From: herb
To: Council, City; Clerk, City
Subject: October 15, 2025 City Council Meeting, Item #2: Conference With City Attorney, 156 California Avenue Date: Tuesday, October 14, 2025 2:44:15 PM
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October 15, 2025 CITY COUNCIL MEETING
AGENDA ITEM# 2: CONFERENCE WITH CITY ATORNEY 156 CALIFORNIA AVENUE
The letter from Holland & Knight LLP dated September 3, 2025 claims the project at 156 California Avenue qualifies for the AB 130 CEQA
Exemption, while the City of Palo Alto says the project does not qualify for the exemption.
At the September 29, 2025 City Council meeting, Mayor Lauing commented that "An Ad Hoc Committee consisting of himself and Councilmember Stone had been created for 156 North California Avenue."
The only thing that can be negotiated in this dispute is to agree on a different project at 156 California Avenue that the City is willing to say does qualifies for the CEQA exemption, which can only occur during open public hearings on the project's application.
However, courts have ruled that it is a violation of the Ralph M. Brown act to make planning decisions about a project during a Closed Session by using the pretext that since the project is the subject of the Closed Session you can discuss anything related to the project in the Closed Session.
If you want to approve a different project than the one that is the subject of this Closed Session, you can do that only in Open Session as part of the CEQA public hearing process on the project that the City says is not exempt from CEQA.
The Closed Session is only about the dispute regarding whether the current project is or is not exempt from CEQA.
Thank you for your consideration of these comments.
Herb Borock