From: Ann Balin
To: Council, City
Subject: Item #9 Impact Fees
Date: Monday, November 18, 2024 12:05:00 PM
CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautious of opening attachments and clicking on links.
Dear Mayor Stone, Vice Mayor Lauing & Council Members,
The residents of Palo Alto need the council to reject lowering impact fees as proposed in item number 9. Our libraries, parks, and community centers are the long standing, established foundations that contribute to the well being of residents of all ages. Do not cut funding for Parks, Libraries and Community Centers.
As you well know during the week our population is approximately 125,000 but on weekends 67,000. The town endures stresses on services and infrastructure. The carbon increase is already showing the impacts of car commutes to Palo Alto. The residents should not subsidize well-paid SV workers to move here. That is exactly what the developers are urging you to do. Palo Altans already subsidize services and infrastructure so this change will harm the city should you allow developers to decrease impact fees.
Do not buckle under pressure from developers to lower impact fees. You need to support the quality of life that parks, community centers and libraries hold for Palo Altans.
Take a good look at who is pushing you to do otherwise.
Respectfully,
Ann Lafargue Balin
From: Melanie Grondel
To: Council, City
Cc: Melanie Grondel
Subject: Please do not lower Impact Fees and defund Libraries, Parks and Community Centers.
Date: Monday, November 18, 2024 9:06:50 AM
CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautious of opening attachments and clicking on links.
Dear Mayor Stone and City Council Members,
In the last budget we are restoring funding for our Libraries.
I am delighted that the Palo Alto Library is able to move to restoring service levels to pre- Pandemic levels. I see other signs of improvement in the funding and planning for Parks and Community Centers too. I consider these kind of community services an essential support that truly benefit all of us in Palo Alto and those who will be moving here when the required increase of dwelling units is being delivered.
I do not want to lose the progress we are making.
Please do not lower the impact fees and undercut funding for Libraries, Parks and Community Centers.
Thank you
for your consideration - Melanie Grondel - College Terrace - Palo Alto From: Annette Ross
To: Council, City
Subject: Impact Fees
Date: Monday, November 18, 2024 8:51:55 AM
CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautious of opening attachments and clicking on links.
Dear Mayor and Council Members:
I understand that Council may consider reducing impact fees. Why? A past Council struggled to get these fees to their current level. Costs across the board are increasing, unfunded State mandates are impacting local governments unfavorably, and myriad pieces of legislation already provide plenty of concessions to developers. Fees are critical to providing and maintaining infrastructure. And Palo Alto is required to grow. You know all this. Please, let's not compound our problems.
Annette Ross
Palo Altoona
Sent from my iPhone
From: Jo Ann Mandinach
To: Council, City; [email protected]
Cc: Jo Ann Mandinach
Subject: #9 Impact Fees
Date: Sunday, November 17, 2024 12:35:58 PM
[Some people who received this message don't often get email from [email protected]. Learn why this is important at https://aka.ms/LearnAboutSenderIdentification ] Dear Mayor and City Council Members,
Please don't even think of forcing residents to deal with reduced city services to allow developers to profit even more.
I was surprised to see candidates for council bragging about how they worked to restore library hours when they're still way below the pre-lockdown schedules.
For example, Rinconada -- formerly Main -- Library -- only saw restored hours for Monday hours until 6PM which still has only only has 2 evening hours all week -- from 6-8PM on Thursdays -- because it pushed up the opening time by the same 2 hours -- so it opens at noon instead of 10AM.
Obviously working adults and kids with after-school jobs are severely disadvantaged Further, to save money they've eliminated Author Alerts which alerts you to acquisitions for your favorite authors to save a lousy $5 a YEAR per user. They justify this because "only" 5 patrons have bothered to complain and their policies are "data-driven" rather than reality-based since a quick glance at the HOLD shelves shows a huge shrinkage now that no one knows when there's a new work of interest to reserve.
This type of false economy is very irritating, reduces the libraries' value and led me to foot the bill personally for the very same valuable Author Alert service -- AND wasted my time researching how to restore the service for my own use. It also wasted the librarians' time trying to justify the indefensible new policy.
We need to fund the libraries and parks MORE, not less, especially when they'll be serving 6,000+ MORE residents due to the new developments.
Please support residents and resident services, not developers by letting them profit even more.
Respectfully,
Jo Ann Mandinach
Palo Alto, CA 94301
From: Gary Johnson
To: Council, City
Cc: [email protected]; [email protected]; Mark Johnson; Justine Johnson-Nurnberg Subject: Municipal Fees-Item 9-Acclaim Companies
Date: Thursday, November 14, 2024 4:26:00 PM
Attachments: Acclaim Companies-Public Comment-Item 9.pdf CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautious of opening attachments and clicking on links.
Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Members of Palo Alto City Council,
Attached is public comment from Acclaim Companies on Item 9 - Amendments to the Municipal Fee Schedule – that will be heard on Monday November 18, 2024. We understand that the specific ordinance being considered at Monday’s hearing is a response to AB 602, which addresses square- footage-based fees and Housing Element Program 3.1C. The attached letter is Acclaim’s public comments on those items. We would also like to inform you that Acclaim has approached the planning staff about other important requests related to municipal fees that are critical to the financial feasibility of the 3150 ECR Project but those requests are not included in this letter.
Appreciatively,
Gary Johnson
Acclaim Companies
125 Willow Rd
Menlo Park, CA 94025
Direct: 650.622.2107
From: Matt Hengehold
To: Council, City
Subject: Hengehold Trucks’ Public Comment Regarding Amendments to the Municipal Fee Schedule Date: Thursday, November 14, 2024 4:15:10 PM
Attachments: Hengehold Trucks Comment Letter for City Council 11-14-2024.pdf CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautious of opening attachments and clicking on links.
Please see attached letter.
Thank you,
Matt
Hengehold Truck Sales + Rentals Matt Hengehold
Hengehold Truck Sales + Rentals
p: 650.494.2444
w: htrucks.com
a: 762 San Antonio Road, Palo Alto, CA 94303
Matt Hengehold
Hengehold Trucks
762 San Antonio Road
Palo Alto, CA 94025
November 14, 2024
Sent via email: [email protected]
Palo Alto City Council
Office of the City Clerk: City Hall, 7th Floor
250 Hamilton Avenue
Palo Alto, CA 94301
Re: Hengehold Trucks’ Public Comment on Item 9 Regarding Amendments to the Municipal Fee Schedule
Hengehold Trucks, through an entity called “Globe Investments , LLC” and in partnership with Acclaim Companies, is currently processing application 24PLN-00120 for the construction of 198 multifamily residential apartments including 40 low income units (the “Project”) at 762 San Antonio Road (the “Property”). The Project is proposed under the “Builder’s Remedy” provision of the Housing Accountability Act, but we have worked hard to ensure it is as consistent with the City’s objective design standards as possible, while maintaining its proposed density and therefore its feasibility.
Hengehold Trucks was founded in 1948 by my grandfather, Fred Hengehold, originally operating on El Camino Real in Palo Alto. In 1965, the business moved to its current location at 762 San Antonio Road, expanding its capabilities while continuing the tradit ion of excellent service to customers throughout the area. Today, my uncle Dave Hengehold and I own and operate Hengehold Trucks, carrying on our family's legacy.
As member s of the community in Palo Alto and part of a developer application team , we are writing to comment on the pending changes to the Municipal Fee Schedule. As you know, Council is considering amendments to the Park, Community Center, and Library Development Impact Fees as Item 9 during its November 18
th meeting. We greatly appreciate Council pulling this important policy item from consent calendar on September 23 , and an opportunity to influence the impact fees that will apply to this Project and others.
We ask first and foremost that City Council consider selecting the “consolidated” rate. If Council does decide it has the needed support to select the “distinct” rate, please consider making the costs for a single-family unit and a multifamily unit in the “distinct” rate more equitable by lowering the multifamily rate and raising the single-family rate.
City Council Should Select the Consolidated Rate
In its report to Council for Item 9, staff explains that selection of a distinct rate is appropriate when “there is sufficient building permit data available” and “a jurisdiction can anticipate the number of projected units per residential land use type. When a jurisdiction has sufficient data available, the 2 #512854432_v2
distinct fee structure is preferred because it more proportionately reflects the size and impact of the residential units.”1 Conversely, staff explains that a consolidated rate is more appropriate where “a jurisdiction may not have sufficient building permit data” or “may not be able to project the type of future development.”
2 While staff goes on to suggest selection of the distinct rate structure, it appears that the presented building permit data is in fact insufficient, that future development was almost entirely ignored in the analysis and therefore the impact of future development unknown, and that the data may have been selectively chosen to skew the Council’s choice in favor of the distinct rate.
The staff report and supporting memorandum from DTA dated August 20, 2024 (the “DTA Report”) imply that many factors , including multiple pieces of information gleaned from the building permit data, and a detailed analysis of anticipated trends in future development, were used to arrive at the distinct rate. However, the discussion on page 3 of the staff reveals a much simpler truth - the distinct rate is merely the result of dividing the current fee by average unit sizes, almost entirely based on past building permit data and selective pending projects:
The building permit data provided for multifamily developments from 2013 to 2024 bizarrely includes two projects whose applications were withdrawn (486 Hamilton Avenue and 200 Portage), but excludes this Project all other pending residential development projects proposed under the “Builder’s Remedy” provision of the Housing Accountability Act.
We have likewise been unable to find any substantive analysis of potential future development, even though staff opines that the ability to predict future development is one of the two factors that inform whether selection of a distinct rate structure is a ppropriate. It appears that the only way future development assumptions informed this analysis, was back in 2021, before the City received its Regional Housing Needs Allocation (“RHNA”) for the 6 th Cycle Housing Element, before it
received many of the applications included in the building permit data list, and certainly before it received any of the in -process Builder’s Remedy applications. This outdated information (exceedingly low assumptions of 2,517 units for single -family and 2,007 units for multifamily
1 Item 9: Staff Report, page 3.
2 Item 9, Staff Report, page 4.
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between 2021-2041) appears to have been used to arrive at the current fees (see DTA Report tables 3, 5, and 7), which then became the basis for the proposed distinct fee by dividing the current fee by the average square footages indicated in the building permit data. Without updating the assumed units that will be built from 2021-2041 in any way, the analysis is entirely skewed and inaccurate.
We suggest that City Council simply has not been provided with enough data about and analysis of both past development and future anticipated development , especially the latter category. In such a situation, by staff’s own admission it is more appropriate to adopt the consolidated rate. We note that as staff mentions in its report, Council is at liberty to select either option and will be considering the Cit y’s entire development impact fee structure in more detail in 2025, with the support of much more robust study. Until then, we urge the Council to conservatively adopt the consolidated rate structure.
If City Council Selects the Distinct Rate, It Should Be Made More Equitable The vast difference between the square footage rate that staff suggests for a single -family unit versus a multi -family unit, is inequitable. It essentially functions as an additional “tax” on multifamily development that will be passed on to families who c annot affordable single-family homes, penalizing them for their desire or need to live in a rental unit or smaller unit rather than building a home.
As fellow stakeholder Grubb Properties has pointed out, an 850 square foot multifamily or duplex unit would pay the same as a much larger, 2,014 square foot single-family home. Put another way, a 1,400 square foot multifamily unit would pay more than a single -family home more than twice its size at 3,000 square feet:
Staff states that it “disagrees” that this is disproportionate and inequitable, opining that “apartments will typically house more residents in the same square footage,” and it is therefore “more equitable to charge distinct fees to multi- family and single-family development.” Staff then goes on to say that the distinct rate was calculated based on “average unit and household sizes.” However, there is no evidence that any data related to the size of a household was considered – the building permit data listed in the DTA Report is devoid of this information. Even if the data was considered, an even payment per person is not necessarily an equitable payment. Charging families who live in closer quarters more, penalizes their inability to buy or build a new home. It is that simple. It also
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incentivizes developers to propose developments composed of micro- units, further adding to the shortage of family-sized units across all types of housing.
For all of the above reasons, we request that Council consider lowering the per square foot rate for multifamily units if it selects the distinct option.
Thank you for considering our requests.
Sincerely,
Matt Hengehold
President, Hengehold Trucks