerned about sinking water tables and my foundation cracking than I am about adding more housing in this city. Get it together PAC.
Barron Park
on Feb 1, 2017 at 5:08 pm
on Feb 1, 2017 at 5:08 pm
Traffic Calming, Narrower roads and More traffic lights will be most welcomed.
The more bike riding tax payers we can wedge into this town the better.
We have unlimited growth potential and our Schools and utilities will handle it without question.
Lets expand beyond our borders and build to the Maximum height limit just because we can..
Green Acres
on Feb 1, 2017 at 5:51 pm
on Feb 1, 2017 at 5:51 pm
I agree with Resident. There is no way to provide housing for everyone that wants to live here and even if there were, the prices would still be high. However, there are ways to attack the traffic problem. First and foremost, don't approve any more developments that produce more jobs and more traffic. That's how we got into the current mess in the first place. Some of the ideas for reducing traffic could actually work--shuttle busses from the freeways, carpooling, more trains after electrification and other ideas. Ultimately the traffic and parking problems will be solved by self-driving cars. A pool of such cars would act like a public transit system that would take you door-to-door. In the meantime, let's work on the immediate solutions.
Leland Manor/Garland Drive
on Feb 1, 2017 at 5:59 pm
on Feb 1, 2017 at 5:59 pm
There is very little room for any more housing, BUT the biggest cause of traffic are the OFFICES! No more office space, and start evicting current offices and companies when their leases come up for renewal!
The twenty buildings that that peeping tom company, Palantir, lease could easily be converted to condos without increasing traffic. Just getting rid of Palantir would relieve us of a big chunk of traffic!
Mountain View
on Feb 1, 2017 at 11:26 pm
on Feb 1, 2017 at 11:26 pm
Something tells me that if we repealed Prop 13 you guys would suddenly find a way to fit in some extra housing. You can't just throw up constant roadblocks to new housing supplies while your property continually increases in value from ever-increasing housing demand.
Professorville
on Feb 2, 2017 at 11:17 am
on Feb 2, 2017 at 11:17 am
I completely agree with the starting comment from Resident.
Question: Why do young workers feel entitled to living close to their employment place?
For more than half of my working life, including living in The Netherlands, in New Hampshire and in Massachusetts, I commuted for more than an hour each way to and from work. Winters were the toughest times, as snowstorms and bad weather could easily double the commuting time. Did I mind it..... yes! Did I accept it as part of life..... yes!
Rather than concentrating on housing, I recommend we focus on creating and improving our Bay area transportation system. Building an excellent transportation system balances housing needs and supplies, and provides a much more flexible solution. Moreover, one can use the time on a train or bus for work or relaxation without endangering oneself or others.
Professorville
on Feb 2, 2017 at 11:37 am
on Feb 2, 2017 at 11:37 am
Since Palo Alto wants to be known as a "biking" city, then let's take action to become what we want to be.
Our general street conditions are pretty bad. You lose your teeth fillings while biking on many of our city's streets. It surprises me when a street has been "made over," and three weeks later a City department starts drilling and opening the street again. Where is the planning in that case?
Let's make our streets safe and comfortable for biking!
Secondly, Bryant Street is supposedly THE Bike Boulevard in Palo Alto. This is absolutely not true at this time. In order to make it a convenient and attractive bike street, let's address diminishing the car traffic on the street during heavy commuting times. Moreover, we need to make it a priority road, so that bikers do not face stop signs at the end of each block.
Again, let's make biking safe, healthy, and pleasurable.
Professorville
on Feb 2, 2017 at 11:48 am
on Feb 2, 2017 at 11:48 am
My final comment.
We, as homeowners of Palo Alto, also carry a responsibility to make the city more livable. We need to use our garages and driveways for parking our cars.
I want to ask the City Council to start tipping our streets close to downtown or other areas around concentrated employment, so that we can control the number of cars parked on a street or a street block.
Right now, we are just over inundated by cars, and I cannot just attribute this to workers. We all play a role in making our city livable, and the least we can do as homeowners with garages and driveways is to use them properly.
Mountain View
on Feb 4, 2017 at 7:29 am
on Feb 4, 2017 at 7:29 am
The population of the US has doubled since about 1954 and California's has more than tripled. California has become more urbanized and is now also part of the PAC Rim. China continues to grow and likely will surpass US GDP, though not GDP per capita for some time. China may be dominant some day, especially since so much of the US is determined to undevelop even more and undevelop the whole. Some foreign scholars think the US will split into 2 or 3 countries in a generation or two.
Where on earth does anyone get the idea that buying a house means that the world will freeze around them until they choose to sell and leave the area? When I came to California and Mountain View, Silicon Valley, in 1982 all the towns on the peninsula were plying or trying to play the same game. That is, industrial parks with Freeway access, but only modest house building. The industrial parks seemed to pay most of the taxes. Where the workers lived was someone else's problem. Nimby's even killed BART around the Bay early on. Well, the chickens have come home to roost.
Unfortunately, the people penalized or even dislocated today are the ones who pay for the past. Still, some urbanization process is normal everywhere and has been for centuries. Obviously the process should be governed, including details like earthquake resistance. I know of a building in down town Mountain View with large glass slabs hanging off it for decoration. They look as though they will become deadly in a large quake.
I went to the SPIE Photonics conference this week in SF. It filled Moscone to the walls with, if memory serves, 12 or 1300 companies. One striking feature was how international it was with companies from many parts of the world from Silicon Valleys starting up everywhere. It would be unwise to expect the Valley here can pay infinite expenses and still thrive. And don't underestimate the cost if it doesn't.
Palo Verde
on Feb 4, 2017 at 12:22 pm
on Feb 4, 2017 at 12:22 pm
And since 1954 world population has almost tripled, 2.7B to 7.4B. Yeah, that looks sustainable. I attended Photonics West at Moscone this past week also. North & South halls in the process of closing for seismic retrofit. 4th street Muni subway construction well-underway, expected to open in 2 years. Salesforce Tower structure looks complete, 1.4M sq-ft interior to be finished this year. Several more residential towers opening. Transbay Terminal expects completion by year-end. San Francisco's development should take some pressure off Palo Alto.