Draft Minutes 3-10-09CITY OF CUPERTINO
103 00 Torre Avenue
Cupertino, CA 95014
CITY OF CUPERTINO PLANNING CONIlVIISSION
DRAFT MINUTES
6:45 P.M. March 10,--2009 TUESDAY
CUPERTINO CO1~~TY HALL
The regular Planning Commission meeting of March 10, 2009, was called to order at 6:45 p.m. in
the Cupertino Community Hall, 10350 Torre Avenue, Cupertino, California, by Vice Chairperson
Paul Brophy.
SALUTE TO THE FLAG
ROLL CALL
Commissioners present: Vice Chairperson: Paul Brophy
Commissioner: Marty Miller
Commissioner: David Kaneda
Commissioner: Winnie Lee
Commissioners Absent: Chairperson: Lisa Giefer
Staff present: City Planner: Gary Chao
Senior Planner: Colin Jung
Environmental Affairs Coordinator: Erin Cooke
APPROVAL OF MINUTES:
Minutes of the February 24, 2009 Planning Commission meeting:
Motion: Motion by Com. Kaneda, second by Com. Miller, to approve the
February 24, 2009 Planning Commission meeting minutes as presented.
(Vote: 4-0-0; Com. Giefer absent)
WRITTEN C011211~IITNICATIONS: Gary Chao noted no other written communications were
received.
POSTPONEMENTS/REMOVAL FROM CALENDAR: None
ORAL COMMUNICATIONS: None
CONSENT CALENDAR: None
MISC: Gary Chao, City Planner, announced the appointment of Carol Korade, new City
Attorney and welcomed her to the Planning Commission.
Cupertino Planning Commission 2 March 10, 2009
PUBLIC HEARING:
1. DIR-2008-37, EXC-2008-17, .Director's Minor Modification to allow the construction
V-2008-01, Dayna Aguirre of a personal wireless service facility, consisting of eight
(T-Mobile/PG&E) Homestead panel antennas and a microwave dish mounted on a rack
Rd @ No. Stelling Rd (Stelling affixed to an existing PG&E lattice tower and abase-
Substation) ,equipment enclosure located beneath the lattice tower;
A height exception to allow eight panel antennas to be
Mounted at a height of about 95 feet and a microwave dish to be mounted at a
Height of about 86 feet on a lattice tower where 55 feet is allowed; A Variance
To allow panel antennas of a personal wireless service facility to be set back a
Minimum of 25 feet (horizontal distance) and a microwave dish to be set back a
Minimum of 24 feet (horizontal distance) from a residential property line where
50 feet is required. Planning Commission decision final unless appealed.
Colin Jung, Senior Planner, presented the staff report:
• Reviewed the application for Director's minor modification, height exception and variance, as
outlined in the staff report. He reviewed the project site, photo simulations of the existing
condition and the proposed facility with the antenna affixed.
• He briefly reviewed the project issues including communications coverage, Radio Frequency
Radiation (RFR) Assessment, noise analysis, height exception, setback variance, noticing and
public comments, as detailed in the staff report.
• Staff recommends approval of the application, the Minor Modification, height exception as
well as variance per the model resolution.
Peter Friedland, Technology Information and Communications Commission:
• Said that when the City Council approved the wireless ordinance, the TICC was asked to be
involved in the review process. They felt the Planning Commission was doing a thorough job
with the public hearings and they did not want another full hearing added to the process. A
subcommittee was formed to provide comments to city staff. TICC felt the request was
reasonable to add antennas to existing structures because of the lack of additional aesthetic
impact. Having the antenna higher is good from the point of view of safety and coverage, and
from a technical point of view the request was reasonable for putting it on top of the tower.
Dana Aguirre, Sutro Consulting, representing T-Mobile:
• Explained that T-Mobile had initially applied and received approval for an application at a
different location near the Whole Foods on a roof top; however, the site became an issue from
a structural standpoint, and T-Mobile had to abandon that location. As a result, the RF
engineers have searched the area for a new candidate that provided the same coverage,
resulting in two applications; the present one and one they are working on at Memorial Park
which they have not yet applied for.
• Moving forward with this location, T-Mobile had looked on the other side of Hwy. 85 where
they wanted to be and looked at placing Joint Pole Authority (JPA) poles (utility poles). They
needed to utilize three poles in order to get enough coverage but it still would not provide the
same coverage because it wouldn't have enough height. The proposed tower appears to be a --
good solution because it offers height and allows enough coverage to fill the void of three sites
instead of one. Seeing that as positive, instead of infiltrating the area with three different sites,
the one site can be utilized to fill a bigger coverage area.
Vice Chair Brophy opened the meeting for public comment. There was no one present who wished
to speak.
Cupertino Planning Commission 3 March 10, 2009
Vice Chair Brophy read an email received from David Arnold, New Brunswick Avenue,
Sunnyvale.
• He raised three questions: (1) The current tower height is already the highest structure around,
increasing it would be an eyesore and would set a precedent. (2) What evidence, if any, has
been presented that proposed setbacks take the safety of local residents into account. (3) Why
is the additional tower needed; my cell signal in the area around the proposed station is fine.
Colin Jung, Senior Planner responded to the email questions:
• Relative to the overall height increase of the tower, about 7 feet; there are already two height
exceptions that have been approved by the Planning Commission, one at the Monta Vista
substation and another one at the Corporation Yard. One facility was built, the other one was
not, hence there is no precedent being set.
• Relative to safety of the residents, he said that Mr. Arnold is making the assumption that the
existing setback restrictions are based on the assessment of health risk, which is not the case.
When the ordinance was passed, they evaluated the regulations of other cities, and found that
the setbacks and antennas were across the board; some were close, some were very far away.
• A review of the federal publications said that for a typical facility, you would have to be 15 to
17 feet away from the face of the antenna before being exposed to an unacceptable level of RF
radiation; that is clearly not the case with a tower height of 96 feet. If you were to lower the
height to 41 feet, you would be closer to the apartment buildings which are 30 feet tall. Of
greater concern is the hazard to maintenance workers operating around the PG&E facility, if
the facility was not turned off when they were maintaining the substation. The higher height
would be much safer for the routine maintenance that PG&E does at that substation.
• The additional tower or station is needed because T-Mobile has very poor cell phone coverage
in that area. He noted that he lived in the area and had poor coverage also. He referred to the
coverage map and pointed out the areas where there was poor onstreet and in-vehicle
coverage. The T-Mobile facility is larger than the typical T=Mobile facility; it has 8 antennas
instead of the standard complement of 3, 4 sectors instead of 3; but it goes from poor to fair
coverage to good in-building coverage for a good portion of the southwest corner of
Sunnyvale and a good portion of the Garden Gate neighborhood in Cupertino.
Colin Jung:
• He reviewed the setback requirements. The City Council adopted the change from 50 feet to
75 feet for antenna setback from the residential property line, with exemptions for an antenna
located on a utility pole or tower. He pointed out that if the application was heard at the next
meeting, the variance application would be moot because the new ordinance would be in effect
instead of the old ordinance. The new ordinance states that an antenna on an existing utility
pole or tower is exempt from the setback requirement.
Vice Chair Brophy closed the public hearing.
Com. Miller:
• Said the application was straight forward; in terms of the appearance of the tower, it is already _
an eyesore and adding the cell tower is making it worse. In terms of the potential hazards, The
Planning Commission is not permitted to address that issue here, but he noted he would
personally be more concerned about the high voltage equipment that is in the area, far more
than concerns about the emissions from the cell phone tower.
• Supports the application.
Cupertino Planning Commission 4 March 10, 2009
Com. Kaneda:
• Said he agreed with Com. Miller, from an appearance standpoint, adding the antennas has no
appreciable effect. The increase of 7 feet in height is minimal, and looking from the sketches
it is not going to make a serious difference.
• Relative to health hazards, he pointed out that the PG&E yard had high voltage transformers
there, and he felt there would be more concern both with noise and EMF from there. Relative
to the setback issue, it helps that the tower is so high; realistically you are not going to get a
home that is higher than two stories in that, residential neighborhood that is adjacent to the
tower. The fact that the tower is higher increases the distance to the homes.
• He said he supported the application.
Winnie Lee:
• Said there were benefits from having the aerial placed on the lattice tower which will be
increased to 90 feet high. It is not a precedent as there is another tower or aerial on DeAnza
Boulevard. The application meets the radio frequency standards, the noise level standards and
it will fill large coverage hole; up to 40% of 911 emergency calls are made from cell phones.
From a safety point, the residents of Sunnyvale and Cupertino would benefit from more
coverage.
• Said she supports the application.
Vice Chair Brophy:
• Said he agreed with his colleagues.
Motion: Motion by Com. Miller, second by Com. Kaneda, to approve Applications
DIR-2008-37, EXC-2008-17, and V-2008-O1 per the model resolution.
(Vote: 4-0-0; Com. Giefer absent)
OLD BUSINESS• None
NEW BUSINESS:
2. Update on the City's Green Building Initiative by Erin Cooke, Environmental Affairs
Coordinator.
• Said her responsibilities included promoting environmental awareness and coordination among
departments; working to engage staff members, residents, the business community and other
external stakeholders in the city's activities to achieve greenhouse gas emissions reduction
targets, as well as resource conservation goals. Short term goal is auditing, benchmarking and
outreach, with the longer term goal to work on some implementation of various activities and
ongoing monitoring. From an auditing perspective, she has met with different department
heads and conducted background research on city environmental improvements that have
happened over the history of the city's operation. Her plan is to improve the job of cataloging
the environmental achievements of the city as part of the history in moving forward.
• Another aspect of auditing is looking at resource consumption of the city ranging from fuel use _
to electricity, as well as water consumption. She said they have been working with energy
service companies to help identify some existing energy consumption as well as opportunities
for improvement, whether those be technologies or different improvement activities within
their facilities.
• Part of that effort has also been bench markings including larger activity to bench mark
greenhouse gas emissions, for 2005 working with anon-profit partner who is helping a lot of
Cupertino Planning Commission 5 March 10, 2009
other regional cities in this region help to benchmark greenhouse gas emissions to have a
baseline for recognizing improvements made over time.
• As part of the outreach activities, a website has been created that will showcase many of the
sustainability activities of the city. She is also working with the business community to
identify some of their concerns and goals for environmental improvements among the city;
including working with anon-profit partner Actera, a partner of other local cities to develop an
energy auditing program, working with local residents to train them to be home energy
auditors. They are also participating in numerous regional collaboratives that are taking place;
sustainabilty historically was recognized more through climate action plans and now cities are
working to identify other policies that can be grouped into more of a sustainability framework.
• In addition to working on green procurement policies, or zero waste policies, the city has been
a participant in the Santa Clara County City Association's green building collaborative. They
are developing a policy framework to present to the Cities Association recommending a green
building strategy for cities located within this region. They are recommending that on a
phased approach; the first being a voluntary recommendation to cities which has already been
implemented in Cupertino; and then more of a mandatory approach followed by ongoing
monitoring of the implementation of that policy over time. The framework will be presented
to the Cities Association on March 12~'; it is still in draft phase until it is adopted or accepted
by the Cities Association.
• Said that the Sierra Initiative focuses on residential and commercial; it creates the framework
for new construction for residences, remodels as well as for commercial properties, or non-
residential properties.
• Said the program for putting solar on city rooftops was progressing; they are working with
energy service companies to investigate what types of installations would be financially viable
in Cupertino; and are looking at facilities to identify what sites would benefit from solar.
• Relative to benchmarking greenhouse gas emissions, she said they were working with Eclee to
benchmark greenhouse gas emissions from municipal operations; all city departments have
contributed in gathering data. The plan is to do a community-wide inventory in coordination
with a larger stakeholder outreach process, similar to those that other cities have been working
on, such as climate action task force or sustainability task force in the city so that businesses as
well as residents and local academic partners have a voice in what the sustainability plan will
be moving forward.
Com. Kaneda:
• Said the Santa Clara County Cities Association Green Building Collaborative adopted the
recommendation to require green point rated score cards and LEEDS score cards be submitted
on projects but no requirement to actually design buildings to that standard. On this go-round,
and part of that initial go-round was that the city's put a requirement on themselves to do
LEEDS silver facilities for their own buildings. In this go-round actually now there is
discussion of making it a requirement for commercial offices to have a LEEDS silver
certification and residences green point rated. He said it was not a requirement for the City of
Cupertino; the city would have to adopt it.
Erin Cooke: _
• Said the policies tend to range between cities; many cities have a requirement for municipal
facilities to be LEEDS silver certified or that residential properties that are developed need to
have a minimum of 50 points for a greenpoint rating; there are a few cities that have already
adopted that policy. The most aggressive policy is one that has been implemented in San
Francisco, but the hope is that this is again more of a regional approach so that cities
recommend this type of framework moving forward so that it is similar for all developers
working within this region.
Cupertino Planning Commission 6 March 10, 2009
Com. Kaneda:
• Said an issue was that the Homebuilders Association and some of the developers were
expressing concern that if each city independently developed their own criteria, it would be
difficult to do work crossing city boundaries because some may have different requirements.
One of the goals of the Santa Clara County Cities Association was to come up with standard
recommendations across the cities in the Santa Clara County region.
Com. Miller:
• That would include not just what needs to be done for new construction, but also the same
process from city to city? It would seem important to make sure everybody has the same
application process even though the end results may be slightly different. What are the steps of
the application process?
Com. Kaneda:
• If you are doing a LEEDS application, that process would be the same but it would not be the
same if, as Palo Alto has said, design to the LEEDS silver standard, but not necessarily do the
application. There would then be a variation in the process.
Gary Chao:
• Said that the next pass at the policy from the Collaborative Green Building, instead of having
defmitive process, there will be references on trigger points, which is an important subject that
the Planning Commission has been struggling with in the past. What size of project triggers
certain types of certification, number of units, sizes of commercial property so that there is
going to be a consistent way of trigger that you apply to the firm projects as opposed to the
process. Once the city receives these, the recommendation from this committee, the process is
that the City Council would have to review it and provide directions to staff and the
Commission to evaluate and provide recommendations back to them and each city can make
additional tweaks and modifications and define the processes. The trigger points are something
that is worth looking at because that will put us on an equal playing field with other
communities so that doesn't handicap anyone or any developers from developing from one
city to another. We are excited to see the evolution of this policy and we are looking forward
to seeing it. We haven't had formal directions from the City Council to embrace this policy,
but it is Erin's job to keep track of this and we have Commissioners that sit on the committee,
so once it gets formally announced, we will introduce it to the City Council, and when you
have the opportunity, as Commissioners during the next City Council work program session,
convey your sentiments in terms of the need of having these defmitive trigger points so that in
the future we could apply equal standards to folks.
Erin Cooke:
• Said she was not familiar with the San Francisco policy; but would follow up and send
information to Gary Chao for the Planning Commission.
• There are plans to reach out to the community in terms of informing them about what types of
green programs are available to them, such as the green point rated program being considered _
by the Green Building Collaborative. The sustainability website will track and showcase
many of the city's achievements as well as provide resources for the academic, business
community and residents specifically.
• The goal is to put those resources and the opportunities for cost savings directly in the hands of
residents, which will be the major focus of the sustainability website as well as a lot of
outreach materials that will be available online as well as at City Hall. The Actera program is
a good example of how the city is working to promote cost as well as resource savings within
Cupertino Planning Commission 7 March 10, 2009
the homes. This is a difficult time for homeowners; the economic crisis is a significant burden
on homeowners and the goal is to teach them simple ways they can save energy and money by
working on small improvements in their homes. There are also opportunities to use other
communication vehicles available including the city channel and the radio to provide some
green tips to residents and business. It was recommended to the Chamber of Commerce and
they are moving forward with putting together those materials.
REPORT OF THE PLAS~TNIl~TG COMIVVIISSION
Environmental Review Committee: No report.
Housing Commission: No meeting; next meeting is March 12~'.
Mayor's Monthly Meeting with Commissioners:
Vice Chair Brophy reported:
• Parks. and Rec is moving closer to a final recommendation to the City Council on the dog park
issues.
• The Sims Property: City owned property which has not been used except for a single family
residence on the property being rented out. Moving forward on making recommendations on
how best to use the land for park land and any other possible uses.
• Parks and Rec scheduled an offsite meeting to get together to develop a work plan and
priorities; given the slow down in the private sector, the Planning Commission may want to do
something similar and put together a revised list of priorities to send to the City Council for
their consideration and feedback.
• Public Safety Commission encouraged citizens to email them about traffic safety concerns so
that they can investigate them; their main project is working.with the Bicycle Commission and
Teen Commission to find ways to reduce vehicle traffic to the schools.
• Library Commission reported that the average number of items checked out per day exceeds
8,000. Budget hearings: There is concern in the tight budget to continue funding 'for Sunday
and Monday services; the city pays to keep it open Sunday and Monday; the County pays for 5
days per week.
• Discussion about funding for the aquarium. The donor of the aquarium agreed to fund the
operating expenses for five years. As it was nearing the fifth year, there was discussion about
getting additional funding from him, but it may require the city to continue to fund it.
• Fine Arts Commission: Discussion about the art at the Tantau Avenue building; question about
lighting the sculptures at night. It was decided night lighting was not necessary since not many
people drive on Tantau after dark. There was also discussion about the Art Ordinance
regarding funding.
• He provided a brief review of the Planning Commission discussions; recent events in
newspaper about Planning Commission; reported that there was a slowdown on the number of
private sector projects and would work on their work plan to address long term planning
issues.
Economic Development Committee: No meeting.
REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT:
Gary Chao reported:
• Results from 2008 residents satisfaction survey; 77% of the respondents still favor creation of
some type of vibrant shopping in the downtown district..
Cupertino Planning Commission
March 10, 2009
• Sandy Abey's last day is March 13, she is moving on to being Human Resources Director in
Newark.
• Aarti Shrivastava has been appointed Community Development Director; Steve Piasecki's last
day is March 24. Aarti Shrivastava worked with the Planning Department before going to the
City of Mountain View.
• Meeting Schedule: The Commission asked staff to look at the Planning Commission work
schedule/work load and consider potentially revising the calendar to reflect the work load. In
the coming months March/April there are several items coming forward; it is relatively lower
workload, as activities are slowing down. Staff's recommendation is that starting in May,
consider either canceling one of the meetings; instead of having two hearings per month,
consider having one hearing per month. He explained the two options for the schedule of
meetings. The first is to keep both meetings on the calendar and cancel one meeting if not
needed; the second option is to remove one of the meetings from the calendar until further
date. He discussed the upcoming calendars for the next two months.
Com. Miller:
• Said at the previous discussion of the meeting schedule, he recommended that it would be an
opportunity for the Commission to do more planning and perhaps look at areas of the city
where they might expect development to happen in the near future; and put some forethought
into that in terms of what they would like to see from the city's standpoint. He asked if staff
saw the resources to do that.
Gary Chao:
• Said it would be an opportunity to do such work since there was a slow down in the private
sector and there would be more time to focus on amendments, updating current policies and
looking at new plans.
• He noted that the Heart of the City is transforming and it-may entail some of the areas the
Commission might be interested in looking at creating different policies. Also the City Council
will be having their public discussion on their work program in May; the Planning
Commission has their own session after that to develop its own work program.
Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned to the next regular Planning Commission meeting
scheduled for March 24, 2009, at 6:45 p.m.
Respectfully Submitted: /s/Elizabeth Ellis
Elizabeth Ellis, Recording Secretary