League of Women Voters of California Education Fund
	Santa Clara County, CA November 4, 2014 Election
	Candidates Answer Questions on the Issues Council Member; City of Palo Alto

The questions were prepared by the League of Women Voters of Palo Alto and asked of all candidates for this office.     See below for questions on Balancing interests, Growth, Traffic Click on a name for candidate information.   See also more information about this contest. 1. How would you balance neighborhood and city-wide concerns? Answer from Eric Filseth: With a proper orientation in City Hall, those concerns don't need to be balanced: they are aligned. The City's top priority should be quality of life issues such as neighborhood quality, traffic, parking, ample city services and excellent schools. Unfortunately for the last few years, the City has pursued policies, especially around development and density, that are in conflict with these things. The massive buildout of office space has benefitted special interests, but led to excessive traffic gridlock, parking shortages, displacement of neighborhood-serving retail, and regional housing pressure which in turn crowds our schools. The solution is to refocus our development policies on projects which benefit the community. I would eliminate the smorgasbord of zoning exemptions (PC's are only one of many) which enable projects that meet neither the intent of our zoning nor the Comprehensive Plan. I would reform the process of the Architectural Review Board and the Planning and Transportation Commission. I would use zoning policy to prevent the California Avenue and Midtown areas from becoming clones of the University Avenue core. Answer from A.C. Johnston: We must stop making development decisions on an ad hoc basis. Rather than focusing on individual projects, as in the current PC zoning process, we must take a holistic view of development and engage residents in establishing a broad vision of the future for our entire community. The Comprehensive Plan is our community's blueprint for guiding and controlling both commercial and residential development. The update to the Comprehensive Plan that is currently underway will govern development to 2030. Making the process by which we update the Comprehensive Plan more inclusive, more transparent, and more responsive to the needs and concerns of community members is essential to creating true consensus regarding future development in Palo Alto. To balance neighborhood and city-wide concerns, both the City Council and the City Staff must reach out to neighborhood groups and individuals across the city. Obtaining vitally important input from residents is far too important a responsibility for the council to delegate entirely to the staff. Instead, members of the council must (a) listen to the entire community, (b) give all residents meaningful opportunities to provide detailed input, (c) make sure that the concerns of all residents are fully considered, and (d) demand that any impacts of further development be both mitigated to the fullest extent possible and shared equitably across the city. The updated Comprehensive Plan should clearly specify the type and extent of the development we want, where it should take place, and the circumstances under which it may occur. Specific zoning changes can then be implemented to realize the community-wide vision articulated in the updated Comprehensive Plan. A properly updated Comprehensive Plan -- based on broad-based, community-wide input from residents -- will successfully strike the right balance between neighborhood needs and city-wide concerns. It will accurately reflect our collective vision of our city's future. And it will help us all work together constructively to build a Palo Alto in which our children will want and be able to live. Answer from John Karl Fredrich: I see a congruency between city-wide concerns and neighborhood needs. Wherein they diverge it is necessary to weigh the public good in terms of cost benefit trade-offs. Some neighborhoods are suffering disproportionate impacts from traffic and others have pressures for more housing. I recommend hitting the pause button on development until it is more clear as to how heavily the big build out at Stanford and the technological boom here in the North County have already over-shot the mark in the area of negative impacts. Intersections that already have an F rating and are near newly suggested developments need special protection. Page Mill and El Camino is a good example. Answer from Nancy Shepherd: I do not support excessive development at the expense of our quiet neighborhoods. I understand how critical this issue is to all of us. My top priority is to find solutions that achieve a balance between reasonable development and quality of life. That's why this year as Mayor, I focused on a plan to complete the Comprehensive Plan update by 2015--to ensure that the City could update our vision and zoning for today and into our future. This issue has been a challenge for Palo Alto over the decades because part of living here is being in close proximity to high paying jobs. Working close to home is an important element for quality of life. Stanford University too, also attracts leading specialists and experts in research and technology who find Palo Alto an appealing place to live with quiet neighborhoods and good schools. I was surprised to learn that in 1969 Stanford Professor Frederick Terman, the father of Silicon Valley, was asked a similar question when interviewed for Palo Alto's 75th Anniversary. Here is the interview website location: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jwk2Y4mi87w Palo Alto is proud of its residential features with eclectic neighborhoods having distinctive charm and character filled with families, seniors and students. Many of these neighborhoods are in close proximity to non-residential commercial property where developers are replacing simple shops with job-heavy offices or research and development buildings. I hear from many in our community that they find this a challenge--too much change, with buildings too close to the street. And neighborhood quality of life is being threatened by spill over traffic and parking problems. These outcomes were never expected when the City implemented the 1998 Comprehensive Plan, Palo Alto's "land use bible" which created our vision for 2010. I believe that Palo Alto is not too big to be personable and adaptive to protecting even the mini-hoods inside our neighborhoods so that new home designs are not out of scale. We need the participation of dedicated and caring citizens to advise and help craft ideas as we navigate our tomorrow. It is this synergy that makes us what we are--a community with an entrepreneurial "can do" spirit and keeps Palo Alto a great place to live, raise a family and retire. Answer from Tom Dubois: I will clearly make resident concerns my top priority, and use the filter of "how does this benefit" residents when evaluating issues. As our comprehensive plan elegantly states: "Commercial activity but not at the expense of our residential neighborhoods." Many residents are concerned about the rapid pace of development and the adverse effects of that development, the difficulties encountered by citizens trying to participate in city council decisions, and the lack of transparency in government. My goals are to require high-quality commercial development that adheres to our existing zoning rules, get baseline measurements about traffic, employment, population changes, and make sensible zoning and services decisions that benefit our community. The Comprehensive Plan is being revised, and I want to ensure that the needs of Palo Alto residents are represented in that plan. We need to zone for the type of development we want, not what we are currently getting. The city also needs to provide planning consistency. We have too many exceptions and not enough enforcement, which contributes to an atmosphere of uncertainty and encourages horse-trading between the city and development projects. The city would be better served with clear processes and fewer exceptions to streamline the process and provide certainty for developers and residents alike. Openness and trust in government is becoming a larger factor. In addition to issues reported by the recent Grand Jury, other factors erode trust such as granting exceptions, uneven enforcement, staff reports that are dense and one-sided. There is serious work to be done to regain trust and have people believe in the positive impact of government. Answer from Greg Scharff: The role of a City Council member is to first and foremost preserve and defend our existing "quality of life" and then seek ways to improve and enhance it. Quality of life means different things to different people. To me, it is having fantastic schools, 34 parks, 4,000 acres of open space, a wonderful urban forest, a great sense of community and a shared sense of values. Our town is walkable, bikeable and has wonderful commercial areas from Charleston Plaza and Piazzas in the south to Downtown in the north, California Ave in the west and a revitalized Edgewood Plaza in the east. The Midtown Commercial District and Town and Country are at our core, and of course, there is Stanford Shopping Center. Being able to run 10 miles in our baylands and the next day hike 10 miles in Foothill Park makes Palo Alto special. Palo Alto is an amazing place and was rightfully named, "Americas Most Livable City." However, we do face many challenges, and I, as a Councilmember and Mayor have worked hard to address them: Investing in streets, parks, fire stations, libraries and other city facilities. Palo Alto's infrastructure is vital to our high quality of life. City facilities like police and fire stations must be earthquake safe. Investing in public works projects to fix our streets, libraries, parks, and aging sewer and utility infrastructure has been my priority. Prioritized fixing our streets and sidewalks. We more than doubled the budget for repairing and repaving our streets. Work is underway on 50 lane miles of streets this year, and the city expects to increase its Pavement Condition Index score (which ranges from 0 to a perfect 100) to 80, which would be one of the highest in the region. Banned smoking in our parks. Palo Alto 311. Worked with city staff to develop a Palo Alto 311 mobile application that allows citizens to initiate requests for city services in a manner most convenient for them. Fiber to the Premises. Strongly advocated for Fiber to the Premises. Marijuana Dispensaries. Led the campaign to keep marijuana dispensaries out of Palo Alto. Cogswell Plaza Renovation & Free WIFI. Renovated Cogswell Plaza and instituted free WIFI. Know Your Neighbor's Grant Program. Developed with former Mayor Yiaway Yeah, the "Know your Neighbors Neighborhood Grant Program" has successfully brought Neighbors throughout Palo Alto together and built community. Safe Routes to School for Students. Advocated and supported ensuring that we have safe routes to school for all our children Bike Paths and bridges . I have worked hard to make Palo Alto bike and pedestrian friendly. Through my efforts Palo Alto will have a bike bridge across 101 and we are working hard to fully implement our bike and pedestrian master plan. High Speed Rail. Protecting Palo Alto from the effects that High Speed Rail would have on the community while preserving options for alternative transportation. Answer from Mark Weiss: Neighborhoods first. Answer from Lydia Kou: I reject the premise that neighborhood and city-wide concerns are in conflict. The neighborhoods are the key part of the city. When the neighborhoods resist having unfair burdens on them and their quality of life diminished, special interest groups demonize the residents as NIMBYs (Not In My BackYard). Is it NIMBYism to resist calls to sacrifice so that others may reap excessive profits? Is it NIMBYism to protect the community that you sacrificed to become part of and have invested in, both financially and emotionally? Is it NIMBYism to resist frequent assertions that Palo Alto needs to become more like Manhattan? Too often "city-wide concerns" is code for the agendas of City Hall, the regional bureaucracies and the politically well-connected. Is it a city-wide interest to have even more office workers at a cost of increasing cut-through traffic and overflow parking in the neighborhoods? "City-wide concerns" is also code for ignoring the impacts of projects on nearby neighborhoods. There is a "city-wide concern" to provide more housing, but that shouldn't trump supporting neighborhood-serving retail. Is the benefit of a few more housing units worth the cost of a whole neighborhood now having to drive further for basic retail? Especially since statistics predict that less than a third of the employees in that housing will work in Palo Alto? And somehow concerns that affect many neighborhoods across the city are treated in isolation, rather than as a city-wide concern. For example, overflow parking into the neighborhoods. College Terrace worked long and hard for a Residential Parking Permit (RPP) program. It was supposed to serve as a template for Evergreen Park and then the neighborhoods around University Avenue. Instead, City Hall delayed and delayed and is reinventing an RPP for downtown. City Hall sees having a "vibrant downtown"--a regional entertainment and dining destination--as a city-wide issue. But has downtown ceased to be useful for many residents? Those in neighborhoods not close to downtown tell me that they rarely go there, a combination of "too much trouble" and "nothing I want". As a residential Realtor of 17 years, I am constantly reminded of why people want to buy in Palo Alto. They come here for the schools, for a yard so that the kids can play, for the sense of community ... Palo Alto's neighborhoods are the community, not just where people park themselves when not at work. Answer from Karen Holman: The question is an interesting one. We are at a point in time when neighborhood concerns especially seem to be city-wide, especially after Measure D. In that vote, voters sent the message that they are not happy with either the current level of development or the kinds of development that effect not only the neighborhoods specifically but also the enjoyment of Palo Alto as a whole. Those sentiments are supported by the City's annual survey that measures the satisfaction of residents in a variety of areas of City activities. When it comes to land use and planning, parking and traffic only 30+% of residents rate the City at excellent or good; in the quality of new development the score was in the low 40's. This is down significantly from prior years and compared to ratings in the 80s and 90s in other categories. Development projects Recent development approvals seem to indicate that the maximum allowable floor area ratio (FAR) is considered the new minimum. Zoning exists to do a number of things, among them defining development so that the public is protected from negative impacts and has some assurance of what the built environment will look like. As a Council member, I brought forward a Council initiative to address issues such as sidewalk width, setbacks, how buildings address the street consistent with the vision presented in the South El Camino Design Guidelines and Grand Boulevard Initiative. Those visionary documents express many of the same visions expressed in the Comprehensive Plan. I have also consistently argued against over use of exceptions that permit larger than otherwise allowed buildings. Retail protections In 2009 ground floor retail protections downtown were reduced and as a result we have been seeing those now-unprotected locations replaced by offices. As a Council member, I brought forward a Council initiative to expand ground floor retail protections, so far only partially adopted. Local businesses and services In my 13 years on the Planning Commission and Council I have consistently supported and argued for local independent businesses both as an element of community and also because it makes good economic sense. We have heard from the California Avenue businesses as well as the community that there is growing concern about and strong interest in preserving the local businesses there. What happens in our commercial areas effects the livability of our neighborhoods. I support protecting California Avenue from chain store proliferation. 2. Palo Alto and surrounding communities are under economic pressure to grow and environmental pressures to live and work closer together. How do you envision Palo Alto responding to these pressures? Answer from Lydia Kou: The pressure to grow in Palo Alto is not economic, it is political. Does Palo Alto have a shortage of jobs for its residents? No. Does Palo Alto need to grow to get more income to support its services? To the contrary. For the types of growth being promoted, analysis indicates that the costs are greater than the revenue produced. We must not confuse the economic interests of the broader community with the profit motives of some individuals and corporations. Excessive development is overwhelming our infrastructure: our streets, parking, schools, parks and other civic facilities. As a built-out city, it is increasingly difficult and expensive to expand that infrastructure. City Hall has encouraged excessive growth by not having projects pay their fair share of realistic assessments of their impacts on the community. Similarly, the claim that there are pressures to live and work closer together is based on the assumption that we need to have a much larger population here and uncritical assumptions about its benefits. For example, the advocates of this are hostile to homes with yards, disregarding the huge benefits of being able to let children play there while the parent is inside working. The advocates of putting high-density housing near transit resist thinking through the details. The elementary schools serving the CalAve Caltrain station area are well over a mile away. Are parents really going to have their children walking or biking along busy commercial streets and then cross El Camino, during rush hour? I was reminded of this on a recent trip down El Camino: A father and two sons of elementary age were trying to cross. One fell and got tangled up in his bike and the other couldn't decide whether to proceed or go back to the sidewalk. The intersections on Page Mill at both El Camino and Foothill Expressway have long been close to failing (2 decades?). A recent City report says that the one at Foothill is failing and the best remedy is a huge construction project (grade-separation), but that the problem could be reduced by improving traffic flow at El Camino. Yet City Hall's policy is to encourage development whose consequence will be to inject even more traffic into that intersection. As a Council member, I will focus on getting realistic assessments of these impacts, tracking cumulative impacts and keeping a skeptical eye out for side-effects and unintended consequences. Answer from Mark Weiss: Push back against ABAG. No real Palo Altan wants to live above or below another Palo Altan. Answer from Karen Holman: Palo Alto has and surely will continue to work for better outcomes to housing demands, both those imposed by state mandates and those to support a more diverse local population. As a Council member and member of the Regional Housing Mandate Committee I often point out the flawed basis for the state mandates which are stated as focusing on protecting open areas and reducing green house gases created by vehicles traveling to and from work. Thus the premise is to locate housing near jobs. The significant flaw in the assumptions is that someone who lives in one town is not necessarily closer to work than someone who actually lives in an adjacent town. Other flaws and frustrations in the state methodology are that 1) there is no consideration or credit for protecting existing housing units and 2) counting preservation of at-risk affordable housing units toward the mandated allotment includes a very high hurdle for inclusion. There are also conflicting data on how allotments are calculated. What I draw from these factors is that the state mandates are not really about providing housing but rather about building new units. Indeed, according to the state density bonus law, development concessions can actually offset the creation of new housing units built as part of a project with more office square footage that exacerbates the housing imbalance. My commitment is to continue to work with State Legislators to get a rational methodology and consideration for creation as well as conservation of housing. Additionally, my understanding from affordable housing developers is that buying and converting existing units to affordable is more cost effective than buying property and building new housing. This response would not be complete without reference to Buena Vista. While we are advised not to comment specifically on the future of that site, it is a grand example of the issues laid out above as to existing housing. Palo Alto is a wealthy community in many regards. We are so very fortunate. But we can do better in providing for housing without causing considerable impacts on schools. We need to consider adjusting our development standards to allow smaller housing units rather than expanding general office space that does not particularly benefit the City, its residents, or its coffers. We are richer for our diversity which in part relies on a diverse housing stock. Answer from A.C. Johnston: While I believe that Palo Alto should work closely with surrounding communities on issues affecting the region, Palo Alto's responsibility is, first and foremost, to enhance the quality of life for its own citizens. Thus our responses to economic and environmental pressures must be for the benefit of and responsive to the needs of Palo Altans. I know that we cannot ignore the reality of climate change, and I also recognize that we must work with other communities to reconcile regional economic and environmental pressures. Palo Alto has earned a well-deserved reputation across the world for both technological excellence and environmental responsibility. When we listen to and work effectively with one another, we are intelligent enough and wise enough to devise creative and innovative ways to solve the problems that we all confront. Palo Alto can enhance the quality of life for its own citizens while fulfilling its global responsibilities by acting sensibly. We can and should take active measures to make it easier and safer for people to enjoy the pleasures and benefits of walking and cycling. We must especially protect children biking to school. We can also expand local shuttle services and support and improve coordination and integration with regional transit systems. By enhancing alternatives to driving, we can reduce congestion. Similarly, by using technology to help drivers looking for parking spaces identify open spaces and by providing commercial property owners and others with surplus parking spaces better ways to make unused private parking available to those who need it, we can cost-effectively improve parking availability. These are some of the ways in which we can balance economic and environmental pressures to meet the needs of Palo Altans. In addition, Palo Alto would benefit if more moderately-priced and affordable housing were built and made available to young people, to seniors who want to downsize, and to teachers and city employees who want to live here. We should make it easier for homeowners to build more "granny units," particularly near regional transit hubs, without worsening parking problems. Locating moderately-priced and affordable housing close to jobs, stores and services can also make it easier for residents to shop and to run errands without cars. Well-planned housing would reduce car trips and help alleviate the traffic and parking problems we currently face. Finally, Palo Alto must continue its long and proud tradition as a global leader on environmental and sustainability issues. Our incinerators are outmoded and at the end of their useful lives. We should replace them with a state-of-the art system that would eliminate the need to incinerate our organic waste or to ship it out of town, that would provide clean energy, and that would make our regional waste treatment plant completely sustainable. We cannot combat climate change alone, but by adopting sensible development policies, expanding alternatives to driving, and dealing with our own waste responsibly, Palo Alto can demonstrate to the entire world how an innovative city can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and develop responsible plans to adapt to rising sea levels and other effects of climate change. Answer from Eric Filseth: Palo Alto's top priority must be quality of life for residents. I don't accept that individual cities must sacrifice their livability in order to accommodate regional goals: no strategy can be good for the region, if it is not also good for the individual cities. And with only 3% of the county's housing, Palo Alto's actions will have little regional impact under any circumstance. One key issue is that Palo Alto must manage its own finances responsibly. With strong finances, a competent city leadership with the right values can resist the economic pressures, and do what's right for Palo Alto. Palo Alto is already a leader on environmental issues, with a carbon-neutral electrical utility, a best-practices recycling program, and a good plan to get rid of the sewage incinerator. Other steps are available to us, such as innovation to reduce dependency on natural gas. Housing is a complicated issue. I support a housing strategy which benefits the community. That includes a preference for Palo Alto housing near Palo Alto jobs. I disagree with those who would put high-density stack-and-pack housing next to our train stations. It makes no sense to me, either from a community perspective or from an environmental perspective, to build housing for people who commute out to jobs in San Francisco or San Jose, at the same time that 93% of City Staff and 90% of teachers commute in to Palo Alto from elsewhere. Addressing Palo Alto's jobs/housing imbalance by building housing for people with jobs outside Palo Alto is simply misguided. Nor should we become an office park for other communities. Answer from Tom Dubois: Recovering from the economic downturn has been a mixed blessing for Palo Alto. As money flows into this city as an investment strategy, residents are experiencing a lot of stress from rapid commercial development of office space and increased transience of the workforce, and this has adversely impacted a sense of community that most Palo Altans care about. I have been active on the new Housing element and in the community to develop plans aimed at preventing people living in Palo Alto from being displaced. I would like to see the city diversify its housing inventory by creating smaller units near services and transit such as California Avenue and University Avenue. At the same time we need to ensure our infrastructure, schools, parks, and community services can keep up with the growth. We need ongoing real-time data collection systems to understand what is happening and why, and work to decrease the adverse impacts of development by making sensible planning choices that allow organic development to happen. Much of our neighborhood retail and charm continues to be replaced by chains, making this a less interesting place to live. This is a damaging trend and citizens are very sad to see valuable neighborhood character being replaced by huge buildings with incompatible architecture. Further work needs to be done to reflect the concerns of Palo Alto residents, such as completion of our Comprehensive Plan including the vision and goals for the future of the city, PC Zoning ordinance reform, and Specific Plans for the areas of the city where denser development is proposed. We need these Specific Plans to ensure we have plans based on verifiable data that includes impacts on traffic, air pollution, noise pollution, and other environmental impacts including the cumulative impacts of projects. The plans also need to include community services and supporting infrastructure. Answer from Nancy Shepherd: Palo Alto has been responding to this pressure and will be doing more. The most important transition Palo Alto needs to make is securing senior friendly housing in walkable areas like California Avenue or downtown. I hear from seniors the feeling of isolation in neighborhoods, especially when driving is no longer an interest, or ability. Being closer to shopping, transit, and health care is vital to living well, and a good quality of life. Early next year the City will consider relocating some residential units zoned in the South El Camino Real area to the downtown districts. This will support the idea of providing housing for seniors, or housing close to job centers and transit, which will stop the sprawl into the southern neighborhoods. As a city located along the rail corridor I champion the Caltrain modernization because our residents need efficient commute options. I advocate for increasing the train schedules for workers to travel efficiently into or out of Palo Alto without their car. Sustainable and low carbon commute options are vital to the environment and health of our area. Answer from John Karl Fredrich: I believe we need to revise and refresh our understanding of how to sequence events. Doing the California Avenue make-over before the Stanford housing expansion next to College Terrace between Hanover and El Camino is a big mistake. California Avenue, including the clear-cutting of trees, should have been held up until after the housing and new office footage was completed. I call it 'getting your albatrosses in a row.' The quantum amount of building on Stanford lands, not just the campus center, but the Hospital, the Shopping Center, Ronald MacDonald House, and the above mentioned changes at the edge of the Industrial Park are all of the scale to require a pause in order to absorb the impact. We need some people on the Council capable of saying NO to those rallying to the cry of MORE. Answer from Greg Scharff: First and for most, I envision that Palo Alto will control growth & development in a manner that protects our quality of life, reduces traffic and parking congestion and maintains our quality of life. We also need to protect and enhance our retail. I have been a strong advocate for expanded retail in our city. Stopping the conversion of retail to office space and supporting expanding ground floor retail protections has been a priority of mine. I spearheaded putting in place a ground floor retail requirement on Emerson Street between University and Forest that was in the process of converting to office. I tried to protect Rudy's and Zibbibo from converting to office space but lost on a 5-4 Council vote. I will continue to work hard to support and protect our retail and expand our ground floor retail requirements throughout Palo Alto where appropriate. I also am very concerned about the loss of neighborhood serving retail and feel that we need to ensure that we have diverse neighborhood serving retail serving all of our neighborhoods. 3. What proposals do you have to alleviate the traffic and parking situation in Palo Alto? Answer from A.C. Johnston: We must begin by not making the traffic and parking situation worse. We should insist that all new development projects provide full parking for the expected occupants. We should also both demand that developers detail what measures would be taken to counter any traffic impacts caused by occupants and hold developers accountable to what they promise. Next, as noted in response to question two, locating additional moderately-priced and affordable housing near jobs, shops and services can reduce car trips and help alleviate traffic and parking problems. Palo Alto should also increase the number and frequency of shuttles to make getting around town using public transit more attractive for everyone. We can learn from Stanford's successful Marguerite shuttle system and should explore partnering with Stanford to provide fast, frequent, and friendly shuttle service, especially in areas of Palo Alto most burdened by traffic. In addition, we should implement, as rapidly as possible, both a residential parking permit system in areas adjacent to downtown and new technologies to make available parking spots easier to find. We should also investigate adding new parking capacity downtown and near California Avenue -- where non-resident parking has created particular problems -- and seek ways in which businesses without adequate dedicated parking for their employees can help bear the expense of expanding parking capacity. Finally, I support the City's Transit Demand Management program. As discussed above, we must find creative ways to encourage both residents and people who work in and visit Palo Alto to use single occupancy vehicles less frequently and instead to walk, cycle, or use public transit to move about and enjoy all that our great city has to offer. Answer from Nancy Shepherd: Reducing car trips into Palo Alto is critical. I will work to have an overall reduction of trips by commuters of at least 30%. Under my leadership as mayor this year, the council is tackling the issues of increased traffic and congestion, lack of adequate downtown parking and relying on neighborhood streets as worker parking lots. We need to change how Palo Alto commuters operate on the days our population doubles or triples with workers. I voted to eliminate all parking exceptions on new commercial projects, and then implement commute strategies to reduce solo car trips by 30% or more as fast as possible. I support the three strategic initiatives that are in varying stages of implementation: 1)Residential Parking Permit Program: In January 2015, Residential Parking Permits will be implemented in the downtown neighborhoods which will protect the neighborhoods from being used as free commuter parking lots. The program is being designed to issue limited permits for workers which will reduce the impact of over-parking today in the neighborhoods, and allow residents access street parking easily. 2) Expand Parking Options: Building new garages, using technology to find open spaces and creating off-site parking lots with shuttle services will take more cars off the neighborhood streets and reduce cut-through traffic. Today the City has a pilot program in front of City Hall that places monitors on the street at parking places. These monitors indicate when a spot is open and can signal to a smart phone a vacant space. It also creates parking data for the City to understand how and when parking becomes impacted during the day. 3)Transit Districts: I supported and championed the concept of transit assessment districts in the Palo Alto business areas where there is a high concentration of workers commuting and creating traffic and parking problems. This is modeled after Contra Costa Transit Village, where businesses assess themselves to generate revenues that offer train or bus passes for workers. Incentives to use public transit instead of driving a car will reduce trips into Palo Alto and is a proven way to get cars off the road. I am focused on changing the traffic experience for Palo Alto, and I look forward to developing more systems designed to reduce trips, making Palo Alto a better place to live. Many recognize that when the schools are on holiday traffic is not a big problem. This is why I have called for increased shuttle service to our middle and high schools, taking even more cars off the road, and making our streets safer for students. Answer from Tom Dubois: Traffic and parking are symptoms of the underlying issue--overdevelopment. We need to stop digging ourselves into a bigger hole. That means requiring building developersto fully account for community impact of how future employees will get to work. Even more fundamentally, we need to update our outdated assumptions of how much space is used per employee, and actually account for the number of people in the building (which we currently do not do). One of my first steps in office will be to change the occupancy assumptions of one person for 250 sq ft of office space, to a much lower metric such as 1 person per 100 sq ft of office space. Our parking mess is the result of years of neglect + we need to apply many approaches to improve the situation--new parking garages, increased shuttle service, residential permit programs (free to residents), and transportation demand management programs enforced by companies to encourage use of alternative means of transportation. We need ongoing real-time data collection systems to understand what is going on where. We need to develop a business registry to understand how many employees we have in town, how they get to work and where they park. Answer from Lydia Kou: The first priority is to not make these situations worse! The first part of this is obvious: Avoid creating more traffic and parking demands. The second part is easily forgotten because there is so much pressure to be perceived as "doing something": Carefully analyze potential solutions to avoid shifting the problem elsewhere and potentially making it worse. For example, the VTA proposal for El Camino to dedicate a traffic lane in each direction to buses. While their presentation now acknowledges that significant vehicle traffic will be displaced to nearby streets, there is no assessment of those impacts. Adding traffic to already congested streets has disproportionate impacts. The GreenHouse Gas (GHG) savings from people switching to buses could easily be overwhelmed by the increased GHG from vehicles stuck longer on congested streets. That doesn't factor in the value of the time of people stuck in the congestion. Some of that displaced traffic will wind up cutting through neighborhood streets, making them less safe for residents. How do you value that tradeoff? The VTA proposal is based on the assumption that travel time along El Camino is the biggest barrier to increased bus usage. What I hear from people is that the key problem is poor connections at one or both ends. Similarly, I am highly skeptical of the amount of resources City Hall wants to expend on cyclists wanting to ride along the major arterial streets. The vast majority of people I talk to don't want to ride on those streets. If changes to the arterials push more cars onto the bike boulevards and residential streets, isn't this going to be counterproductive? In considering what is possible, City Hall needs to consider not just the technical aspects, but the political and financial impacts. For example, the primary benefit of Caltrain electrification is that it will increase capacity by allowing trains to run more frequently. The problem is that during peak hours Caltrain is already running near the maximum that doesn't create crippling congestion on the cross streets that would then spread to the parallel streets (Alma and El Camino). Grade-separation is needed to avoid this ("de-synchronization"), but while electrification has been budgeted, its prerequisite of grade-separation has not. Complicating matters is that the transportation needs of the Peninsula have been a poor stepchild to those of San Jose, both internally and moving workers from the East Bay to SJ. Answer from Greg Scharff: Traffic, parking, building design and scale, and the loss of retail are very concerning to me. I recognize these concerns as issues that we need to address, and as Mayor, placed a "time out" with my colleagues on the PC Zoning process and directed staff to undertake a variety of initiatives aimed at reducing traffic and resolving parking issues as well as addressing parking intrusion into residential neighborhoods. We are currently working on over 14 separate initiatives to improve the traffic and parking situation. To reduce the impacts of traffic, we are creating alternatives to driving. These include initiatives to expand our free shuttle program, the formation of a Transportation Management Association made up of major employers, traffic signal upgrades, getting better data on the impact of proposed development projects, Car Share and Ride Share programs, Bike Master Plan implementation programs, Embarcadero Roadway Traffic Operations improvements, Caltrain Advanced Preemption improvements and Safe Routes to School Commute improvements. All of these initiatives are aimed at making getting around Palo Alto easier and more convenient. Our parking initiatives are also robust. These can be broken down into three main categories that include (1) managing our current parking supply better, (2) reducing parking demand and (3) increasing parking supply. These include new parking garage technologies and parking management strategies, new parking garages downtown and on California Ave, Satellite Parking, and Valet Assisted Parking. As your former Mayor and Councilmember, I advocated for and we eliminated loopholes that allow developers to build without adequate parking, and ended almost all parking exemptions. We moved ahead to address parking issues in the Crescent Park neighborhood and started the conversation with multiple stakeholders to address this issue citywide, which I expect to come to fruition in January of 2015 with a Residential Permit Parking system for those neighborhoods that need and desire it. The city is currently working hard on a Residential Parking Permit Program to provide parking relief to neighborhoods while ensuring the vitality of our business districts. We are also working hard to get more parking garages financed and built. The Council has also initiated a downtown development cap study to evaluate the impact of future projects on traffic and parking and is moving forward with a comprehensive Transportation Demand Management Program to reduce traffic on neighborhood streets. This combined with the push to give people incentives and alternatives to driving should help the parking situation, and when combined with a Residential Permit Parking system, end parking intrusion into our neighborhoods and restore quality of life. Answer from Mark Weiss: Slow down the influx of new office space. Answer from John Karl Fredrich: We should concentrate on livable, affordable housing and, as such, see to it that the Housing Element of the Comprehensive Plan up-date has room for the building of studios, in-law units, cottages, and accessory housing on larger lots near alley-ways and on corners. Placing a small structure (300-600 square feet) adjacent to a larger building on a 7500 - 8000 square foot parcel in some parts of town should not be a burden and could be handled quite nicely if the Planning Department were to prioritize that as a community need. That would be a perfect complement to the suggested consolidation of lots into larger 3/4 acre parcels in order to make multi unit projects where space and zoning allow. In all cases the management of traffic and parking needs to be evaluated honestly to see if any expansion at all is feasible. Answer from Eric Filseth: On traffic, the first step is to stop making the problem worse. We must recognize that the primary source of our traffic problem is the densification and increase in office space, although in some areas high-density housing has also been a contributor. Each mixed-use project that adds 250 office jobs, but housing for only 8 adults, increases the problem. It is the First Rule of Holes: when you're in one, stop digging. This can be accomplished through development reform. The short-sighted policies of the current City Administration have created this problem, and it is well past time to change them. I support the City's Transit Demand Management (TDM) initiative and its alternative transportation programs such as Bicycle Boulevards. We should do these things; but we must also recognize they will only be a partial mitigation. The most important step is to attack the source of the problem before it gets any worse. Parking is an unfortunate problem. Again, the City's past and current policies on development have created a problem which is not easily + or inexpensively + solved. The first step is to get enough commuter cars out of the neighborhoods that the neighborhoods return to an appropriate residential character. I support a Residential Parking Permit program to do this, including the provision that any block can opt out if it chooses. It's unfortunate we should be at a point where we need this, but it is where we are. Business parking must be an operating expense of business, not transferred onto residents. The rest of the problem must be addressed through a combination of using the existing space better, use of new technology, likely some added capacity, potentially some local transportation enhancements; and pushing more of the pain back onto commuters, in order to further discourage solo vehicle trips. A mechanism which gives some preference to workers of neighborhood-serving businesses is desirable if it can be done. I very strongly believe residents should not pay for these things. Residents have already paid, in terms of quality of life; and an RPP program, though necessary, will nevertheless be an inconvenience to residents. Answer from Karen Holman: Traffic and parking issues have become even more front and center in the current economic climate. There are two parts to the issue: providing solutions to the existing conditions as well as not exacerbating the situation with new development that does not adequately account for and address its impacts. As a Council member, I have voted to support creation of a Residential Permit Parking Program, move forward a Transportation Demand Management Program and support expanded and coordinated shuttle programs. I have also voted to eliminate a number of parking exceptions. These are some of the actions that are needed to get people out of cars and choose other forms of transit to get to work rather than clogging streets and impacting residential neighborhoods with overflow parking. At Council I was also part of a collaborative initiative to establish a Business Registry. The City needs accurate data to analyze traffic, parking, and commercial occupant density, both in regards to individual projects and cumulative potential impacts. The Registry will collect data to be used in identifying, deterring and eliminating impacts from commercial developments. Responses to questions asked of each candidate are reproduced as submitted to the League.  Candidates' statements are presented as submitted. The answer to each question should be limited to 400 words. Direct references to opponents are not permitted. The order of the candidates is random and changes daily. Candidates who did not respond are not listed on this page.