Good evening, everybody, and welcome to the October 8th meeting of the Parks and Recreation Commission and Urban Forestry Board.

We have an exciting meeting tonight.

So thank you all to members of the public, both here and present and online for joining us, as well as the staff and consultants.

Alison, if you could please take a roll call.

So we have Commissioner Bryant, yes, Commissioner Felios, Commissioner Summer, your Vice Chair Mitchell, and Chair Davis.

I'm here.

So with that, we'll move to the next agenda item, the approval of minutes from our September 10th meeting.

We had one business item on that agenda, which was a heritage appeal.

Is there uh any public comment on the September 10th minutes?

So I see a hand raised.

I'm not sure if it's for that.

Um it's for Shawnee.

Uh Shawnee, did you want to speak to the minutes of the September 10th meeting, or are you getting ready for the biodiversity and urban forest plan on the screen?

So I'll get back to you in just a second then.

Thanks.

Okay.

Uh hearing no other public comment.

Uh is there a motion or is there discussion among the commission on the minutes?

Move to approve them.

Second.

We have a motion.

Commissioner Fuelio, second from Commissioner Bryant.

We have a vote call.

So Commissioner Bryant, Commissioner Helios, Commissioner Summer, Vice Chair Mitchler.

I'm gonna abstain since I had to refuse myself on the one item.

Okay, and Chair Davis.

Yes.

Thank you.

All right.

Uh now we'll turn to the oral communications from the public.

So this portion of the meeting is reserved for persons wishing to address the commission on any item that is not on the agenda, so any so not the biodiversity plan.

Uh so speakers are limited to three minutes on this, and state law prohibits the commission from acting on non-agenda items.

Uh please raise your hand if you wish to address the commission on anything that's not on the agenda.

We have two online.

All right.

So we have Shawnee.

Uh so Shawnee, are you uh making general uh comment?

Yeah, same right anyway.

I might as well.

Um, so I wanted to comment again about borrowing elves because last year in 2024, prior to the um biologist being on leave and replaced by eventually consultants.

There were 10 pairs of borrowing outs that nested at uh shoreline this year, if I understand correctly, there may have been three or not.

Um, and it's not clear if the nests have been successful, partially it's because to know if an Est is successful.

You have to monitor at night, and that was not I think I was not done.

I don't know what you guys can do, but pushing forward either um in agreement with the Santa Clara Valley Habitat Plan or in other way, helping the borrowing owls come back would be really really important.

And it's kind of sad because the boring oil preservation plan had the target of 10 pairs, and the first time it was achieved.

Um was just in 2024, and then well back to three, maybe.

So hope you can do something.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Anybody else?

Yes, we have two more.

We have Bruce England.

Hi, hello commissioners.

Yeah, Bruce England here, Wism Station Drive, the member of Green Spaces Mountain View.

Um, I just I want to get this in your minds early about the um Parks Recreation Strategic Plan.

We, you know, you haven't seen a draft yet, so that's still coming up.

I've mentioned many times about having more access to public-facing restrooms, but I want to mention that the policy that the city has right now closes the restrooms at uh sunset, which is highly arbitrary and weird.

And I use Pyramid Park myself at night.

That's just one park.

Um, pretty late, like eight, nine o'clock at night because they have some great exercise equipment there that I take advantage of.

It's a great park.

Um, and I'm not alone.

There are a lot of people there at night after the sun goes down uh with their kids and they're walking their dogs and they're hanging out.

Some people are using the exercise equipment, and I became aware this was a problem when some um teen girls were using the basketball court and they ran over to use the restroom and found that it was locked.

I really strongly hope that when the parks recreation strategic plan uh is adopted that it includes language that resets that uh closure and and really sets it based on usage, not because the sun has gone down.

So I'm just giving you some advanced notice that I intend to bring that up as much as possible when we get to the point of discussing that plan.

Thanks.

Thanks, Mr.

England.

And we have one more hand.

We do we have Dita.

Ida, please address the commission.

Good evening, commissioners.

I must admit I had difficulty getting on, and I just came on.

So I'm not sure whether we are on general open comment at this point or whether we are on the agenda item of biodiversity.

Let me clarify that first.

Right now, this is general open public comment on uh items that are not on the agenda.

So if you're speaking about biodiversity, if you could just wait a second.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, thank you, Kia.

Nobody else.

And nobody else.

All right.

Thank you for those comments.

Uh we'll now move on to the uh main force of the evening, the biodiversity and urban forest plan draft review.

Uh, just uh let you know how this will transpire.

We'll we'll get a uh staff presentation from Brother Sylvia.

Um, the commissioners will then have an opportunity to ask questions, then we'll open it up for public comments.

Um I would request that this time if you are a member of the public and you anticipate uh wanting to make comments.

Could you just raise your hand now so we can get a sense of how many uh people to expect and Alison, if you could let me know that towel in a few minutes, three.

Okay, thank you.

Um the commissioners will uh comment and discuss.

We're gonna uh specifically address the questions that were articulated in the staff memo as uh part of the agenda.

There's three principal questions.

I'm gonna take those one question at a time, and I'm gonna mix up the order of uh commissioner responses just so nobody puts all that their stuff out there first and then has to listen to other people.

Uh and after we do that, I'm gonna take uh any other thoughts or questions uh comments from commissioners that that uh weren't made specifically regarding those questions.

There is no motion for this item, so it'll be purely input.

And with that, I will turn it over to Brenda Silvia for the staff presentation.

All right, thank you.

Good evening, commissioners.

My name is Brenda Silvia, Assistant Community Services Director and Project Lead for the Biodiversity and Urban Forest Plan.

I'm joined tonight by Lindsay Wong, senior management analyst and my project partner.

Also with us this evening are members of our consultant team from SFEI, San Francisco Estuary Institute, who are co-presenting this item.

I'm pleased to introduce Selena Peng and Lauren Stoneburner, who have led the development of the plan in partnership with city staff.

Tonight we will present the draft biodiversity and urban forest plan, answer your questions, and receive your feedback.

We were specifically requesting input from the commission on several discussion questions outlined in the staff report.

Before we begin, I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge the city project team whose time, knowledge, and expertise has been invaluable throughout this entire process.

Most of them are not here, but I'm still gonna call them out.

We have John Marchant, our community services director, Russell Hanson, Urban Forest Manager, Tim Youngberg, our parks and Open Space Manager, Jeffrey Sumera, Senior Planner, Danielle Lee, Chief Sustainability and Resiliency Officer, Fariel Saidna, Saidnia, Senior Project Manager, Raymond Wong, Senior Civil Engineer, and many more city staff who helped support the development of this planet.

All right, we'll give you a little background.

In June 2021, City Council adopted the strategic roadmap, which included sustainability and climate resilience as a key priority.

Two related projects were identified to update the 2015 Community Tree Master Plan and define biodiversity requirements for landscaping.

Staff began working on both projects, partnering with Davey Resource Group for the CTMP Update and SFEI for the biodiversity strategy.

Based on PRC and community feedback, the scope of the project's expanded to integrate the CTMP into a broader biodiversity and urban forest plan developed by SFEI with support from Davey Resource Group.

The plan is the first of its kind, the Bay Area providing a united, a unified science-based framework for enhancing biodiversity and managing Mountain Views Urban Forest.

Key PRC milestones in this project have included in 2022, the PRC review the consultants' scope of work.

In 2023, PRC received project updates and outreach information and offer guidance to strengthen the public engagement process.

In 2024, PRC reviewed research findings, outreach results, and the draft vision, objectives and goals.

At this point, I will hand things over to our SFI partners, Selena Pang and Lauren Stoneburner, who will share an overview of the draft, plan and the process that brought us here.

Thank you, Brenda.

I want to give a very special thanks to the commissioners and the members of the public who are here tonight to provide comments and questions on the plan and also who some of whom have taken their time before this meeting to prepare and really digest the plan and know it was long.

There's a lot in there.

So thank you guys so much for your time.

Again, my name is Lauren Stoneburner.

I'm an environmental scientist at the San Francisco Esteria Institute or SFEI, and I'm joined by Selena Pang.

I'll be giving the main presentation, but we'll tag team on answering questions.

And we both look forward to hearing your comments.

So here on the slide is an agenda of what we'll be covering.

Again, because the plan was very long, we'll be freezing through a lot of the details, but we're happy to dig into those in our discussion.

So we'll just give a very brief overview of the plan review process and timeline, and then we'll spend the bulk of our time talking through the plan, its content.

That includes what went into making the plan itself, the inputs were science-based assessments, community input, and city perspectives.

And then we'll spend time talking about the plan components from vision to action, the components of the plan related to implementation and evaluation, and then we'll sort of breeze through the guides that were supplemental to the plan, providing more detailed resources.

And then we'll launch into discussion.

So we're still towards the beginning of the draft review process, but this wasn't the beginning for us.

We had a lot of input from city staff, as Brenda mentioned along the way and also in reviewing the first draft of the plan.

And we also had a team of technical advisors review the plan as well from a technical perspective.

And this is the first draft that's coming out to the public, and this parts and rec commission meeting is the first forum where we'll be able to discuss it in person.

And next week, we're also going to be going to the Environmental Planning Commission to present the same draft.

From last week until that EPC meeting, we're also receiving comments from the public at these hearings and online on the website, biodiversitymb.com.

We'll take the draft, review it, revise it, and return to the PRC again in January 2026.

At that point, pending PRC's approval and recommendation to City Council, we would make any remaining revisions to the plan and bring it to City Council first in April, hear their comments, make further revisions, and hopefully have it finalized and ready for adoption in June 2026.

So now we get to talk about the plan itself.

So as a reminder, I think Brenda gave a really great introduction to what the plan is and how we got here.

But just to kind of sum it up, the plan is a vision and a set of goals and objectives based on the science and community priorities to improve biodiversity and the urban forest for increased access to, enjoyment of, and benefits from nature.

And like Brenda mentioned, this document also serves as an update to the 2015 Community Tree Master Plan.

And what's special about it is it integrates the urban forest plan into the biodiversity plan, and joining these two together better informs how to manage Mountain View's landscape as a single cohesive urban ecosystem rather than considering these two as separate parts.

And since biodiversity and the urban forest can be interpreted in different ways as terms, we wanted to share what we mean by biodiversity in the urban forest.

I'll read the definitions.

We consider biodiversity to be the diversity of all living things in an ecosystem that includes mammals, pollinators, plants, birds, fungus, microinvertebrates, etc., and then the urban forest is the entire population of trees in an urban area, including both in the built-up developed areas as well as in the vegetated, naturalized parts open space areas.

And we're going to spend a lot of time talking about the three main pillars that went into developing this plan.

They were science-based assessments, the community engagement input, and city staff perspectives.

Then we conducted a science-based assessment in a variety of different ways on what's needed to support biodiversity and the urban forest.

And then finally, we worked closely with city staff on what's feasible to achieve and alignment with city priorities.

And these inputs were synthesized together to develop the plan, which charts the path from vision at the bottom to action at the top.

And we're going to walk through each of these components individually.

In short, the vision at the bottom forms the foundational underpinning, underpinning the goals and objectives.

And the metrics and targets are what enable the city to evaluate progress towards its objectives, and the actions are those concrete steps that the city can implement to make progress towards the vision in a real way.

From the science-based assessment point of view, um, we first started by understanding the historical landscape, what Mountain View, what the Mount View look landscape and ecology looked like before it was a city before Euro-American settlement in the mid-18 to 1900s.

So this map that you're seeing here is a map that SFEI produced on the historical landscape, the historical habitat types.

And that was really a basis for us to understand what is sort of native, and that's a that's a big topic in this plan.

Then we assessed how the landscape has changed over time from the historical landscape to present day.

And we also broadly evaluated a general sense of what projected future climate conditions would be and the concerns and challenges to be aware of when developing a biodiversity and urban forest plan.

We also conducted a thorough biodiversity assessment, and this was applying SFEI's urban biodiversity framework, which was published in the 2019 Making Major City report.

This diagram shows in a conceptual way the seven landscape elements within a city that you can parse apart to identify the different pieces that support biodiversity in a city that includes elements like habitat patches, connections between the patches, the quality of vegetation in the urban developed environment.

And so we went through in our in the plan, you can see we stepped through each of those elements to identify the needs and opportunities to improve the ecological landscape conditions.

And then we also conducted an urban forest assessment, and that included a couple different components.

There was an assessment of the existing tree canopy cover, and we also showed how that has changed over about the past 10 years.

Specifically because of data that are available through the city on public tree specifically.

We looked at general but sweeping threats to the urban forest that are important to manage and factor into operations, and then we assessed or estimated the benefits that Mountain View sees from its public trees and also its um its urban forest generally.

On the community side, we had a few goals going into our community engagement.

We first sought to build public awareness of this plan broadly and to achieve a diverse range of participation, including with those who otherwise might not have shown up to events explicitly to provide input on a biodiversity and urban forest plan.

And from all of those different perspectives, we sought to generate meaningful input and have that input help us craft the vision statement and to prioritize goals and weigh trade-offs.

We ended up with over 1,300 community interactions, over six workshops, three pop-up events, an online community survey, and a project webpage where people could post comments and questions.

And finally, the city pillar.

We worked closely with the city to develop this plan.

And the plan is actually housed and led by the community services department.

So we were very much a team developing everything from the vision to the actions and metrics.

We also had meetings, workshops, and consulted with the city project team who Brenda named.

It involved representatives across different departments, community services department, the city manager's office, community development department, and public works department.

And then we also had those touch points with advisory bodies to get feedback and provide updates along the way, such as with the PRC.

And then we also worked in close collaboration with the urban forest manager on the urban forest components.

And then in addition to working specifically with city staff, we also did our own review of city and regional policies and plans to align and dovetail with other plans and initiatives.

So we synthesized all of this input from the science, the community, and the city to develop the plan itself, of which there are five components, and we're going to walk through each of these step by step from vision to action.

So the vision statement is a single sentence that represents the city's North Star or what the community envisions Mountain View's landscape could look like in the future by living by the community's shared values and ideals.

And so I'll read the statement and then I'll kind of parse it apart a little bit.

Mountain View envisions a healthy, connected and resilient urban ecosystem with abundant access to nature and its benefits for people and native species alike.

The healthy, connected, and resilient were values that we heard most often in our community engagement.

And the abundant access to both nature and its benefits represents this strong community value for nature for the sake of recreational enjoyment, time outside, as well as value of the services that nature provides, like clean air and water, the cooling properties, and human health.

And people in Mountain View also very much value both the value of nature for people and nature for nature's sake, being able to balance the emphasis between strategies for people and for nature.

And the goals are what translate the vision into long-term, more tangible aspirations, and it acts like a compass that would eventually lead you to that North Star.

So, in order, the first one is connect people and nature.

And we considered that to be connections in all directions.

We were thinking about connecting people to nature and to place, connecting nature to nature, connecting patches of habitat and connectivity across the landscape.

And we also thought about connecting people to each other and to their community.

Foster places of refuge was the second goal, and we thought about that in terms of balancing improving natural resources both for people and for nature and native species.

Build resilience was related to a couple different dimensions: the urban forest resilience, the resilience of natural resources and habitats, and resilience in the changing climate.

And finally, it's the community and the city both feel that it's important to activate, collaborate, and bring in other participants into making Mountain View greener, more resilient, healthier.

And so that involves bringing in the community practitioners and projects, working across city departments and working across other agencies and other governments.

They are what translate the high-level vision and goals into something that's specific, measurable, and practical commitments that guide the city's implementation.

And it applies science-based guidance and the community priorities.

So I'll just provide an example, but to work towards goal one of connecting people and nature, the objectives include supporting a network of connected green space and fostering a cultural shift that spotlights for biodiversity to instill a sense of place.

So we're not going to go through all 11 objectives in this presentation, but we can flip back to this slide or any others during our discussion if we want to have the language up there.

And so building on the vision, the goals, the objectives, we now get to the two key components that drive the day-to-day execution of the plan.

And that's the actions on the left.

Those are the concrete steps that the city can make to implement and make strides towards the vision and objectives.

And then the metrics and targets on the right are the evaluation tools.

So the metrics are the methods of measuring progress, and the targets are the milestones that mark progress along the way.

And the city project team played a really big role in helping to develop these components and identify the steps, those actions and metrics that are feasible to track and to implement and to help tie this plan and the commitments in this plan to other city processes and operations where possible.

So first we'll focus on the actions, and there are even more of them, so we won't go through each one individually.

But just to give a flavor, I'll just kind of highlight some of the ways in which we try to kind of make these actions specific and implementable.

So these actions try to cross-reference with other active city initiatives, like, for example, the active transportation initiatives and plan in action one, and it uh ties to specific city processes, policies, and operations like interagency land management agreements in action three.

It references the guides that we have provided in supplement to this plan that provide even more detailed guidance and uh even more detailed guidance.

For example, we provide in the guide A urban landscaping mapped zones on where to do what on the landscape, and it gets very specific.

And we also have related to specific initiatives, related to ordinances and standards.

Um, related to objective, let's see, 3A, growing and protecting and caring for a resilient urban forest.

We walk through many dimensions of urban forest resilience, including monitoring, management, planting, and protection.

And then related to goal four activate and collaborate.

We go through many different um approaches through partnerships with local organizations, tapping into the potential for greater community science, building more robust staff training, and making sure that there are regular updates to the plan.

And again, there are many of them.

So I'll just kind of go through this in broad strokes, but there are 14 recommended metrics, and the recommended metrics are those that the city can readily implement with the information that's already being collected by the city currently.

And they each of these metrics talk touch on or each of the objectives are touched on by at least one of these recommended metrics.

So there's coverage of all of the objectives.

There are then 10 additional supplemental metrics that would require additional data collection beyond what the city currently tracks, and these also span all of the objectives.

Very specific and able to be applied in practice.

We format that intentionally formatted them as independent, self-contained resources with the intention that the city or the community could pull out one of those guides, print it and use it separately from the plan itself as sort of a handbook in their work.

And we worked with the city on how to present all of this rich information, and we collectively decided that having these plans consolidated in their own standalone sections would be the most usable way that the city could apply these resources and their day-to-day operations and decision making.

So the guides included a land urban landscaping guide that translates the vision goals and objectives and actions in the plan into practical landscaping design guidance.

And also an updated city tree list for both street trees and parks and open space trees.

An urban forest policies and practices guide that supports urban forestry operations guidelines and pest management strategy, and a monitoring and targets guide that helps developing a monitoring protocol to track metrics and select targets.

So just to wrap up, we very much appreciate how much expertise and enthusiasm is in this room to help review this plan and make this plan work for making Mountain View more biodiverse, healthy and resilient.

And so we came up with some discussion topics that can help leverage all the amazing ideas that you all are going to bring and help make the plan even stronger.

So we gave you all some questions, but just to really boil down to what they are about.

And so it would be very helpful to get guidance on or have your thoughts on aligning with the community and the city's needs and priorities, the feasibility of the actions, metrics, targets, and the impact of those, and making sure that we're doing what we can to lower the barriers to implementing the plan itself when it comes time.

And then just to um bring us back to the timeline.

Again, we're kind of at the beginning of this public review process, and um we have many more rounds of review ahead still.

It's planned for adoption in June 2026, and you can always follow along the timeline where we're at at biodiversity mv.com.

And thank you again for your careful review of the plan.

We're very excited for the opportunity to hear your ideas.

So I'll hand it back to Brenda.

Okay, like Lauren said, thank you, commissioners, for your time and partnership on this project.

Um Mountain View is taking a very bold step in setting the pace in the Bay Area with this first of a kind plan to protect our urban forests and biodiversity.

We're creating a model that other agencies are going to be looking at as an example of environmental leadership and sustainability.

It's pretty exciting.

Uh, the plan shows what's possible when innovation collaboration and care for our natural environment come together.

Thank you.

Ready for questions and comments.

Thanks so much for the uh presentation.

Your hard work on this and uh developing this one.

So we are next going to go to uh commissioner questions, and then uh open it up for public comments, and then we'll come back for uh the commissioner comments.

So with that, the commissioners want to begin with questions.

Commissioner Benchner.

Sure.

Um, I have a number of questions.

Um first one just came to mind is as you talked about the the timeline.

Um, when this comes back to us in January 26, for me, I don't know about others.

It would be really helpful if if we could get a red-lined version that shows the changes from now to then, because otherwise it's it's for me anyway, difficult to read through 182 pages and try to figure out what's what's different, and so that would be great.

Um, all right, so questions.

Um the first one um sort of related to the 22.7 percent canopy coverage in 2030.

Um, you know, it's been 10 years since the 2015 community tree master plan.

You know, we're we're tracking to get to 22.7.

Um, but I was just wondering, was there any discussion to now being more aggressive and and shooting for a shooting for a higher number in 2030 than the 22.7 that was put out 10 years ago.

Sure.

Yeah, so um based on where the city is currently at in its tree canopy cover, we felt that the 22.7, I think it was, um, target was still appropriate.

It does based on where the city is at with tree canopy cover, it would actually require a bit of an acceleration in tree planting still.

And so given the progress that the city has made to date and where it still has to go, it felt like it was aggressive enough that it wouldn't make sense to change the milestone yet.

Um next question.

So since and I'll talk about this more later on, I guess, but since 90% of the city canopy is on private land, you know.

What can be done to shine light on that and perhaps put in some private tree metrics to further encourage private landowners?

You know, I think this somewhat relates to actions 18 and 19 of activating the community through partnerships and incentivizing data collection in action, but I'm just wondering if there were any ideas for how to get the private to participate.

Property owners.

Yeah, flip to 18 and 19, if you mind.

I mean, I was just trying to find actions that that somewhat related to that, but those aren't necessarily you don't have to answer in that framework.

I mean, I'm just yeah, yeah.

Wondering since the private owners are the large majority of trees.

Yeah, I'll start by saying that um this plan is very focused on what is in the city's jurisdiction, and so um this plan isn't able to tell landowners what to do.

It can it can inform what the city does to work with landowners, and we definitely did explore the priority actions in terms of how to work with the public, um, and I think that for example, Mountain View's collaboration with Canopy was seen as a success in an area for further development and growth, and also using that as a model in other ways.

So that was I think Mountain View was interested in um digging in more on the things that have been successful and pushing those.

Um is there anything you would want to add?

I was just gonna talk about canopy and some of the efforts we've been making in a couple years ago, we did a um a street tree planting campaign with canopy.

We've done that actually two years in a row.

Those are some of the efforts that we can have them be boots on the ground, talking to neighbors, encouraging a street tree to plant, um, you know, explaining the benefits, but creating some of those personal relationships, and we utilize canopy and like leveraged their expertise in that and again their ability to be boots on the ground, and he.

Yeah, I mean, excuse me, above and beyond that, lots of ideas, lots of thoughts of how we can kind of implement um, I'll say private property inventory or otherwise, where that comes in for me is as a part of these redevelopment projects or otherwise, where there are requirements to replant trees.

There really isn't any reason we could not go out and inventory those to some extent.

Um, it's the same thing with private tree removals, heritage trees or otherwise.

Um, the efforts she's talking or that they're talking about in terms of canopy, that's one of the things that I'm gonna be requiring of them going forward is any tree that's planted, even on private property that they're doing, I want to know where those locations are.

We're also gonna do more in terms of kind of follow-ups, three months, six months, things along those.

We can track those inventories.

There's also all kinds of citizen science inventory processes, etc.

But it really is about kind of what we're focused on right now is getting a new CMMS or an asset management system.

Once we get that, it's about trying to figure it out to where we can open that to the public to where they can submit information that then we have to verify to then add to the inventory.

So there's lots of kind of methods, there's lots of other alternatives that we can do that on top of just the LIDAR.

That's the one thing that's kind of guided our private to this point is what's the canopy cover on that private property?

But we don't know any of the details about the individual trees.

So that's that kind of loophole that I'm thinking of next.

We want to try and close is just kind of naturally start to collect that data.

So the next question maybe somewhat ties to that.

So this relates to action number 11.

And it's specific, you know, specifically, how would the city keep track and have an accurate inventory of 27,000 trees and keep it updated?

I'm just trying to get my mind around it.

You know, even if you did it over a five year cycle, I took 27,000 trees, it would require visiting and cataloging 20 trees every day for for five years.

So how do we actually go about collecting the data?

And what will the database actually include for each tree?

Or am I imagining a much more detailed thing than we're actually planning on having?

Um, so in terms of the inventory, um, absolutely one of the I'll say benefits of of having West Coast Arborist as our contractor currently is they automatically update our inventory every time they show up at a tree and they do any kind of service, they're updating certain key fields.

I don't remember the exact quantity, but there's about 12 of them that I've given them that are the critical pieces.

They're absolutely allowed to collect anything else they want to, but there's at least 12 of them that I want, whether it's you know, height, crown spread, condition, species, diameters, all kinds of different things, but there's about a dozen of them, sidewalk damage, etc.

Um, so that's one component, and that's one of the steps we've taken over the last year or two that I've been here is we're starting to re-implement that grid pruning or that neighborhood pruning project to where we're getting to a lot more trees.

Um, last year we got to just about 3,000 trees.

This year we're hoping to get to about four or five thousand trees.

If we can do 5,000 a year, that gets us really close to where we need to.

Um, above and beyond that, our park trees, some of the other stuff, you know, taking advantage of some of our mitigation money to get a new locations for vacancies or otherwise, while they're also doing the inventories within our parks or otherwise, um, using some of that Google landings money that we've heard about, specifically dedicated to inventory update, so that we can do a better job of that.

So, I mean, again, just following up a little bit.

So, you know, again, to do 5,000 trees, I mean, a lot of them don't require any kind of maintenance or anything.

I mean, are you sort of driving by and saying, okay, that tree at 4300 bagan?

We're gonna log some stuff on it, even though it doesn't require any.

I mean, is that that that is the gist of it?

Yes, absolutely.

The kind of that using West Coast Arborist, that's kind of the model that they're built upon, is that they touch every single tree as they move down the street.

It may not require much, it may only need one or two cuts to clear it from the building or to raise it, but absolutely as they move down the block, they're going to inventory every tree and at least touch it to some regard.

Okay, and that's an outside consultant.

Um, that's our contractor or two tree contractor.

Okay.

And okay, I mean, they must be on board full time or something like that.

We are getting closer to that, yes.

Um, next question.

So so we received a what I thought was a thoughtful letter about allergy concerns surrounding the proposed planning list.

You know, I recognize that allergy concerns didn't pull high in the surveys.

Um, but only a small percentage of unique residents were probably actually counted in the surveys.

And I also think if it's if there's a health and safety concern, um, I believe we should be sensitive to that concern, um, even if it only pertains to a small number of residents.

So, given that you have thoughts on how to address some of the airborne allergens, allergens concerns that have been brought up.

Sure.

So, in terms of that, it really is a challenge because they kind of the pollen and the flowers and all of that kind of go part in parcel with a lot of our natives or otherwise.

And so it's kind of that balance to where we have to constantly be identifying perhaps even new, I'll say semi-native plants or otherwise that may not be as allergenic, that might be just a little bit better, but it really is kind of part and parcel that there aren't a lot of trees that are I'll say are hyperallergenic or hypoallergenic, excuse me.

I mean, could there be any kind of like a footnote or notation on the plant list that this type of tree might be a poor choice if you were a private person and you have allergy?

Absolutely.

That was one of the things that we kind of discussed on this is that that's part of the reason that our list says that it's an interim or a temporary while we continue to expand upon it.

What we really want to do is have a searchable database.

I don't know how familiar you guys are with Cal Poly EU.

Um they've got their select tree database that you can go through.

Literally, you plug in different criteria and it pulls up a tree for you.

They have that just a simple fix on our part.

As soon as we add every tree that we're interested in planting, we can create a mountain view tree list that anybody can then go in, look at that list, sort it by those same criteria or otherwise so that they can make better choices.

Yeah, I mean, and I would just gonna be a comment later on, but I think having that searchable public tree-ish list is awesome, and the public should definitely have access.

Um, so my last question for now is just, and this would be for city staff, and it's just a question is the urban landscaping guide a prescriptive enough to guide your planting and maintenance efforts.

Yes, short answer.

It's always a it's again it's a balancing act.

You get too prescriptive, you end up in a situation where you're not able to adapt to any other changes that are occurring, and so that's why I say yes, it's prescriptive enough, but it could be more prescriptive.

It's just it's we're trying to find that balance, but it's not too vague.

No, I don't believe so, no.

That's it for pronounced.

Thank you.

Uh other commissioners with questions.

I go, please proceed.

Uh, the first one might be sort of a comment and question, but uh of the 1388 community engagements, I was one of them.

Umly about 550 people participated in the survey, and of those 550, only 345 were from Mountain View.

And I was concerned about that.

And I don't know if you have the same kind of concern.

Is it I I guess where the comment is we may have to do a lot more education with regards to the rest of the city.

I'm trying to interpret do other people not care or are the people satisfied with Mountain View the way it is, or is it just not knowing enough about biodiversity?

But I don't know if it's a concern to you as it was to me when you only saw 345 people fill out a survey, and I was one of them.

Sure, sure.

So all of those things were something that we talked about behind the scenes.

We also do have a lot of stakeholders and agencies that we partner with that participated in this process that participated in this engagement process, whether it was developers or our canopy partners and the canopy the outreach that canopy does, but we did hear a lot of feedback.

People are extremely happy with the progress and the efforts that the city is making.

And that was that was really nice to hear, and we heard that a lot, um, that they were happy with our efforts.

Um so for the most part, yes, sure.

We had talked about how can we do a better job at education, outreach, you know, explaining the benefits of trees to folks, and that was something that we really wanted to make this plan be digestible for your average resident.

Um, and if it was too complex and too, you know, complicated, we would lose that audience.

So we really worked hard on that.

Go ahead.

I also wanted to make sure that you're looking at the numbers in context.

So it was 395 uh respondents to the survey live in Mountain View out of 550.

Um the remainder of all of the other engagement interactions that we uh it would be something like 800 or something in that order.

Um we did not collect information on where they whether they live in Mountain View.

So only look at the 395 in context of the 550-ish participants of the survey.

Also, I I one other flavor I wanted to add to the response is that they're also Mountain View is also a big place of um business and corporation and people come to Mount View also for recreation.

So I think people have a stake in the future of Mountain View, even if they don't live here.

And so I think it's actually important that we represented that contingent as well.

And please don't misunderstand.

I wasn't criticizing your outreach.

I thought your outreach has been great over the two years.

Uh, done really good job.

Oh, it's a fair question, absolutely fair question.

Yeah.

Uh the second one I may be jumping ahead of ways, but I would in looking at the recommendations of Davy Tree with regards to the heritage tree ordinance.

Um they they made some recommendation on size and scope, how things are measured.

They made they had uh eliminating palms from the heritage tree uh uh ordinance, and they also introduced an idea of having an arborist board dealing with heritage tree appeals rather than this committee.

And uh is that would that be a city council decision?

Would that be a staff recommendation to the city manager?

How would that move forward?

And I again I apologize if I'm moving too far ahead.

No, no, no, that's a that's a good question.

Um we would have to tackle that when it comes, it would it would certainly change the the dynamics here.

So we'd want to talk with our PRC first and explore what kind of process we haven't even dug into into that yet, so um, I I don't think I can confidently give you a an answer of what that process would look like.

I'd have to, you know, consult with a few others.

And I would just add that ultimately the urban forest board composition currently is defined by ordinance.

So it would have to go before council or otherwise to be updated.

Yeah.

Um if the plan was adopted by city council uh next June, um, how's it going to affect the forestry division with regards to are you going to have to would you foresee having to reorganize the department, hire new people?

What would you, you know, as our expert envision?

Again, all of that would be on the table, but until we get in and we start developing kind of those priorities with our short-term, long-term goals, et cetera.

Um, it would be status quo.

Um, we're getting a lot better with our staffing.

We're actually knocking on wood.

We're we're this close to hiring our final field position to where we would be fully staffed, not in not only just the field, but also in terms of administration.

And so that's freeing up, I'll say a little bit of extra time for us to be able to start to implement some of these things.

Um, if we get into it a lot faster, a lot more aggressive.

Again, some of that may be on the table.

We may need some additional support.

We may need some additional staff.

Um, again, I just I can't say until we start digging into it, but there's a lot here, and we could not handle it all in short order.

That's and I think that the the action items, we were very careful that they a lot of them build upon work we're currently doing.

It we just need to amplify it.

We need to expand upon it, build upon it.

So it's a nice, we already have a nice foundation, but how can we take it to the next level?

And we'll have to take a look at like, does it require you know these actions if we do amplify and build upon it?

Does it require an extra staff person and then and then go and make that request of the budget process?

Thank you on that.

Last one, um, I call it who what where um there were actually who what when uh the target language blanks that are in guide A and guide D where they're all blank right now in terms of percentages and such.

What is how does that move forward?

I mean, is that something that staff will recommend percentages?

Is it something the Parks of America Commission comes up with percentages, or are we gonna ask the city council to do those percentages or just approve what etc.

You know, that's what's my idea.

Those are uh those serve as a starting point for us, and staff will kind of determine what's measurable, what realistic goals that we can you know practically implement, take a look at that.

So um it's it's meant to help us track our progress and report that out, but it's just a starting point, and staff will have to take a look at that.

And what can we manage with our current workload and our current staffing as it sits, and then how can we build upon it?

Do you foresee just a follow-up quick fall?

Do you foresee that as a process between January and a June approval or after a June approval?

After June approval, okay.

Yeah, and we we haven't you know, this plan is a is a guiding document.

It doesn't include timelines, it doesn't include costs, those kinds of things.

Staff intends to develop a team internally cross-departmentally, much like the city project team to carry out the implementation of this plan.

We need to work together.

There are a lot of actions that are co-department led and that touch a lot of different departments, so somewhat like the city project team, the city, we don't know, we'll call it a cute name, the city of biodiversity team will start to carry out and implement the plan after it's adopted.

Thank you.

You got it.

Thank you.

Um questions.

I had a couple and one of them was I think almost answered, so maybe I won't bring that up again.

But um the other question I had was you explain your recommendations around the tree species diversity.

There's a limit that's discussed uh no more than 10% per species, 20% per genus, 30% per family.

Can you elaborate a little bit more on what the thinking was behind that recommendation?

Yeah, that is a standard kind of across the board in any city.

Um so just as you said, and I forgot what um what page that would be on, but yeah, I think um 25 evaluation.

Yeah, um, and so I think Mountain View is actually doing pretty good in that realm.

The only uh the biggest takeaway is to not plant any more redwood.

It's close, it's approaching that 10% threshold where you don't want more than 10% of any one species.

But why don't you want that?

Ah, um, so diversity, species diversity, genus diversity is important for resilience, um, because each species has its own vulnerabilities.

So if a species is vulnerable, let's say, to a certain kind of pest or disease, and the city is hit by that pest or disease, and you have 50% redwood or 50% of one species, you are at risk of losing 50% of your urban forest.

So it makes you more resilient um to stress and disrupt disturbances, um, whether it's heat and drought, flooding, um, pest and disease, diversity is better for um protecting your urban forest from those kinds of adversities.

Does that help?

So go beyond uh the you know, kind of plant diversity but to animal diversity, absolutely.

That is it's the same concept that applies for ecosystems as well.

Um, so any form of diversity will um make a system, whether it's the urban forest or the urban ecosystem more resilient to stressors, um, there were will be a greater likelihood that other species will be able to tolerate the stressor when up when a certain subset of species cannot.

Does that help?

Yes, yeah, okay.

Um I have I have to go back to my second question.

So you decided, can you elaborate a little bit more on why you don't feel able to prepare the targets now?

And uh, you explained that you know, there would be a biodiversity working group or whatever, maybe you could give that.

And you explain more why you don't feel like the plan needs to include that now.

Go ahead.

Do you want to, or you want?

Well, I'll just say first from our like technical perspective that setting targets, well, it would involve a lot of perspectives, and it takes a lot of work to reconcile and weigh trade-offs, set commitments that are feasible and meaningful, and so that was beyond the scope of this project.

Um, it does take again it because it involves reconciling so many different um city perspectives, it seemed better fit for city implementation.

Would you agree?

Yeah, some of the some of the back and forth we had with the city project team, we started to get into the weeds, and that was taking up uh an exorbitant amount of time as haggling over some of those smaller things, and what we decided was let's get the plan, and then this internal team, especially because some of these other departments have plans that are currently currently being developed and projects that are currently being developed that will be influenced by this plan.

So it made more sense to get the biodiversity urban forest plan across the finish line and then create this internal team that can sort of tackle and dive into the meat and potatoes, if you will, but we it started becoming just going down a rabbit hole on one item, and next thing you know, it's two hours later, and we we just don't have time for that kind of thought at this point, and without even getting a draft plan.

It was you know, we were getting caught up in that.

So I think it makes more sense for us to have that biodiversity plan team to carry things out and say, okay, now here's the plan, this is what it looks like.

Let's come up with some real uh reporting methods that work for everybody that were for CSD that work for CDD that work for public works, and what do those targets and metrics look like?

So it sounds like you're thinking of having an implementation plan almost for the for this.

It's a separate and the team will tackle that setting that what is public works came to the table with it council or implementation?

No, that wouldn't go to council.

So would these um metrics or sorry targets ever come to the or those just gonna be something we have to we haven't even gotten that far yet?

Okay, all right.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you.

Um so some of my questions uh have been asked already.

So the there was one request that I I would like to make uh about the the graphics and the maps for me it would have the maps of the planting areas that you proposed, the corridors that you propose, the the past planting zones.

Uh for me it would have been much more informative, would have gotten me more involved if I could at least have seen where El Camino and Guanijuana are.

Um as it is, it's more um an idea, but to to engage me as this is my city, where are the proposals, it would be much better to have more detailed maps.

So that that would be one request I would like to make.

Um I have concerns about the figures about the canopy growth, which go completely counter to both my intuitive sense that we are taking out way more trees than we're planting, and what I've heard in the community also.

So I don't know to what degree the couple of percentage growth in canopy is just a question of the big oaks that we have have gotten bigger.

And to frankly, to what degree it's the tools we have aren't actually that good because we are taking out hundreds of trees and the city has, as Russell knows very well, for years and years and years we have not planted the quote of trees that we set ourselves as a goal.

So I I find the canopy both the numbers that you have I find very difficult to believe and I I find that the decision about what the canopy should be the percentage in my opinion should have been or should be moving forward part of the discussion that we have in public rather than a feasibility question that staff deals with and I I will have a lot more comments later about feasibility but that right now my question is how do you explain this this contradiction between what the community feels and the numbers that we're being given.

I think Russell and I can tag team on this I can start just on the the data integrity question.

So I can provide a little bit of context that land cover classification does have some degree of error and the degree of error likely does not explain um or let me rephrase even when accounting for the margin of error there is very likely to actually be a true increase in canopy um so um I guess does that does that make sense in terms of kind of the the data the data piece you know I'll I will accept what you say but it's contrary to what the community believes and that's just that just the I I was hoping you would have a better explanation for me but at this point.

And Russell I think we'll have more but Selena did you want to add a little bit and also to note that the analysis is happening at a city scale so we don't disagree that the experience of individual community members living in particular areas would be different from the overall city trend all right um and I I think Russell has some good thoughts yeah I just absolutely in terms of the data that we are getting the technologies are improving to where we're getting far better resolution.

So you're absolutely the older data may not be as accurate the newer data is going to be more accurate than that older data.

So again trust in the data be given given the fact that we're getting better technically at being able to identify and so forth.

The other place that I go with it is just it's a sheer number scale if we have 25 to 30 thousand trees not just private trees but excuse me 25 to 30 public trees you start extrapolating that out over even all the private trees etc it becomes a very significant number.

Even if the each tree is only putting on six inches of growth you multiply that over 20 or 30 thousand trees or private property trees that's far going to outpace those 200 500 maybe even a thousand trees that are being removed because in some cases it's not always large canopy trees.

Again some of the trees that we're approving for removal through the process are dead trees they have no foliage they have no branches and so there's a lot of factors that are involved with it and so I won't dispute what the public feels you know that again depending on their neighborhood and what their personal experiences are those are all valid.

I would just say on the city scale when you start to really analyze it there's a lot of little things that you have to ultimately start to consider that make it more reasonable that it's accurate.

So if I'm understanding you correctly you're you're kind of agreeing with me in assuming that the growth in canopy is the growth in the trees that we have.

Correct.

Okay.

Yeah not not necessarily in terms of the replacement trees.

That makes sense um another concern I had was was I live downtown and there are a lot of large oak trees that are private trees and you you do not include they're included in the canopy numbers, but they're not included in um in the city trees.

And I I read SFEI's uh reoking document, and I loved it.

And when I heard that you guys were were going to work with us, I was just thrilled.

Uh you your um discussion about reoking seems to me uh very restrictive in that you basically say plant oaks in large parks where they have room to survive.

In my neighborhood, which is downtown, uh, there are oaks everywhere.

In fact, oaks in my neighborhood grow like weeds.

If you look at the empty patch, there's an oak tree growing there, and of most of the there's a lot of stressed trees in town, the oak trees aren't stressed mainly.

So I'm concerned about the guidelines that you're putting in, uh, that are like perfect conditions.

This is what the perfect conditions for oaks should be, but don't really think about putting oaks anywhere else.

It doesn't really reflect the condition of oaks in neighborhoods because we haven't really looked at private trees, so that that that's a concern for me that built also into the proposed city tree list on which we have trees.

I always go back to them because I hate the Brisbane box.

Uh, it's still on the street tree.

I know that on lists they look good, but in Mountain View, they really are not doing well, and I could easily provide pictures of dozens of trees that are not doing well, and I don't think our street tree list right now is built on actually analyzing the trees.

I doubt you've had time for that, I doubt you've had staffing for that or budgeting to actually look at what we have and how it's doing.

So I'm I'm concerned about our saying that we have a new street tree map when we haven't done the analysis of what is doing well and what isn't.

So I I would like to see your question.

I'm sorry, I get to your question.

Well, that is my question.

How will we do this?

Okay, I think we can tag team on the sun as well.

Um, but um, I think Russell will have more perspective on which trees do well where.

Um, so I'll leave that to you.

Um, but also I just wanted to provide a little bit of context on the reoking zone.

Um, so that's in reference to the um guide A urban landscaping um zone, I don't know, it was like zone D or E, um, towards the end, um, and we identify specific places where planting oaks should be prioritized, and this was partly because of the um the kind of amplification effect that oaks could have if they're planted in close proximity to each other, um, so you will be able to support more biodiversity by concentrating where the oaks will found are found.

So that's more from the perspective of how to get the most bang for your buck from the biodiversity perspective with planting trees.

It's less to do with where trees might be the most feasible, although I think that's also a consideration.

Um, and also another piece to consider, which I think, you know, the science might still be out on this, but um, if you were to plant oaks, which are a powerhouse species for biodiversity in a densely developed area.

Let's say it does do well, but it is surrounded by a very harsh environment, you could create some sort of ecological sink where you're attracting species that otherwise might face a very harsh environment.

Um, so from that perspective, it could be good to create those nodes from for the sake of biodiversity, but um, in terms of feasibility, do you want to?

Sure, so it it realistically for me, I think we've all seen the tree that performs that miracle where there's a crack in a rock and a seed that's in there and it grows.

Um the issue with oaks on private property when we're talking about smaller lots when we're talking about housing pools, sheds, ADUs, there's just a lot of conflicts in the urban environment when it comes to our oak trees.

And because of the size of the trunks alone, as it for me, it really boils down to sustainability.

I don't want to plant a tree that I'm taking out 30 40, 50 years from now because of conflicts that it's creating.

I think we all see that when we talk about our cedar trees and our heritage tree hearings, etc.

Our larger trees are the ones that create the bigger conflicts, and they're the ones that our public, I'll say tends to be more afraid of, not just in height, but just in general size, they get more concerned about those.

Um, and so it really for me is about sustainability and getting those oaks, getting those large canopy trees to those areas where they can be supported where there are not as many obstructions or conflicts or other issues that are going to impact the life of that tree, the sustainability of that tree, etc.

Um, absolutely.

We see them growing in backyards, we see them growing in little five by five areas, but they frequently are causing root damage to the sidewalks to these other things that then you start to root prune them.

Now we're starting to shorten the life of these trees, and so as with everything with me, it's a balancing act.

How do we get those trees?

I'm not saying we can't plant them, it's just not really recommended that we do that in those smaller confined spaces.

That's really where that list is coming from is it's trying to get them into an appropriate location where we know they're gonna likely survive and thrive more realistically for a long period, two, three, four generations, hopefully.

So, so this I have no more than another two or three questions.

Um, saying that 90 percent of trees are in private property, that's basically the same number that Palo Alto is supposed to have.

Now, Palo Alto has much larger lots than we do.

In Mount View, we have very small lots, and Russell has just been talking about what trees fit into small lots, and so that is another question I have.

Oh, we have what is what does the viability of having a tree canopy?

How are we going to achieve a tree canopy if we have small lots?

And we don't have much private, much public land in which to plant them, and that's that's not the question perhaps that you can answer now.

But I I would like I would like that.

I'll keep that for a comment for later, I guess.

Um my final question really is uh, I was expecting to see some discussion about artificial turf and the how does artificial turf interact with biodiversity?

And um, I asked that question when we were talking about the strategic plan, and I was told that why don't you ask it about the viewing the biodiversity uh discussion, and it's not like there's consensus about it, but it seems like a biodiversity plan would be a place in which to mention that.

So was that part of your conversation?

Was that something that didn't come up?

Yeah, it was part of the conversation, and um because the um artificial turf versus um natural turf has um there might be some differences in soil health, maybe in those between those two conditions, but unless you're planting native vegetation with multiple layers of um vegetation height, um, and changing like the diversity of the planting, the difference for biodiversity impacts might be small.

Um, Selena, is there anything you would want to add on that?

No, that's okay, yeah.

Interesting.

Thank you.

Okay, yeah.

Except that an actual term well with all the fine okay uh now it's my turn and I have a whole bunch of questions but I think I'm interested in moving along to public comment uh and hearing those good comments so I'll just ask one it's kind of a mentee questioning and it's one I've already asked you but I think if I ask you to respond now might save time later I think others might bring this up my expectation I think said over the last whatever year I have was that the uh heritage tree ordinance would be revised through this process and I was a little bit surprised kind of at the hep and qualified language you know they're kind of minor uh recommendations and I I understand that they're laying the path for future uh considerations and Brennan you've already answered this for my benefit but I think for everybody could you briefly describe the process how the heritage tree ordinance will be specifically revised with real numbers not just kind of thematic recommendations and how that fits into this plan and and frankly this body's sure um so as I had mentioned we we tried to keep this plan digestible and that was the intent from the very very beginning um SFBI has provided staff with some detailed technical guidance um including recommendations such as updates to the heritage tree ordinance and other city policies we didn't include that level of detail in this very public facing document it would be too long and too technical but we have that that technical guidance and we're going to be leaning on that as we internally implement the plan um and ensuring that those actions are carried out effectively and with thought and being mindful of that.

With that said regarding the heritage tree ordinance update we'll use that technical guidance um to bring recommended updates in phases for the heritage tree ordinance we started some of this work on updating the ordinance when we were starting to update the 2015 community stream master plan update we paused it but we'll bring updates and we will include PRC all the way through to city council in phases based on themes like for example I wrote these down here um tree size and scope of protection species considerations and then maybe the appeals process those changes can be thoughtfully reviewed um you know and implemented if we brought it all at one time it would it would be so cumbersome and it we'd be pinging all over the place.

So being really thoughtful about those phases and bringing those updates um and working through that that will be one of the first actions because it doesn't require any money it's staff time and we already made those starts and we've we talk behind the scenes all the time how can we improve operations how can we improve better education better understanding of our public it it does boil down to those heritage tree ordinance updates.

So that's one of the first things that's very low hanging fruit and it's called out in the bio plan as a short term priority one of the immediate actions I don't know if I answered your question.

Yes okay great thank you for asking for the benefit of it.

I assume as an ordinance revision council's going on appeal at once you're not going to be taking incremental fees right that would be for PRC to help us with all right and just so near term so this would be in the next month to a year.

After the by the adoption after the adoption okay yes thank you that um I figured there would be other discussion of that topic so if that clarity helps uh so with that, I'd like to turn it over and can I just ask one more quick question?

Yes, you may on this this should be a quick one.

So one of the pre-submitted questions was what is the canopy coverage in other neighboring local cities and promise was that that would be shared with us tonight.

Do you guys have that for some cities?

I only pulled out a few um kind of examples um but uh and also I'll I'll mention that how you can how you calculate tree canopy cover um depends on what you set as the boundary.

So for the sake of our analysis, we looked only at urban areas.

So and so that means excluding the bay, which we did for Mountain View, but we wanted to make sure to do that for all cities, and then excluding um sort of upland areas in the hills where it's maybe more exurban, suburban, um low density.

Um so just want to provide that caveat, and so if this number were recalculated, there might be small differences, but um, for Santa Clara County as a whole across all cities, again in that urban extent, it was around 21 and a half percent tree canopy cover.

Um, and then on the low end, it was around um 12 to 13 percent um of cities in Santa Clara County.

Um, that 12, 12 around 12% was San Martin and around 13% Milpatas, and um, and then on the high end was um sort of in the foothills, as you might expect.

Um, Monte Serrano was 45 and a half percent, um, Los Altos Hills 45%, Los Catos 40%, so really up there, um, really helped by the natural geography of that area.

Um, and then so Mountain View is kind of mid-range for Santa Clara County, um, similar canopy cities are Campbell at around 19%, San Jose at around um 18%.

San Jose is really big.

Um, so I'm sure there's a lot of um diversity there.

And then um uh Morgan Hill is the next highest in our calculations at around uh 22 and a half percent.

Um that's great.

Did you have Palo Alto?

Did you say Powala?

I didn't um I didn't grab Palo Alto in my numbers.

I think it's around 30 ish percent.

Just Palo Alto also does extend up um beyond the urban extent.

So again, it does depend on where you cut that boundary.

And what about Los Altos?

Because that's probably a better comparison of something.

Off the top of my head.

Okay, yeah.

Thank you for just as a frame of reference.

The state of California is looking for urban areas to achieve that 20 to 25 percent.

That is what they are targeting at this point.

Thanks.

Okay, with that, we're gonna turn to public comment and uh Alison.

How many folks online?

I think we have three hands.

Okay, I'm gonna start with the four.

So uh if those folks online could raise your hand if you have comments, we're gonna start with the uh comments here in the room, and I will invite Mr.

Lambert to kick us off.

Thank you very much.

I have a relatively quick comment.

Um I've attended uh many government meetings over the years and uh seen visions uh presented um from the city of Mountain View and our city council members.

I've often seen those visions frustrated or even prevented by other laws and specifically state laws, but there are also laws that come about from the transportation authorities and things like that.

These all have their own priorities, for example, housing, for example, transportation.

And I'm concerned about the implement implementation of our vision here in this urban forestry and diversity plan.

If we do not address or understand that um sort of the the context of laws that we're dealing with in the state, and to understand the extent at which they are going to prevent us from accomplishing the goals that we want to achieve, and then to understand how it might be changed.

And this is a long-wing vision.

Um, Sylvia's talking about this being a model for the future for other cities.

Um, a lot of these uh laws are clearly implemented for purposes of profit, not for purposes of sustainability for the environment.

And how can we change those laws and what we should should we be doing or should we be lobbying and not just accept them as it is and end up with uh with uh development that is going to prevent us from building an urban forestry and uh diverse uh uh biodiverse uh community?

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Lambert.

Um Mr.

Keynes, would you like to go next?

Yeah, I'm just pulling up a presentation for you right now.

So answer that around.

That doesn't count.

LG will give you the one minute.

I can share them both.

Yeah, thanks a lot.

Uh next slide, please.

I just want to make a comment based on my personal experiences.

You know, it's grew great, very comprehensive.

It's actually quite a long documentary.

But again, like previous speakers said, how is it actually gonna be carried out?

And of course it boiled down to money.

How to what extent is the city going to commit resources?

And um, does the city even have the skill set needed to carry out some of these things?

I mean, the plan is pretty critical of the forestry division, like they didn't have the barbarous.

Um, a lot of shorthand people, you know, that kind of stuff.

So I just want to show you some few examples that happened around my neighborhood where I thought that the city kind of dropped the ball, and I'm wondering how these can be read in the future.

And oddly enough, these all occurred about four years ago, and I'm not sure what happened at that time in the city, but this is what happened.

One day, they were tackling the trees on the median strip on middle field, they're clear-cutting the branches up 10 feet.

I was shocked, you know.

This is what's like afterwards.

I called the city, they said, Oh, well, you know, some branches are getting trucks, they want to get rid of those.

But instead of just cutting those branches, they cut all the branches off, and so we were left with line of like toothpicks.

And fortunately, they did stop there and they did the rest of the trees kind of more, you know, judiciously.

Uh, next slide, please.

This has to do with yeah, the shoreline overpass.

This has to do with reversal bustling, I know, but you know, in uh December 2121, they clear cut the median strip for about a half mile.

You know, all those trees are removed.

This is four years ago.

Nothing has been done since.

Now I know the project has ups and downs, but you know, why were they in such a hurry to cut all the trees off and just leave it like that?

And now the Bristol bus plane has been shelved, and so you know who knows how long it's gonna be before we get trees back there and for the growth.

Uh next slide, please.

A little bit related to this was there's you know, there is I'm pretty sure a bike lane is going on on a shoreline, but three very large redwood trees that's seen on the left were removed.

And again, this is almost four years ago, and you know, during that time, these trees, you know, they sequester a lot of carbon, they provide a lot of shade, and you know, we never know what's gonna happen with some of these plans.

So, what's the hurry to cut down the trees?

Next slide, please.

And finally, this is my own pet project.

I don't know if you remember this.

Um PG the PGE, yeah, it was gonna put a gas regulator station in San Barone Park.

They had to remove some trees, and I suggested they save one of the redwood trees because it's fairly isolated, it looks like it's a good transplant candidate, and the city agreed.

They did it, but um, again, this happened to be in 22.

But the execution was flawed, and the tree eventually died.

I mean, just from for example, they did the transplant on one of the hottest days of the year that year.

It was over a hundred degrees.

And so the tree immediately got burned.

I suspect they didn't hydrate the tree before they did it because you have to hydrate these trees like two or three months in advance to make sure they're fully loaded with water before you cut off all you know most of their roots.

I know this is possible because at the very end of Palo Alto many years ago, they transplant like 10 or 15 very large redwoods, and they're all doing well.

So it's not a matter of implementing, you know, you can do it if you do it right.

Somehow something went wrong here.

So, you know, these are little things.

This is like you said, boots on the ground where the rubber hits the road.

How do things actually change?

It's nice to have a very nice plan, but when it comes down to actual people doing the work, is it actually going to be done correctly?

How are we going to make sure it happens?

I hope it does.

I really like trees as you can tell.

And I'd really like to see this plan go forward.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr.

Gene.

Appreciate your comment.

Dr.

Ferrier, if you want to go address the question.

First, I want to really thank you for this plan.

Um 184 pages.

I'm not gonna have adequate time to address the things I'd like to and provide feedback.

So I'm gonna focus on improving the plan rather than my overall positive thoughts about the plan.

Um, native plants and trees are throughout the plan.

Bravo, great work, you guys.

Um, but we need to pay attention to natives appearing to be backwalked in certain parts of the plan.

Um sections, and so they should be, I think, cleaned up, the language cleaned up.

For example, the section on page eight and nine is kind of it's old thinking, basically a license to continue to do things as they have been done in the past, and I feel like that section should be removed.

Uh, we all know humans are creatures of habit, and if we provide the easy way out, um, even great people will take the easier path.

Also, none of the recommendated recommended metrics included natives.

I didn't see one on a slide tonight, but I swear that wasn't in mind.

I did look twice.

Um, guide A, Section C doesn't belong in the plan.

The green zone appears to be a way of going quickly without natives, and yet saying we are meeting biodiversity goals.

It also appears to relegate the quick undefined plantings to the poorer areas of the city.

Well, the reoking part is section D goes to the wealthier areas of the city.

Um I know you had reasons, but um it's a consideration.

Uh native planting escapes are built in multiple sections.

An example is goal two, action six, which says native and quote biodiverse plantings, biodiverse plantings, uh is not defined.

Similarly, another section says near native.

Uh, as a biologist, I do not know what that means, and it can only surmise it means non-native.

To be clear, it isn't if it isn't native, it's not supporting biodiversity.

And oak supports 270 native caterpillars to feed our baby birds.

A ginkgo biloba supports two.

We need six thousand caterpillars to fledge a small nest of chickadees.

Um, without natives, we have an ever increasing loss of our birds and pollinators.

The plan is intricate, but we can't lose sight that if we aren't planting planting natives, we are not supporting biodiversity.

It's that simple.

Our trees are 15% native.

We should really put a moratorium on planting non-natives and try to get our quick tree plantings in uh to be native so that every day we are not literally losing biodiversity, and it just to paraphrase Lauren, she said it's pretty good.

The artificial turf turf is similar to non-native turf, and for biodiversity, it needs to be native turf.

Kind of says it all.

Thank you.

Thank you for your work for your comments.

And uh Ms.

Shank.

Would it be possible to put up the GIS map mapping tool?

The map that shows the patchwork of urban forest?

Is that on the public on the plan?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, it was just a moment.

What was your name?

I didn't care.

I see Korea.

I'm a PhD in the studio.

Thank you.

Well, they're putting up that mapping, that map of I don't know how many people have seen.

Have you seen the GIS map?

Shows the patchwork of urban forestry located throughout the city, the mountain here, a lot of them.

As you can see, is concentrated along Stevens Creek or near Stevens Creek on the other side of the freeway, maybe cut off by the freeway.

One time it may have been the upland forest area beyond the riparian zone, ecological zone, and the creek itself.

So as there was a lot of good work in this plan, done by ecologists, very good at this, very good at biologists.

And they uh rightfully explain how the 90% of the remaining private trees are on private land, and that it's a patchwork of remnant urban forests, and a lot of these trees, a lot of these forests are composed of these private trees, and these remnant urban forests, not the one I was looking for, but you can see the patchwork and see the concentration along the creek there.

Um this is this remnant forests are kind of a rich uh forest ecosystem.

The plant itself is really good at talking about increasing urban canopy by planting trees, planting trees on the streets, planting trees on public easements and so forth, but it does not and it seems to avoid talking about the preservation, needed restoration of the remnant patches of urban forests, which comprise, as you said, 90%, you know, of our urban forestry.

I don't see how the plan can actually avoid not addressing private land and private development, and I think there are opportunities out there, okay, to preserve these rich urban forests, you know, that begin you know with rich soils, you know, soil organisms, dense canopy, a lot of what you see, the map's gone, but if you look at the urban forests that are along the highway, at the fringes you have what are called highway vegetation barriers.

Those are tall, dense, overlapping uh canopies that actually prevent airborne pollutants from reaching residential areas.

EPA, Caltrans, Forest Service, academic institutions have studied these highway vegetation barriers and shown that effective barriers not only reduce noise but also reduce human exposure to soot particulates to toxic gases emitted from tailpipe emissions, and that is one of the reasons I believe that we have a rapid rise in chronic disease and cancers in Santa Clara County is because we're being exposed to a lot of these emissions, and I believe that these highway vegetation barriers, these barriers, are so important to our health and our communities that we should I would suggest having a moratorium on the removal of highway vegetation barriers and have developers actually show costs.

We'll removing highway vegetation barriers.

I have a lot of other comments, but I've running out of time, but thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Shane.

Appreciate that.

And Alison, we have five online right now.

Um, since I can't see them, I'll let you key up speakers.

And uh thank you for those online for your patience.

Uh you're up next.

We do have a three-minute time limit for each speaker, and Alison will give you a one-minute uh warning.

And just a reminder stamp on that responding questions for public comments or the commission.

So we have Shani.

My name is Shani Kleinhouse.

I have a PhD in ecology.

The environmental advocate for the Santa Clara Valley Bird Alliance.

Our community has advocated for this plan and participated in most of the public outreach, at least our Mountain View presidents.

And we're still reviewing the plan.

And we'll provide more comment in the coming weeks.

And we really want to see it succeed and become a cornerstone for paradigm shift in our region.

But we have some significant concerns.

And I think some of the previous speakers, like Miss Ferrea, Dr.

Furrier have described some of those that we really need to focus on locally native trees altogether.

We're discussing 10% of the city's canopy.

And they're no, and so most of the existing city trees were selected intentionally to deter biodiversity.

They didn't want cutter pillars instead of enhancing it.

So even if every tree that is planted is native, we'll still have a long way to go for the biodiversity goal.

And even if you need to replace oaks in 30 years, it's better to have oaks and replace them in 30 years than to plant London plain trees or some other sterile trees.

From an ecological point of view, locally native trees support exponentially more the biodiversity than climate adopted species from other regions.

Most insects, the foundation of the food web evolved with the native locally native plant.

And over 90% of leaf-eating insects can only use those.

So if we bring species from Southern California or the Southwest, we may gain some drought tolerance and tree diversity, but they we lose the biological ecological relationship and the biodiversity.

One comment is that I think the vision needs to be clarified.

There are words there that are not defined and are some somewhat overlapping, biodiversity nature, urban ecosystems, and there's other places where these terms are used almost interchangeably, and this needs to be cleaned up throughout the plan, but especially with the uh vision, and also the vision seems to have access to nature, but and that kind of gives it a very anthropocentric focus.

And I think that a better framing might treat humans' well-being as an outcome of the ecological rather than a parallel uh objective.

I have about one more second, so I would say implementation needs a lot more detail.

It's not clear who will implement it, what the costs are.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for your comments.

Next up we have Bruce England.

Bruce, the floor is yours.

Hello, this is actually Gita Dev.

You've got you unmuted Gita Dev.

I didn't get the unmute right away, but it did eventually show up.

So I don't know who you want to hear from first.

Well, let's go with you, Bruce, and then we'll get to Gita.

Alright, sorry, Gita.

Um okay, Bruce England, Wism Station Drive, also member of Greenspaces Mountain View, and some of your speakers are also members, just to highlight that.

Um, try to get this all in three minutes.

In general, I like what I've read so far.

Um in the plan, I haven't finished it, but I'm continuing to work on it.

We'll get through the whole thing.

Um I like that various city departments are involved in the development process on this and on other key city plans that are mentioned in the uh in this plan in this draft.

Uh question about strategy being dropped from the title.

I'm not sure why that happened because strategy is still in the text itself, but this can be problematic for people who are running searches using the original title, which itself shows up in various places.

Um private property canopy full details are truly needed for this plan, at least eventually.

Otherwise, you're not looking at a full set, a full data set as you ideally should.

Next, comment practical details regarding actions to be taken should be more fully described, including timelines and dependencies.

Uh, dark skies ordinances are currently off the radar, it seems at least for city council.

And it says in the draft that the city will take action, but the city can mean a lot of different things, and I would rather see something more specific about who's going to do what and when.

Next, as you know, Greenspace's Mount View members and others have raised objections to heritage tree removals in both public and private projects.

We feel it's particularly important to establish clear and reasonable guidelines for tree removal approvals and appeals beyond what we have today.

This will make life easier for PRC commissioners too.

Um next comment that I've got a question.

The comment is I appreciate all the comments and questions raised so far from commissioners and the public, including what Commissioner Bryant brought up regarding artificial turf and commissioner Mitchner on adjacent city canopy levels.

These details could easily be missed along the way.

And then my question is how will other plans be impacted by work on this plan through the review phases and vice versa.

Um, for example, tree choices adjacent to walkways and bikeways need to be handled mindfully to be sure that they're appropriate, and that might be called out in this plan and also in the active transportation plan.

And those are my comments.

Thanks.

Thank you, Bruce.

Wait, you love time on the clock.

Uh that's impressive.

Um, so with that, we'll turn to Gita, if you're ready to speak.

Thank you, thank you indeed.

Uh, this is Gita Dev.

I'm with the Sierra Club.

And uh I think that this has been a very laudable experiment for Mountain View, and we will have comments and that'll follow when we've had a chance to get into it in greater detail.

I just want to pick up on a couple of items.

One is that if 90% of our urban canopy is in fact on private land, then as several people have mentioned, we really need to do a better job of getting getting that uh, you know, addressed, and of getting to learn more about that canopy.

I know that Palo Alto had a plan to do door hangers on every single door in order to allow people using the citizen science that uh Mr.

mentioned, that they were able to report in on what trees they had, I believe, by taking photographs.

So I think it's really important for biodiversity to understand better what's happening on 90% of our land.

So that would be one comment.

I would hope that in line with maybe comments that Dan Shane made, that since a lot of our urban forest and our urban canopy is on private land, we need not only a heritage tree ordinance that penalizes you for removal of trees, which I think is really really important, and that it needs to be addressed right away.

Um, but maybe there may be incentives for saving um urban canopy that is important to the city if it's large enough piece.

I know that developers can, for example, um, donate uh land on their property for parks rather than paying park fees, as that may be an example of something where if there is urban canopy and if we have it recorded, that we could ask for that urban canopy to be saved.

So I'm very, very interested in the concept that 90% of our urban canopy is on private land, and we need strategies and tools to figure out how to save that.

I know that in San Jose, for example, they have been losing trees much faster than they are planting them.

I do understand that trees do grow and urban canopy grows, but at the smallest scale, it's an exponential growth.

You know, it's very small, starts out very small, and it's only when they get very mature that they really start to grow exponentially larger.

So we need to figure out how to save some of our urban canopy on private lands.

So I hope that we can uh address that.

And I want to say how much I appreciate that Mountain View is doing this because as Sierra Club, we hope that it'll be a uh a sort of a star that other cities can hitch their cards to in order to get uh in this age of climate change to get an urban canopy that really works for us.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much, Kita.

And our next speaker is.

Good evening.

This is Marina.

My name is Marina Yeliashikevich.

Um I'm a resident in Mountain View.

I'm very excited to be here today and uh thankful for everything you do.

Um I have a few comments that are related to what Gita was just saying, um, to private uh areas, the urban canopy that is located on private residential areas.

Um in the last year, I live in Rex Manor.

In the last year, I have noticed that more trees have been disappearing from the neighborhood and not uh eagerly replaced.

So I learned about street tree requirement that was mentioned earlier today.

Uh and what I've noticed in the last year, I can see that uh new houses being built.

Um, and they all as new single home family houses being built in my neighborhood, and uh they ought to meet street tree requirements plant a tree in their front yards.

It's in the planning uh uh building planning um, it's a building planning requirement, I'm sorry.

Uh however, I'm not seeing them the new owners planting the tree.

So it seems there is a requirement, but the implantation is not happening.

Um, so I'm aware of a few uh a few houses around me that do not have that such tree.

Um and uh also related to that, I wanted to bring up that um this uh uh front yards um uh there is a requirement that the front yards are 50% permeable landscape.

Um, and I'm seeing that the new owners, new construction sites are using plastic grass to meet this 50% permeable landscape, which just horrifies me.

Um, and I wonder if we can address that.

Um, and uh now that I have one minute left, I'll end it one more comment uh about heritage trees, since they've been so highly discussed here today.

Um, I'm also noticing that heritage trees have been removed for the reason being uh rotten roots.

Uh, what I'm seeing around me with the two trees removed in the last year within a block of me of my home is that uh those trees are planted on a green grass front yards.

Um, and those green grasses are constantly being uh watered, of course, every day.

So I wonder if we could educate the owners of private lands, uh especially those that have heritage trees, that perhaps overwatering uh can be reduced and thus heritage trees uh um could be saved.

I have a few more comments, but I think that is plenty for now.

I appreciate you listening.

Thank you.

Thank you, Marina.

And we should have one more.

Yeah.

Uh Rash.

Rush.

You have the floor.

She just dropped off.

I don't see her on there at all.

Maybe we give her a minute to walk back on.

I'm here, can you hear me?

Yep.

Yep, we can, thank you.

Okay, go ahead.

Uh, can you hear me now?

I'm trying to figure out if I'm on speaker or if I'm just talking into the phone.

Oh, can you hear us?

Yes.

Okay, great.

Okay.

Well, thank you for the opportunity to review the plan and provide feedback.

Um my comments will echo a lot of the things that other people have said.

Um, but I'd like to say them anyway.

So overall, I appreciate the whole ecosystems approach taken by SFEI.

I also commend their detail and quantitative assessment of Mountain View's current state compared to both its original landscape and future potential.

For the most part, the goals, objectives, and actions laid out in the plan do a good job addressing the challenges and opportunities laid out in the prior chapters.

However, as written, the document is not yet a plan by the city of Mountain View, but instead a list of recommendations and best practices provided by a consultant.

There's no ownership by the city over any of the goals or objectives or actions.

And as discussed earlier, the metrics are currently just suggestions.

For the public to have any confidence in the plan, the city will need to clearly state what actions it's planning on pursuing, what time what the timeline is for the actions, and who is responsible for implementation.

And it needs to have those metrics as well included, however hard they are to decide upon.

Otherwise, there's no guarantee that it'll guide future action in the city or carry any weight in future decision making when weighing competing priorities and limited resources.

I also found there to be a misalignment and lost opportunity in protecting heritage trees in the plan, as others have mentioned.

They provide greater cooling, health, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity benefits than smaller trees.

And the staff also states in the document that trees are the only infrastructure asset that increases in value over time and are not easily replaced.

But despite these innumerable benefits, the document comes up short of meaningful actions to protect heritage trees.

For example, objective 3C, which seeks to use greening opportunities to adapt to future climate conditions, only includes actions that involve planting new trees.

It seems like a missed opportunity to not include actions that protect heritage trees since they already provide significant canopy and cooling benefits.

Moreover, they're providing them at no cost to the city, whereas a new tree planted costs an average of $3,000.

This missed opportunity is also relevant to objectives 1A, 2A, 2B, 4A, and 4B.

To really protect these trees, the plan needs to establish metrics for tracking them and limits on the amount that can be removed each year.

The document drafted by SFEI is a great foundation for the city to use to create its own plan that is valid and meaningful.

Following this first round of review and before bringing the plan to the city council for a vote, I encourage city staff to change the wording of the document from SFEI recommends to the City of Count Mountain View will and include the metrics necessary to track progress.

This will allow the public to understand to what the city actually plans on committing and give us confidence that real strides will be made to protect and grow our biodiversity at urban forest in Mountain View.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Rashmi.

And thanks to all the speakers for those thoughtful reviews.

It would be great to have such a uh engaged community on this.

Um I think that wraps up our uh web based speaker.

So now uh we're gonna uh take commission responses.

Um staff has asked us specifically to respond to and to do this first uh questions which are articulated in the agenda.

And so we will do that.

And uh what I am going to suggest as your chair is that we go through these.

We're gonna take them uh one at a time with each uh commissioner responding.

We'll look for uh relatively quick and succinct responses to these.

If we'll go through them all, then if commissioners have additional comments beyond these.

So, two hours of sitting.

I want to make a motion.

No, yeah, so with that, um we'll uh 10 minutes?

Five minutes.

Five minutes.

So let's uh get back together at 9.05, and we'll uh be in there.

Okay, thank you.

You want to be resilient and sustainable.

But what I think is it was I would like to sustain myself through less than over the screen.

Yes.

I already filled less than I should not tell.

And we have any different still.

I'm gonna replace it.

Okay, so this is like a better big thing.

Yeah, okay.

I think at some point, it's just possible.

This is the guy back home.

So that was really fit.

So I couldn't be this one.

Yeah.

No, I just year after year.

I don't know what's drowned about.

I just saw it's just we didn't have a speech.

I didn't see it.

I think I'm like a last week.

But the scope is 50 minute parts.

Go into details in two minutes.

Oh, you have to draw people.

Yes, well, what what we always recommend is a flight topical at the end of the day.

I mean, I don't know.

It's like I have all the individual coding.

Okay, multiple hour long.

So, my thinking, this document.

Hi John, how are you?

Uh, so hard here.

We talked about this a little bit, uh, because it hasn't changed.

Uh, I could just work.

But no, I'm actually there alongside the stuff.

Which is that, yeah.

It's something on paper, and like a focus.

I I was starting to dive into this place.

I'm glad you think it's leaving us.

We want to expect 200 pages.

Like, the next city council meetings to be supposed to be.

I know people want this done, but we'll be very mindful of the speakers off, yeah.

Um, we've adopted a lot of action plans over the years.

Are you doing like a strategy?

Like, you're name again.

Um, so I'm building the house shopping down to the party trees.

I think the nice oh, I have more than the perfect trees in the good place, it'll last forever.

Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

Uh the solar thing is that kind of ID.

But we can't do it down on those of some of the things.

Not really.

That's true.

They're gonna they live in those those other ones.

Um, people know it's we have to ourselves.

You'd have to hit their city council.

Well, I mean, this is sort of our studies.

You know, I just wanted to have a density here.

So you know, the trees, you wave all the parking, you wave all this.

I don't have any choice.

I know why.

So we want to try to start again.

But I started to figure it out.

You haven't put this happy.

But I saw that, you were the first guy I thought it was.

That's the thing.

That would have to be a higher price.

That's really hard.

Yeah, definitely hard.

But it has to be done.

I can have another way on the edge.

Yeah, yes.

I make that one.

Oh, awesome.

I mean, you can kind of bring it up.

Well, you should I encourage you to take the status.

Yeah, which you can do about where you can just crack, yeah.

Thank you.

Also, you need directly.

I'm rare to go.

I kind of have a landscape that I have.

There might be other ways.

Thank you for getting your 10 years.

Yeah, yeah.

I hope you're still in it.

It really goes back to the reserve.

Very last year.

I think it's funded.

Yes, that's okay.

You can take that.

I don't know if that's certainly for uh two more entertaining us for this break.

We will now resume the uh meeting, been brought to my attention from uh members of the commission that fantastic public input.

Uh we could probably get more public input if we retitle this plan to biodiversity, urban forest, and pickleball plans.

We'll stick with what we have for now.

Okay, so um tennis.

Yeah, all right.

Um, seriously, now we're going to go to the three requested uh comments and the three requested topics that are outlined in the staff memo.

My suggestion for um expediently getting through this, uh, is that we briefly touch on the kind of key thematic points we want to address uh quickly for each of these, and then I'll go do another pass for commissioners that want to pick up any um more detailed comments about specific issues, and so um rather than having each commission go through all these eventually, I'm gonna pick it apart and and do the first question, have each commissioner respond to that.

Then we'll go to the second, and I will uh do the random.

I'm not gonna start.

Um, so for the first question, uh Commissioner Mitchell.

Sorry, so does the PRC agree that the drafts plans, vision goals, and objectives reflect the city's priorities for mountain views, biodiversity, and urban forests.

Commissioner Mitchell, okay.

Um sorry, I'm gonna preface this by I was sort of expecting a different process where I thought we would just elaborate on all our thoughts.

So I'm sort of merging a couple things here, so bear with me a little bit.

Um, so I mean, just overall, I'd say this was an impressive draft.

You know, I I think that it um presents a high-level vision.

Um, I like the vision.

I think it's not too wordy.

I think vision statements often get ugly as everybody tries to get a word smithing and get every little word in there.

And I I thought this one was uh pretty good.

Um, I think that the to this to this question, I you know, the draft plan is the result of what I think was thoughtful collaboration between technical experts, city staff, and our mountain view community.

And as such, I do agree that the plan um, you know, the draft plans, vision goals, and objectives reflect our city's priorities.

Thank you.

Commissioner Felios.

Um I just want I'm gonna add in uh commissioner misher hit on it.

My compliments, I I really like the work that was done, both as FEI and staff, uh and the collective group that you had working with you from the other department's uh great job of capturing where Mountain View is right now, and you know, and what leading us where we needed to go.

I love this page.

I'm a math teacher, as you guys probably remember, and math teachers like organization like this.

This is very easy for me to follow, so hopefully it is very easy for our public to follow as well.

As you know, with regards to the goals, I mean, the vision, which we always want to have a vision to lead us, and then the the goal objective action organization was really well done.

So all over the comments when we get to the other parts, Mr.

Solar.

I wholeheartedly agree.

I love the cross department collaboration that happened between the city and hopefully that we meant that will continue to be going forward, not just in the biodiversity diversity sphere.

Um I think the vision is appropriate, what we've been needing, and the goals are nice and simple, uh, and the objectives are pretty concise as well.

So I think that that part of the framework is highly successful.

Yeah, something completely different.

Alison, could you could you put up the slide that I have for the vision?

So uh I'll I'll just preface it by saying that I was thrilled that staff was working with SFEI.

Uh I read as far as I could every word.

I loved most of what you had there.

Uh I had a problem with the vision, and the slide.

Well, of course, yes, Commissioner.

Uh somewhere smiling because of course I was going to have a problem with the vision.

Uh I I have I have three uh I combine on a slide, the word cloud that the community gave us, the vision that we have in the document, and then a scribble that I put together that is completely not a proposal for another vision, but is making the point of what I would like the vision to be something that will speak to every resident.

And as Brenda, you kept on saying uh that it needs to be for the general public, that it needs to be easily digested, easily understood, and Mountain View envisions a healthy, connected, and resilient urban ecosystem with abundant access to nature and its benefits for people and native species alike, is not easily digestible to me.

Um so I'll break, I'll I highlighted the my main points.

Um my vision, my personal vision, and what I've heard from the community is not that we will envision something, is that we will be something.

Mountain View will be, not Mountain View will think about it.

Uh urban ecosystem is uh, we have a word list, we have a glossary and urban ecosystem is there.

You know what that means, Brenda.

I know what that means.

Many of our residents not don't know what that means.

Urban ecosystem is not the right word to have a division statement.

Uh abundant access to nature and its benefits, uh, that sounded to me at first reading like a system of paths or trails into the mountains.

What I heard from the community was we want nature in the city, on the creeks, on my street, in my park, not an access, which could mean anything.

Active transportation plan, wonderful.

But what are what our city wants?

What I want is a city of connected green spaces where people and nature thrive, and you may not agree with me, but this is easily comprehensible to anyone.

So I would very much like staff, SFEI to come back with a vision that people can easily understand, that is really based on the word cloud over there that we don't have to explain.

It's not that anything is lacking there, but it's not easily comprehensible.

I would like a vision to be an inspiration.

Not a put together by committee to put all the right words in there, which I don't mean to be too insulting, but uh this is what it sounds like a lot, a lot of people working together trying to put all the words in.

And I would like an inspirational an inspirational uh vision, and especially one that says we will be.

I think that's the way city goals are written also.

Mountain View will be a city for all people, not Mountain View will think about maybe one day we will be.

Okay, thank you.

Uh thank you, Alison.

I have another slide, but for later.

Um I think the objective 3A, which is about the um the urban forest.

Um, and the urban uh the urban master plan needs a lot more.

Okay, we we there is a little too much acceptance of 2015.

Let's go with that.

I think the tree list should go through the PRC with all the wonderful comments from SAPI.

I think we should think about the we should think about the um the canopy numbers.

Um we should think about, and I'm you know that Russell, but the urban forest is really doing well, it's lots of trees dying.

Um that all needs to be part of our steps and actions, looking at what is going on.

I I walk from my home to across El Camino and I saw like 50 trees.

So why are trees dying and are specific trees dying?

So we're sorry, we should.

And I think this regarding private trees, I think we should we should strengthen that.

Palo Alto has their uh their oak count every year.

I would love for us to do something like that.

That's a great way to involve the community and a great way for us to get uh to get information about private trees.

All right, those were my comments for this section, back to you for more later.

So my turn.

Um I think that the draft is coherent, rational, it's well organized.

Um I mean, the process is rational, it's responsive, properly aligned.

So yes, I think uh in that respect it does reflect the city's priorities.

Um throughout this process, I've been interested in how the kind of many ecological principles of inputs uh associated with the term biodiversity would be translated or distilled into something concrete.

That I associate with the term plan.

And uh, so it's it actually has been uh awakening for me to see how this has all come together.

Um I think there's a lot of detail on the problem statements, the analysis.

I think there's less specificity on the commitments, uh the way the plan articulates commitments.

I'm sure this will come up more in the discussion.

Um so like Commissioner Bryant, I too have to do a little words, but I'll make mine a little more simple.

Um this is maybe it's semantics, maybe it's pedantic, but this is just how I see things.

So on the um the statement, um, abundant access to nature and of benefits for people and native species alike, I would change that from alike to if it's benefits for both people and native species.

A like implies an equivalence that I'm not sure is uh appropriate in terms of access to nature and the benefits.

So I would accept most of the uh the vision statement, but change it to uh view the vision's a helping connected with the system with a ecosystem with abundant access to nature and its benefits for both people and native species that was my one uh word uh wordsmithing thing also and this maybe this too is getting pedantic but I'm going over two places of refuge so refuge by definition is a shelter or protection from danger or distress and it sounds like we're accepting a characterization of the general environment as being distressed and we're fostering some isolated exceptions to that so rather than that you know having refuges um I would seek a goal that says Montview seeks to make all areas healthier more connected uh I don't know places of refuge I don't know if that makes sense to you that's probably pedantic but anyway that's my comments and we'll move on to the second point um to achieve the city's priorities what feedback does the PRC have on the plans action items and priority levels those are listed on page 77 and the performance metrics and targets page 98 and this time can I start it this under the commission table and we'll look at other things the okay starting so we're gonna do action items priority levels and metrics and targets all in one yeah okay all right um so I'm my concerns with the plan will come up on the on the next uh questions about what would make it feasible and what will be uh be uh you know what might what might be the barrier um as for the metrics go for it I think they're all wonderful um the targets obviously are not really written we need numbers and not only do we need numbers but unless this has a really frequent coming back to the community or to the PRC or to the EPC depending on on what the the metrics are this needs to be just built into the work plan as a look at progress because this is what if it's not the work in progress there's two choices it's either work in progress or it's just shelf and which which would be a waste of a lot of energy and a lot of time.

So the metrics absolutely um the action items and the priority levels are fine with me I would like everything to happen all at once and immediately but again the the action items referring to the urban forest I would like to strengthen and I would like a lot more focus on the urban forest and its current condition rather than I think we are having an acceptance of the status quo but that I will love going further detail later.

Okay.

Commissioner Soma I'm smiling because I love how we all focused on something slightly different.

And so it's one of the most fabulous things about this group, it's just you know, everybody kind of covers it all.

So I spent a lot of time looking at these um action items.

And um, so I have a list of I don't know, I think I don't think probably nine at actions I'd like to add or sort of tweak or miss up.

And that's why I don't know if you want me to just launch into that.

Okay, so in this um, the actions, and this action 1A, which is support a network of connected space across the city, which kind of interestingly sounds like Ronate version of vision.

Um the only real network of brain connective spaces that this currently talks about is an active transportation improvement project design.

So that's basically streets, trails, paths, that sort of thing, and then um land management agreements.

I guess I don't not exactly sure, like if the city is managing a school or something, you know, portion of a school or something like that.

I wasn't totally clear on where those were, but in any event, my main point is that I liked how this number two.

Oh, I know.

Number two is about creeks.

So that was probably where the city is managing things for valley water, and but I think we also need a three and four.

One would be schools, and clearly that isn't under the city's control, but we do have influence, and sometimes there's agreement or financial contributions, and those could all be, you know.

So we have influence over schools to some extent, and we also have you know, members of the school board who are in our community who you know here and listen and they're involved.

Um, so I like the fact that schools was there, but I mean uh creeks were there, but I'd also like to see schools, and then further, I think we should go so far as to believe that we can influence Caltrans and PDE, even though we don't have um, you know, the ultimate say in the work that they do, and I think this in particular Caltrans touches a little bit on the topic which we are always hearing from uh some certain community members back there, um, and and how the the freeway right of way is maintained, and we have some huge PGE right away along the Stevens Creek Trail.

So I guess I would like to see that kind of network of green expand out beyond active transportation and um creek corridors, and really think about what all the other areas where we could exert some influence.

Alright, moving on to the next one.

Um, one B foster cultural shift that spotlights biodiversity, and it didn't.

I mean, I'm all for um educational installations and content, but uh which is external public facing, but there's also going to need to be internal cultural shifts and general cultural shift in the way the city does business, um and so it's not just going to be enough to put some signs around and think that that's the cultural shift we want.

We're gonna have to um really make it part of our our core um being that we're emphasizing native plants and you know incorporating these landscape zones into what we do.

So to in my mind, when the action related to one being really needs to be expanded greatly, um like an example that you can think of the way you know Google went through a cultural shift when they started um you know, first they were just kind of doing standard office buildings, and then they had a cultural shift where they were promoting a lot more kind of ecological principles in their in the way they designed their office setting, and now you look at their facilities, and there's a lot more native plants, it got you know, um managing storm water differently.

It's it was a complete cultural shift for them, and so you know the city ought to be able to take make that kind of cultural shift as well.

Um, now some of the the this you know work is really, you know, in the future, and there is an action that where the city sort of takes a look at this.

This is action 20, and I think you could reference that here the way you've done in some of the other ones, re referencing other actions where you kind of already are having an action where you go off and you know think about what you need to do across department, but in any event, um I'd like to see a little bit more words really.

Okay, 2A 6 implement planning projects according to urban landscaping zones indicating guide A.

So I really like guide A.

And it's very way back there at the end and kind of a forgettable place.

Um I think it I think it should be more important in the document.

I don't know, you know, how what that means to the order of things, and I'm not trying to think that through, but I took a while to get to it as I was reviewing, and there's some good stuff in there.

And the other thing that I think would really help both the action items and then the um implementation, which I know we aren't talking about that, but this would also benefit, is to sort of add what um I would call a prototype, so so you know, an urban environment like the city, you can look at it at the scale of the whole city, and a lot of the maps are looking at that whole city scale, but we're also missing a look at kind of the neighborhood scale and a site scale.

Now clearly the plan is not gonna you know design every neighborhood and everybody's property.

That's not what's gonna happen, but you could look at typical conditions and how the guide A, the five zones, there's five, and the actions kind of land on the ground, and it really needs to the plan needs to illustrate that for people to see like you know, the condition of you know, uh it so not just at a site, not like if you were taking, you know, some old shopping center and turning into housing.

Not just that, but that is one of them.

Another would be like the function of a whole neighborhood and how you would, you know, maybe it's something that backs up to a creek and you know what you had in mind these zones and what actually needs to be done on the ground.

That's that's one of the things that um this um it's gonna come up in um development review, and it come up so many different places in the city's capital improvements and just kind of taking a look at what what actually would happen if you would follow the guidelines in um guide a and and so um kind of losing my train of thought here, but I think it does relate to the actions and how the the guide A um interrelates to the actions.

So the first time that it's mentioned is in action six.

So I don't you know again it would really help to see how that how what would change so um let's see, um prioritize shade parking in there too.

That must be in 17.

I guess you have to go into the details of 17, but there's a discussion of parking lot shade goals in there, yeah.

Yeah, okay.

Action 17, prioritize shade tree planting in the cooling zone.

And it was sort of unclear how you know how this affected development review processes.

Um community development wasn't one of the responsible departments, it was just the Office of Sustainability, but they don't review development, the community development department does.

So I know that some of that comes out of what you're doing in action 20, but it's still unclear how who actually is doing this.

So I at minimum I would reference action 20 and uh listing development is another responsible part.

So 4A action 18.

So now we're starting to get into the activating collaborate, and this is city-led outreach and partner with local organizations.

So one of a really effective way to help people and understand what you want is to have case studies, you know.

So as time goes by, you could start to show where people are implementing, and actually, we have some pretty good examples right now, which is Google has done a lot of this stuff, and so why aren't we talking about what they did there?

Just this just examples, it's illustration explanation type of stuff, and so but you could add to this action 18 developing and promoting case studies as part of educational outreach and partner efforts.

You could add um promote uh partner events.

There's a native plant tour that happens in Mountain View.

Why aren't we why isn't the city actively promoting that maybe even starting as things go on and we have some you know good examples in our parks.

I mean, we actually have the pollinator habitat at West Annex right now, but I think was on that plant tour, but um, you know, anyway, add that as a part of the action, and then another one that I think would be really powerful would be to add that you know, for the city to start an award program and and recognition of private efforts because there's nothing better than you know Stanic when getting an award for what you did on you know, on your property to encourage other private sector to pick action.

Okay, um, I'm getting close here.

Okay, 4B.

Okay, so that 4B uh which is action 20 and 21, I think it's action 20.

So that one is really important, and I'm glad to see that well, that's a medium-term priority.

Um this is where the city would look at development processes and figure out how these principles could be applied to that, and that I think that's pretty important, and I think it should be done in the short term.

Um and baked into that, I also think we should include an assessment of additional staffing requirements and whether some functions could be addressed by volunteers or community partners because ultimately the city is not going to be able to do all this.

We just there's just too many other things going on.

So I'd like to see us start to incorporate volunteers into things as part of what you're doing in this action.

Um and then moving on, just my last item.

Moving on to the performance metrics and targets.

I I think the city should commit to the supplemental metrics.

Um I know that the city's not completely ready, you know, to count things, but you know, there's already great counting efforts that some partners do.

You know, there's a Christmas bird count, um, I don't know if anyone does a butterfly count, but you know, there's already groups that are doing some of this stuff, and maybe with city sponsorship could take on, you know, a mountain review centric thing.

Um, in particular, we need to some of the objectives.

There's a couple there's two of them that only have one target or sorry, metric, and one of them has only two metrics.

And it's with only one metric, you really can't tell if you're accomplishing an action.

So in particular, I think we should prioritize the supplemental metrics that address objectives that have few metrices.

So that's two B, four C, and four D don't have much to measure what they're out yet.

They're contained in the supplemental metrics.

So I would suggest at minimum to prioritize those three.

And then I'll just note there's an error in one of the cross references.

And I'm sorry, I think right now what page it's on.

But in talking about establishing the targets references action 21, but that's not action 21.

Action 22, which establishes the targets.

So you'll have to make that edit.

So that's in comprehensive stuff.

Commissioner Phillips.

Um a lot of things have been already comments, so I won't repeat those, but um on page 79.

Um in action five, um, I had highlighted under the third bullet planning lists and guidelines could be incorporated, and also in the uh under action uh that same paragraph, a subset of materials could be developed.

And following up on something like Commissioner uh Brian had mentioned about will Mountain View will, instead of could, would we consider should as or another verb other than could's kind of you know, well, I guess we could do this, but this is something we really should do, and so I just something considered there.

Also in that same box, responsible departments.

I'd love to see committee development included in that as well, uh, with regards to uh everything that's mentioned in there uh with regards to development and uh you know them taking some ownership as well.

Um page 92.

I have it.

We can scroll here.

Sorry.

Oh, I want to say how much I liked action 22 because it does indicate how uh reporting back to the PRC uh annual summary to the parts of record commission with progress made, supported by targets and metrics.

I wanted to I like that so just very simple, and then I kind of lost it, but I've got to find it again.

We do have one typo in the thing in gosh darn it.

I thought it was on page 65, but now I can't find it.

It's about Santa Clara Valley Habitat Plan with an it's in the thing, it's just with an updated anticipated for 2025, it should be update, not updated.

So I'll try and find that page again for you.

Yeah, so you guys see little edits like that, you can always email me.

Okay, I've been passing them along to SFI.

Otherwise, I really like this part.

Commissioner Metcher.

Um before I get into that, I want to go back to the previous one just real quickly.

Um, you know, is it related to the vision?

You know, three of us sort of did a high level, we like the vision, and two people went into more detail on it.

I mean, I don't know what you're taking as feedback, but if if if the vision is going to be revised out of this meeting, then I'd I'd like us to circle back and all work on the vision because I mean some of us might have had additional tweaks, but we just did a real high level uh you know, I like it or something like that.

So maybe you guys can comment on what you're doing with our feedback.

Joe, do you want to express your comment about the vision?

I mean, I like bits and pieces of what other people said, but I I mean I let's come back to it later, maybe.

I mean, because we're in the middle of this one, right?

I just I just don't know what you guys are doing with our comments, right?

Whether you're whether they're gospel or whether you threw you're throwing them into the mix because you've already heard from 800 people and you've spent tons of hours on these things, and even if we want to change a word, maybe it doesn't make sense to change that.

You know, so I don't know.

We're taking all the feedback and we'll take a look at it because we have gone through extensive behind the scenes based on the community.

Um, as far as the vision goes, we'll have to we'll have to talk about it.

Um we can't, you know, we have a timeline that we'd like to meet, and um, there might be some slight tweaks that we can make to it to to update it, but we've had a lot of input and feedback on it thus far.

So, yeah, I mean that's what I would think, but if yeah, but if you're gonna take more out of this meeting from that, then we should all have an opportunity.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Um, okay, so getting to this, um, to this bullet point, you know, I I think that the action plans were consistent with the goals and objectives, um, which is which is an important thing.

I'm going to now make a short case for adding an action related to private trees.

Um, you know, I brought up the question earlier, and and other people have now brought it up in public comment.

You know, per the document 90% of mountain views canopy is private trees, homes, schools, etc.

I know it would probably be time intensive, but it just really feels that it would be important to at least have some kind of a limited understanding of the composition and mix of those private trees, um, because they far outweigh the city tree data, and they would they could sway that data could sway data and recommendations.

You know, just as a high-level example.

If a tree species is three percent of the city tree total, but it's 25% of the private tree total, then in combination using weighted average, that tree is gonna make up 23 23% of the city's overall numbers, which would be more than double the suggested 10% diversity limit.

So I I think that the private trees is a big component, and it would be nice to add some kind of an action or metric related to private trees.

Um as to the priorities, you know, one of the things I did was as I read through the actions.

I had my hand covering the priorities, and I tried to guess whether whether it was going to be short-term, middle term, or for long term, and um I was mostly in alignment on all but two or three, um, but I want to speak to one in particular, and and and um Commissioner Summer actually brought this one up, and that is action number 20.

Um, you know, I just think time is of the essence in improving some of our habitat connections, and I think some of the current development projects are in key city areas, and they could incorporate strategic landscaping to enhance habitat connectivity, and also some of the projects could install appropriate landscaping and plannings.

So I was I was surprised that this wasn't a short-term priority.

Um, you know, I presume that there might be implementation complexities and workload things that that might push this to medium, um, but I um I saw that as a short-term uh priority.

You know, I I did not try to make, you know, I understand maybe there's a trade-off that would have to be made with other short terms, and I didn't um go through the exercise of choosing another short term that I would take off the list, but but I thought that that was an important one.

Um, going on to the metrics and targets, you know, are there potentially some better or additional metrics?

You know, I don't know.

Um this seems like a good list.

I, you know, but it's sort of like what's missing.

I I don't know.

Um although maybe some private tree uh metrics um might be something, um, but again, I'm open to to hearing from other commissioners and our residents on that.

Um, I think that the targets, as has been mentioned, they they need to be fleshed out quite a bit more.

Um, you know, for example, we need to really understand where we are now in order to come up with meaningful target numbers.

You know, just as an example, I I took metric number number three, you know, the number of projects or acres of project area incorporating enhancements for native species habitat in the urban matrix.

Okay, so I we need to know a lot more about where that metric stands today in order to be able to come up with um a future target that's that's meaningful, and and I don't know where that is in this process.

I'm hearing that maybe that's going to be after after adoption or but anyway.

So um I think that's that's it for my comments on uh the uh actions, metrics, and targets, and again, I thought they were all fairly well aligned and cohesive with with the um higher parts of the question.

Thank you.

Um at a high level, um you know, I don't disagree with you much.

I think these are all uh good.

Um I'd have to say probably two years ago um when we started talking about biodiversity, and I didn't know where this is going.

Um I guess I thought there would actually be more it wouldn't be so tree centric um that it would touch on some other I don't know, wildlife measures or things like that.

You know, there's two bird-related actions and and some habitat things, but by and large, a lot of the metrics are trees, and and maybe that's what the plan is.

I guess now I understand what the city's after.

Um I didn't originally have these, but I really agree with temple commissioner comments.

I'd like Commissioner Summer's um idea of kind of the lustrative prototypes for the A-Gi.

I think that's a great idea.

Um, I agree with Commissioner Mitchner's thought about having some kind of metric for uh trees on private land or canopy on private land, and um having something in the plan that further amplifies the role of citizen involvement, the volunteers or private individuals.

I you know, we have a huge resource in Mountain View, and that's our citizens, and I think there are people that will participate.

So just a high, you know, conceptual level.

Um those are some inputs.

Um probably more of our thoughts will come out in the implementation thing.

I'm not I'm not suggesting we have more complexity.

Um, I would actually think on the um we call this the the priority levels.

We should have another level, which is I for immediate, um, because I I think to me, the the what this uh this plan most lacks is urgency, and I get that it's it's trying to knit together this complex um set of city interactions, but you know, a lot of the language and the description is very couched and conditional statements, and I I think just there needs to be more um stakes in the ground, and I'd rather see a few metrics and priorities um put out there, uh committed to and acted on, and then uh you know, as a plan proceeds, um evaluated adjusted.

So and for that, you know, uh action items 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, and 22 are the ones I think uh the plan should suggest more immediate action at all.

So that's my two cents on that.

Could I add a better comments?

Okay, so um I I completely agree with everything that the commissioner said.

Um particularly I want to highlight two things.

Something that the commissioner Summer said about active transportation corridors.

Um active transportation corridors really raises the thought of bicycles, and I didn't see sidewalks.

I mean, you you mentioned sidewalks, but they are not called out as clearly.

I walk from my home downtown, or I walk from my home to the school, I walk to the grocery store.

The importance of canopy there is great, because walking is completely active, but if we don't think of where people walk, we are missing out on the whole segment of the population, and we are not doing well on that, so that that needs to be called out in my opinion.

Um and and with that uh not identifying large patches is great.

Obviously for biodiversity, but I actually consider myself a doctor for biodiversity.

And as I walk along the street, I would like to have patches where I can see a butterfly, or I can smell flower, and it would be great to call those corridors for walking and canopy and some idea of beauty and butterflies and birds in everyday life.

So I would like to have that included there.

Uh what the chair Davis said about immediate really resonated with me.

Because we've been doing this plan for, I don't know, we started in 2020, and most of the actions are still the same actions, and it would be great to have a sense of community, and that that's part of what I will say later.

But the I really wanted to lift that up as I feel that very strongly too.

Thanks.

Let's move on to the um third one implementation, where I think we'll get more color on that.

Uh does the PRC have any feedback on any changes or future steps it would make the actions more feasible to implement, and whether there are any barriers to implementation that this document should address.

So this time I'll start in the middle.

Um, Commissioner Filio.

You want to kick that out?

Right, sure.

Um, I have I had a section I wrote called challenges, and uh facing us and uh uh so number one public space availability for areas to plant more trees in native plantings, and the fact that we we know that that's always been a problem in Mountain View.

Uh we uh I gotta compliment the city on some of the land that they bought, whether it be like on San Rafael or that area over Montaloma, that we look to people that might be wanting to level our house or whatever and and earn some money, and then we we take those properties and and uh the corner calderon and and uh in church street, things like that, where how can we continue to uh acquire, but that is a challenge.

Um, number two, selecting the appropriate trees, native plantings when increasing canopy and native plantings.

Um I've talked about this before.

I hope you you guys are bored by it, but street trees to check all the boxes.

They have to have canopy, they've got to be native, they've got to be drought tolerant, they can't litter because the bicep near a bicycle lane or I on the street, in other words, those acorns that may fall or those those little uh things that come off the the liquid ambers, I think it is the female liquid ambers.

Um and uh and and you know, that's that's a challenge, you know, finding the appropriate uh street trees, or and I forgot they don't raise the sidewalk, which Russell, you've already talked about as well from the root, you know, overall growth of the roots, like magnolias do, although magnolies I know are common there, but uh anyway.

Um choosing pollinators that might minimize allergy situations for for our citizens.

Uh, we did get in the all got an email with regard, I think we all got it.

I you know, and it was a valid point.

Um, I do think that most of those trees exist right now, it's just a matter of whether they are put in areas that cause further anks for people, but just a challenge on how we might manage that.

Um, see I put while the it is actually a quote from the while the plan focuses on enhancing biodiversity and the urban force in mountain view for people and nature, its implementation must consider competing priorities and constraints.

Mountain view, and then I just put mountain view must balance housing demand and other development priorities with this biodiversity and urban forestry goals.

Uh the plan does offer some strategies to strengthen urban ecological uh ecological health along other objectives, but still what's facing city council, it's facing a lot of our cities with regards to uh state uh regulations with regards to housing is going to be a challenge with regards to how we go forward.

Funding, funding's always going to be an issue.

Uh, however, I really like the suggestions with regards to combining with the Santa Clara uh County Urban Forest Master Plan, which could offer dollars for us uh with regard in in a partnership with regards to moving forward.

Um I kind of hit on it earlier, public buy-in.

Um, you know, how do we get people?

Well, first of all, I want to compliment uh Commissioner Summer on what she talked about what I call catching people doing good, in other words, highlighting people that have done a wonderful job, maybe re removing lawn and putting in, you know, uh reverting back to some of the ideas we had when we had major drought.

Uh, when I was first on the commission back in the 90s, we had a huge drought, and you know, basically we couldn't we didn't have any water to water our lawns, you know.

What were we gonna do?

And some ideas came out from the city with regards to um you know plantings and such that that would still make your house look good but not use water as much as you had to if you had a lawn.

And uh, you know, I think incentive programs, uh things like that, and and catching, you know, you already catching people good and and you know, highlighting them in some way, maybe an award, you know.

I don't know, give them a Hershey kiss, I don't know, something like that.

But uh, you know what I did in my classroom, right?

And so uh things like that that we have to sell the public on to want to buy into doing the same thing that we want to do with the city.

We you know, as we say in the report, we can do what we want in this the cities.

How do we get the others to follow us, you know, with regards to on private property?

Um I said how is the best way to incentivize or the buy-in interest and such.

And uh that's that's what I see as our challenges moving forward, and and so I'll kind of leave it at that and uh let the others talk as well.

Thank you.

Okay, so I have less comments on uh this kind of implementation question, but I still have some.

So uh it seems to me that the future steps that would make the actions more feasible to implement are really completing that actions 20.

I think 21 and 22, which is a lot more, you know, it's a target setting, it's figuring out the internal capacity.

Um, and then obviously some funding for this would make more feasible.

And then as far as barriers to implementation, one of the difficulties that I'm having, is that there isn't really um major sense of locational priorities.

So it's sort of everywhere all at once, and we all know that that's just not possible.

Um the guide A does have you know these zones, but since you can't, you know, the maps are so tiny, we could make bigger maps.

Um, we could do prototypes that look at more neighborhood scale and some key sites, maybe people that are already developing, but in any event, we don't have a sense of where to start.

So I think we need to identify a handful of pilot projects to jump start things.

I mean, might be already projects that are on the CIP but haven't really moved you know into detailed design, where you would start showing how you can implement this.

Um, and then the way that whole the guide A, the different zones, and some of them probably even overlap, but it's really hard to tell because the map's not presented as a combined um aggregate map, but you know, is there overlap?

Can you you know kind of like kill two birds with one stone?

I know that sounds like the wrong kind of metaphor.

Anyway, um, yeah, that I that I think is gonna be a big barrier to implementation is you just can't figure out where to start.

And even though we're not putting expectations really onto private property, some people will be willing to do this stuff anyway.

I certainly know the people in this room would be willing to do it on the you know, property they control, you know, personally anyway.

I mean, I've already done a lot of this in my front yard where I tore up my lawn and find a bunch of natives and you know, right?

Like people are willing to do things, so um, you know, is it more important to do the creek zones or to reoke or do the cool streets or right, like how do we decide?

So I think that is the biggest barrier to implementation is that it's so huge of a task, it really needs to be broken down a little bit.

Commissioner Mitcher, okay.

Yeah, just you obviously so um so I just um a couple of the things that I that I heard.

Um, you know, I agree with a lot of the points that were made.

I thought Commissioner Summers um point about locational priorities within the city was an interesting um comment because otherwise you're trying to boil the ocean or maybe that's all so um, metaphor.

Um I also thought the you know the the Palo Alto idea, I mean I think there was an idea about postcards went to Palo Alto residents to maybe that's a way to help, you know, sort of kick start a uh, you know, private tree inventory, um, and pretty inexpensively.

Um so getting to you know, sort of my main point on finance guy.

Um, you know, I I think sort of an elephant in the room and with this is how much it's all gonna cost, and the source of those funds, you know, both from a budget standpoint and from a workload standpoint.

Is it really feasible to have so many short-term actions?

You know, not that I don't want them, um, but just doing a quick count.

Um, the community services department is the lead department on 19 of the 25 actions, you know, is that feasible from a workload standpoint, um, to embrace fully this this plan.

Um, you know, so I was thinking that you know one interesting data point would be to know how much this full plan would cost if it were to be fully implemented.

You know, another way to look at that would be let's assume that the CSD budget can go up by percent to handle incremental work, you know, whether it's contractors or whatever, and let's say the community development and the city manager's office each get one percent bumps, then which of these 25 actions would make the cut, right?

How many and and how would they be prioritized?

Um, if you have limited resources, which which we do which we do.

You know, a lot of people here tonight are saying, hey, we can do this.

Um, there's a there's a lot here if you want to fully fully implement it.

So I to me that those were the areas of uh challenge and feasibility, Mr.

Ryan.

Yes, thank you.

So and I'll start by following up on what Commissioner Summers said.

I'm extremely fond of pilot studies, um, they they don't cost a lot, they don't require commitment forever, and you can prove a point, and uh so I think that's a very good idea.

Now I have another slide for you, Alison.

If you could up my slide, um, I I was uh that this document is is very careful in calling itself merely a resource and not prescriptive.

Uh it it I counted over 20 times where it said it's feasible.

Uh there's a lot of continue, consider, maybe.

Um the picture the the picture on the slide here, the top left one is the Paris City Hall, as it was a few years ago.

So there's this ginormous building, and then there is cement, asphalt, whatever, on top of a parking garage.

Uh the slide at the bottom left is what it looks like right now, because they decided that they want trees, and although there was a parking garage, they planted thousands of trees, and this is exactly what it looks like right now.

It has benches, it has people, it is birds, it has butterflies, and it's it's on top of a parking garage, and a little too close by is the metro station.

The bottom line is um if you ask people is it feasible to put a forest over a parking garage in the middle of a fully built up city, they would of course say no.

However, it proved uh in a matter of just a few years completely feasible.

So my main problem with the plan, and I think the main barrier to it is the postal feasibility, and the ease with which with that it would be to say no, it's not feasible, it's too difficult, we don't have the money, it can't be done.

Uh so while I like the plan, I think there is a danger of nothing much happening.

For me, the question is who makes the feasibility decision?

Who drives this plan?

Who advocates for it?

The idea of staff working together and collaborating is wonderful.

I know you have been working on it for many years.

Obviously, it's not yet at the point where it should be.

Obviously, it's a work in progress.

Uh, unless we have a person who is responsible for this plan and will advocate for it, I don't know if it will ever happen.

In the distant past, when I was in city council and we were just starting our sustainability efforts, we had a pilot program, very fond of pilot programs.

We hired a sustainability manager for six months, and then obviously things develop from there, but we started with the person responsible who would be able to pull things together to work with the different uh departments to have accountability, and I think unless we have that, we are not going to make a lot of progress.

And here comes my response again to to what uh Chair Davis said, the sense of immediacy.

It's urgent, we need to do it now.

Yes, there's lots of other priorities, yes, there isn't a lot of budget, yes, it's difficult, but we need if we're serious about this, we need a structure that is focused with a person responsible for it with the appropriate budget.

Um otherwise, a lot of what I read here is basically a lowering of expectations.

You know, it would be nice to do this, but we have a lot of other a lot of other priorities.

There's many cities in the world who are building housing, but they're also planting trees.

They're also providing spaces of refuge.

Uh when you live in a dense environment, you need a place just in green around you.

That's refuge for people, it's also refuge for birds, caterpillars, whatever.

So I I actually like the word oasis.

But my idea is that we can't not have a focus in terms of leading this.

Okay.

Yep.

Those were my thoughts.

I I'm really optimistic.

I think this is a great plan at the great start.

It sounds like we're quibbling.

Um, but you know, I think this is gonna be such a uh important thing to mount you and centers and read it.

Um I do think in terms of implementation, the biggest risk is risk aversion.

The biggest risk is being tentative.

Um, and I look forward to sending before council member Ramirez and his colleagues a set of recommendations that they can say, yeah, we're gonna we're gonna hold people accountable to this.

And I'd rather have a few um wins, a few things that we get going, uh, and not try to do everything at once, but it's we gotta um pick a few and get get rolling on it.

Um, you know, we talked, you know, you had a slide that showed you know science and then the community of hood and the the city thing right now the plan reads like a guide for good ideas for city departments to you know which is good, you know, we need that, but I think what the community's looking for are um not just the things that when the city can resolve the you know the various um competing interests might get done.

They're looking for what where's the stake in the ground?

So you I think you you get that point, you I'm not gonna belabor it.

Um, but um, yeah, I think that I think uh it's a really good uh plan and and just the and the next level is so where do we get started most quickly?

So um I hope I hope those are meaningful uh responses to your three questions.

I don't have anything more to add.

Some of my fellow commissioners might want to follow up with some uh additional thoughts, and I promised them we would allow that.

So you want to kick it off?

Sure, yeah.

So I just have a few other a few other things.

Most of them are just comments because I thought we might be spending some time sort of commenting on on things.

Um, you know, so just uh a few things in general.

I I thought having the definitions up front was was a good was a good thing.

Um I also really like the use of the visuals and the graphs and the charts um throughout the plans.

I thought those were interesting and a great way to paint the picture.

Um to Commissioner Bryant's comment.

Yeah, if we could have a couple street names on there or something like that.

I have a I have a little trick that I use for myself, but it's still hard sometimes to locate locate things, um, you know, just in reading it, seeing the difference between historical mountain view habitats and the current is is really a poignant uh it really uh, you know, and if we can replenish some of that and create and enhance um some connections, you know, it would be wonderful if we could we can get that going.

Um let's see, you know, I thought the section on and recommendations for reducing artificial lights at night was instructive and interesting, um, including the timing of peak mountain view bird uh migrations.

I I didn't know some of that information.

Um I thought it was great that uh SFEI thoroughly researched documents and policies from other jurisdictions and um included the link between those and this plan.

Um I think that was helpful.

Uh I thought the idea of incorporating native landscaping around perimeter areas of athletic fields seems like a win-win.

Um I think it would I think it would look really nice.

Um I generally uh concur with the notion of removing heritage tree protections for invasive species like palms.

Um I also agreed with many of the other heritage tree recommendations in action 13 and in guide C section three.

Um you guys probably know that off the top of your heads.

Um I also like the idea in guide C section six of having an approved list of certified arborists and some standardizations of reports and formats.

Um I do have a caveat uh reservation on that that I'll get to in a second.

Um I thought it was interesting to learn that there are international standards uh for tracking urban biodiversity performance.

Um it allows for consistency and comparison and that was interesting to know.

Um, so in guide C under precise plans, recommendation number five on page 141 suggests potentially shifting heritage tree appeals from um PRC to a board of certified arborists, and I don't know whether we're ever gonna have an opportunity or when that will be to weigh in on that again.

So I just wanted to uh give some thoughts.

Um, you know, while that board I think would have more expertise than PRC, I I do have a few concerns about shifting that um responsibility.

Um first I would note that many of the certified arborist reports we received for appeals we hear have actually been more in favor of removing heritage trees than PRC has been.

Um that's the first point.

Secondly, I'd have a small concern.

You know, this is just you know, maybe it's being overly um whatever, but that an appeals board of certified arborists, and this would also relate to the city approved list of certified arborists, might feel pressured to uphold city decisions in order to remain in good standing and stay on the list of certified arborists, and whether that was true or not, um just the perception of that amongst the the public could be an issue.

And finally, on the um on this notion, you know, as imperfect as the current process might be, and as much effort as it might be, um, this current appeals review by the PRC really feels much closer to the concept of being judged by a jury of your peers.

Um as PRC members, we all live in the community, we have property and landscaping circumstances that are similar to the applicants.

Um we've been here in many cases for decades, and um I think that that's important in the appeal process for heritage trees.

And just as a final side note on that, you know, this heritage tree section was um placed under the precise plans section of the plan, and I don't know if that's the right place for it or not.

So that's so those were my additional comments.

Mr.

Mitchner, do you feel like you've articulated ideas or didn't want to touch you up or no, that's I'm good, and yeah, because I integrated, I was able to integrate some things.

Um, you know, and if we if we come back to the vision, we can talk about that.

Uh just one thing that I forgot earlier was just my support of action 20 conducting a biodiversity and urban forest focused review of city development process to clarify various city department expectations and requirements, and it's followed up on in guide A as well on page 170 with regards to development and uh management policies.

Um, just a little side note.

I I take all the city newsletters, and the mini development department newsletter came out yesterday with your October report.

So I always go through, see hey, what's what's going on?

The number of heritage trees being cut down in that report is incredible.

I mean, incredible is not the word, it's just it's disturbing your mind and it does.

I mean, one, you know, there's a project of 35, another project of 17.

There was only one project that was one tree.

And granted, they may not be our I you know, I don't know what the trees look like or whatever, but uh, and I know that the city has, you know, they're under constraints too with regards to development.

But I'd like I I support this part of the plan wholeheartedly in the fact that I think we just have to have a better review.

Can't we have projects that find a way to save some of the trees rather than just leveling all of them?

So other than that, I'd like to say that um SFEI, know that you and our staff are on my Christmas list, and uh you guys rock.

You made my my rock list when I say that.

You guys rock.

No artificial truth, though.

No, no, no artificial truth.

I don't think I have anything else to add, I expect with the homework explainment.

So I mean, there's which homework is having you know, the the questions, but um, I mean, there's so much here, it's really an amazing plan, and it's very comprehensive.

So compliments.

Let me just tap in on that.

I mean, it was, I mean, I just want to say it was awesome to get this 10 days ahead of time.

Um, downside is the homework assignment came later.

And so I sort of started my own homework assignment before.

So when we do the strategic plan or the uh, you know, the strategic plan.

If we could sync those sync those up now, be great.

Your memo was awesome, and I wish I had had, you know, it added a lot to just reading the report.

So it it gave me some more focus.

Okay, so um, just three brief comments as for the the ordinance.

Obviously, we all saw that, although it was stuck away fairly close to the end of I I consider I hate doing uh heritage tree removal deals.

I think we all do, but we we listen to them as part of the community, and giving this task to certified arborists means taking away some of the voice of the community, and the somewhere in your action items or e goals is the concept of including the community, so we, the heritage tree board are not professional arborists, but we're a members of the community, and in that sense, our input is very important.

So cutting that off would be a problem, um, what one thing that maybe too like to do anything about it, but um if you could amplify a little in the report, the really strict connection between the health of individuals in the community and the urban forests and biodiversity, those are not contradictory, they're not in a position to each other, and you you do have the wording there about uh personal health, but and then you even mention statistics, but just just giving it a little twist where it's more visible.

Okay, I can just see somebody saying why do I care about this little chick, or why do I care about this little lizard?

I don't like lizards, but the fact that the health of individuals depends on the health of nature around them, it would be, I think, useful for the community to hear that.

Since we're using to me, this this plan is also an educational tool.

Which is why I would like the vision to be easily comprehensible.

And then I would like to see as much emphasis as possible on staff education.

And I really mean the educational planners and the education public works.

I don't think I need to educate Russell on the importance of treaties, but not everyone on city staff knows that.

And seeing housing and development as in opposition to nature and health is really a problem.

There are ways to build cities where they're green spaces.

Still with space for people.

And unless the city says that clearly, developers have no reason to build like that because it requires a little more thinking.

So, so it's it's on us to make clear what we want.

To say one more one more thing that I meant to say and didn't say.

Um we don't have very big lots, but these days in my neighborhood, I see houses being torn down, trees being taken out, and very big houses being built, covering every inch.

So depending, depending on the private sector, to provide us with canopy is a serious mistake, and we need to find spaces in the public spaces in which to plant trees because otherwise our canopies will disappear.

It is somewhat frustrating to get a full package that has been so many people have gone through it, we may not be able to make changes to it.

Um this is kind of what I as a member of the PRC had hoped.

We were going to be working together on items like the vision, for example, and not receive the packet as this is the packet, we put a lot of work into it.

We'll see who they make any changes.

I find that very frustrating and not what I expected.

The plan itself is great.

I hope we can implement it, and I think it's important that it comes to council with recommendations of how to implement, those are my gods.

Okay, thank you.

Um you'll accept input from commissioners individually if they wish to uh violate further input on vision or other.

And there is a tool on the um the project website, biodiversityenv.com.

Uh, these they're similar type of questions that we ask the PRC that the public, any of you can chime in on it's kind of a survey open-ended survey where you can provide those comments and SFAI is getting all that feedback as well, and that will be open until uh October 17th that Friday, and we did that at in um if people couldn't attend the meetings if they wanted to be able to chime in that way that they could do that.

They could read the plan online and provide their feedback, multiple ways to chime in and engage with us, okay.

Russell, what time do you get up this morning?

D AM.

Yeah, yeah, very fast.

Maybe last.

Then we need our can you throw the vision statement up there just real quick?

I'm not gonna do a wordsmithing thing, I just want to make one one quick statement since I didn't get to speak after several people suggestions.

And I'm not gonna change anything on the right there.

Yes.

Okay, word snipping.

So my my two things I'm gonna agree with Commissioner Bryan on one thing and I'm gonna agree with Commissioner Davis on on another.

The first Mountain view envisions you know it's a vision statement.

I don't know that we need to say envisions I would it's more of a of a make a stronger statement mountain view is or will be or something I would use an active a more active voice on that and then I'm I'm fine with Commissioner Davis's thing about tweaking the people and native species uh for both people I'm sorry so those are my only two thank you uh with that at uh 10 27 oh wait a minute there's a whole other I was going fast for a reason I'm sorry I'm not adjourning I am if you're closing that item I I would like to to certainly thank SFBI they have put a a lot of work into this obviously and their collaboration with staff has really been spot on so appreciate the work thank you yes the quality workshops um is there any more agenda yeah yes I'm sorry I was jumping the the closure uh as much as I appreciate that I just want to do a couple quick updates please um so allison and staff have been working to schedule some additional meetings thank you all for uh your responding to that um so the October 29th PRC date that was a uh necessary meeting for our um city attorney's office based on state law um and this is gonna be for a heritage tree appeal um and if the situation that we haven't seen before um and so in advance of that meeting you'll be receiving some information from our city attorney's office about that specific item but that's why that meeting is a special timed meeting and it's because of special circumstances that you'll be learning more about um our november 12th regular meeting we'll have a tree appeal and right now it looks like two public works projects coming before you and then uh we were asking some additional dates for a special meeting later in November um that we are going to land on that Monday november 17th date and that is going to be the review of the draft parks and recreation strategic plan and we'll be updating our websites dating tomorrow and getting information out to the community about that that's all I have and I would like to thank you all the feedback really it exceeded my expectations so thank you for being so sort of thoughtful to the time to get that it really did it was there was some really good stuff in here thank you.

Alison am I missing anything then at 10 29 I will adjourn a meeting.

Thanks everyb