Location: Barron Park School Room 2 (former kindergarten room)
Anticipated absences (excused): Markus Fromherz
Call to order:
1. Volunteer (or Assignment) of Secretary to take minutes for this meeting.
2. Agenda Changes (3 minutes)
3. Approval of Minutes (2 minutes)
4. Pedestrian Safety on the Bol Park Shared Path (Art Liberman) (20 minutes) A number of residents have expressed concern about the issue of pedestrian-bicycle safety along the shared path in Bol Park. Art proposes that the Barron Park Association Board vote to recommend that the City of Palo Alto help the situation by installing some signs, to inform and remind bicyclists that they need to slow down and share the path with pedestrians.
5. Status Report on May Fete (John King) (10 minutes) The May Fete is scheduled for Sunday, May 19.
6. Approval of New Member, Lisa Landers, and Possible Re-assignment of Membership Duties to Her. (10 minutes) Lisa Landers lives on Barron Avenue. New members are welcomed by the Board.
7. Authorization of Expenditure for Updated Software for Membership Data Base: (Art Liberman) (10 minutes) Up to $300 is requested for the purchase of an upgraded version of Filemaker Pro.
8. Presentation of Slate by Nominating Committee (Nancy Hamilton and Linda Elder) and Election of New President, Vice President and Secretary. (15 minutes) The following have been nominated to serve through the end of 2013. (John King will continue as Treasurer.)
President: Art Liberman
Vice President: Markus Fromherz
Secretary: Lydia Kou
9. Approval of Diversity Event (Lydia Kou) Lydia will provide details.
10. Status reports and updates on other items are being handled primarily through e-mail. Opportunity for direction and interactions. (5 minutes) [ Green Team, Zoning and Land Use, Traffic, Civic Affairs, Environmental, Native planting]
11. Proposals for items for future agendas (5 minutes). These items are awaiting space on a future agenda. They will not be discussed at this meeting except to clarify who is taking the lead on each.
Review of the BPA as ‘Chartering’ organization of a Boy Scout Troop (May or June)
Proposal to survey BPA membership attitudes about Buena Vista (date undetermined)
Job description for Business Liaison (date undetermined)
The Palo Alto Housing Corporation, developer of the Maybell Homes and Senior Housing Project at the corner of Maybell and Clemo, commissioned a Traffic Study that was submitted to the City’s Planning Department in February. The traffic study was made public only recently following a request by BPA President Lynnie Melena. Click on the link to download the Maybell Clemo project Traffic Study.
The study reveals that the developer, with input from the City, has broadened the possibilities for entrance/exit by cars from what they presented at the community meetings last September. The consequence of this Traffic Study is that there is now a clear preference for traffic to/from the site to use Maybell and not Arastradero, as had been proposed initially.
The only entrance/exit proposed at the community meeting was on Clemo, and with the existing barriers at the end of Clemo near Maybell, all the traffic created by the site would then flow to/from Arastradero (The traffic study has no figures of the site itself with traffic directions so I have created them using their site plan on which I superimposed arrows: Maybell runs vertically on the left, Clemo runs horizontally at the bottom).
Traffic exit/enter Clemo to/from Arastradero
In a second proposal in this Traffic Study, which is the one preferred by the developer, the project would be served by two driveways—one driveway on Clemo Avenue and a second via an access easement through the adjacent Arastradero Park Apartment Complex (a property that is also owned by the Palo Alto Housing Corporation) to the north that would connect to an existing driveway on Maybell Avenue.
Traffic enter/exit via easement to Apartment driveway to/from Maybell and Clemo to/from Arastradero
Each of these proposals has two scenarios. The second scenario – suggested by the City of Palo Alto, according to the Traffic Study – is to relocate the barrier on Clemo Avenue from its existing location near Maybell Avenue to immediately east of the proposed project site driveway on Clemo. As a result, this would block all traffic to/from Arastradero and all traffic generated by the project would flow to/from Maybell.
All traffic enters/exits to/from Maybell with relocated Clemo traffic barriers
What about the Traffic – from the Conclusion of Study
The consults favor this last configuration. They conclude, from an analysis of the traffic generated by the project, that even under this last proposal with the traffic barriers moved “ residents along Maybell Avenue would not notice a change in traffic as a result of the proposed development. As stated earlier, given the severity of queuing, bike and pedestrian trips on Arastradero Road, it would be beneficial to relocate the barrier on Clemo Avenue to east of the project driveway, so that the project trips cannot access Arastradero Road via Clemo Avenue.”
You may wonder what criteria the consultants use to say that the residents along Maybell ‘would not notice a change in traffic.’ They use an assessment based on a model that starts with the average daily traffic (ADT) volume and then state that a 20 to 30% increase in traffic could be added to a roadway before residents would perceive the increase. As a baseline, they use the ADT weekday of 3320 on Maybell Ave and estimate the average increase from the project would be 120, which is well below their criteria of what is a noticeable increase. However, they do not mention that the ADT on Maybell increased by 25% over what it was prior to the Arastradero restriping project and is already at a level that exceeds ” 2500 vpd, the maximum acceptable volume on a local residential street as defined by Palo Alto’s neighborhood traffic calming program.” [Gale Likens, former Palo Alto Transportation manager in Establishing thresholds of significance under CEQA]
The study strongly favors the Clemo auto barrier relocation, which would direct all the traffic to/from the site to Maybell. “The barrier relocation may be beneficial in that it would prevent project trips from attempting to access Arastradero Road from a stop-controlled approach that is affected by significant queuing issues and bike and pedestrian trips during peak periods. While similar issues are present at the Maybell/Clemo intersection, they are less severe as the traffic volume on Maybell is much lower than on Arastradero.”
The single family homes have garages in the rear and their entrance/exit traffic would be serviced by the site’s main driveways rather than directly onto Maybell or Clemo. This was a change from the first concept, in recognition of the the fact that during the periods between 7:45 and 8:15 AM Maybell Avenue is congested and “there are hundreds of pedestrians and bikes that use the Maybell corridor during this period to access the nearby schools. “
The study acknowledges the already serious problems that occur during AM peak hours on Arastradero: “.. this intersection [Clemo and Arastradero] is currently subject to frequent blockages as queues extend along Arastradero Road from the downstream intersection at Coulombe Drive past Clemo Avenue. Thus, the “Clemo via Arastradero” access alternative, which would funnel all of the project traffic through the Clemo/Arastradero intersection, would exacerbate the existing congestion at this intersection. In contrast, moving the Clemo barrier to the east of the project driveway so that all project trips would access Clemo Avenue via Maybell Avenue would result in less delay.”
Next Steps
The project will be reviewed by the Planning and Transportation Commission sometime in the coming months. In the meantime, if you have opinions about the study and its conclusions that you want the City staff to hear, send them to Curtis Williams, Director of the Planning and Community Environment Department (curtis.williams@cityofpaloalto.org), and to Tim Wong, the City’s staff planner assigned to the project (tim.wong@cityofpaloalto.org).
The Barron Park Association Board would also like to hear your views as well. Send an email to BPA-Board@googlegroups.com.
You can add your comments to this post if you register as a “user” on our website – click on the register link and enter a username and choose a password in the top of the left hand sidebar on our home page (this is required to prevent spammers from adding comments).
A change to the section of our bylaws that relates to the election and term of office of the President and Vice President of the Association was approved by the BPA Board at its meeting on March 19, 2013.
The essence of the change is that the President and Vice President shall be elected in November of each year for a term of one year, beginning January 1 of the following year. The new bylaws provide a clear succession plan. When the President steps down, the Vice President automatically becomes President for the following term and a new person is elected as Vice President.
This change was made, in part, as an inducement for current Board members to accept a leadership role of the BPA, knowing their term of service as President would be limited. Also, the Vice President and President would work together, familiarizing the Vice President with work of the President on current issues and comfortably allowing him/her to step into the role of President at the end of the year.
A link to the full text of our bylaws is at the bottom of the About the BPA page. You can also find at the bottom of this page links to other BPA policies.
Thanks to the efforts of long time Barron Park resident Dick Placone, who went to bat on this project with the City officials, we shall see some additional landscaping of the Matadero Well site in the near future.
Matadero Well Site Landscaping Plan
Some features of the plan:
The existing railroad ties will be re-set and moved inward, leaving room for a 4-foot decomposed granite path along the edge (only for part of the site because there isn’t room next to the Well Site fenced area.
The granite path will also circle around to the rear of the site, where two park benches purchased by the community (one by the Barron Park Association and the other by the Henshel family) will be mounted.
New groundcover plantings alongside the granite path.
More mulch, and the existing material spread out over the area as indicated.
The rehabilitation of the Matadero Well as an emergency source of water for Palo Alto was completed some months ago. The Utilities Department planned to leave the area outside of the fenced-in area the way it was before the rehabilitation effort – which was a bleak and unattractive empty lot (this land does belong to the Utilities Department, and is not under the control of the Parks Department).
This was the situation the community faced despite the persistence of BPA President Lynnie Melena, who spent countless hours over the past several years conferring with Utilities Department people during the course of the well rehabilitation project. As a consequence she was able to get the fence and equipment painted a pleasant green befitting a creekside location, but nothing more. The park benches purchased by the Barron Park Association and the Henshel family were still languishing in storage, waiting for an agreement with the Utilities Department on a suitable location.
This state of affairs did not sit well with Dick Placone, a long time Barron Park resident and the former President of the Barron Park Association. Dick first went to battle with the Utilities Department and leaned on City Manager Jim Keene, who assisted him by having the Utilities Department place some plants around the fenced equipment area. These are hardy, drought resistant shrubs that in a few years, with some care during this coming dry season, will create a natural screen in front of the fence. Claire Elliott, a nearby resident who works with the environmental nonprofit Acterra, has already spent time tending to the new plantings.
This still did not satisfy Dick Placone. So he leaned a little harder on City Manager Jim Keene. The City Manager provided a modest budget for some landscaping and authorized Palo Alto’s landscape architect, Peter Jensen, to prepare the plan shown above. Nearby residents have given their OK . Soon the spot will be an attractive looking place for all the folks in the neighborhood who pass by in their cars or on their bikes, and an inviting place for pedestrians to rest and relax for a short time as they walk by.
Without any public announcement, AT&Ts workers and contractors swooped through the neighborhood recently installing some of their pole-topping antennas along with the cabling and power system infrastructure. These antennas are part of AT&T’s ‘Distributed Antenna System” (DAS), which was approved by the City Council for our part of Palo Alto in January after a long, sometimes contentious debate. This is good news for AT&T cell phone customers who (the company says) will have good service in Barron Park – or will be good news once the antennas are operational.
The antennas look like inverted wastebaskets on the top of an 8 or 10 foot post mounted to the top of utility poles. I’ve seen two of them this week on Barron Ave- one on the 500 block and the other on the 700 block – and a third (pictured below) on the pole on Matadero just opposite the California Native Garden at the end of Bol Park. A fourth was about to be installed on Chimalus, but the AT&T installers broke a water line near the base of the pole and the work is currently on hold pending permanent repair by the Utilities Department.
DAS antenna and equipment mounted on pole on Matadero near Bol Park
While AT&T maintained that the antenna system was needed to improve currently poor cell reception by its customers, the debate on this specific DAS system focused on three issues:
aesthetics of an antenna mounted on top of a pole, and the associated equipment mounted on the side of the pole;
noise generated by the equipment on the pole to power the antennas and emergency back up batteries 24 hours/day;
microwave radiation exposure to residents who live next to an antenna, particularly in second story residences in line of sight of an antenna.
The microwave radiation exposure issue, comparing the output and pattern of microwaves from this antenna to those from cell phone antennas on towers, is complicated and has been discussed elsewhere. Since the antennas were not yet powered, I could not evaluate the noise. In any event, noise would not be problem for this particular location except to some squirrels or birds nesting in nearby trees.
As to the aesthetics, it is in this writer’s opinion that the poles with the DAS antennas do not add significantly to the unsightly view of the poles themselves, with their multiple overhead strings of power, telephone and cable lines, jumble of insulators and transformer boxes. These antennas are not concealed or camouflaged to look like a tree, but AT&T did follow the ARB recommendations and other advice by making the equipment brown in color and so it blends in with the color of the poles themselves. When I was a kid, utility poles were called ‘telephone poles.’ With the cell phone antennas on the top, maybe that name will come back into use.
