Well welcome everybody. I will call this November 17th meeting of the Parks and Recreation Commission and Urban Forestry Board to order. I'd like to thank all of those here in attendance for joining us and the folks online. Thank you as well for joining us this evening.

Allison, will you take the roll call?

hall here here here here it's nice here here thank you for that our next item item three is

the minutes we actually have two sets of opinions we'll handle these uh individually um

see if there's any uh commissioner question is take public comments

see if there's any commissioner comments and then not have a motion proceed we'll start with the

uh wednesday october 29th minutes you really had uh two items on that uh meeting a heritage free

application appeal for 151 calderon and then the state drc schedule so um are there any

commissioner questions about the minutes hearing none are there any public comments related to the

october 29th minutes seeing none if there is no commissioner comment or discussion

we'll entertain a motion move to approve second second there

that was a close call i'll give that one to rodney sure

yes yes yes thanks for that our next uh minutes for our most recent meeting november 12th

12th, where we heard about the Salem Lake Habitat Island alternative analysis, the water

reservoir pump station at Charleston Park, and the solar arrays at several facilities.

Are there any comments to the November 12th minutes?

So I do have a comment if we're at the comment stage.

We are.

Okay.

I was, I want to just express my discomfort with these minutes because the PRC had a serious

discussion about the Charleston part.

And looking at the minutes, there is no way for anyone who was not present to know what

we talked about.

And so if it comes to counsel, if we had jumped up and down and said, this is wonderful, or

if we had said, as we said, this is not really what we expected.

And there are some serious problems with this.

There's no way to tell.

So this isn't the time to figure out how to fix this, but I just want to express my discomfort

with what these minutes look like.

Yeah, they would have to watch the recording, wouldn't they?

Which is not really likely.

So at some stage, I would like the PRC to talk about this more fully.

Thank you.

Yeah, sort of made that comment myself for just the capturing of significant comment.

Any other commissioner comments?

Notwithstanding those, would anybody care to make a motion?

So moved to the public.

I'll go back and see if there are any public inputs on the November 12th minutes.

in line with a hand up nope thank you for the process check but i think we're okay and we'll

entertain a motion i'll move second

bryant yes mr summer yes yes yes

okay um next uh we have oral communications from the public

if anyone in attendance would like to provide public comments on an item that is not on the

agenda uh so it's funny to do that

speakers will be limited to three minutes and state law of divots the commission is acting on

non-agenda items but are there any comments for non-agenda items

move him to the room but simply jumping after this anybody online wish to make a comment on a

non-agenda item okay

uh with that we'll we'll uh move on to our key item this evening

Item 5.1, Parks and Recreation Strategic Plan.

First of all, I would like to say congratulations.

This is a milestone moment.

I think one that we've anxiously awaited

and look forward to discussing.

You know, I will say thank you in advance

for receiving the many comments that I'm sure are for you.

I know a key word throughout the document was inclusiveness and inclusivity.

And I think that applies not just to park use, but to contributions to the planning process.

So I'm sure there will be a lot of inclusiveness.

And I just want to thank you in advance for being receptive to hearing the comments that are to come.

So we will have a staff presentation and then the commissioners will ask questions if they have any.

We'll open it up to public comment and then the commission will comment and discuss.

And I think we're just providing input on this so there won't be any potions or resolutions.

So with that, I'm pleased to introduce Christine Fosby, Assistant Community Services Director, who will leave a discussion here.

All right, thank you Chair Davis for that introduction.

Good evening Chair, Vice Chair, Commissioners, as well as the number of members of our community that are here tonight.

My name is Christine Crosby, Assistant Community Services Director and Lead for the Parks and Recreation Strategic Plan.

I am pleased to present the draft plan tonight.

This draft reflects more than two years of community engagement, technical analysis,

and staff collaboration across not just our department, but various departments within the city.

Tonight is an opportunity to walk through the key components of the draft and gather your input to help us refine and strengthen the final version.

And before I begin my presentation, I'd like to acknowledge the work of my colleagues on the draft plan.

Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour-Rambert, Community Services Director John Marchant,

Assistant Community Services Director Brenda Sylvia, Parks and Open Space Manager Tim Youngberg,

recreation manager Colin James, shoreline manager Brady Rubish, senior management analyst

Lindsey Wong, and many more from the other department from public works, community development,

information technology, finance and administrative services, and the city manager's office.

Take the village, right? Additionally, joining us virtually tonight is Nile Vat, co-founder and

president of Next Practice Partners, the city's consultant for this project, as well as Diksha

Rwatt, Associate in Urban Designer, and John Gibbs, Principal in Landscape Architect from WRT,

who also assisted with the plan. Tonight we'll review the draft of the strategic plan, walk

through its major components, and discuss areas where your feedback can help refine the final

version, such as the accuracy and completeness of the plan, the vision goals and strategies,

and the action plan. Again, your input will ensure the plan is aligned with Mountain View's needs

today and over the next 10 years and i must reiterate this is the first public draft of the

plan we are very much welcome to feedback and will continue to revise the draft throughout the process

until we achieve plan adoption a bit of background helps explain why this planning effort is both

timely and necessary our last major guiding documents the 2014 parks and open space plan

and the 2008 recreation plan are outdated and are no longer and no longer reflect our community's

growth or current needs since then mountain view has experienced population growth changes in

school field access and major shifts from the pandemic and how people use parks and public

spaces additionally developing this plan is a city council priority project and aligns closely with

related city-wide efforts such as the housing element and the biodiversity urban forest plan

The strategic plan responds directly to the community's strong call for parks, open space, and recreation to remain essential to Mountain View's quality of life.

It allows us to take a comprehensive look at current conditions across parks, trails, open spaces, and recreation programs.

It also helps us understand how access varies from neighborhood to neighborhood, including factors like proximity, ease of travel, amenity, availability, and condition.

Looking forward, the plan helps us anticipate future growth, set priorities for investment,

identify funding needs and strategies, and establish a clear system for measurement and accountability.

The strategic plan is grounded in several key factors.

It begins with extensive community input, which helped us understand what residents value most,

what needs important improvements, excuse me, and where gaps in access or amenities exist.

We paired that with the deep knowledge and observations of our city staff who have first-hand

insight into program demand, facility usage, and emerging needs across the system.

The plan also draws from a series of in-depth assessments, including the Recreation Program

Assessment, our Operational Assessment, Park Assessment, and a Level of Service Analysis.

These assessments were supported by measurements and GIS analysis to provide an accurate picture

of the system today.

Alongside that technical work, we developed cost ranges for park acquisition, design, construction, and reinvestment,

so we could realistically understand the financial implications of both maintaining and expanding the park system.

We then evaluated existing and potential funding strategies to determine what tools the city may need to support long-term implementation.

Another key factor involved rethinking how we calculate park and open space acreage,

with a focus on what is actually accessible to the public.

This includes city-owned parks, adjusted acreage for joint-use school fields,

and the publicly accessible portions of Shoreline.

And finally, we reviewed national best practices from organizations

such as the National Recreation and Park Association,

the California Park and Recreation Society, and the Trust for Public Land,

as well as broader recreation trends informed by tools like the Market Potential Index.

These national references provided helpful context about what's happening across the country, but they served only as a reference point.

The recommendations in this plan are ultimately based on Mountain View's local data, community input, and system needs.

This strategic plan reflects a two-year development process rather than the original anticipated 18 months.

As described in the staff report, the schedule was extended due to several factors.

These included additional meetings with the PRC to gather input at important milestones, a longer community engagement phase to ensure broad and diverse participation, and a two-month delay in launching the statistically reliable survey to avoid the holiday season, which then pushed subsequent outreach and analysis tasks.

We also dedicated a significant time to verifying and recalculating existing park acreage, which required extensive cross-department collaboration and the creation of new GIS data sets.

Although these items added time to the project, they greatly strengthened the accuracy and reliability of the plan's foundation.

From 2024 and into 2025, much of the work focused on a more qualitative phase.

This phase also incorporated a cross-departmental review of the draft plan with multiple departments to refine the recommendation and ensure that they align with broader city efforts.

Overall, the extended timeline allowed us to build a more thoughtful, accurate, and tailored draft plan, one that reflects Mountain View's needs, values, and long-term vision.

We have a strong level of engagement throughout the process, which really demonstrates how

much Mountain View community values its parks, open space, and recreation programs.

In total, we engaged more than 3,200 community members throughout the various input opportunities.

Additionally, all surveys, public meetings, and two stakeholder meetings were available

in multiple languages to ensure broad and inclusive participation.

As I mentioned, we did come to the PRC four times at specific milestones.

The first was in September 2023, where commissioners shared feedback on the city's strength, opportunities, and top priorities for the plan.

We returned in December 2023.

We presented initial findings from the park and program assessments and an overview of the statistically reliable community survey.

In July 2024, we shared key findings from the public input process as well as updates to the park and program assessments.

and the final last meeting that we came to the prc was in march 2025

when we reviewed the draft level of service analysis and received input specifically on

how school fields and accessible portions of shoreline mountain view should be calculated in

the plan overall the depth and the quality of engagement both in the community and from this

commission strongly shaped the draft plan and ensured it reflects mountain views values priorities

and long-term needs. Several themes emerge consistently, such as residents strongly

expressing the need to expand park land, particularly in certain planning areas. There

was broad support for improving aging infrastructure and park amenities and a clear desire for

more biodiverse landscaping, tree planting, and environmentally sustainable features.

Residents also prioritize public restrooms, sports courts and fields, dog parks, shade

structures and skate or bike amenities. On the recreation side, there is a need for expanded

fitness, wellness, and social programs for adults and older adults. And across all engagement,

the community emphasized its appreciation for the city's well-maintained parks and the wide

range of programs that are available. Transitioning from community input, I'd like to talk about the

park acreage by planning area. Historically, the city calculated park acreage by counting all city

own parks, school fields, and open spaces, and then reporting acres per 1,000 residents, both

with and without the North Bay Shore Planning Area. Through the engagement process, we heard

clear feedback that not all of Shoreline is publicly accessible, and that school fields are

not available to the community at all times. In response, we analyzed actual accessibility and

reduced the acreage accordingly, adjusting school field acreage based on the hours the public can

access them and including only the publicly accessible portions of Shoreline.

For school fields, staff reviewed hours of availability throughout the year, accounting

for daylight savings and standard time, as well as before and after school hours and

weekends and non-school day use.

Using this information, we reduced the acreage to more accurately reflect when the school

sites are available to the community, which equated to a reduction of 35 to 43 percent

depending on the school site.

With the previous method, the citywide acres for 1,000 residents was 13.43 acres, including the North Bay Shore Planning Area, and 2.66 acres without the North Bay Shore Planning Area.

After revising the methodology to better reflect the public access and reporting just a citywide figure, that figure is 4.74 acres for 1,000 residents.

We've also heard feedback that even this may still count school fields too heavily,

that before school hours should not be included, and that trail segments should be assigned

to the planning areas they traveled through rather than grouped in the North Bay Shore

planning area.

We also heard suggestions that shoreline acreage not be counted at all.

These perspectives will be considered as we refine the methodology in the final plan.

also important to remember that Mountain View has different types of parks. Regional, community,

neighborhood, and many parks. And each type serves different needs of our community. The experience

and the usefulness of a park can also vary based on its size, surrounding neighborhood, and barriers

like major roadways. This park acreage analysis helps us understand where access is more limited

across planning areas and where new parks or expansions would make the greatest difference.

overall this revised approach provides a more accurate and transparent picture of how much parkland

is truly available to community in each planning area and it guides where we should focus on

improvements and park expansion over the next 10 years as far as the key findings from the plan

several strengths stand out with our system over the past decade the city has made significant

investment in expanding and improving public spaces since the adoption of the 2014 parks and

open space plan. We have opened eight new parks, extended the trail system, and delivered major

new facilities, including Shoreline Athletic Fields, the Renovated Community Center, Magical

Bridge Playground, and a newly opened Ranksburg Park Athletic Center. The city continues to

maintain its parks at an exceptionally high standard, and that is a direct reflection of

the expertise, dedication, and pride of our parks and open space south. Their daily work, everything

from land sweeping and irrigation to playground inspections, trail care, and facility upkeep

consistently delivers the clean, safe, and welcoming parks that the community values so highly.

On the recreation side, we've also seen tremendous growth, especially since COVID.

Our programs have expanded significantly and staff successfully pivoted our core offerings

to respond to new community needs.

That adaptability and willingness to reimagine services has been a major strength and reflects

the dedication and creativity of our team. As a result, recreation participation has increased by

28% over the last three years, and community events have grown by 31%. Across all the engagement

we conducted, we consistently heard appreciation for the quality of our parks, facilities, programs,

and events, and these strengths form a solid foundation for the next decade of improvements

and guide how we will build on what is already working well. On the flip side, there are several

opportunities for improvements that emerged through this process.

The most significant is the need to add parks in the planning areas with the lowest acreage

and limited access.

We also need to modernize and redesign several of our older parks to meet current expectations

around design, accessibility, and functionality.

We heard strong community interest in continuing to expand programming for adults and older

adults and internally strengthening staff capacity and succession planning will be essential to

maintain high quality services as our system grows. And in summary what we're seeing is that

while recreation remains a strong point for Mountain View there are some policy adjustments

we can make such as clarifying access to fields and reviewing program fee structures but not

surprisingly the overarching opportunity and the core focus of this plan is really about expanding

and enhancing our park system.

To guide future investments, the plan recommends categorizing park projects within a three-tier

framework.

These tiers are not listed in priority order.

Instead, they serve as three buckets that help us categorize different levels of park

projects based on the cost, complexity, and volume of work involved.

Tier A captures repairs and updates.

Projects focus on bringing older parks and amenities up to a consistent baseline.

Tier B includes more strategic improvements, such as redesigns that enhance layout, accessibility, and usability.

And Tier C represents most significant investments, new neighborhood parks and park expansions, which typically require land acquisition or major partnerships.

We've received feedback about the naming and whether calling them tiers implies prioritization.

prioritization. That's a fair point. And we'll evaluate alternative naming options in the

final plan so the intent is there. As you'll see on our next slide, the most significant

opportunity for Mountain View, and therefore a major focus of the plan, is in what we currently

call Tier C, adding new neighborhood parks in our most park-deficient planning areas.

Based on the updated acreage analysis, our focus over the next 10 years is on the planning areas

that fall below 1.5 acres of parkland per 1,000 residents.

These include Steerland, particularly the Terra Bella and Rex Manor neighborhoods,

Thompson, especially Monoloma neighborhood,

as well as Ranksor, Central, and Wiseman planning areas.

These planning areas have the greatest need for new neighborhood parks,

and this becomes a primary lens for directing our efforts.

At the same time, the plan acknowledges that other types of facilities,

such as community parks, mini parks, and opportunities for indoor sports complexes

continue to play an important role in the city's overall system.

These aren't the primary focus of the 10-year window,

but they remain important categories to think about when expansion opportunities arise

through redevelopment, partnerships, or land acquisition.

There are many ways to evaluate our park system,

and the plan includes a wide range of data points,

including comparisons to the 2014 Parks and Open Space Plan.

But we also know we can't do everything within a single decade, and we need to be realistic

about what's achievable.

This focus on planning areas below 1.5 acres per 1,000 residents provides staff with a clear

data-driven lens for prioritization, while still allowing us to remain flexible and opportunistic

when other types of park or facility expansion opportunities present themselves.

In addition to new parks, the plan also focuses on tiers A and B, repairing and updating existing

parks and implementing strategic improvements that enhance functionality and environmental

sustainability.

We also highlight key system-wide amenities, restrooms, shade, sports fields and courts,

dog parks and skate or bike features that could be integrated across the system.

This approach balances reinvestment with thoughtful expansion.

Let's look at the draft vision and values that form the foundation of the strategic

plan. These were shaped by reflecting on everything we learned through the community engagement

process, the technical assessments, and extensive input from staff and partner departments.

That reflection helped clarify what matters most to the community and what kind of parks and

recreation systems we want to build over the next 10 decades, or the next decades, not 10 decades,

for the next decade. As part of this work, our department, the community services department,

developed a new mission statement,

building community, enriching lives.

It's a concise statement that reflects our authentic commitment

to serving the community in meaningful and impactful ways.

Grounded in that mission,

the draft vision describes the future we're striving for.

A vibrant, inclusive, and sustainable community

where accessible parks, open spaces,

and recreation opportunities

inspire connection, well-being,

and stewardship for generations to come.

This vision reflects the priorities we heard throughout the planning process, access, inclusion,

environmental resilience, and the importance of fostering community connection.

The accompanying values, inclusion, future focus, collaboration, stewardship, and quality

represent how we approach our work and how we make decisions.

They reflect the department's commitment to serving all members of the community, planning

for the long term, working collaboratively, caring for our public spaces responsibly,

and delivering high-quality programs and facilities.

Together, the mission, vision, and values form the foundation of the strategic plan

and guide the goals, strategies, and actions that follow.

As noted in the plan, it is structured around four goals.

Goal one focuses on equitable access to parks, trails, and open spaces.

Goal 2 focuses on inclusive and responsive recreation programs.

Goal 3 focuses on organizational capacity, staff culture, and maintenance practices.

And Goal 4 focuses on long-term funding strategies and strengthening community engagement.

These goals create a clear foundation for the strategies in the action plan.

The strategies on the screen outline the key directions that support Goal 1 and 2.

I won't read them word for word, but they include improving connections to parks and trails, diversifying amenities to reflect community values and trends, promoting environmental resilience, and expanding inclusive programs for diverse community needs.

The remaining strategies support goals three and four.

They focus on strengthening staff capacity and creating a future-ready workforce, enhancing preventative maintenance practices, diversifying and strengthening revenue sources, and improving storytelling and community engagement.

The draft action plan includes 38 action items separated by each goal and strategy.

The community's priorities are clear.

People want continued investment in parks, trails, and open space.

And as a result, most of the action items and plans focus on those areas, along with

funding actions needed to support them.

Our recreation programs are already strong and well-liked, so the major areas of work

over the next decade on improving or on improving and expanding the park system.

The action plan framework is designed to make the plan implementable by clearly identifying

what the action is, when it should occur, which department is responsible for leading

it, and the relative cost to implement.

Each action is categorized as immediate, short-term, medium-term, or long-term, which helps us

sequence work realistically and align it with staffing capacity, CIP planning, and budget

cycles.

The action plan also includes an action type, which indicates whether an item is ongoing work we are already doing, an enhancement that would improve or expand, or an initiative that would be new for us and or require a significant level of effort to accomplish.

That distinction helps set expectations about the level of change, staff time, and resources involved for each action.

As we move into the discussion phase tonight, we are asking for your input on any action items the Commission would like to see modified or added.

If it's helpful, at that point, I can bring up the detailed action plan slide later as we discuss to walk through any specific actions you'd like to revisit.

But before we get there, what you see here illustrates the magnitude of costs associated with park improvements and developments.

The tiers that we discussed earlier reflect the comparative level of investment required.

Tier A repairs are generally lower cost.

Tier B strategic improvements require moderate investment.

And Tier C projects such as new parks or major expansions carry the highest cost.

You can see that comparison here where each level is shown relative to the cost of developing a 5-acre neighborhood park.

implementing many of the actions in the plan especially new parks and larger

renovations will require significant financial resources the City Council has

already identified the exploration of a revenue measure in the fiscal year 20

25 27 work plan which aligns closely with the types of capital needs

highlighted in this plan this slide helps set the stage for the funding

strategies that follow the plan outlines several funding strategies which I

already mentioned just now, which is pursuing a 2026 revenue measure to focus on capital costs,

completing a Nexus study to update development fees and implementing the recommendations from

the study, expanding sponsorships and grant funding, and building strategic partnerships.

In addition to these larger strategies, there are other opportunities that may not be as

substantive individually, but still contribute to a stronger funding foundation. These could

include updates to our fee structures or exploring the addition of capital reserve fees for

facility reservations to help support future improvements.

The plan includes 10 performance metrics that help us track progress over time.

These metrics focus on system-level outcomes and are listed on the slide.

It's important to note that in strategic planning, it's more effective to align many actions with a

smaller set of high-level performance metrics, rather than creating a one-to-one metric for every action.

individual actions can be tactical may change over time or may be completed once while performance

metrics need to remain stable measurable and meaningful over the span of the plan

by focusing on a concise set of system level metrics the city can track the overall impact

impact of the plan not just whether individual tasks were completed even without metrics for

each individual action the community will still be able to monitor progress through the plan's

annual reporting framework and public dashboard that we'll be creating. We will publish updates

showing the status of every action, key milestones, and major deliverables. Together, this action-level

reporting and the higher-level performance metrics provide transparency and accountability,

allowing residents to see both the progress on specific actions and how these efforts

collectively advance the city's goal. Following tonight's meeting, we will update the draft plan

to incorporate the feedback we received from the commission and the public the next draft will then

go to the city council for a study session in january 2026 where we will receive their direction

incorporate their feedback as well as well as additional community input provided at that time

as part of each round of public public review we will update the draft to reflect the input received

and this iterative approach ensures the plan continues to evolve and reflect the priorities

and values of the people who use and care about our parks and recreation system the current draft

remains available for public review through november 30th at the project website imagine

and the parks.com and we encourage the community to continue submitting comments we will return to

the prc in march tvd on date and then back to city council in may 2026 for plan adoption

within the staff report and on the screen tonight we have provided three questions for the prc to

provide feedback on we are also interested in any other feedback commissioners have that may

not fall within these questions and it brings me to the end thank you again for your time

you're coming to work with engagement in a minute and your thoughtful review of the draft plan we

to hearing your feedback as well as the members of the public and as i mentioned here at the

project website for anyone that's in the audience or online that would like to visit the website

that concludes my presentation and staff as well with me like each and john are available to answer

any questions thank you very much assistant director of trusty that was a great presentation

and now we'll take commissioner questions

and we'll open up public comments.

So, Commissioner's questions.

Commissioner.

Commissioner.

Sure.

So I have a number of questions

and I ask more than this in advance

and I appreciate the responses.

A couple of them I'm going to ask again tonight

both for my own clarification

and also for the public to be able to hear the response.

So one of the questions I asked in advance, and I wanted to ask it again during the meeting,

the plan has multiple mentions of a connected trail system or a connected park system,

both in the resident input and in the body of the plan.

Can you describe what that would actually look like in Mountain View?

And if possible, to sort of create a clearer picture,

Or could you give a specific sort of park-to-park or park-to-school example of what we really mean by connected?

Yes, thank you for the question.

So I was thinking about this after responding to the written question and trying to think of an existing example within Mountain View to paint a picture.

and one that came to mind was we have three parks within a very close radius that also has a

pathway or trail that connects them. That would be Chetwood, Magnolia,

connecting to Pyramid Park, which is one of our newer larger parks. That is a great example of

providing a safe pedestrian access and connecting parks. Through the public input process, though,

we did hear very strongly of creating this citywide network and connection between our parks and our

trails and associated with creating greenways so that as you're walking from one destination to

another that you have panics, you have shade, you have biodiversity, you can walk safely if you need

that. And so that was something that we heard very strongly through the plan process.

Yeah, okay, great. I mean, and that's exciting to me, if we can create something like that.

Absolutely.

I think that's the goal. You know, I just had this idea that someday maybe we could have a

park crawl, sort of like a pub crawl, where families or whenever could highlight and introduce

people to parks in seconds of the town. So another question. So I was out visiting a number of parks

this past week. Where would a visitor to Crittenden Hill be instructed to park their car or their

bike? The RV park there, the RV lot said authorized vehicles only. So

how would our general population use that part i'll take that question john marshall community

services director um we'll have to go look at signage but one place you can park is on the far

side of what we would call um lot b which is part of behind uh fire station the fire station there

THE CORNER THE OPPORTUNITY IS TO PARK WITHIN THE KITE LOT OF SHORE LINE AND THEN MAKE YOUR WAY OVER TO

CREATING INVILLE FROM THAT. YEAH I MEAN I TRIED TO COME IN THROUGH THE RV LOT AND

SO ANOTHER QUESTION I ASKED IN ADVANCE BUT I WANTED TO UNDERSTAND A BIT BETTER

HOW WILL THE ANTICIPATED THREE MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR ALLOCATION TO THE PARKS AND OPEN SPACE

from measure g which is the property transfer tax um how will that be held and allocated to projects

will the funds be designated for capital improvements as opposed to operating expenses

and for transparency will there then be some reporting mechanism for seeing how those funds

are received and appropriated um for example some kind of an annual prc update or something like that

I think that's a great question. As mentioned in the response, the city has not received any Measure G funds as of yet.

We will be taking the funding and appropriating to projects that may not have access to park land and move fees.

What's nice about the Measure G funding is it's not restricted geographically or by park planning areas,

So it does give us the flexibility to apply it to the capital projects that are needed.

And you did bring up a very good point about communicating out how projects are funded.

And that's something as part of our storytelling that we want to do better at.

We want to, as we're, you know, posting a project that we are really promoting and sharing with the community what is funding it.

And that the community support, for example, through Measure D, help fund this project.

And so that will be, you know, something that we'll be looking at doing.

Okay. Yeah.

Because right now, you know, occasionally we get to see the spreadsheet of capital, you know, that's allocated.

And so we can see what's going where and how much money is available.

And I would hope that for that bucket of money,

there's a similar parallel process where we can see it

and track it.

Another one I asked in advance, but I

want to re-ask here for clarity.

With regard to action 1.2.4, it's

going to be interesting as we call on certain actions.

I can see where this might be long-term as a collective group, but it seems like a few of the amenities, for example, fitness equipment, shade structures, restrooms, free canopy, could be shorter term and less expensive.

So I'm wondering, you know, how does the strategic plan handle cases like that where not all components of an action fall under the same time horizon or cost, though they may collectively?

You know, I do see some TRA type updates related to shade structures and tree canopy.

They're listed in actions 1.3.1 and 1.3.2.

And those are immediate and short term.

And I guess the other part of this, you know, is this should some of these smaller TRA amenities for specific parks get pulled out and be part of their own unique actions?

Yeah, fair question.

And thank you for it.

So to address the of why it is categorized as long term is that we didn't we don't know exactly when certain projects are going to take place.

And so this gives us the flexibility that as projects are designed to incorporate these amenities if the site allows it.

And based off of community feedback, because of course, every new park design would still go through the community design process.

um the wonderful thing about us doing annual reporting on this that we'll be able to

note with each of these action items what has been accomplished to date and so at those annual

reporting you'll learn whether we were able to incorporate um a shade structure into a park or

if we added additional tree canopy or biodiverse landscaping and where, and we can give those

updates as we move along.

My idea is that we would, by 10 years, made some significant effort in those areas.

I do hear you, though, that there are some overlapping action items specifically around

biodiversity and shade.

So that is something that we as staff can look at to refine for the next draft so that we're not duplicating efforts with action items.

For action 4.1.1.

Thank you.

4.1.1.

Yeah. So if the idea is getting a revenue measure on the 2026 ballot, should the time frame on that action be immediate rather than short term?

I do agree with you on that. I believe, as I reviewed one of the questions, I happened to look at that and went, why do I put that on short term?

So I will, we'll take a look at that and probably update that.

Okay. And then just, you know, for action 4.1.7, I was just wondering what are the elements that go, you know, this is exploring the feasibility of establishing a nonprofit.

And I was just wondering, what are the elements that go into that that make it long term, 10 years from now?

Just exploring the feasibility of establishing a nonprofit.

That's a great question.

The reason why we put it out at long term was to give us an opportunity to focus on the action items related to funding strategies that might have a bigger impact.

I have never personally set up a foundation before, so I actually don't know what it would take.

And so we'd have to do some research.

We need to talk with colleagues and other agencies, learn from their experience, and then determine if that's the direction that the city wants to go into.

but this action item does have us commit to exploring it and researching it which is again

an area that we're not very familiar with okay and then just for clarity for my colleagues i

i i'm gonna have other questions later on and and and opinions on some of the actions but i

differentiated this as a as a question as opposed to yeah if you don't mind pausing for one second

I do see that Neelay Bhatt has his hand raised.

Hi, Neelay.

Hello.

Good evening, everyone.

Hi.

Can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Brilliant.

I wanted to just add to your response, Christine, on the, especially the nonprofit side as well.

One of the sources that we've discussed and would encourage staff to explore as well is the National Association of Park Foundations.

and they essentially help similar agencies evaluate the pros and cons and the benefits of

really going forward with that. And if they do, what would some recommended practices look like?

So there are a number of friends groups. There is a foundation. In some cases,

they may not be very active. In other cases, they may really need to be established.

And so when we talk of evaluating the feasibility, that's the kind of national resource that would

be the most beneficial to potentially explore going down that direction.

Thank you, Neelay.

And then just my last question for now is just, you know, I had been one of the people,

I don't know if there were others that had asked the question in advance about the reasoning

behind, you know, not having a unique corresponding metric to attach to each action and how the

community be able to view and assess progress on actions without a metric.

and um i felt that your response that you also mentioned tonight that the city would plan to

publish annual updates showing the status of every action that alleviated the concern for me and i'm

glad that that's the plan wonderful thank you yeah i recently saw our colleagues in another

department do that with one of their plans with presenting and sharing an update um so there's

!

I thought that's a great idea to incorporate with this and continues the dialogue as well

as sharing where we are with the various action items.

Thank you.

Thanks.

No questions?

I just had one quick one.

It was based on an email we all received from Serge Bonte with regards to why McKelvey

and Schaefer were considered one park when they're basically different uses in the back.

There's baseball fields being attached to a little mini park, basically.

And so I just was wondering, should they be treated separately because they're separate uses?

Yes. Thank you for that question and for sharing that.

It will give us something to consider and to look back on and reflect if we would like to continue to keep them listed as separate as they are or to keep them together as they are or separate them.

I do want to just note for, I guess, in response to the community question, as well as others I proceed, there is, we are as staff looking at how we can utilize McKelvey more.

We're going to be looking at exploring if there is an opportunity to provide soccer on that field, on the graph area specifically.

It has been very well maintained since we've opened it.

The team takes great pride in the work that they do at that site.

It has been a great place for our youth to play baseball, but could we expand the youth so that it is getting more exposure?

So that is something outside of this plan process that we're already exploring and looking to see how we can implement.

Thank you.

It's all in it.

Okay.

Thank you.

I got a three category of questions.

The first one was about the plan timeframe.

One place the plan says 10 years and other places it says 10 to 15.

And then at the very end, it talks about kind of the refresh process

and when it would start.

So can you talk a little bit more about what the anticipated time

spans for the plan is and then also the whole process of,

you know, keeping it dynamically alive and also the eventual need for a complete revision at the end.

Absolutely. Thank you for the question. So yes, the plan is intended to be a 10 to 15 year,

but at the 10 year mark is when we will be doing the major review and update of it.

Because as you know, a lot can change in 10 years.

New trends may emerge.

We may have made significant accomplishments on action items or maybe, you know, the, you

know, economic, you know, status changes and we have some trouble with that.

And so at that 10 year mark, we'll be able to revisit, see what we've been able to accomplish

and start this process again.

I'm so excited.

Thank you.

But it'll be an opportunity to do community input, see how the community is feeling, what

the priorities are at that time, and work on developing it.

So that 10, 15, that five-year timeframe kind of gives us that opportunity to develop the

next plan for the next 10 years.

Okay.

Very good.

Thank you.

But I, my next area of questions has to do with the inventory.

And I won't make my comments about that till later, but I do have a couple of questions.

So the first relates to Cuesta annex.

So is it included in the community park acreage?

I think it's 38 acres.

Correct.

It is included in the Cuesta Park acreage.

Okay, and do we know how much acreage is actually just the Cuesta Annex?

The park itself is 25.14 acres, and then the Annex is 12.67.

Okay. Cool.

And then...

where do well i guess that's a little category but

where do those charleston park improvements that we talked about last week fit into this whole plan

that's a great question it's already a capital improvement

budget for next year or this two-year period

I believe so. So the city has a variety of projects that are currently underway with park projects, for example, or a project like that, the Reservoir One. Those are not included because they're already advancing. But let's say if that was a brand new project, that might fall in the Tier B category because it's a strategic improvement and more than just a life for life replacement.

And that would be short term.

Oh, as if it was like an added as an action item to complete that project.

It would probably be a short term three to five years.

Does that sound about right?

Yeah.

So how would you account in the plan for these things that are kind of already underway?

Bonus.

That's a very good question.

Because I mean, it does take staff capacity and you've already kind of programmed that

And that's going to sort of delay some of these newer things that are in the plan.

So it may or it may not.

I think what I should have answered this on your previous question.

I apologize for not stating this.

What is helpful for us as staff is that once the plan is adopted, if new actions emerge

that would align with the strategies that are outlined within the plan, we as staff

could add it to the action plan.

That allows us to be responsive to emerging trends and be able to adapt that.

But you're right, we do have a lot of projects that are currently underway or that have been scheduled.

And the ones that have not started would fall under the Tier A, Tier B, Tier C that's mentioned in here.

So there are things happening at Charleston Park that would fall in some of the action items.

We haven't identified them yet, but once we do, we'll be able to plug them in.

That might mean something that we said was long-term is happening sooner than later, but that's just a positive outcome.

Right. So something like a new park, like Villa Park, I mean, the land is secured.

You know, it's still a new park, though.

Correct. So let's say that a new development is coming online that haven't yet,

and the developer is planning on dedicating land as part of that.

That is an opportunity for us to develop and create a new park.

Our priority is still going to be for neighborhood parks.

So it's acquiring the land for anything that's between one and five acres and then developing it.

But yeah, if something comes along, we'd like to continue to still be opportunistic and be able to respond to that, be able to add to our inventory.

Okay, great.

And then, so in the section 5, 5.3.3, there's a nice block of thing that's called key recommendations.

And those are described as a strategic framework to guide the planning, design, and development of existing and future.

So how would you envision using those key recommendations going forward?

5.3.3.

5.3.3.

It's in the LOS amount.

Yeah.

Get there and then.

Find them?

I'm kind of asking this question for a reason.

Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you.

Sorry, I didn't write down that page of design.

Commissioner Summer, sorry, while I was flipping pages, I lost track of what was the question.

Would you mind?

So how will they be going forward, the recommendations?

Sure.

Very great question.

So thank you for that.

And it's going to allow me to flip to the pages.

The key recommendations related to park guidelines will allow us a good starting point when we enter design phases for new parks, as well as if we're looking at redeveloping a section of a.

The goal is to reflect on the information that is in here, whether it's looking at how to place park amenities or the type of biodiversity, which we would then refer to biodiversity in urban forest and for specifics.

but this helps guide the design process for us with giving us good starting points and things

to think about as we're designing parts. However, I will have little asterisks added that as we

enter park design processes, we really design the park based off of the community input at that time

for that park, but we will be using this information to help guide that design process.

Typically, we start off with an idea to have the community react to and share what they

like, what they don't like.

And part of that is incorporating the guidelines as well as the amenities and such, depending

on the site, if it makes sense.

So I should have given you this question earlier so you could have time to think about it.

But I think what you were just talking about was 5.6 guidelines for new parts.

But there's a section that precedes it that seems to be kind of the synopsis of kind of the whole analysis boiled into some good, concise sentences.

Thank you for pointing that out.

And so is that different than what you said, do you think, the use of those?

The section 5.3.3, which is the key recommendations, it follows the park site assessment.

So the park assessment was conducted by WRT's team, and it was a point in time of them assessing all of our parks in person.

They are local to the area, so they were able to make it out to all of the sites,

and they shared what their observations were of each of the parks and general themes that they noticed against the system.

those themes then develop these key recommendations to consider as we're looking at our parks of what to redevelop, what to develop, and things to think about.

John or Diksha, Diksha, I see your hand is raised. Would you mind? Thank you.

yes i did want to jump in and add that two parts of that section the biodiversity and planting

when we revised the plan document we can move those sections they were actually supposed to come

with um the park recommend like the park design guidelines portion because they are created to be

overarching elements for the park design um to be referenced when new parks are being designed so

So including biodiversity and planting recommendations there itself.

We didn't, for each park type, we didn't break down the specific like biodiversity and planting design because it was becoming very repetitive.

So I think it will be referenced in a similar manner that Christine just outlined.

We'll just move those sections to be more clear for the reader and the city when they're referencing it.

Thank you, Deeksha.

Okay, thank you. That was all I had.

Thank you. Commissioner Bryant?

Yes.

Excuse me.

No, it's fine. I just need to hold my pump down.

There are examples, and I've changed my bullets around, so I'm not sure in which, which I can't give you a number of which specific action I'm talking about.

I'm talking about but there's a bunch of actions and some of them give examples of parks where

that specific action would be implemented what would what would what is the mechanism for choosing

which start we're going to be starting with or what is the schedule though though you know the

immediate or the various time categories are kind of broad so what is the trigger for action and

you understand what that is I do thank you for the question and I believe you're referencing

uh section 1.2.1 with designing and implementing tier a tentational improvements and it does

specifically focus on Cooper, Wiseman, and San Verone parks. Additionally, 1.2.2 references

focusing on Klein Park for Tier B strategic improvement, and I think those are the ones that

we clearly identified. Earlier within the document in another section, we do outline

projects that fall under the different part categories for Tier A, Tier B, and Tier C

is the new one that we haven't developed yet.

And those are listed in priority order based off of a combination of the site assessments

conducted by WRT and staff's assessments of the sites.

So WRT put together a list based off of the scoring that is within the appendix, and we

took that a step further or find it based off of our knowledge of okay no we really think that

really is a high priority we need to focus on that because it's an older part the playground

has seen its day versus others that were like you know what we've got a little bit more time we can

put that as a medium or a low priority and our goal is to revisit this list on a regular basis

because as time goes, those priorities are going to shift.

As far as identifying projects,

we'll do that through the GAP level improvement plan process,

program process.

Right now for this upcoming budget cycle,

it's considered an off year.

And so it's probably not going to be the year

that we're going to be proposing

if we want to get to plan adoption, right?

So as we move forward,

each year we'll review our list

and the funding that might be available

in order for us to do those to incorporate them into our CIP process. Okay so so is there like

a bucket dedicated to community services and this is what you can use with the CIP?

Um no we would have to compete with other funding that is available and or parkland dedication

funding if it falls within that planning area. For example, if, let's say that for Cooper Park,

because we'd like to make some improvements in that area, if there is no funding within that

planning area, we may look to measure G funding if we received it to apply for that. Additionally,

one of the other action items is related to exploring grant funding. There are grant funding

opportunities that are available for park improvements we would need to be um strategic

in how we apply for it um and and go for it um which then requires having the appropriate staff

to be able to support that um and so that's you know we'll have to be strategic and and looking

at those those things to be able to prioritize the projects i will jump in and at the same time as

the the council looks at a revenue measure being able to identify those type of funds for future

park improvements should be there thank you that's just my question um just a process question so this

will be coming back to erc in march um will whatever document we have to review at that point

um clearly show us what change what's new and what's what was taken out what's very good question

that you have to start allocate another 15 hours it's one of those now before and after you have

to circle the changes um no i i have not actually thought thought that forward yet as far as process

of how it will be identified um i do feel that our presentation and the report that will accompany it

will point out the major changes um but i'll have to discuss with the team how it's presented in

march take this question as a comment that would be helpful to understand with it yeah and there

should be revisions between now and going to city council in january and again from january to march

march to make their plan adoption great um little question here sylvan park is designated a community

park yes i know there's a number of um uh reasons for the classifications is is the acreage yes it

is thank you for asking that question um community parks are five to forty acres in size and how big

is silver park right hand man here and we'll see that for you pretty good man

um

silvin is 9.28 how big is pyramid park here is 2.77

um okay it's a size thing it just it seems relative to the other community park eagle park

west of rainstorm uh sylvan to me feels a lot more like a big neighborhood park but such as

classification okay um you know leave it there for my questions just follow up on jonathan's question

when the plan goes to council would it be shared with the commission yes um similarly to this

process we will plan two weeks in advance of the same council meeting we our goal to do that for

each public meeting at that time we will also make sure that you receive it as well thank you

but i will second i did the same thing during biodiversity um our chairperson's uh request

that somehow we captured what's changed between tonight and what we see in in march because

that would make everybody's lives easier including the public who reads this too

last one i'll frame this comment as a question so it fits in the section do you think i'm being

overly sensitive if i take some exception to the statement several factors extended the schedule

including additional meetings with the prc um you're here i i looked yes you know i immediately

looked at that and said, oh my gosh, am I holding things up? I looked at the 2022 scope of work that

talked about delivering presentations of materials throughout the development process with PRC and

so I was a little taken aback. So you can take that as a question or a comment however you want.

We can do both. No, that's very fair and I totally understand your thoughts and feelings

on that um so i do want to recognize that um i think that when we embarked on this process

we didn't envision um each of those touch points and i know that the commission wanted more touch

points which was all it was it was making us kind of shift what the original plan was and it took

time for us as staff to say okay we got to stop and pause and we need to do this first before we

continue to move on um so it contributed towards it but it's not like it wasn't driving force we

don't need to spend time on it i just kind of had to hear that um i'm going to move on because i

know we've got a lot of ground we have to cover so any further questions uh with that we are going

to open it up to public comments and i'm going to take uh public comments here in the room first so

So I think I've got about four or five in hand.

Those online plans to make public comments, you can raise your hand and we'll get to you shortly.

There will be a three-minute time limit for each speaker,

and Allison will give you the one-minute warning, and I will give you the gavel.

Two minutes?

Three minutes.

Three minutes.

Three minutes.

Thank you.

Welcome to two minutes.

We appreciate it.

I invite you to be as concise as you can, but...

I beg your pardon?

Feel free to reference.

That's right.

If other folks have essentially made your comment,

you can just second that.

So without further delay, we will turn to Vivek Chopra.

Is there our...

Yes, I'm going first.

If you'd like to be.

Sure.

Oops, sorry about that.

So I started reading the plan about a week and a half ago or whenever it came out.

And right in the beginning, I read the statement about the city providing 4.4 acres per 1,000 residents and the system having 46 parks.

And yeah, I was really triggered by that.

And I'm glad that you did touch upon that, that that's a conversation we can have about what is park and what is not.

Because as you all know, 64% of the space is owned by the school district.

And as the last few years showed, that space can very well go away as the priorities of the school district change.

or we get a different person

as a superintendent.

That's what happened.

You also count

shoreline as park space,

even though 41% of that

is paid for use.

Like the amphitheater,

you've got 20% of that

as the title.

Marshlands, 17% of that

is paved. It is like parking space

and such.

And if you look at the area

which I live, which is north of central,

So as per my calculations, and I've got some data here that I would love to share, you have 0.6 acres per 1,000 residents.

What this plan also does not cover is what's happening on the legal landscape.

So there is SB 79, which passed.

There's going to be higher density housing, especially in the area in which I live.

you have you know a builder's you know remedy house you know this article you know development

that's going to be coming up just down the road from where I am which has you know 447 homes and

assuming you've got like two to like you know 2.1 you know person you know per home you've got like

close to a thousand people over there and you know where are we going to find essentially a three acre

lot for those. And most of this development is happening in areas where we are extremely

underserved. So I would love to hear about what are the concrete plans. And yes, we are priority

C because it is expensive to go by land, but we've been priority C for all these years and I don't

see you changing thank you thank you mr chakrab all good break

um yeah i want to thank you for um addressing you know the whole question which is sort of what

did it and speak to as well um because um i'm not entirely sure i love the idea of thinking about

the neighborhoods and how much park is in a neighborhood but um because of the kind of ribbon

development on um san antonio which is proposed and coming and then all the and i've forgotten the

name of the street just sort of near um rensdorf and off to that side there's a whole bunch of

condos, apartments, and then all the ones opposite Safeway on Shoreline.

Where are all those thousands of people, thousands of people going to have a park?

And I just don't, you know, and I have to confess, at the moment I'm taking a course

in landscape design.

and I'm just thinking it's time for Mountain View

and this is totally off the cuff, okay

it's time for Mountain View to have Olmstead and Ball's

concept of Central Park here

we need landscape, not pocket parks

and not a little bit here and there, we need that too

but we need a grand park

I guess I'm influenced by the book I'm reading

but i don't know i'm just so concerned that if we're just thinking about you know this little

neighborhood and that little neighborhood say okay there are a thousand people who live here

what about this gigantic river of construction that's going on all around us thank you very much

the river

thank you my name is bill lambert i'm a resident of the mauna loma neighborhood and i'm speaking

as the resident of mouth here so uh i haven't had a lot of time to look at the report i will

get back to you with thorough comments at some later date but i would like to um something that

i've always wanted to hear at the park and rep commission meeting or in any discussion

was something about the 2014 plan

and sort of an assessment of what progress was made in that plan,

what progress was not made on that plan, and why.

As I recall reading the plan, it was very aspirational,

had great goals, and it sounded wonderful.

But I think 10 years later, very little has actually been accomplished.

And let me make a few suggestions about why that happened.

One is staffing.

You know, it would be great if we had some dedicated Park and Rec Department staff that

are responsible for the Park and Rec strategic plan goals, making sure it's communicated

to the public, making sure that, you know, the goals are accomplished and modified as

necessary.

i also think there's a fundamental problem that the center used in the plan what i think we're

very much constrained by the planning areas and using that if you limit our funding i understand

there's reasons for that but um if that can be changed and modified i think that should be very

important another thing a lot of the main metric here about park space is acreage per people i

I think that's the completely wrong approach.

For example, one could have a wonderful five acre park

in one corner of a neighborhood

that is what has across a train track

or a large busy street to get to.

It might have the appropriate acreage per thousand residents,

but it's the wrong metric.

The metric could be something like every resident

mountain of all ages deserves to have a walkable park space that they can use that's appropriate

for top lots for teenagers right for older people who are going to use park and open space

differently need different sized parks and different need different amenities that should

be our metro not something that's very cold right that's such as acreage um so you know those are

uh my comments i don't have much time left but walkable accessible safe park space for everyone

thank you mr lambert jim warski

Thank you, staff, and thank you, commissioners.

I had the good fortune with Jessica at meeting with us with staff on last Wednesday, and

I've been happy to hear that a lot of the things that we talked about and suggested

that they actually heard and they've actually made efforts to feel it, and I thank you for

that.

One thing I will tell you now, because a lot of the things I was going to talk about were

mentioned by others, and I'm not going to repay them and waste other people's time,

is we don't feel like we were involved in this.

Did you say there were 3,200 contacts?

I was eight of them.

I went to all the meetings.

I went to any.

Bill was probably 12.

Jessica was seven, whatever.

We got a preview of this plan in June of 2024.

We got another one, a little,

we didn't get anything at the March plan.

They would say,

what's with the consultant?

We don't know.

We'll get back to you.

What's with the consultant?

We don't know.

We'll get back to you.

The first time we really got to see this plan

was two weeks ago,

and it's 250 pages.

We're told we have two weeks to make comments,

get back to you,

and you'll incorporate them and bring them to council.

I think that denigrates the contributions

of the people here who worked four days

in the last two weeks,

what they can say, what they know,

what they mean to the community

and the knowledge they bring.

Don't they get to see if you did a good job

before you bring it to council?

Oh, we tried our best and here now council gets to look at.

I really do believe that both the community and the council should be the ones reviewing these ideas, seeing if you got it right, not because they want to give you a hard time or not because they're interested in making anybody look bad, but because they have valuable input.

input. Ronit wrote a lot of the 2014 plan. Sandy did this for a living. These are people that can

bring things to our community that we don't necessarily have and that people that live in

Indianapolis don't necessarily know. When they say that Charleston Park for accessibility

is a nine out of ten, they must work for Google. We can't get there. We can't. There's no parking.

but yet two people from San Francisco come down and walk around and say,

oh, everybody here seems happy.

That's like going to a Raiders game and asking what's the best team in football

or standing outside a Britney Spears concert and saying,

who's your favorite artist?

We need people from our community that know this area to add to this park,

and we need to be given more opportunities to add our knowledge

and our community knowledge so that, like Bill says,

we can build parks for everybody that works for everybody,

and not that just fill some metrics out that checks the boxes i have a lot more to say i've

said a lot of it but this is my main thing we need more input from the people that actually

understand what's going on in this city thank you mr zorsky shani klein house

Thank you.

I'm Fanny Kleinhass with the Santa Clara Valley Bird Alliance.

I'm trying to find the first few slides that were on here.

I found one of them.

I took a picture.

So the biodiversity plan relies heavily on parks and connectivity between parks, which was something that Commissioner Michener brought up.

It's without the parks and those connectivity corridors, there's nothing.

It only applies to city properties.

So the biodiversity plan really, really needs to be integrated with this plan.

But when I look at the vision, it doesn't have anything about biodiversity and it needs to be there.

When I look at the values, biodiversity is not there.

And then the draft goals, biodiversity again is missing.

Those are the foundations of the rest of the plan and they don't have the biodiversity in them.

And what that means is that the biodiversity plan, which we praise because there is so much good science at the basis of it and how you can bring nature into town can never happen.

Not without this integrating it into it.

starting with the vision, with the foundations, with the goals.

And so I would say this needs to be written again,

and it needs to be permeating throughout the plan.

The biodiversity needs to be all of that.

Yes, at the end, when you plan, what am I going to plant here?

Then that's part of it.

But there is a lot to do before that to integrate it.

I want to say a couple of other things,

because I saw some pictures of what you could do in parks.

plastic is not good for children it's not good for adults too but it's really not good for

children so when you have an area that has a play structure and the kids are supposed to be crawling

on plastic that's not healthy for them and i would say one more thing about that is and this

is i learned from mothers in my neighborhood park is that when you have several children

the smallest one doesn't use play structures they need sand they play in the sand forever and then

the older kids can play with all these things that you provide for them. But if they don't

have something that the very little ones can play, then the mothers can't spend more than

10 minutes in a park. So think about that and about biodiversity as you design parks.

But the biodiversity really needs to be integrated all the way from the vision on to how do I

design a park. Thank you.

Thank you, Shani. Any other comments from folks here in the room?

All right. Oh, yes, please.

My name is Zoe, and I wanted to talk a little bit about, I think, especially from my own age group,

And I'm also very athletic.

And I work out and do things in the parks a lot in Mountain View.

And I feel like there's just not enough space, especially

within the 10-year vision.

I came to this meeting to learn more about how decisions are made.

when each project is decided to act upon.

And I see a lot of effort in the different, in the, I guess, easier tiers.

You know, maintaining the parks and maybe just keeping the park tier one, tier two, maintaining the parks.

But I don't see a whole plan for acquiring new land.

It could be as simple as just having more acreage to run around on.

So I think this is really important for the 10-year goal, especially as the population

grows.

I know my own age group will want land to run around on and participate in different

sports and stuff.

So that's really important.

Okay.

Thank you.

I will now turn to folks that are participating online.

And Allison, I'll let you tee up the speaker.

All right.

Celia, you're up.

Hi.

I'm Celia Pamer, resident of Batonview.

I also appreciate that I've been given a chance to give input in the past a few things I'd

like to put on record or just relating to things I've heard tonight. My first thing is I think we

really need to be documenting the plan. That's why it's the plan. There's things that we've brought

up and then we've heard, oh, that is the plan, but it's not in the document of the plan. So we

don't want to have like some ambiguous secret plan. We want it in there for things like the

10-year updates, how priorities are going to be set. Those are our strategic plan is how do we make

those decisions. And so we should be planning how we make those decisions and documenting that.

One thing I did notice is under the guidelines for the different tiers of parks, we're missing

guidelines for community input on the different park types. And in fact, tier one or tier A and

tier B don't require community input at all the way it's written. We're clearly we want it and we

should identify how we're going to get that input. So we don't have snafus like Cuesta and Pickleball.

we should know how we're going to get that input. In terms of talking about what counts as park

space or not, I do not think parking lots should count towards park space. They actually remove

park space. They remove amenity space. We don't count street parking as part of park space, and

we shouldn't count parking in the parks as part of the park space either. A specific thing I

noticed from after I gave feedback before on page 106, and actually on the slide tonight,

it says that shade structures were asked for but I in the many community meetings I went to

people repeatedly pointed out that that was what was offered in the question but that they would

prefer trees and most people actually put under other that they wanted trees not shade structures

so I feel like that community input was not integrated and then there is recognition of

nature as an amenity in some places but that needs to be more consistent and throughout the document

and finally I really feel like there's a bias toward courts over field space and it still exists

for instance the free tennis courts don't count towards pickleball locations even though they are

allowed to play there and it's available for them but unlined field counts for all uses and for

instance there's no map for dedicated soccer versus dedicated football versus dedicated

ultimate frisbee which we all know and actually even um what's it the um quidditch right like we

why is it that courts get identified spaces that have to be specifically for them,

but all the field users have to share and we don't have lines painted for us.

And we often have to pay to reserve our fields.

So, yes, those are my comments. Thank you very much.

So, yeah.

Can I seat house Bruce?

Bruce, you're up.

Thank you all.

Bruce England, Wiseman Station Drive, speaking for Mountain View Coalition for Sustainable Planning.

Mainly, I wanted to let you know that we fully intend to review the plan thoroughly and develop our own comments in a comment letter.

But we're just for a variety of reasons. We have not been able to do that yet.

So I want to let you know that's coming. And I know there are future city meetings.

I will take advantage of those when they come up.

So I have, these are not in any particular order, but I do want to mention that I particularly love Pyramid Park.

It's near where I live.

It's so good at serving not only our own neighborhoods and the HOAs around here in Wiseman Station, but the trail leads up to it, the trail adjacent to the light rail, and people throughout Mountain View can use it.

It has dedicated space for things like sports equipment, battle ropes and pull-up bars and things like that, which I use.

and I see used very often.

So I'm not saying every park should look like that,

but just letting you know that that's a park I really do love.

And it's one of our more recent parks.

In the list of related plans,

you didn't mention the active transportation plan.

I will cite Brenda Sylvia's city project team,

where she's bringing in people from all the different departments

to talk about how the plans interrelate.

The active transportation plan is really important to this,

as well as the biodiversity plan. I've mentioned this all the time, but we need more restrooms,

water, fountains, hydration station benches, and make our park space really serve across the city,

not just in these identified areas that are called parks, but that the whole city becomes

sort of like a massive park space where people can walk and bike throughout the town and be able to

access these essential services. And having shade trees where they're needed, we have a real problem

with heat island effect that's only going to get worse.

And so we need to pay attention to that,

not only in the parks themselves,

but throughout town with ample tree canopy

and all of that, not shelters providing trees,

but trees providing the shade that we need.

The restrooms tend to be closed at sundown.

That is so arbitrary and ridiculous, honestly.

People are in the parks past sundown.

We need to get real here and keep those restrooms open.

If the locks are on timers or are remotely controlled, all the more reason to keep them open later than they are.

No artificial turf, no plastic stuff like that.

Be sensitive about lighting considerations with the ordinance coming up.

I agree with Celia about not counting parking lots as park space.

And trying to be careful about having designated areas for specific parks and making our park areas as flexible as they possibly can be.

That's it for the moment.

Thank you, Mr. Englund.

Hello, Cliff.

Hi.

Cliff Chambers, I'm speaking on behalf of the Mountain View Pickleball Club.

First, I'd like to give a big thank you to Christine Crosby and her team.

I think they've put a lot of really hard work into this, and it really shows.

and she was able to answer several of my questions earlier this week.

I really appreciate that the community engagement with the Pickleball community is shown in the plan,

specifically on page 106, where it recognizes that there's a need to integrate Pickleball

into either existing parks or new parks based on community engagement.

I just really like to focus my comments on one key change that I'd like the commission to consider, and that is the planning benchmarks for one right now in the plan.

It's one court per 10,000 residents, and I don't think that's sufficient.

Our closest peer is the city of Palo Alto that has 15 courts for their population.

It's about one quart per 4,700.

I would really like the commission to consider changing that to one quart per 5,000 because it really, we need to have a sufficient pickleball facility.

As you know, we've had a lot of people come out to various meetings in August.

Staff tells us that they're going to finalize the private property public pickleball court option in by the end of this year, hopefully.

And then hopefully decisions can be made soon.

But we really, our club has literally been advocating for a minimum of 12 courts expandable to 20.

And if you use that guideline that currently exists, you wouldn't come close.

And I've been assured by Ms. Crosby that they're not using it for planning for actual courts.

But I think it should reflect, the guideline should reflect the current demand.

And with a few seconds that I have left, I just want to add, I really do feel that it's really necessary to integrate the biodiversity, the active transportation and the parks and recreation plan.

As several speakers have said before, there was a commitment to do that.

And I'm not really seeing the kind of integration that I'd like to see because it really brings it all together.

People spend a lot of time and energy in the park and by bringing those three we have better connected parks with better biodiversity and people can really enjoy themselves. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Cliff.

Next one, Mary.

Okay, Mary.

Good evening. I wanted to mention that the plan, the surveys indicate that connecting trails and greenways are one of the highest requested amenities in the park.

And so for that reason, I'd like to request that the trail acreage actually be allocated to the areas in which they occur.

So right now, for example, Stevens Creek Trail is listed as 50 acres and the entire 50 acres is allocated to North Bayshore.

But actually it runs through Central, it runs through Sterling, it runs through Grant.

And so I think the amount of acreage that is in those areas of the city should be reflected in those areas of the city.

It paints a really different picture about access to parks.

Again, connecting trails and greenways or just places to walk in the parks, those were all rated as very, very high in the survey.

And so I think the areas in which those things occur, you know, like Stevens Creek Trail.

The other thing is I see Fayette Greenway reflected and that's part of the Hetch Hetchy Trail.

But I don't see the Hetch Hetchy Trail in Wiseman.

And I don't see the acreage for the light rail trail that a couple people have mentioned favorably tonight that they like having that light rail trail there in the Wiseman area.

That acreage doesn't seem to be allocated.

So I think that should be reflected because the trails are so important.

We did talk a lot about, again, on the topic of connected park systems and greenways.

I think there should actually be a definition of what is the minimum we'd expect to see

to consider something as like a greenway or a parkway.

I think that should be defined and metrics should be added for that.

So I think the source for some of that greenway space might actually be public roadways or traffic, you know, using traffic calming measures that include trees and plants.

And so this is going to be a cross department collaboration.

And so I think especially for that reason, it's important to get some definitions and some metrics into the plan for that.

um more specifically action 3.2.1 um says established life cycle based replacement

schedules and then it lists a lot of um hardscape amenities i'd like to see um an established

life cycle based replacement schedule included for trees and plants because plants have especially

shrubs and things have a limited lifetime and also i'd like to echo the comments made about

incorporating biodiversity and in favor of trees instead of shade structures. Thank you.

Thanks, Mary. For your comments?

Can I see you have Tracy?

Hi, Tracy.

Hello. I did want to echo some of the stuff, but I'm going to try and keep it very brief.

Certainly biodiversity, trees, and as Zoe said, just open spaces.

Look at what the public comments were during many of those, even the summaries of the events.

Those were top priorities for the citizens of Mountain View, us citizens.

and um so a lot of what i see in the plan refers to things like shade structure even if you look

at a lot of the pictures that are in the um plan they're all of like more concrete things large

shade structures um and if you even go there's lots of references to shade structures it'd be

I'd like to see more references to shade trees.

In the strategic plan performance metrics, number four, page 135, as an example, says one of the metrics will be two parks per year and new shade structures.

I don't think we're following what the public wanted if we're just concreting and putting up shade structures.

I just want to be sure that we're in this plan we're still considering trees as public infrastructure.

I don't think we quite have that in here in that way. Not just concrete and built structures.

I think that's it. Thank you everybody for all of your work on this plan. I do appreciate it.

And everyone's comments too. Great. Thanks for your input Tracy.

I see you.

Yes, good evening.

Can you hear me?

Yes, thank you.

Great.

I'm a long time resident in Mountain View.

Thank you for the opportunity to give input.

I'm glad that the city staff mentioned the housing element and how that is an important, significant, really,

change that will impact or that that was actually the reason for updating the parks and recreation

plan. The housing element has and will increase the population and the development of buildings,

but it also has unfortunately caused a significant loss in our green canopy, specifically our

heritage and mature trees. As you all know, the trees are green assets, really, that we are relying

on to maintain our health and sustainability, especially in the face of climate extremes. And so

there has to be a compensation for the increase in population and the loss of all these trees

to developments in what we have, at least in existing parks, in future parks, and in the space,

open space that we have. So I'm echoing all the other folks that gave input. We need a lot more

trees. We need a lot more, preferably native trees, that can provide shade and sustainability.

The other thing I wanted to give input on is natural parks are really a great way to move forward. You can even change the current parks to be more natural parts.

The definition of natural parts is this incorporating more trees, native trees, native plants, native shrubs, and also minimizing any plastic parts.

So absolutely no plastic turfs, preferably or strongly I advocate for no rubberized floor or ground for the parks.

I think Shani and some other people mentioned the damage and the harms that can come from that.

Kids need sand and dirt and natural substances to enjoy and to benefit from.

And lastly, I would like to advocate for taking advantage of the open space we have,

such as the Cuesta Park Annex, to designate it as a community urban forest.

I think that would be a fantastic thing to do.

And the sooner we do it, the better, because as we know, this space is really the desire of so many other entities to build on.

And we can lose it very quickly.

So I strongly advocate for that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Holly.

Welcome your comments.

Hi, this is Leslie Friedman. Thank you for giving me this time. And I want to thank the other people who have spoken because, and you should thank them too, because it means I won't talk that much.

I'm concerned about time. I looked and listened to the great deal of research and work that the staff put forward to make this look like a really reasonable plan.

However, by the time 10 years from now, Mountain View will be completely different than it looks right now.

Part of that is the loss of more than many, many, more than many trees getting killed, gone forever, but also because of the state and SB 79.

But even before SB 79, the open land parcels were turning into large office buildings and also now to really gigantic developments for dwellings.

So what is being planned that would be after these 10 years into the next decade, I think that's sort of off limits because we do not have or cannot have, we cannot change this SB 79 now.

And we need to be able to make Mountain View the beautiful and really wonderful place to live right now.

And time is ticking away.

Thank you.

Thank you, Leslie.

Any other?

Okay.

Okay.

um really thank you everybody for the comments i think we had um 14 15 14 comments and i learn

something every time people speak and it really is appreciated and and thank you for uh respecting

the time i think we got through a lot of information by everybody sticking to their time

limits um and speaking of time limits i'm going to take a quick poll of my fellow commissioners

that has been suggested that we take an eight o'clock break um we could either handle the first

question and then take a break or we could take a break now what is anybody have an opinion i think

i would recommend take a break now and then we keep all our comments all right consistently

like to take a what do you think five minute to you chair let's take a 10 minute break and we will

Returned.

And in line.

That's 14.

Well, no, knee's kind of slow.

Oh, gee!

Sweet shot.

You left a lot.

I don't know why I have to say it.

Big one.

Big one.

Big one.

Big one.

Big one.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

us a break thank you to the folks online you know we don't have that uh you can't slip out and go to

the restroom on notice so we have to call a break uh but i think we're all refreshed and ready to

go now so um we have done the public comments and it is now time for the commissioners to comment

uh staff and the staff memo have uh articulated three questions

And I think what we'll do is, as we did the last time, we'll take one at a time, each

commissioner responding to the first question, and then we'll go to the second question,

each commissioner respond to that.

And then we'll open it up for other comments that commissioners wanted to provide.

So our first question, does the draft plan provide an accurate picture of mountain views,

parks trails open spaces and recreation programs is there anything missing or not shown clearly

and commissioner mitchner would you like to start sure sure um so i just want i want to start by

thanking everyone involved with helping us get this far um you know i recognize it's a tremendous

amount of work by our city staff and you know we're looking in great detail at things that

that we probably never researched before.

And what we have tonight is a really comprehensive

and thoughtfully considered draft of our strategic plan.

So thank you to everybody who was involved with that.

So turning to the first PRC question

on whether this provides an accurate view.

In short, yes, I think it's very comprehensive.

I just wanted to add a few comments.

Sort of to back that up, I thought that the analysis of recreational offerings that were cross-checked for alignment with residents' recreational needs was thorough.

It looked at the balance in recreational offerings from a range of perspectives, including program offerings, cost recovery, program life cycles, program direction, and program user proficiency.

I thought that the detailed data on parks and incorporating new methodologies like a level of service framework for amenities, separate measuring acreage of trails, partitioning out three distinct segments of Shoreline Park, and coming up with what I believe is a fair and reasonable algorithm for counting shared public school grounds,

gives us the clearest snapshot that we've probably ever had of our parks and our open space inventory.

I thought that the statistically valid survey, the online community survey,

and the comparison between those responses with sort of a sanity check comparison to ESRI,

overall city demographics, gave me comfort in the validity of input for residents on the posed questions.

I thought that the summarization of stakeholder input, which included strengths, opportunities, and priorities, presented themes that are very consistent with how I would assess our city and what I've heard from talking with people over many years.

So there were no surprises in that to me.

I once I got used to them, I like the equity maps, the visuals, which which sort of color code for Mountain View City and Mountain View Wiseman School District.

I think looking those in combination are powerful ways to sort of seeing the coverage and shortfalls for parks and specific amenities.

So to the extent that all of this then drove much of the draft plan, which I think it did, and I mean, you know, again, that's maybe separate from actions and goals, which we'll talk about later.

but to me that's a strong indication that the plan provides an accurate picture

of how Mountain View residents view our current state of the union

where the city stands today with its parks and amenity assets

and what our residents hope to see for future directions

so I do have some specific comments on a few of the level of service components

but I'm going to share those later as part of my general comments

thank you Commissioner Metzger

commissioner mine's a little bit simpler uh yes is my answer i don't disagree with anything that

commissioner commissioner said so i wouldn't repeat those but just to be simple i thought it

it captured not be very well right now so to bullet number one i have other things to say

in the other bullets but yes sure sure thank you um i i don't want to repeat anybody but i do also

want to say that I know that there's a lot to like about this plan and I know it has been you

know a ton of work and so everyone should get a big huge cut on the back for that so you know it's

always that kind of the fact that people want to talk about the bad parts but they don't talk about

the good parts enough so I thought Joe uh Mr. Mitchener gave a great you know summary of the

a high level, attaboys and you know, you guys should walk away

feeling really good about that. I do have a couple of thoughts

about this first question. So I'm assuming we're talking about

the existing parks, trails and open space retrograms. And I

know we're primarily focusing on city owned facilities. But I do

think that it would be worth adding a discussion of the POPA category, the privately owned,

publicly accessible park, because there are some already and I know there's more planned.

And, you know, clearly, you clearly you wouldn't need to do as an elaborate of an analysis of it,

but just kind of putting that in the context, for example, that Google fitness trail, the Bay Trail,

San Antonio neighborhood that village green dog park and I think there's a splash pad

in there somewhere. Those are all examples of I think they're all publicly accessible

anyway. And a lot, I bring this up because a lot of people don't just distinguish between

who owns this place they're recreating, they just want to enjoy it. So we need some context

that there are additional facilities and then you know, now we're even giving people credit

for it in their development approvals for providing it.

So do you want to say something about that thought?

No, I don't.

If the chair doesn't.

I'll permit it this time.

In relation to our ordinance, Chapter 41 does allow COPAs for credit.

Those existing facilities that you mentioned do not fall under that existing ordinance.

And so actually we have approved two POPAs under Chapter 41 since it was changed to allow those.

However, none have been actually built yet.

And so while those are publicly accessible, it doesn't fall under that specific guideline of our POPA ordinance.

So they have done, they still have done that.

But within chapter 41 POPA, those will be publicly accessible in perpetuity, whereas

we don't have that type of guarantee with some of these others that are currently publicly

accessible.

Okay.

All right.

That's a good distinction.

And probably kind of explaining that and differentiating would be a useful addition to the plan as

well.

Okay.

So then, then further.

talking about, you know, does it provide an accurate picture?

I know that Evelyn Park came online, like right in the middle of doing this,

and, you know, nobody wanted to go back and, you know, catch it up.

But I did notice that it was on some maps and not on some other maps.

And, you know, at least we should show it on the map

um an account port in the acreage totals um and ideally add an assessment of it although

it's brand new we could probably just say it's great and and move on um

it just provides a little context um evelyn park we did add into our acreage totals and

did update the level of service while building this drought awesome but you are correct that

it has not been assessed or scored because it was not open at that time when it was done.

Okay, yeah. So that's probably it came online right in the middle and that's where you were

and so you added it from there. But ideally we would, you know, fully incorporate it because,

you know, it's sitting there getting used and it's good to go. So then my next topic is Quest for

annex. I find it pretty odd to include that in a community park acreage because it doesn't

meet any of the description of what a community park is. I would propose adding a new category,

which would be something like nature based park. When the awesome comments tonight called

the community forest. And there you in similar to how the

shoreline park sort of has this breakdown into the different

categories. And I do think that I thought about, you know, does

it really have that same thing as protected open space, a

shoreline, it's a little bit different because shoreline has

those areas that are specifically set aside in this

case it's for the burying owl. And I would call that protected open space. It's large,

it's for habitat, whereas that's not what our park is or a question. And, you know,

when I do the math, that's $127 million of land people, we can't not talk about it in

discuss it. And, and, you know, first off, classification is first step, I think we should

classify it as a new thing, a nature based park, summer shoreline might fit that same category as

well. The marshland has, you know, trails, and you're appreciating nature, that might make sense.

I, you know, I don't know if this really works under our first question here, but I think

then we should talk about, you know, have action to start developing the types of, you

know, I'll call it infrastructure, but it's not really infrastructure that would go with

a nature based park, you know, define define natural surface pathways, interpretive signs.

In that case, you're doing oak savanna management, which you know, you would do oak replanting,

native grass restoration, invasive exotic removal, you would define the dog use areas

a little bit better.

So that maybe didn't have 100% dog use.

You would tell people to stay on the defined path so you don't get new user trails every

year.

you know, make it a little more managed and owned so it's not a place where people are going to

build their bike jumps, which my son would have done when he was 13. And, you know, in general,

look at how we might turn that into the kind of parks that I hear everybody wants.

So I got off topic there. Back to the what's is it an accurate picture? So there's some of the shoreline some of the special use category. I'm just having trouble with following a fire station, a safe parking lot, and two parking lots apart.

park. I think that needs to be something else. I, I know that those two parking lots are essential

to the operation of Shoreline Amphitheater and fire station is a city facility, but it's not a park.

Park. And then.

Oh, okay.

So the park park.

So I see that there's 18 acres of open space.

And I think I know what those all are, but they aren't mapped.

And they aren't assessed. And we don't really know what they're surprised of. Examples that I can think of, you know, in my neighborhood would be the little remnant spots where the road right of way, when shoreline, when Sterling was turned into shoreline, and they purchased some houses, and then part of it got paid the road, and then the rest is leftover.

So like at the shoreline in El Camino, there's a couple of spots.

One of them got turned into a community garden.

So 18 acres, holy cow, do the math, $180 million of land.

Aren't we going to talk about what we think should happen to it or have an action related to figuring that out?

That seems important to me.

Because a lot of these things that we're hearing that people want more of like dog parks, you

know, dog, off leash dog parks, those little spaces are perfect for that. And they're close

to home, they're in the neighborhoods, and they're already city property, and probably

people are already walking their dogs there. So why don't we take a little more control

over them instead of acting as if they are something useful.

that's all i have for this pathway thank you great yes so i'll start by uh by saying the

the last part of the commissioner uh summer said about the spaces that are already owned by the

city that are not used as they could be used i think that's a really important thing to raise

and we should we should use everything we have as best we can so and then I do have

comments so the the document first of all I know a lot of work has gone into this

for me reading it was like trying to drink from a fire hose and I thought it's probably not just me

Christine too and all the rest of staff trying to put all this together into something that makes sense, that reads easily and that leads to action.

So I have my sympathy.

When I started reading the plan, it seemed to describe us as having an abundance of space, of open space.

and comparing what we have now to what we had in 2014 or even in 2007 or whenever it was I was an

active participant in writing the plan nothing much has changed in terms of acreage I think a

lot has changed in terms of mini parks in terms of safer access but the acreage itself has hasn't

changed very much. So to be told that we are doing great as far as the Quimby Act goes, and that

everyone, 92% of our population has an easy 10 minute walk to a park, doesn't reflect how I see

it and doesn't really reflect how our residents see it either. And when I looked at the

at the equity maps at the various maps assessment maps for parks like the maps

for playgrounds the circle around the playground process 101 85 central el camino

so there are standard tools and then there's a map of mountain view and in too many

too many examples of instances in the data that we have, the standard tools have been

applied in a standard way. And maybe that's a result of having basically a consultant that's

not from here. And if these maps had been presented to the community, they would have told you,

you know, this doesn't make sense. You know, 85 is not an easy walk.

Crossing El Camino is not an easy walk. So there is, there is a problem with that.

Right. So when I saw the walkability score of 92%, I had a private fit, and then I looked at

data again and this makes us more walkable than palo alto for example now palo alto has 6 500

acres of parks and we have 767. so any statistics find its foothills but we're also more walkable

to parks than los altos redwood city uh we've we've done a lot with what we have

but we are not brilliantly doing well so i would tone down our satisfaction with what we have

uh the the inclusion of of queenby of of shoreline park in in the queenby calculations

is problematic and i'm glad that you you presented the acres per person both with and without without

no facial that makes a lot of sense um and also frankly the the trails

including trail as part of the park for a neighborhood is is a little questionable

the Stevens Creek Trail passes through my downtown neighborhood and I take it very frequently for a

walk but at least part of it is just a bicycle commuter road you know going between downtown

and the other side of El Camino I have some problems adding that into a neighborhood and

saying, look, this neighborhood is well, so.

And then the scoring of the parks, and I've said this any number of times, but I'll say it one more time.

The accessibility scores for the parks.

Charleston Park is more accessible than Mercy Bush, which is in my neighborhood and is really very accessible.

So I have some concerns about the metrics and how they've been applied to assess parks.

And I mean, when it looks at accessibility and says, oh, it's scored high on accessibility.

But when I looked what the criteria for accessibility are, they're not, can you walk there?

They're like, is there a great signage?

Or is there a fence around it?

So I'd be very, very careful with.

I'd be very careful with with what we get from the from the scoring.

For example, the description of Pioneer Park, which I love.

I love Pioneer Park, but it says it has a great variety of plants.

And it says there is a fountain and Pioneer Park does not have a great

variety of flats. It has wonderful trees, but the planting itself is really a missed opportunity.

And there's lots of trees dying there. We can discuss it later. In my opinion,

Pioneer Park is a missed opportunity for something wonderful. It's fine now, but it could be wonderful.

Um, all right, those are my comments for, for question one.

I thought of when I missed, and I'm doing it up.

You can.

Oh, I'm going to bring it up in this subject because, you know, we're asking,

is it accurate?

Or is there anything missing?

So I think that there needs to be another section. It somewhat relates to the Nexus study, but it's

not exactly the Nexus study. And that's look at the growth forecast under the housing elements,

element, and what that would mean to the park children. It's sort of a future look. There

was one that was one of the values in fact, you know, future focus, and particularly because

the housing element in this plan have an overlapping timeframe, I think it has to be counted for

somehow, even if you're not completely able to resolve, like when you would need a park.

at, you know, the whole package of the growth under the housing element, and the whole package,

you know, how that relates to the park needs. Because I think that one of the members of the

public kind of brought that up. And it's a really good point that that it's kind of

of we've got these long standing, I don't know,

fallen deficits in some areas.

And then we're going to have development driven

opportunities because of the ability to fund them.

But we'll have to figure out how to prioritize this.

So it's important to have that in the mix.

I really like your answer.

Council member Ramirez, you will know that going last is tough because all the good stuff

is pretty sad.

I want you to know because I have it written down that what she said, I thought that too.

She just said it better than I ever possibly could.

But I think as a former, an initial stage of any planning process is really an analysis of existing conditions.

And I took this question to mean, is the analysis of the existing conditions good enough to go forward with planning on it?

Is this a good accurate view of things?

And I agree.

Yes, it is.

it's

it's interesting that

so much of the quantification

all these little

numbers that we're dealing with

are necessary because of the

Quimby and how we're allocating

the part dedication

money and that's

so a lot of this is driving

policy through the numbers

and so we have to do it

but

you know

I think my comments were that, you know, let me take these kind of individually.

Parks and trails.

Yeah, I think there was real good analysis.

A great amount of data was collected that characterized these resources.

You could arguably debate some of the finer details of those, but overall, I think it's really good.

I, many of the things that Commissioner Sommer said just really resonated with me that, you know, how do we take a more holistic and inclusive view of open space in the city?

in the city.

So much of what's going to be meaningful and address

the community needs are going to be the linkages

between these parks, unless we do get a new central park,

which I don't think it's going to be.

One of the ways we're really going to enhance,

maybe it's going to be.

We're going to enhance the parks system

is through these better linkages and the circulation.

So I think some of the opportunities that could have been contribute to the picture are things that aren't typically thought of as park space or don't add up into the numbers of these characterized parks.

Other city lands, rights-of-way public space, or even some private land that could factor into how we view open space.

SO, AND SHE SAID IT BETTER THAN I DID.

BUT I THINK LOOKING AT OWEN SPACE A LITTLE MORE BROADLY THAN JUST THE, YOU KNOW, HOW WE MEASURE PARKS, IT'S INTERESTING.

WITH RESPECT TO THE PROGRAMS, I THINK IT WAS GREAT SORTING IN THE PROGRAM AREAS.

I didn't really see in a group of Commissioner Michener.

Some of the characterization was really good, but I actually didn't see program specific data on use.

And yet I know there are things like community gardens that have a waitlist.

And I'll bring this up later when I talk about other things like abandonment and how do we stop doing things that maybe are at end of life.

But the other thing that I think from seeing a little more clarity on the program usage will be how we put in place methods to make sure that we are continually responsive to changing recreational needs.

So I will leave it at that.

You know, I did think, I have to say, the golf course at Shoreway was just kind of lumped in with other specialized amphitheater and parking lots and stuff.

And here's arguably the largest, you know, continuous space in Mountain View, 200 acres, revenue generating 80,000 whatever rounds a year.

um and it wasn't really touched and maybe we want to keep our heads down on that i can understand

why but um i think there are probably issues about the golf course that could be addressed

in the plan or discussed characters but um in summary the short answer like commissioner

philiosis yes i think at least it's a great a great uh collection of data and analysis and it's

very good commissioners just want to respond to anything that was said on question number one

before we move on yeah i mean i'll just say is i mean i i took sort of a narrow focus on

on the bullet point questions and i'm going to have a lot more later on um including some of the

other things that other people have talked about but i won't i won't discuss them now so okay

all right let's uh move on then to question number two do the draft vision goals and strategies

reflect what the city should focus on for the future of parks and recreation and this time

let's start commissioner bryant thank you um at this point could we could we put the division the

goals and the strategies up on this yes absolutely i'll start with the vision and the values and then

when you're ready to advance the gold

did you want to start commission grants sure so um

I had a general problem with the whole plan that I was never quite sure whether it was

a vision for the city of Mountain View and the values of the city of Mountain View or

a vision for the department and the values of the department.

I think what we heard a lot from the community was not future

focus, but this present moment focus, like immediate action.

But when I read the, where you explain what you meant by future

focus, it sounded like the department and for the department,

it sounded like a really, a really good value to serve the

needs of the present and be prepared for the future. So in

the whole plan, I think there needs to be a certain

pulling apart somehow clarity about what is city and what is

what is department, because many times that the well, maybe I'm

going to make a more comments. So let me let me leave it at

that.

I was kind of disappointed that I kind of when I was reading

reading the document, I slog through 100 pages looking

the horse beef.

And for me, the beef was actually the vision,

and the values, and the strategies.

And that's actually the shortest part of the document,

which was, again, possibly in the general comments.

What I was disappointed not to see here

are general conversations that I was hoping we would have

about issues like what is the proportion of active uses

versus passive uses in our parks?

What is our attitude towards artificial grass?

My attitude was no, but it's not a conversation we have had.

And that is kind of something that I thought a strategic plan

would have those discussions, would have those conversations.

and I hope I'm still keeping within the answer to this question.

You want to look at the goals?

Yeah, so a lot about the parks, trails, and open space, which I guess I focused on, was very focused on more traditional parks.

You mentioned the biodiversity plan, but didn't have it integrated into it. Some of the graphics of parks have some trees on the border and a big grass section in the middle. And that is not what we heard from the community.

community. So this, this, if this is a guiding document, the graphics need to reflect what

the community has said very clearly we want. We want a lot more planting. We want a lot

more trees. Many of the speakers mentioned shade structures. It's not what people ask

for people ask for a natural space with play areas with with various activities but embedded

in a more natural space and and it's not reflected in the document and i i think it's critical

to do it because we have the biodiversity plan and it hasn't

it's not really acknowledged except in a word here and there in in the examples that are given

as to what the park will look like

And

the, well maybe I should just read for my notes.

There's also a strategic plan 10 to 15 year horizon makes sense, but

The community has been fairly strong in saying we need to do something now.

And so I'll have some comments about that later too.

For the department, you need to think about that kind of horizon.

But we have no idea what the world will look like in 10 years, certainly five years.

So to me, there needs to be a...

we need to look at what what we can do quickly.

The definition of community parks is very weighed towards formal structured activities.

Existing nature features should be kept if feasible.

So things are feasible if you want them to be feasible.

maybe it costs a little more, maybe it requires a little more thinking, but what the community has asked for is existing nature features.

And this is actually a comment I made at the very beginning of this process. This isn't just about the amenities, or trees aren't amenities, or open space or

grasses aren't amenities this is infrastructure this is what we should

have in every part so the the language that is used in describing parks doesn't

reflect what the biodiversity plan is going to say doesn't reflect what the

community is asked for or we compare in in a certain park you will have

amenities like a roller ring and a pollinator garden there's there's no it's not the same

universe a pollinator garden or a um or trees or butterfly gardens can be part of whatever

park we have there's no reason why a plane structure shouldn't be surrounded by flowers

or a ring shouldn't be surrounded by flowers.

And in fact, in the whole categorizing parks into tiers,

there is no indication that planting

to improve parks and achieve community goals

is like a basic thing, not we added an amenity and planted a tree.

I also have a real problem with calling building new parks aspirational.

To me, you know, call the tiers maintaining, improving, and adding new parks.

aspirational to me says yes you want it but you know what it's not going to happen

and maybe that's true you know maybe the financial analysis tells us that there's just no way we're

going to have hundreds of millions of dollars to build an enormous new park maybe we really need

to focus on what we have and improve what we have change unused open spaces into nature and change

our streets into more natural environments.

But just calling it an aspirational sounds

like my husband who sometimes says,

you need to change your expectations.

All right.

And then it's also, and I don't have the page on which it

is amenity investment priorities and counting planting trees as an amenity is again

seeing trees as something that you add not as the infrastructure of everything

it's not it's not a list of we'll have a fountain we'll have a

a rink of some sort, we'll have a place structure and we'll have trees.

And the same with trees is unless you do it immediately, you won't see it for a long time.

So there needs to be a prioritization for the environment that our residents are asking us for.

And my last comment was about the wording of the goal, expand and enhance safe, equitable,

and convenient access to parks, open space, and trails. And that could fit really well into a

transportation plan. Okay. I think our community wants parks, not access.

And, and I mean, obviously they want access, but, but they want parks, more parks, even

really small parks, but parks is a place for, for the community to meet, to have a place

to, to breathe, to sit, to run around.

So I would look at that wording.

And these are my comments.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

Do you follow that?

That good set of comments.

So I think this question is appropriate time for this.

So, um,

what the city should focus on for the future of parks and recreation.

So one thing that every plan like this always faces is the question of whether you should

work on everything all the time and advance everything a little teeny bit in that 10-year

period, or whether you should say, you know, we need to get stuff done and check it off

the list. So we're going to work on these top 25 things for the

tenure. So this question is about focus. And I'm not sure this

plan gives us enough focus because we are not going to be

able to do all this. Number one, we won't have money for it. And

number two, you won't have stuff for it. So

for me, to me, the goals kind of rise above that. And I, and

um,

so those are hopefully durable goals. And I really like,

then I move on to the strategies. And in my mind,

pretty well defined, you know, in the industry,

strategies are how, how you're doing it. So if you're expanding and enhancing safe,

and equitable and convenient act is sparse by focusing on the sentence isn't finished.

And all those strategies, they don't create focus. They, they're kind of reiteration of the goals.

So, by focusing on those existing park-deficient neighborhoods, by focusing on integrating

housing element growth into our park system, you know, we need you meat.

Because otherwise, you just end up advancing everything like that's kind of what the criticisms

I'm hearing of the previous park plan was yeah, we added park on the ground and it's

all great parks.

Most city parks are wonderful.

Pyramid is wonderful.

Right?

The mini parks.

But maybe those didn't quite meet our focus targets because we were being opportunistic.

So I think if we, if we switch from a opportunistic perspective to a tactical perspective, we

would have some strategies that hold us.

Okay, we could do this.

How do we decide if we should do it?

Because, you know, this opportunity came up, should we take it or not?

That's what this strategies and this plan should be helping you.

All right.

So related to this is the in process work.

And I feel like we kind of didn't account for that.

And in it very in the plan all that well, you know, there's a lot of stuff in the pipeline.

There's land that the city already owns that, you know, in that CIP, or maybe it's even waiting for the next CIP.

And I would love to have that list, like where we could say, yes, that is.

could say yes, that is, we should focus on those because they're delivering like, you

know, the San Rafael part, that's like delivering exactly what this plan says to do. It's a

neighborhood that needs it. And that should be up there with gold stars and, you know,

the staff assigned to it and the money like thrown at it, right, that's what you want this plan to

help you decide. So, and then, you know, similar, similarly to housing element growth, you know,

there'll be this park and loo money that you have to use for the new growth. You can't use that

for fixing up your new parks. And, you know, that's going to be super challenging. And I don't

know if we're going to end up with a giant bucket with nothing to spend it on. But yeah, we got to

like get those acquisition cranks really turning uh where's strategy for that

because you know there's going to be 40 50 60 acres of land that has to get

purchased and these type the things that are already in the cip that's not what those are

for that's to meet the existing need we've got deficient neighborhoods that when they were

subdivided in the 40s 50s and 60s, they did not plan adequate park lane. And there's no connections

to the parks that have that were built the later so you know, Montaluma, where's that park? How are

we going to make a park there? I know the city staff has an idea and you've been working on it.

So how let's articulate a strategy that kind of goes with it. Okay. Okay.

So related to that, so the strategy is going to help you focus and prioritize.

So I was looking at Pupachino's 2020 park rec master plan.

They did a master plan.

But what I really liked about it, they had a, they listed prioritization criteria in

the plan because that helps you shift from that.

Oh, we're just going to wait for opportunities to come up.

And, and it helps you decide which ones to pursue if you have those criteria. So they criteria to

help align with goals and community priorities, like, how do we know if this opportunity is going

to meet our goals, we need those criteria in this plan. And similarly, what order should we do them

so criteria for sequencing things and phasing, just, you know, it's going to be useful later

to look at that and, and say, Okay, this opportunity, like maybe there's, you know, a grant we could go

get, and it's going to be a lot of work to do it. So does it meet the criteria?

Um, that that would be really super helpful.

So those key recommendations, I love those, those are really good. In my mind, those are almost

better than the 5.6 guidelines for new parks. And they're buried. And I think they should be

put together in a chapter or whatever we're called section. And there's sort of a lot of

overlap between the two. And you might also be able to shorten the document by doing that.

It sounds like John. And so it's interesting because the 5.3.3 has a big section on biodiversity,

just about the only place that it is.

There'd be a lot of chances to put the kind of things

that Renit was talking about in this.

And kind of related to that and guidelines for new parks,

it was sort of weird.

Like where's the guidelines for park improvement

and renovation?

There wasn't any sense of like how we're gonna decide

I like how the plan clearly highlights a couple of well I don't know I didn't count seven or eight parks that are should be at the top of the list for that. But they're still going to be kind of competing with each other for funding and so trying you know what are the guidelines for that. And then, you know,

For example, are we going to, you know, prioritize the addition of, you know, native landscaping

and pollinator, right? Like, that's the place to put it.

I think we're still on this one. So 5.7.2 improvement tiers. I really like the tiers.

I think it gives good clarity.

But then we talk about back to the old goal

of three per 1000, but that's not the goal anymore.

The level of service framework makes it clear that it's not.

There's on page 76, there's those four bullets

that those are the level of service framework

and none of those say three per 1000.

CUNBIAC permits you to do exact fees that allow you to get to 3,000, but it doesn't,

don't think require 3,000. It's just been kind of this universal standard. I like our level of

service framework and the benchmark much better than the CUNBIAC. And so we shouldn't fall back

to that. Three per thousand. We've got other things we're shooting for. We've got qualitative

goals. We've got benchmarks and level service standards. So three per 1,000 is not, it's

out the window now. In my mind, the goals, vision and values are almost should be the

first thing you talk about in the doc, it's foundational. It's gives you like, inspiration.

And it's in chapter seven. I was looking for it. So I think that that would need to be split in

half. The goals, goals, vision and values to the beginning, and then they give you more space to

commit the strategies needier by talking about how you're going to do those things um

i think that covers all the questions

commissioner philis

i i approach the question a little bit differently than my

the colleagues that they got a little more specific and maybe it's my background um as a

as a former teacher and coach this is exactly how we planned out our as a coach you know how our

program was going to be or even within i taught the math department how we wanted the math department

to go we started with a vision statement much like this and the goals and and the strategies

which lead to an action plan articulate where you're going and so i kind of like this now i

i could see changing a few words here and there uh you know like like mr mr lambert had talked

about with regards to the the boundaries as opposed to the planning areas you know when

you can have a planning area but there's a main street in the middle of it

you you're not usually going to want you know having your kids cross those streets or whatever

And so, you know, wording it in such a way that your goals reflect that type of issue, let's put it that way.

But I kind of really like this, to be honest with you, the way it is.

And then within the action plan, which is the next question we're going to look at, there's some things that I thought we could do differently.

But as far as this particular question, I think we're in pretty solid ground, to be honest with you.

So I'm going to leave it at that.

like what the city should focus on for future parks and recreation.

Commissioner Michener.

So, yeah, yeah.

So, I think one of the beauties of our commission

is we all come at things from different ways

and it blends and it's great that way.

You know, I'm probably,

I'm going to be a little bit more direct on it.

But so I guess on the vision, you know, so in general to this whole thing, I say yes.

I think that it reflects the right things.

But I do have a few comments and some proposed amendments, not that we would make them tonight or that they would be accepted at all.

On the vision, I'm generally fine with it, though I'd want to confirm the intent and my interpretation of two key words.

For me, I'd want to ensure that inclusive community refers to being inclusive of both all neighborhoods as well as individually inclusive, meaning being accessible to all ages, ability levels, etc.

So that's what I take from it.

And I would hope that that's sort of the intent behind it.

I'd also want to ensure that the word connection could imply both interpersonal or intercommunity connections, as well as connections to nature.

Because I think both of those types of connection are important.

And that's how I would read that word or hope that that word would be interpreted.

So with that, I like the vision.

If you put up the goals down.

Thank you.

With regard to the goals, my initial impression is that I thought the four goals captured the breadth of areas of focus that we need to be focused on.

I think it's important that funding is a standalone goal of its own because that's a big and important category.

One small nit might be to flip-flop goals three and four.

It wouldn't be a statement on relative priority, but more just consistency with the biodiversity plan, which I think listed sort of internal operations-related items in the final goal and clustered all the other items next to each other.

Again, that's not a huge deal to me, and I recognize that it would also entail flip-flopping the strategy and action numbers in categories three and four that correspond with a new set of goals.

I might also tinker with the fourth goal to add the notion of growth and expansion of our open space areas.

so perhaps I would

tweet the wording very minorly

to say develop new

funding sources and strengthen

existing financial strategies

to support

an expanded

and sustainable parks and recreation

system

so that's

my input on goals

and if you could flip to the strategies

now

um so i thought um sort of the strategies under the first goal on the park scales and open space

i thought i thought that those three strategies sort of um what nailed it in terms of encompassing

the intent of goal number number one i thought i thought that those did a accumulatively

good job of capturing that. With goal number two and the strategies related to recreation

programs and facilities, I wasn't sure that either of the two strategies there

really directly gets at increasing participation. Metric five covers that,

but should there be an additional strategy that specifically lists increasing participation?

Or perhaps the second strategy, 2.2, could be reworded to something like expand program participation, delivery, and awareness, including through opportunistic partnerships.

and i see that the word use is there now at the very end but i think that's a pretty subtle

sort of almost hidden connection to increasing participation if that's what that word use is for

so so i just i just don't think that we really get at expanding participation

which i think is one of the intents of the second goal

um for the third goal

I wonder if there might be interest in adding a clause to include the notion of cross-departmental

collaboration for example strategy 3.1 could say something like build organizational capacity in a

future ready workforce to sustain high quality parks and recreation services, including through

cross departmental collaboration. Because I think the cross departmental collaboration was a big

part of pulling this all together and it's going to be a part of the solution going forward.

with the fourth goal um for the first strategy 4.1 i might suggest flipping diversity diversify

with expand to place more of an emphasis on expanding which is what i think we need to uh

do first and foremost um for the second strategy 4.2 i didn't at first understand the whole concept

of meaningful stories.

But when I read the full text

of the three actions under that strategy,

it made a lot more sense to me.

So anyway, that's my feedback on this question.

Thank you, Commissioner.

Do the draft vision goals and strategies

are what cities should focus on?

First of all, I'd say

that I appreciate the components

of the plan methodology.

I understand how it works

and the analysis of the establishing

vision and goals.

The question is, are we on the right track?

I'd say emphatically yes.

This is a great start.

I like it.

The comments about

the vision

should be

advanced in the

document, I certainly think it should have been advanced

in the planning process.

we had that conversation already.

But so I think it's good.

I like it.

Now I'll get pedantic.

So it's fine.

It's not wrong.

And I've done enough plans

envisioning to know that

this is a headache.

You start wordsmithing stuff.

You get,

there's a lot of subjective opinions.

But I'll tell you how I think about it.

I'll give you my subjective opinion.

I realize that's just what it is.

It's fine.

There's nothing wrong with it.

But I think the tone and structure of the vision statement really dilutes the focus on the specificity of park planning.

And so my issue, as Commissioner O'Brien pointed out, my, you know, I wrote it down, Commissioner O'Brien.

My issue with the vision is that this is a vision for the community.

It's a vision for community identity.

And that's something that's already well articulated in council priorities and the CSP mission.

As the statement is structured, the parks and open space are an inspiration for other values.

I don't disagree with those values, but it reads more like a social treaty, sort of social manifesto.

manifesto this is what we're trying to do with the community and i just think the vision could

be more specific specifically relevant to park and recreation strategy i i don't disagree with

those as ideas they're good but i think for a park and recreation strategy plan it really should

bore down on parks and recreation strategy so and and these aren't the words but you know i think

It gives a framework to satisfy current demands for recreation and open space and incorporate processes to continuously refresh and respond to trends and community interests.

Provide a respite from urban development.

So, vision statement should be a future-oriented, inspirational description of what the organization, in this case the city,

wants to achieve and find a long-term direction.

So I think the vision should describe what

function recreation resources will be, not what the community will be.

So that's just my opinion on vision statement.

Goals. One, expanding and enhancing safe, equitable,

and convenient access to parks and open spaces and trails. Good. Great goal.

I was fully on board. I think that's kind of the core interest of the community.

Number two, and here I'll maybe depart from Commissioner Michener, increasing community

participation in recreation approaches. And to that I say, why increase? If a demand is,

if a need is being met, if a community is satisfied, do we need to push more people?

do we need more people in the pool?

I think the emphasis really should be on understanding

and meeting demands, you know, satisfying community

interests, not increasing participation just for the sake of increasing

it, right? Maybe that's

yeah, maybe I'm parsing words,

but here I would change the increased community participation

to satisfy demands and continuously understand

and refresh the process for understanding

what those demands should be.

Three, fostering a positive staff culture

like quality operations.

I'm kind of ambivalent on this one.

Frankly, this struck me as a organizational alignment thing

thing that, you know, resource allocation, organizational line with succession, that should

just be standardized city department process. I think it's okay. I just think it occupies

disproportionate real estate in this plan. I disagree with those things, but, you know,

when you get down to the action items, this is really just a series of job descriptions. You

We want someone to do communications.

We want someone to do the development.

We want someone to do it.

So it's okay.

Unless the whole thing dropped out of the plan

and went to city HR functions, I'd say that's great.

Developing new funding sources.

I think it's good.

I think it

so as a goal it's great as

how it's played out in the plan

I think it's still a plan to plan

I had hoped

that some of those would have been

more

specifically

targeted is we're going to do this

then

and I think a lot of it still sounds

exploratory

we're going to

explore this item further

but that was my take on that one um so i'll leave it at that um and

uh someone said that the strategies looked a lot like the goals and um

i think i'll just appreciate the comments that other commissioners have made

and I can't conclude on those.

So any last comments from anybody on number two,

vision goal strategies?

All right.

We're getting...

You guys are doing great.

Very, very proud right now.

All right, we're moving on to number three.

When we're looking at the action plan,

are there actions that should be added, removed,

explained better or moved up or down in the timeline and this time we'll start in the interior

and the outside so would you like to start mr sorry sure

the action items that i'm having the most trouble with are the long term really expensive

they seem like they're, they need a higher degree of kind of work breakdown.

They're a bit too amorphous to take action.

There's no prioritization expressed.

And it's all just kind of lumped together.

So I don't know if you could advance through that a little bit, but like, well, one,

Right here. Clearly, 1.1. You're, you know, you're, you can't acquire any other way than

opportunistically, there just really isn't except that you can target things and, you know, talk to

people. So it seems to me that the actions need to give you a specific direction on what to do.

So, um, but breaking it out a little bit more, um, you know, strategically locate key parcels

in under saved areas and, uh, you know, make connections with the owners and the real estate

community.

I just made that up off the top of my head.

I mean, I used to work in park acquisition.

So, you know, that's basically what the job description of the acquisition manager is.

And, you know, there's relationships and it's overtime, but, you know, you're still targeting where you're going to do it.

Because you don't want to just acquire anything that somebody puts on the market.

You're going to go in and make your own market because you don't want to be competing with other people.

That's just one example.

1.2.4. That's, yeah, integrate high. So this is enhancements, but it's all just kind of lumped

together. So I know that it's a lot more challenging to do that. I think that it was kind of raised by

other people that, that I almost don't see quite enough granularity to take action. And the actions

are supposed to be about taking action and doing things and checking the box. Like, that was done.

um so that's really my view of the actions i didn't spend a lot of time thinking about each

how to granularize each one um because some of them actually are quite granular like that 1.2.2

flying park improvements

that that's got an appropriate level of granularity but it's the fuzzier ones where there's no real

a little, again, it's moving the puzzle pieces, moving the horses, you know, one centimeter

down the racetrack. You know, that's not how you win the race. You just advance every horse

a teeny bit. So yeah, I'd like to see us really pick what we're going to do in the

next 10 years.

Thank you.

uh commissioner feelings um i'm just gonna go through the ones a few highlights um i skipped

right to 1.1.2 uh with regards to i just i'm not sure that and maybe i'm going against what public

opinion is but i don't know that we need an indoor sports complex uh i think i'd rather focus on open

space you know with regards to things and so i'm fine with acquire land and develop new community

parks love that idea we've talked several times in several meetings about trying to find ways to

get larger parks uh you know like a you know starting at pyramid size and maybe getting

better and i know that's a huge reach but it's not something we shouldn't reach for if possible

you know they tore about a big part of land in the city that we wouldn't garble up but the indoors

i'm not sure about the indoor sports guy maybe my colleagues feel differently i know they're

popular especially in snow areas of europe i've been to them and they're really cool but i don't

know with our our climate that should be a priority personally uh the next one i wrote down was 1.2.4

just um put three huge stars that is great uh i think that that one that 1.2.4 integrate high

priority amenities uh going through that whole thing um there's a few things i think are

are i i even think it addresses some things that were correctly pointed out by commissioner bryant

on on a park that can cover more than one thing you know and and the use for all

type of thing and i think that one point that one action item addresses that

let's see the next one I was a 1.3.2 let's see establishing an enhanced native habitat pollinator

gardens and climate resilient landscaping in parks again I put a star by it we can incorporate that

into any of our parks no matter what and still have views for all people involved in that park

um the next one i had was oh 2.1.1 and all the way through 2.1.3

with regards to the the the city council uh policies i hope it's just my hope that when they

do that and and whether i don't know that we would have input directly on that because they're city

council policies but that we keep in mind i guess the i guess i don't have another word than the

vulnerable people the people that don't have income the people that the youth of the of the

city the elderly of the city are considered when we look at those that that you know the middle-aged

people usually can afford more and so the activities when we look at those schedules

you know whether it's an adult soccer league certainly can afford more than a youth soccer

league like ayso and i hope that we keep those things in mind and with uh commission with

councilman ramirez sitting here it's helpful to you know he's hearing it now for me but and i

probably would go to the council meeting to to voice that as someone that has been that someone's

an old fart excuse me and but has had have grandchildren thank you i'm sorry i apologize

that has grandchildren, has a son and daughter that went through all the programs for recreation.

Just keep that in mind as we move forward in that particular goal, because I think they need to be looked at.

There's no doubt. And, you know, we talked about this fact, the McKelvey, if you remember the McKelvey meeting room about,

you know, how much should we ever get? You have to pay $50 an hour or, you know, if it's benefiting that neighborhood.

and, you know, it's not, you know, they're not a money-making charge.

Thank you.

I'll go on because of time, too.

2.1.6 was my next one.

Expand water fitness opportunities for adults by increasing platts offerings,

and exploring new formats that support wellness, mobility, and active aging.

um not that i'm against that but i i supply and demand is a lot of it as well i mean are people

using the programs we have now i mean is there a need to expand uh you know i i just i had i just

had a question mark there with regards to looking at it a little bit more you know how how we utilize

our current programs do we have sufficient offerings as it is or or do we just put them

in there just because you know type of thing um let's see 3.1.6 um

identify staff capacity or adding staffing to establish centralized communications and

marketing role to support consistent department-wide outreach and engagement super important

uh just again my background a little bit working for the cif and the ccs

we have found the need to do this and and communications be you know don't actually

having one person just responsible for that and how important it's been with regards to getting

the word out what we do what we offer things like that uh and how important that is to have the staff

and not depending on everybody to do their little part but having at least someone to coordinate all

of that is incredibly important and while i have that in mind i'm sure i i thought something things

that again uh mr lambert talked about it's kind of related but not directly related to this

particular point but having someone that is somewhat like a compliance officer in your you

know the ncaa has compliance officers at all the universities um that would be important to have

someone in in our department as he mentioned earlier in his talk about how well are we doing

these things someone should be responsible in the department it shouldn't fall on john's desk

completely but someone under john pushing him all the time on a we are not compliant with what the

plan is asking so i think that when you were looking at that part of how you broke down

the you know the the roles of everybody in the department uh that's incredibly important and then

And also, and I think Commissioner Mitchell has been an advocate for this as well, with regards to someone with regards to development, bringing in, you know, like you have development people at your universities and in a lot of goals.

goals you have that development person especially with regard when we got to the part with in the

plan talking about uh looking up uh ways of of of earning uh uh not scholarships but um

monies that are out there uh a great example of that was when we and renee you remember this

we had a person completely dedicated uh to the stevens creek trail at generate where can we grant

grant get grants that's it the words grant thank you grants from the federal the state the county

every dollar we could to put in the stevens creek trail when we first built it and i forget her name

she did a great job and i don't think she was employed with the city i think we she was uh

that was actually the carby that's probably wrong and it was the yeah the friends of students so

but you know that type of idea with regards to staffing i'm getting a little bit off

but they're all they all kind of relate to how we how we can most efficiently move forward

in those regards um let's see uh 3.2.1 established life base replacement schedules for parks recreation

facilities equipment and furniture and tim you've been an advocate for this i know that uh uh also

russell has been an advocate for this and ronita i have to you for the last two years you've been

talking about if we don't maintain the parks we build we are you know so that's got to be i i

starred that one as being super super important and uh because the fact that we can we can build

a park it looks great on opening day when we cut the ribbon but what will it look like in five years

if we don't have a maintenance plan and uh so let's see um we took care of that one

or we took care of that one okay we'll go like that okay four point one point five was again

and pursue grant opportunities.

I already talked about that one.

Oh, and 4.1.7, I thought we were talking about,

actually, Christine, you talked about not having experience

with regards to working with a foundation.

One of the, you might consider thinking about going back

to when we built the Stevens Creek Trail,

the establishment of the Friends of Stevens Creek Trail,

because that is directly what we would look for with regards to a group that could be a foundation to support.

Maybe not the whole department, but in specific parts of the department.

And I don't know how that structure started, but they're pretty effective.

They're still in business today, and they've done very well for the city and are quite a value to the city, I think.

and then with the performance metrics I was fine with so that's all I have to say

Mr. Bryan yes sure um

so I was trying to go through this and have a clear idea there is a lot of information there

It's really well organized.

But when I stepped back and thought, so what actually are we going to be doing?

I would really appreciate, and you have all the data there, a table that says, here's

what we're going to be doing immediately.

Here's what we will be doing in the next, I don't know, two to five years.

just to set the expectations of the community. And I don't think that's extra work because you have it all there.

All right.

um so um and and i asked this before as a question but

maybe even just uh just a little section to explain how any of this will actually happen

what will be I mean some commissioners have talked about priorities and you know

when are decisions happening what will be the how transparent will it be to what degree will

the community be involved and you gave me an answer about the CIP

be. I think it would be useful to to not just have it as a list, but this is a process.

And this is how the community can get involved in it or follow what is going on. This is

again, kind of a foundational question for this document is who is the audience. And

as uh as chair davis was saying some of this is really internal and for me i wasn't sure that i

needed to be part of this of course i will have comments but nevertheless i didn't necessarily

have to see all of this but if it's for the community then it needs to be educational

it needs to explain processes and to know this is where you can get involved this is how

how all of these ideas will become will become fact.

Okay, now I will love the other commissioners have gone have have done, I will go well.

by the number so 1.2.4 integrate high priority amenities such as tree canopy biodiversity and sports fields.

Those are just universes apart.

Biodiversity is basically foundational to all our parks, but ball fields do not need to be in every park.

So, um, I would, I would pull these apart because the community has spoken differently

about biodiversity.

And had there been more time, I would even have tried to think about where you could

put it in but we all know what it's like to do from a fire hose

so canopy and landscaping are not things you do in the long term it's not like a skate park

and also the financial burden is very very different okay adding diverse planting and

planting trees in a park that we already have is nowhere near the amount of money you need to

to build a skate park or a or a whatever else we have there sports fields and courts. So

they they shouldn't be in the same i mean four dollar four dollar signs no really not

all right uh 1.3.1 so you have expand uh tree canopy

immediate that that that's great i really appreciate that

that. 1.3.2 establish and enhance native habitat pollinator gardens and climate resilient

landscaping. That's short term. But if you're planting trees, you might as well plant some

plants, some bushes, some shrubs, some flowers at the same time. So the community has spoken

fairly strongly about that. I would like to see that promoted to immediate and ongoing.

I saw the word promote and I didn't write to myself where it

was. But whenever whenever the word promote appears, it I'm not

sure if that means PR, because if we say build, it might happen, but promote is let's talk about it.

So I would, I would like to see.

No.

there is a mention of on page 73 so that's on the on the descriptions of the park

set a goal of 15 to 20 percent canopy for trees and that that we have not discussed

how much canopy we want and the biodiversity plan may have some some something to say about that

but this is part of what i was talking about earlier the descriptions of parks are very old

world very old-fashioned you know when we thought that you put in some grass and then

them some trees on the side and we have a park. So those

definitions of what parks include and the tree canopy need need

to be looked at again, because we don't want a strategic plan

that's in conflict with biodiversity. And there hasn't

been time to to meld them absolutely. You know, it would

have been better to have more time. But those are really

important. All right. 2.2.

Expand partnerships for program delivery. There was a lot of talk there about organized groups.

But I was wondering about if you want volunteers, they kind of need to jump through hoops. If you expect them to be an organized group, they have to go to outside groups and find insurance, liability. The city's demands are very high.

it would be great to promote the possibility of having individuals, not only organized groups.

It would, you know, for smaller projects, it should be possible to do.

it would

all right, 3.1 build organizational capacity.

I

there is mention of having somebody who would focus on grants,

which I'm sure would really relieve staff of not particularly fun work and have somebody who's

expert at it. There's also no real staff expertise in biodiversity. There is theoretical

knowledge. There's people who've read and gone to conventions and that's that I acknowledge and

commend, but there is no one who is, has experience in actually implementing this in knowing how it's

done in other places. So I would very much like staff to look at the possibility of having like

a biodiversity expert and also an advocate. What, what Commissioner Filius was saying,

somebody who stands there and say, have you done this? You know, our last meeting about Charleston

park where it looked like public works had not exactly consulted with with uh community services

it would be great to have someone in community services who had the brief to be able to reach out

to other departments to explain to advocate to be present when big development decisions are

are happening and say oh these 140 trees you know we have a biodiversity plan these are things we

should do rather than you guys getting the plans but it's really too late to do much about it

and this would have to be someone with withstanding to so that they would be listened to and i was um

I talked to John and Christine about it when I was in council and there was a lot of pressure

to do sustainability. We put in a six-month sustainability coordinator as a pilot program.

And he did so well that became a permanent position. But there are ways to start quickly

with not too much money and not too much commitment. And then when it's proven itself,

you can go to council and say, look how wonderful.

And hopefully they'll say yes.

I think it's critical.

And I said the same thing with the biodiversity plan.

Unless we have someone who's responsible for this,

I don't think it'll happen because good intentions

are good intentions.

But someone whose job it is, the results are different, I think.

Um, and I had, I guess this should have been a question, but it wasn't a question.

In, in the, in the community services department organization, you have urban forestry, which

manages urban canopy landscape medians and supports biodiversity.

And then you have parks and open space maintains parks, landscape areas, and the

pastoral pedestrian mall.

And I couldn't tell the difference why landscape

medians are different from landscaped areas.

The logic didn't completely work for me.

So maybe when you're looking at the organization,

you can maybe find ways to make it a little more logical.

Maybe it's completely logical to you and not to me.

That's completely possible.

And then I also had a comment about tracking measures.

And Commissioner Summers mentioned the QIMBY Act.

And I'm wondering if we hold ourselves to changing the ratios under the QIMBY Act,

whether we're just doing ourselves a failure because the chances of her getting a lot of new

parks are frankly fairly limited so maybe we we need to look at other definitions of

what having a good park system is maybe the number of people who use it the range of ages

the number of different activities that can happen in that park or the pickleball field.

There's a pickleball field, but a small park where children can play and seniors can walk

and you can enjoy flowers and sit under the shade and maybe you run around a little.

That might be a more successful park.

So we need to look at those measures.

And there was under a metric for sustainable park design and landscaping.

There's a lot of talk about shade structures.

And as as part of you, if the speaker said, I don't think the public is looking for shade

structures are kind of easy, but people want canopy and trees.

sometimes when you ask questions, you get answers and then you

think the answers reflect what people think. People want shade

structures because they want shade, not necessarily because

give me another piece of plastic in the park. So I would go

adding shade, if we add shade structures, not the same thing

as adding trees.

And

Finally, the public transparency and reporting.

This may already be part of your plan, but just having a dashboard on the city site is

not really.

It's not really in my eyes involving the community, I would like to say a report, a written not

not a written report, but a meeting of the PRC.

For staff to describe what has happened this year, which goals, you know, have we gotten

closer to our goals?

What new developments have come?

And then it can go to council as a report.

It doesn't need to be discussion, but I think a public meeting would be really useful.

Okay, those are my thoughts.

Mr. Mitchell.

So overall, I think it's a comprehensive and well thought out set of actions with realistic timelines and high level cost estimates.

I do have some comments on several of the specific actions.

But before that, just at a high level, I do wonder, as some other people have brought up, whether there's really enough specificity in the actions or whether they're still a little bit too high level.

For example, you know, we have there's an action where we group a bunch of parks within with one action.

So the question that comes to mind for me, and I think it's come up other ways is our actions actionable.

I mean, if you if you look at it.

Is there somebody who can do something about it?

You know, what what's the obvious step to make progress on that?

I think we might be a little bit too high level,

or maybe we just need to develop them a little bit further.

So getting to the specific actions, 1.1.3.

I'd ask a question about this separately,

and I'm bummed that I did a little stint on Friends of Stephen's Creek Trail,

and I'm bummed that this next stretch is still at least 10 years out.

I was hoping that it would be a little bit sooner than that.

I know that, or at least I've heard that Sunnyvale is making progress

and might be a little bit ahead of us.

But I guess we have funding for design,

but we don't have funding for construction.

And I don't know.

I mean, there was a big number floated.

I don't know how much, whether we're at zero now or whether we have some of that.

But anyway, God, I'd love to have that a little bit sooner.

So one thing I didn't notice is I did not see an action for Tier A foundational repairs, maintenance, and minor improvements to many parts.

you know and since several of those um rex manor thaddeus varsity are considered high priority

um instructing me that there could be an action related to tier a mini parks

perhaps somewhere under strategy 1.2 i mean it would be less expensive than tier a at the larger

parks and it could potentially be immediate or short term.

You know, and I'd note that there is a TRA action for neighborhood parks, but there isn't one for many parks.

So I would propose including one because then you might have a little bit more granularity on some actions that are achievable in the short term.

on one two five um for stevens creek trail again um you know i was wondering if some of the

amenities for example benches and wayfinding whether they could be completed in a shorter

time horizon than six to ten years um also you know this listed this action is listed as a three

dollar sign which is one to five million dollars and i think it would be quite a bit less than that

for benches and wayfinding, which would be important improvements for the trail.

I think residents, maybe even someone like me, might donate money for benches with commemorative

plaques on them.

Or perhaps Friends of Stevens Creek Trail might assist with fundraising.

But it seems like we could knock off some of that stuff that could make that trail much nicer.

and it wouldn't have to be

six to ten years

and a high dollar amount.

So I questioned that.

Going to 213.

Updating the athletic field use policy.

So I'm just thinking that

that could be on the longer end

of intermediate.

Well, actually, it's intermediate, so it's probably fine.

But I don't know.

It's immediate.

So yeah, so I'm thinking it could be on the longer end of immediate if user groups are

sort of invited to participate, because they may end up having to adjust their operations

on changes to H7 that could impact their field allocations or their annual fees.

So I don't know that this is one that if you want to be inclusive of our neighborhood groups, that you can just knock off real quickly, because I think you need to take input in those groups.

That will definitely require us to engage with our youth sports organization.

for 214 and 215

I would hope that

some new adult and 55 and older

fitness and wellness offerings could commence in less than 3 to 5 years

which is what the short term is

it would be great if just a few things could be

added if there's a need or a demand for a few things

and again i don't know whether the timeline on this is yeah i just don't know exactly how it

relates to the to the goal you know whether that's or to the to the action whether it's

that's the timeline for entirely completing the action or again there are there are some

sub bullet points within the action that might be might be sooner i'm going to 311

So I think this is definitely important, but I hope that there's a way to keep the cost down.

You know, it's listed as in the $250,000 to $1 million range.

And I think we just need to be mindful that our residents probably want our city to be judicious in spending on organizational analysis type of expenses, as well as the use of outside consultants, if that's the intention.

I think there's a sensitivity to that.

I'm not saying that it's not important, but I just think we need to be careful.

for 321 and 322, which is now 322. Thanks, Christine. Again, I think the regular maintenance

operations and proactive maintenance are both really important. And I was really glad to see

that those enhancement actions are short-term and the feeling is that they can be largely

with existing staff time and expertise.

Because again, maintaining what we have

and getting in the routine of that

and having it documented,

I think that's really important.

Okay.

Going to area four.

Four one one, again, we covered,

I think I asked a question on it.

Again, if we want to get something on that ballot in 2026, this needs to be immediate and not short term.

So I think that was handled.

416, I'm exploring the feasibility of capital reserve fees on facility rentals.

And I guess the first thing that dawned on me is that I'd hope that linking potential capital reserve fees to facility rentals wouldn't result in an offsetting decrease to regular operating income from those facilities.

Are we robbing Peter to pay Paul or are we doing a shell game with money?

I think the question is whether there's realistically new incremental money to be had through facility rental fees.

And I don't know the answer to that.

And I guess that's what maybe you would explore with this.

But yeah, I don't know that there's more out there.

But if it's just going to offset, and I appreciate the creativity in trying to come up with ways to make money, but we'll see.

And again, on 417, I asked the question earlier.

Again, if this is just exploring the feasibility of establishing a nonprofit, I hope that we wouldn't have to wait 10 years to explore the feasibility of that because we need the money sooner.

and the feasibility should be something that we could look at soon.

With regard to a few of the metrics,

I'm going to be a little different than maybe some of the others.

I would be very much in favor of continuing to include acres per thousand

by planning area as a metric.

I think that that's a metric that our community is familiar with

and it really sort of gets at the crux of how we're doing with adding parks to underserved areas

in in the city i i think it's great that we also have things where we're comparing

you know mini parks actuals to to mini park benchmarks and and all of that i think that's

great but i think that we still need to keep our our eyes focused on um you know what we're

providing in different planning areas in the city. With regard to Metric 6 and Action 414

and cost recovery, you know, just sometimes I feel like maybe we're viewing a little too sharply

down the path of high cost recovery percentages of things. You know, it was reflected a little

bit in the plan on, you know, where we showed that Mountain View has a higher percentage than

national average of revenue generating programs, you know, which can, you know, that could be seen

as a good thing. But it also could be seen as, as you know, we're really, we're sort of money

focused on some of these things. You know, and I, I completely understand that some niche user

needs and amenities are narrowly consumed by a small group of users. And in those cases,

those users should bear more of those costs.

And I know it's a tricky balance.

We just need to be cognizant of maybe not pushing too far.

For example, we've already been getting some feedback

that Heritage Tree appeal fees are too expensive

for an ordinary resident.

At the last meeting, we had somebody who had to do a GoFundMe

to do the appeal, and they wanted to save some trees

So I just think we need to be careful with that.

And then finally, on this topic with regard to metrics,

I think it's great that we're going to have annual reports to the PRC and City Council on outcomes and progress.

That's awesome. Visibility and transparency are really important.

But I get this vision.

I just hope that we don't have to add additional FTE just to track everything

and prepare reports for everything that we're taking on.

So anyway, those are my comments on this.

Great.

I think it's me.

I'll kind of wrap this part up quickly.

So I agree with a lot of what I've heard.

I thought Commissioner Summers' comment about granularity on actions is good.

Commissioner Filos' comment on indoor sports complex,

I agree with the exception of that may be the solution for pickleball.

Not building a new indoor complex, but situating pickleballs indoor.

Anyway, to the strategies, the 1.1s, I'll just hit these all together.

These are all long-term, but they're all super high priority.

So I think incentives to progress are going to be important.

Otherwise, we risk planning to plan.

1.14, kind of the safe routes to parts.

I'm not actually sure what all is in this.

Exploring the feasibility is kind of what sounds like a weak commitment to a really important issue.

I think as we struggle with adding parkland, these linkages and then safe linkages between them is really important.

So I'd like to see some of that advanced more than long term.

It's only on the 1.2.5 Stevens Creek Trail.

unlike Mr. Michener who said we could put in the benches and migration stations but earlier I was thinking actually we could

maybe put those in later but kind of the trail safety and surfacing issues some of that might be pulled soon

in my opinion.

Just

going down.

1.3.2,

Establish Enhanced Native

Epideth Pollinator Guidelines.

You've heard me talk about this before,

but this

kind of

feeds into this concept of

community partnership.

And

you know,

Tim and

Brenda

great examples of working with

our local neighborhoods who

follow their habitat. And so I think

this is a great example of where we're going to really exploit those

the community helping to achieve some of these things.

People have said good things about

inclusive program offerings.

I guess for the 2.1s, I'm not going to comment so much on those as I think in my time in corporate kind of strategic planning, all the things we want to do are really important, but also the things we want to abandon are really important too.

what do we need to stop doing so we have the resources to do the things that are really important.

And I don't know, Christine, tell me if I'm looking at this correctly.

I saw 1,800 classes, camps, and activities.

And there's 13,000 enrollments.

If I did the math, that means there's seven enrollments per activity.

and I'm sure there's probably more to it than that but

maybe it's worth looking at or having a mechanism in the plan that says here's how we're going to

manage the life cycle of these programs and here's how we're going to decide to get rid of and

getting rid of anything is always going to incur some kind of objection from some segment of

the population, but

part of that program

life cycle management I think is important

for the overall

process.

That's 2.2.1

process for volunteer

organizations. I think that's great.

Really important.

And I think I've

said stuff on that.

I said earlier

that I was kind of ambivalent on a lot of this organizational capacity stuff and maybe

thought it was overweighted or took up too much real estate in the plan.

I've heard some interesting concepts from my fellow commissioners, and I might back

off that a little bit.

I do think a really good development person can be a really good payoff, but that's a

position you want a really good person.

um staffing specializing in an inclusion I guess I'd ask what's the problem what are

what are we trying to do there I was it wasn't really clear in the plan what

where that problem was articulated

I totally agree on 3.2.1, the life cycle, basically having a good plan to maintain parks, monitor that.

Revenue streams.

I'm kind of concerned about this next study.

I certainly hope, because I read in the plan that it's up there against the housing element, and I hope we're not looking to deep base our funding sources.

So just watch how that develops.

4.1.7, establishing a nonprofit.

I just want to emphatically say this is great.

and I'm not going to talk much longer

so I'll just tell them a story about that

so in two weeks I'm going to go to Japan

and I'm going to meet a guy

that I worked with

40 years ago

in Phoenix, Arizona

when the city of Phoenix Parks Department

sent me to Japan

to

work with him

on a Japanese car design in Phoenix

as a

young landscape architect in a newly

created sister city program. And I did that.

And we worked on it.

I kind of went away and thought, probably not going to go anywhere.

Are you kidding? A Japanese garden in Phoenix?

I went back for the first time in 30 some odd years

two weeks ago. And it's fabulous.

And it's wonderful. And it is wonderful because a nonprofit group took it over. And you look at the surrounding city of Phoenix Park, it's kind of in shambles. This thing was beautiful. And rich cultural programs, all kinds of stuff that I think a good nonprofit can really help with.

And there are plenty of models.

I don't think the exploration needs to be long-term

because I think there's a lot of models out there for that.

And it's a good idea.

Okay, annual reporting.

Yes, absolutely important.

So I'll leave it there.

I think my fellow commissioners have said a lot of good things.

and um and to do one last pass to see if people wanted to address anything that wasn't embodied

by those three questions but is important to communicate in our uh commentary on the draft

plan would anybody like to start there's a couple all right we'll get to you right after the

commissioner um so yeah so i have a number of things um so i've sort of sorted these

sequentially as i read through the report so first of all in the staff memorandum introducing

the strategic plan there's a statement that says mountain views challenge is not the total amount

of parkland but rather its distribution and accessibility and i i guess i'm not sure

residents would completely agree with that statement um while distribution and accessibility

is definitely an issue i think that many would see three acres per thousand as a floor and that

that Mountain View should actually aspire to more.

I agree with some of the input that we received

about wanting to see more integration

with the biodiversity plan and this plan.

And I'm just hypothesizing that perhaps

the biodiversity plan was still sort of freshly drafted

at the same time this plan was being freshly drafted.

And hopefully in the coming months,

as we move towards final approval on those two plans,

there'll be sort of an opportunity to look at them,

you know, side by side and maybe try to find places

where we can weave them together a little bit more.

I don't know if you still have it.

If you could pull up page 14.

Of the final?

Yeah.

I'm going to make a fun little point on data.

Let me...

Okay.

Oh, thank you.

One second.

When my computer shut off, it completely...

Yeah, I know.

I should have foreshadowed it.

I know.

I didn't have my charger.

Thank God, Allison said, Savior, and went and ran and got it.

One second.

I have to just reconnect to the server.

Oh, Allison can share it because she is ready to rock and roll.

Page 14.

So, yeah.

So, this is an area where I think if you can go up the part where the bar charts are,

So I think we need to be, and it's just a general thing, you need to be really careful with numbers.

So 75 and older goes from 5.88 in 2025 to 6.84 in 2030.

And the report describes that as rises slightly.

And yes, that's true in terms of one percentage point overall for the city, but it sort of masks that for that age group itself, going from 588 to 684 represents a 16% increase in residents that are over 75 years old.

And then the report says it grows slightly to 7.38 in 2035.

Well, that's an additional 8% growth for the 75 and older group.

So in 10 years from 2025 to 2035, the 75 and older group actually grows by 26%.

Okay, and when you look at the growth in that age group from 2020 to 2040, it's 48%.

Okay, so that's huge for that age group.

And it's a nuance sort of in looking at the numbers, and it can be sort of glanced over in looking at the bar charts.

But it's pretty important not to miss what's actually a very large growth in older seniors planning for future sort of age appropriate recreational programs and amenities.

And that's true in other things.

But it stood out to me.

I'm with the older seniors.

And that's my audition for a future spot on the senior advisory.

um okay so um my next next point um started in the funding allocation section of the statistically

valid survey um there was a slightly higher percentage of respondents that would put money

towards improving existing parks and facilities versus acquiring or developing new ones and i

I just I thought that was interesting, but I also wanted to point out that it's a very similar result to a survey done by Santa Clara County Parks as feedback bridge parts and facilities.

So that was interesting.

I'm going to go into seniors again here a little bit.

So the survey showed that there's a desire among residents for more 55 and older fitness and wellness programs.

If we add programs, or to the extent we have them today, I think it would be important to consider offering those through what I would call mainstream recreation rather than the senior center.

my hunch is that while the senior center serves 55 and older community members who are 55 to maybe

i don't know 65 or 70 don't categorize themselves yet as the senior center target audience

or really see themselves as a fit for programming at the mountain view senior center

so i think it might be interesting to investigate whether you know this is just perception

by me or whether you know there is maybe a little bit of a disconnect and how to best

offer programming for those 55 and older especially in the 55 to 70 group which which

wouldn't be flocking to the to the senior center for programs um restrooms and restrooms and parks

were definitely high on residents list of important amenities i totally concur and i just wanted to

Adam mentioned that the restrooms at Cuesta Park, while they exist, they're extremely dated and pretty uncomfortable.

You know, that's just personal, personal, personal opinion.

Mention that.

I would hope that as it relates to the Nexus study, that if housing development park fees are going to be reduced by 20%,

that that loss can be offset or more than offset by another source um perhaps perhaps commercial

development and park fees i think commercial developments also benefit from nice parks and

open spaces both in their property values as well as the health and well-being of their tenants

so i think that it'd be completely justifiable to include a park um surcharge on commercial

developments if we're not doing that now um let's see i thought it was nice to see some of our

recent park additions um with high ratings um pyramid fayette mora avondale wyandotte um

it would be disappointing if these recent ones that we worked on um weren't highly rated but i

hope that that speaks well of the city's current processes and diligence in in park design

As I mentioned at our prior PRC meeting where we reviewed level of service, I'm totally fine with capturing school sites by percentage of available hours.

That's precisely how I would have done it, and I think that that's fine.

However, as I also mentioned at that meeting, I do wish that Vista Slope and Crittenden Hill at Shoreline were not included in total developed parkland.

As those areas feel much more like passive open space than areas, you know, similar to Cuesta and Rengstorf Parks and other parks where residents feel invited to visit and recreate.

For me, Crittman Hill in particular does not feel inviting as a place to visit.

and i just think that those two areas are so large that removing them from developed park acres

would take the city's acreage per thousand down from 4.4 and i'm using the 2025 population

calculation down to something in the neighborhood of 3.2 or 3.3 per thousand which is a significant

difference. I'm not saying that those two spaces aren't wonderful open space. I think that they are,

but I just feel more like they're passive use than developed park, which is what

is the title of the row that we're calculating, and they skew the numbers.

You know, or maybe the trails within those two spaces could be categorized as trails,

or maybe in regional parks with the other parks being excluded.

Or maybe there's something to be done similar to, as Commissioner Summer said, with Cuesta Annex.

You know, those areas feel a little bit similar to Cuesta Annex,

although Cuesta Annex at least feels more accessible to visit.

But in any case, you know, again, I think if those two areas are truly open

and we want to encourage use of those two areas,

I wish the city would do more to publicize them.

I always sort of thought they were off limits

and that I wasn't really allowed to go there.

Perhaps with wayfinding, bike parking, more bench seating,

I cruised around Vista Slope and there was a bench to sit.

Also, just as an FYI, Google Maps currently lists Critton and Hill

as temporarily closed.

So I don't know how long it's listed.

But that's sort of how it feels.

I think that the report shows that the city is still largely dependent

on joint use agreement for some of the outdoor amenities.

If there were no joint use agreement,

we'd have a shortfall for basketball courts and rectangular fields.

the latter is critical for youth sports

and the city would also be close to shortfall for playgrounds

and as we mentioned too

some of the equity maps with playgrounds

again pushing a stroller across

some of these streets

the equity circles need to be

not perfect circles

or something like that, or they need to jut in where there's a major street.

Anyway, I just wanted to be sure that the amenity numbers don't sort of slip through the cracks

when people are mostly focused on parkland acreage and comparing those to the benchmarks.

With regard to the benchmarks, you know, I appreciate the effort in the report

to try to explain how the acreage and amenity benchmarks were created.

but I think the actual derivation of the benchmarks still feels like a bit of a mystery

you know and that's a little concerning because actual versus benchmark is is sort of key to the

entire analysis and so that benchmark can't feel arbitrary you know and I was trying to think of

ways to to deal with this and I don't even know how you would do it you know I was thinking

you know if it would be feasible you know could there be an additional appendix item that somehow

sort of brings us into that room to view the deliberative process of creating just one of the

benchmarks, you know, the back and forth of the inputs that were included in coming up with one

of the, you know, just a sample benchmark. You know, then residents would see, you know, sort of

rigor that goes into the determination of the benchmarks and be more comfortable in accepting

the actual versus benchmark comparisons.

You know, I will say to the plan's credit,

the benchmarks created show the city with a deficit

in most of the comparisons.

So at least we're being a tough grader on ourselves.

So that's good.

If it showed that we were exceeding benchmarks

and everything, then I think that would be more bothersome.

I think the benchmark of one diamond field

for 25,000 residents feels a little light to me.

In that case, Mountain View would need just three diamond fields.

And I know for sure that that would fall way short of what's needed

to accommodate all the different age groups of baseball and softball

that are played in the city.

You know, kids that are 7 and 8 can't play on the same field

as kids that are 15 and 16.

um you know again it's not currently relevant since we're well better than that benchmark

but i just wanted to provide feedback on that particular benchmark

um it came up tonight um i would i think agree with commissioner bryan i would not want to see

trails allocated to the planning area in which they traverse i think that that would over inflate

the recreational acreage within the planning area just because a trail happens to pass through

that area wouldn't really be a space neighborhood you know could go visit and pursue sort of typical

recreational activities unless they're you know dodging bikes and and stuff like that so

i would support keeping trail acreage separate as it is now um i think you know i'm sort of

winding towards the end of these I think the elephant in the room and all of this is that the

public probably wants tier c and tier b additions and this would be primarily primarily to close

parkland gaps in some of the planning areas as well as to add or increase specific amenities

I think there's also a very strong interest in adding new parks and more connected green space

throughout the city so the sooner we can cost out some of those things and start working on many of

10 actions under goal number four um the better off we're going to be you know finally uh you

know that 1.1 billion dollar cost to reach three acres per thousand throughout the city's

neighborhood serving parks is really sobering um you know it's not even apparent that there are 87

acres to be had within the city limits and almost certainly not within the most underserved areas

so clearly even with you know grand funding plan the city's going to need to set priorities

and act quickly and opportunistically whenever possible um to you know whenever there's a

possibility to acquire some land sort of the city's been doing which is great on a smaller scale

um for a number of the mini parks and you know this plan puts this stuff out there and can be a

a good start for all that. And, you know, the other way, if you divide 1.1 billion by 89,000

residents, it's 12.4 thousand each. So pass the hat or something like that. But anyway,

we can't do that. But there's, you know, there's some good ideas. But I think

when I'm looking at the big numbers that we need, you know, you're looking at revenue measures and

And there's a few of the other ideas, too, that are the opportunities to bring in more.

I think there was an idea about a sales tax or some kind of a tax increase or something like that.

And that could generate more money.

I think naming privileges is an interesting thing to look at as well.

So anyway, I think those are my additional comments.

Excuse me.

Do you want to do anything?

I just, one is a compliment.

I thought the memo that you put ahead of the, I'm glad I read that first, before I went to the plan was rock solid.

Because by reading the memo, I was very well conditioned about what the overall plan read.

And I read the whole plan.

I didn't cheat.

I didn't go the, what did we used to use the, instead of reading the novel, we'd go to the clip notes.

I didn't use it as clip notes, but I thought it was really well written.

It really encompassed what the plan set.

So great job on the memo.

Teamwork over here, though.

I'm not the only one.

I just wanted a few things.

We have some future challenges.

and i mean i would say when i say we the the commission over the next 10 years uh the city

council the city of mountainview and that we need larger parcels we don't you know jonathan's talked

about this before it's it's wonderful at many parks but we need five acre parks you know and

how we're going to do that that's it's it's it's a huge challenge but it's not one we should give

up on because you never know what might happen you know um uh one other one lighting versus non-lighting

when we read the when you read the the responses of the public there was a huge i wouldn't say huge

but there was a large number that wanted more lighting in the parks however we have a dark

skies group that is very valid too about not having lighting in the parks and or you're very

limited going so i think that that's going to be a a tough um tough road to hold you know to to

please everybody and just a challenge moving forward because they're both valid in what

they're saying but uh um and this is probably above our level but open space versus housing

sb 79's kill us it's it's you know i feel almost personal responsible why didn't i notice this and

why didn't I stop the state from passing this thing?

And because, you know, in a city like ours,

trying to find the, you know, we're putting up,

we're accommodating SB 79 by putting up a lot of stuff right now,

but we don't have the room to put, you know,

the parks to accommodate all these places as well.

And meeting the needs and balance, what I call balance,

as we look forward to future parks, making sure we accommodate everybody.

We need to have the biodiversity, but we still also have to have room to play.

And because especially with more dense housing, that means less.

We weren't going to have front yards anymore or backyards like my kids were able to have both, you know, a park down the street.

But, you know, our front yard and our backyard.

We're not going to see this much of that with denser housing.

And so balancing what a park might be is going to be a tough sell.

but i think that when we i think involving the community with any park designs can be continued

to be important i think this staff and this this commission has done a good job of of reaching out

to the to the people that live in that particular area to find out what their needs might be

but i think it's going to be challenging parts going forward so those are my just closing comments

great comments. Thank you.

Ms. Shoshana.

Well, I blew it and

I should have made this comment

on the last question

because it's related to Act

4.1.7, which is the one

about the foundation.

My suggestion

on that is to

more vaguely word

that, make a non-profit

funding partner, because

I think you could make a case that a

land trust would be a way better entities as a partner because not all foundations do philanthropy,

but a land trust can take action and hold land and perform stewardship and, and philanthropy.

And, um, like for example, in, uh, Pennsylvania, there's the organization that actually owns

falling water. You know, the famous Franklin is land trust. It's the Western Pennsylvania

conservancy, and they have a huge urban greening program to like a tree planting in Pittsburgh,

maintenance and, you know, construction of all that kind of like street medians and pots and

a lot of this stuff that Mountain View does downtown. And so when I think about a land trust,

I mean, we've got land trusts around us, like falling out of the sky, there's just so many of

of them. You know, back in the 70s, when mid pen form, they

actually created that post that Peninsula Open Space Trust as

their nonprofit partner, they kind of were born together and

grew up together. And, you know, I've always had the thought

that someone should see if post wanted to become more like the

Western Pennsylvania Conservancy and have an urban greening

program. So I am saying all this because I don't think you would have to create a new entity.

I think you might be able to strategically target some to expand their program to cover what you're

trying to accomplish. You know, similarly, there's some of the public agencies.

um certainly the uh santa clara county habitat agency ought to be a funding partner uh for

shoreline's uh burrowing owl program um you know another example like the santa clara county open

space authority which we aren't in their boundary but um they they they they aren't that well funded

but to pass their original parcel tax measure, they actually included a grant program that's

for urban parks. So they send money to San Obey and I think maybe Milpitas too, and maybe even

Gilroy. And so that's why that kind of explains why I think you should make it a little more generic

and look closer to home. You don't have to go to Foxham Foundation in Washington DC.

Silicon Valley Foundation, that's the name of it, right? Silicon Valley Community Foundation

is the best funded foundation in the world. Yes. And they're down El Camino. So let's talk to the

people that exist already and not worry about the start anyone.

Um, I only have a comment. I said, I know this was the draft

plan. So I'm hoping that the final plan maps can actually

larger and less blurry. So the people can, you know, look at

and at the detail because that's what I found myself doing. And

and it's like, can't really read it.

What street's that?

So I would like to see them as 11 by 17,

you know, tabloid page,

because they're great maps

and let's make them,

let's make me good in the document.

Yeah.

Commissioner Bryant.

Yes, thank you.

So I would like to see the plan kind of tightened.

um it was mentioned before it's kind of nice to know what the vision and the goals and strategies

are uh at the at the beginning and there's just so much statistical information and so much

so much analysis and so many comparisons between questionnaires

and I didn't necessarily see straight line from all the information and the analysis

to what we're going to be doing because I compared

as much as I can time to compare the 2014 parks and open space plan I didn't look at the right

plan but the parks and open space plan to what we still need to do and it's not really that

different the neighborhood that were underserved are even more underserved in space because we