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PC 07-13-2010 CITY OF CUPERTINO 10300 Torre Avenue Cupertino, CA 95014 CITY OF CUPERTINO PLANNING COMMISSION APPROVED MINUTES 6:45 P.M. July 13, 2010 TUESDAY CUPERTINO COM1VIUNITY HALL The regular Planning Commission meeting of July 13, 2010 was called to order at 6:45 p.m. in the Cupertino Community Hall, 10350 Torre Avenue, Cupertino, California, by Chairperson Paul Brophy. SALUTE TO THE FLAG ROLL CALL Commissioners present: Chairperson: Paul Brophy Vice Chairperson: Winnie Lee Commissioner: Lisa Giefer Commissioner: David Kaneda Commissioner: Marty Miller Staff present: Community Development Director: Aarti Shrivastava Senior Planner: Aki Honda Snelling APPROVAL OF MINUTES: Minutes of the June 8, 2010 Planning Commission Meeting: Motion: Motion by Com. Kaneda, second by Com. Miller, and unanimously carried 5-0 -0, to approve the June 8, 2010 Planning Commission minutes as presented. WRITTEN COMMUNICATIONS: None POSTPONEMENTS/REMOVAL FROM CALENDAR: 1. M- 2010 -02 Modification to a U se Permit to allow commercial entertainment Alan Parsano establishments and live entertainment activities and to extend the (Modena Investment hours of operation For these uses to 2:00 a.m. at the Oaks Shopping LP & Sunnyvale Center. Postponed to the September 14, 2010 Planning Holding, LLC) Commission meeting. Tentative City Council date: 21255 -21275 Stevens October 5, 2010. Creek Blvd. Motion: Motion by Com. Miller, second by Com. Kaneda, and unanimously carried 5 -0 -0, to postpone Application M- 2010 -02 to the September 14, 2010 Planning Commission meeting. ORAL COMMUNICATIONS: None CONSENT CALENDAR: None Cupertino Planning Commission July 13, 2010 OLD BUSINESS: None NEW BUSINESS: 2. Green Building Ordinance Workshop (Informational. Workshop; no decisions will be made). Aarti Shrivastava, Community Development Director: • Explained the purpose of the workshop was an educational session for many of the participants of the first workshop for the Green Building Ordinance, who expressed interest in the Green Point Rating, LEEDs standards Phase 2, Cal Green and how they all fit as part of a new ordinance. • Speakers will include Shiloh Ballard, Silicon Valley Leadership Group, who facilitated the entire process of putting the recommendations together for the Santa Clara County Cities Association, resulting in Phase II recommendations that are being used as a base for the ordinance; and Com. David Kaneda who has a great deal of experience in Green Buildings, who will explain how Cal Green and some of the LEED and Green Point Rating requirements mesh together. Shiloh Ballard, Silicon Valley Leadership Group: • Said that the Silicon Valley Leadership Group (SVL Group) was similar to a high tech association, with 300 members that run from Apple to HP to many of the smaller groups, whose mandate is to advocate on behalf of the business community for the issues they are grappling with to make a strong economy in Silicon Valley. • About two years ago, the Board of the Leadership Group was interested in getting involved in environmental issues and climate change and decided that green building was an issue they wanted to focus on. They partnered with the Santa Clara County Cities Association and worked together to develop recommendations for cities to adopt around green building policy. Phase II is the end result of that process. • Reviewed the slide presentation which summarized the process of developing recommendations for cities to adopt a Green Building Policy. Representatives from different constituencies met regarding key issues to move forward for adoption of a policy. The goal was to get all the cities on the same page, and at the same time, by doing so, spur the local green economy and help develop clean tech and green tech in Silicon Valley, and also improve the environment. They did not want the outcome to be developers going from city to city dealing with a totally different set of guidelines or policies to have to comply with. The initial accomplishment was around the near -term policy recommendations and every city in Santa Clara County ultimately adopted those recommendations; because the underlying rationale behind those recommendations helps underscore some of our over - arching goals and why we landed where we landed. • The reason they started with the near term policy recommendations was because the material was very new and is cutting edge, and man:y of the questions they would be grappling with were fairly complicated and would take some time to respond to; in the meantime we didn't want to do nothing at all, and we knew that there were some very easy low hanging fruit that we could adopt right away and encourage most of the cities to adopt. While we were grappling with these bigger questions, we said here is an easy step we could do immediately and that easy stuff was what we called our near term policy recommendations; the first of which is to simply recognize GPR and LEER as the standards they should be working from. This was to get all the cities on the same page- in terms of the standards they are working from. • The first recommendation was to adopt LEED and GPR. The similarities, both are mission Cupertino Planning Commission ? July 13, 2010 driven organizations, non profits interested in doing something green for the planet; they both also have a third party verification system, although they are different. The differences, LEED was formed by USGBC which is a national organization whereas Build It Green, the organization that formed Green Point Rated is a local organization based out of Berkeley. Another difference is that when LEED was formed they started on the commercial side, developing standards for commercial buildings and Green Point Rated started on the residential side. • The second recommendation is for the applicant to complete a GPR checklist or LEED checklist as an educational measure to help people go through the checklist and learn about green building. Nothing on the checklist is mandatory at this point. • The third recommendation was in recognition of the fact that cities and local governments should be leading by example, and if the goal is to ask the private sector to adopt green building practices, cities should help pave the way by imposing those same kinds of requirements on themselves first and accomplish many things; one of which is readying the industry both in terms of the products available and the infrastructure in terms of the trainers and certifiers and Planning staff able to do that. • Moving onto the Phase II recommendations, we started with the low hanging fruit and once all the cities had adopted all those recommendations moved onto address some of those larger questions; the idea was to still be working towards similar recommendations across jurisdictions and raise the bar in a way that was an appropriate nudge on the private sector and not set the bar too high so that the industry wasn't necessarily ready to accommodate some of the needs that were out there. As an example, years ago we started looking at green building and convened a focus group of residential developers and some who were already building green and some who were not building green and had no intention to build green, and we were just asking the questions, what do you know about green building; and for the folks who had been building green, they cited even though they wanted to be pursuing this, they cited some real barriers to being able to do it, and one of which was getting green lumber at the scale they needed and getting it delivered on time. That is something we wanted to be cognizant about when developing Phase II. • She referred to the slide presentation Page 6+ and reviewed the GBC's Phase II recommendations for Residential New Construction; Residential Remodels; Nonresidential New Construction; Nonresidential Remodels/Tenant Improvements. She said it was determined from the process that there was a difference between new and remodels; it is much easier to do green building when starting from scratch than it is to remodel. • Under new construction, there are 9 homes GPR rated or LEED certified, and multi - family equal to or over 9 homes is GPR or LEED silver. It is an illustration shown elsewhere where it is broken down between small, medium and large projects; what that is a reflection of is a difference between an ability of a smaller ; scale development to do certain green building measures vs. a larger scale development. • The Collaborative quickly came to the conclusion that for smaller scale projects, it is okay to have a less stringent green building, a requirement that it is for larger scale projects, and the general principle will be reflected in the recommendations as well. • There is a lot of detail on both the remodels on the residential side and remodels and tenant improvements on the non - residential side; a lot of time was spent to ascertain where to draw the line between a small, medium and large project; the Collaborative concluded that every city is different; and a little project in San Jose could be a big project in Saratoga, and that is unique to your city, and you may already have ways in your planning process where you differentiate between big projects and small projects, and if you do than go ahead and use that. Our recommendations are not intended to complicate the process and overlay a whole other way of screening projects; but if you don't have already something in place, this was a way that we recommended to break down or help define what those small, medium and large Cupertino Planning Commission 4 July 13, 2010 projects are. It is based on permit valuation, square footage and FAR and they aren't perfect; it is important to continue to be flexible but the principle is the one outlined before and that is for smaller projects, there should be less of a green building threshold than for larger projects. She noted on the remodels for the residential sites is that Build It Green has not yet finalized the multi - family remodel guidelines, so that is why there is a placeholder there, to be determined. When those come out, we want to apply those, but it is still premature. • She noted they were recommending LEED silver or Green Point Rated for the larger projects. She reviewed the rationale for the recommendations: big vs. small and the different shades of green; FAR, valuation and square footage as ways to determine how to define small, medium and large projects. In the recommendations, a choice is always given of LEED or GPR; it is better to give the private sector a choice. • An important and sometimes contentious issue within the GBC was verification. Some feel that you should get certification or being a green building from a third party; an entity separate from the city and the developer and can do that in a third party neutral evaluation of whether or not you as an applicant have met all the green building requirements. Some of the Collaborative felt that the city could serve the role, they did not see any problem with the city stepping in and verifying whether an applicant had met the green building requirements. After much discussion of the issue, especially with reps from the different entities such as USGBC and Build It Green, the result was that if the city had the resources and was willing to put the resources into training staff to do that verification; it was acceptable; with the understanding that it is not an easy task. There are cities willing to put the resources into it. Multi- family remodels was mentioned as well as flexibility. • After Phase II was adopted, the State adopted Cal Green, which is the State raising the bar for itself on the building code. What is Cal Green is now convention in terms of green building or will be shortly. The different standards will have to be changed and moved to reflect that. How does the new Cal Green requirements mesh with what we have recommended in Phase II? We are still coming to conclusions on that question, but where we are trending towards, is with the tiers, Cal Green is another choice. One issue is how you actually verify the different tiers of Cal Green. Many cities spend a lot of time talking about what the standard is going to be; are we going to be doing LEED silver, LEED gold, Green Point Rated 75 points, what are we going to do? Those are important decisions to make, but at the end of the day, where you set your standards does not necessarily equal achieving that perfect green puzzle and getting that green outcome that you want. There is a lot between setting the standard and getting that green home built that have to do with how you implement and verify. Setting the standards is an important question, but the implementation piece is also equally, if not more important. • The flexibility is cutting edge matter and things are changing and we ultimately want the building community to embrace these new techniques. In doing so we need to view them as partners and not play the Gotcha game, but try to create that appropriate on -ramp so we can all be building green building. Chair Brophy: • Reviewed Com. Kaneda's background as an electrical engineer, one of the area experts in emerging various green standards, and has served on the advisory committee working on the State Building Code for the addition of the Green Building Ordinance. Com. Kaneda: • Reviewed his background which included expertise in designing green buildings; service on the Planning Commission; a member of the Santa Clara County Cities Association; member of the Building Standards Commission, Green Building Code Advisory Committee and committees for the Public Utilities Commission related to energy efficiency and lighting; and also on the California Energy Commission for lighting and energy efficient building design; Cupertino Planning Commission 5 July 13, 2010 and a member of the research group for the Department of Energy. • Said he viewed it as a grass roots type of effort, meaning instead of something happening top down, it happens bottom up, so various parties including a lot of the local cities started to realize they wanted to do something related to green building regulations. That is a large part of why Shiloh Ballard ended up doing what she did with the Santa Clara County Cities Association, because the cities were starting to move on their own, and different cities were adopting different standards, which was causing concern among developers and other organizations because all the standards were going in different directions and different cities were doing different things. The result is some Local recommendations that were starting to be adopted, including national recommendations, as well as the international Green Building Code Ashrae 189.1 which was just released earlier this year which is a model green building code; Cal Green; the Energy Code which deals only with energy and Ashrae 90.1 which also just deals with energy. California saw this grass roots development happening and wanted to do something more than just the bare minimum. California has some serious potential problems with energy infrastructure and water infrastructure and said there were concerns about how the State was going to deal with that. At one point, they were hoping that some of these model national codes could be developed so they could look at adopting Ashrae 189.1 as their State Code, but there is a delay in the development of that Code due to some technical reasons. The State decided that they couldn't wait and needed to move forward. The State also realizes that California is like the gorilla in the room in that when they adopt a practice, it will help stimulate the entire industry into moving faster in a certain direction. • He summarized the five key parts of Cal Green which follows the LEED rating system. The first section Planning and Design; is about site, the soil and preservation, deconstruction of buildings, etc. The second is energy, which is slim because it defers to Title 24 Part 6. Cal Green is part of the Building Code which is all Title 24, Cal Green is Part 11, the Energy Code is Part 6. • The Water Section covers indoor and outdoor water use that has some overlap with BOSCA regulations. There is a material and resource conservation section; the last section is environmental quality, which is primarily about air quality inside the building. • Planning and Design: The main mandatory requirement for residential is storm water management, which comes up in some projects as runoff from the site. For non - residential projects there is storm water prevention plan 1:hat is required; bicycle parking that is required; a reduction in light pollution; a requirement to drain water away from the building; and a requirement for parking for different kinds of vehicles including hybrid vehicles or carpool parking. • Energy defers to the Energy Code and the only comment they made, is if you go to Tier 1, there is a statement to do 50% better than Tit] a 24, Part 6 requirements and if you go to Tier 2, it is 30% better. • Water efficiency includes an indoor section and an outdoor section; the indoor section calls for a 20% reduction in indoor water use of fixtures; low flow faucets and low flow flush toilets, urinals; water efficient appliances and fixtures. The other thing they are looking at for outdoor is water based irrigation control; either an irrigation control where that has a satellite connection and it gets weather data or irrigation controllers that have moisture sensors. • For non - residential there are also requirements to put in separate sub - meters for tenants above a certain size, so that people can start billing tenants separately; there is an incentive to try to conserve water. • Section 4 is material and resource conservation; for residential the only mandatory requirements are annular penetration, like wires or pipes cut going out of the building against rodents, construction waste diversion, so that it is not just throwing all the construction waste into a landfill but separating it and recycling what you can and providing something called an O &M manual. Cupertino Planning Commission 6 July 13, 2010 • For non - residential, there is a number of requirements including protection from weather, protection from moisture, which includes not having the irrigation system spray on the building; and control of construction waste. There is a section that requires soil reuse or recycling so as you are scraping and landscaping, not just dumping the soil out but using it onsite and/or using it elsewhere. • Commissioning is taking the building and checking the systems, such as air conditioning system and making sure it works before you hand it over; historically it has not been done well at all and it is not uncommon to see buildings that don't perform correctly because they were never commissioned. • Environmental quality is related to the air quality in the building. This is all requirements related to residential and it is mostly about air quality, volatile organic chemicals and paints, adhesives, flooring and carpeting; formaldehyde, MDF or plywood; moisture barriers because if water gets into your house it can cause mold and creates spores and can cause problems with air quality; bath exhausts, damp air out of the bathroom out of the house; and requirements for fireplaces and wood stoves. • There is a requirement that when duct work is installed, it be totally sealed off, so that during construction it doesn't get contaminated and you avoid the problems from construction dirt, debris, dust when the system is turned on. • The last is related to verifying and inspecting the systems to make sure they are installed correctly, especially the HVAC systems. Non - residential is similar; moisture control, formaldehyde, VOCs and sealing the ducts, sealed fireplaces; and carbon monoxide controls and outside air requirements to ensure there is enough fresh air; no CFCs which destroy ozone. • He said that it was very difficult to determine how the things stack. They all have the same groups of things they are looking at, they come to some level of consensus on what the important issues are; and have attacked them in very similar ways, but are all slightly different. Fortunately the City of San Francisco, the American Institute of Architects, the USGVC and some other groups are working together to compare these standards and provide some comment on their meaning. • Discussed information from Global Green; that looked at Green Point Rated (GPR) vs. the residential portion of Cal Green and what they concluded was that going to a Tier 1 standard would meet the requirements of GPR; it came up with 70 points, and the cutoff for GPR is 50 points but if you go with the mandatory, you would be down at around 40 points. They compared the non - residential standards to the LEED requirements and their conclusion is that if you have a Tier 2 requirement that would be equal to LEED certified level. • Codes in the building industry are actually what the State or whoever is adopting the code or the city says this is the minimum that you are required to do to not be illegal; it is not the ceiling, it is the floor and that is what the code is. In some ways it is not really green building, it is just not a brown building. If you look at these on some kind of continuum, where we are today which is there is no requirement of a green code; it is just standard building code Title 24 and then starting in January 1, 2011 the C al Green will be required and that is higher than what is currently required. GPR for homes is higher than that, a LEED silver standard is higher than that and if you went to a LEED gold or LEED platinum, it is much higher than that. How high can you reasonably go; this is a house I was involved in, my house, we expected to get a platinum rating, quite easily and according to the builder, they are going to get 265 points, and GPR is 50 points, so obviously it is not that difficult to get to 50 points. • Reviewed information related to costs from Mark Franco at the New Building Institute in Seattle; summarizing that if a designer takes time to think about his design, he is able to improve the design without changing the cost at all, in some cases they can reduce the cost. In theory you can do a better greener building at the same cost, but that at some point as you push the envelope further the cost will start going up. If you don't go too far along that curve, you can end up with a building that will perform better and save money on energy. Cupertino Planning Commission '7 July 13, 2010 • Reviewed studies done in 2003; there is a premium between 0 and 2 -1/2% to do a LEED certified building; silver was 0 and 3.3 %; gold was 0.3 to 5 %, platinum 4 -1/2 to 8 -1/2 %. It was reported that in 2003/04 there were issues that you couldn't get certified wood and the result was that the cost of certified wood was exorbitant; there were issues with getting no VOC paints back then; now most of the paints are no VOC and there is very little premium for it. The numbers aren't that bad; but it is expected that a certified building would be no extra cost and a silver building would be a smaller premium. • The other issue related to that is that there is some data that green building in a commercial market command higher rents. • Photo voltaic systems: The cost of photo voltaic is dropping rapidly and is now down between $5.50 and $6.00 per watt. He reviewed data from his office building, estimating $9 per watt installed for the system; the percent of construction was about 1.2% which is a fairly small number considering it is a net zero energy building. Com. Kaneda: • Said that if Cupertino or any other city decides to go with any of the higher levels of tiers of the California Green Building Policy, they would have to have a legal nexus. Discussion in the last six months has been that it is just paperwork. Aarti Shrivastava: • Said staff would follow up on it. She understood they would have to make a finding; most cities that have adopted Green Building Ordinances different from the Building Code have been able to make the finding. Com. Giefer: • Said it was one of the points in the Green Building Collaborative often discussed, since they are all from cities within the Bay Area, sharing the same air space, the same environmental concerns and issues, and if all adopting the same policies, they can all make the same case. Chair Brophy: • In terms of comparing the Green Building Ordinance with the Build A Green or LEED program; to some extent those comparisons say that the revised code will be less stringent; but in looking at the previous materials handed out at the Kirsch Center, it looks like they were an apples and orange thing. While it is true that the state code does not cover everything that those two covered, it does have some areas where it does. He questioned whether the comparisons of the revised Title 24 to the Build It Green were a valid comparison. Com. Kaneda: • Said they were not exactly the same, but were fairly close; the big difference is that the rating systems tend to have a higher requirement of things, but they are not mandatory. Sometimes there are occasions when you just cannot do something with a site or building; the Code doesn't have the flexibility to let you say that it doesn't apply to you, therefore you don't want to do it. In reality it does have that flexibility. The Code is quite difficult and every architect I know doesn't want to even try that with the city; whereas with the standards, it is built into the way you develop your design that you choose the features you think are most appropriate for your design. They have a higher requirement but you get to walk away from them; that is the big difference. Aarti Shrivastava: • Clarified that the difference was that Cal Green only applies to new construction; Phase II applies to remodel and existing buildings and Cal Green does not apply to multi - family Cupertino Planning Commission >? July 13, 2010 residential buildings above three stories. Those were the two big differences if you did adopt the Green Building Ordinance. Com. Kaneda: • Said that the American Institute for Architects has requirements for continuing education, specifically in sustainability. Experience indicates that it is on-the-job training for the first project, and once the first project is completed, the basics are known, and after that it is layering on additional knowledge. He said there was also a lot of information available, and courses and guide books available. USGBC and Build It Green also has training classes. Chair Brophy opened the meeting for public comment. Jennifer Griffin, Rancho Rinconada resident: • Complimented Ms. Ballard and Com. Kaneda on the presentation about the new issues in green building; and said it was important that the City learn as much as possible about the new techniques and technology. She noted that the HGTV channel covered many of the topics and showed homes built in other countries as well as the United States. • She discussed the use of cork floors which is a sustainable wood product. The outer layer of cork trees is used without cutting the tree down; the wood can be grown quickly and harvested and it may be an incentive to use woods that are easily replaced. Chair Brophy closed the comment portion of the rneeting. Com. Miller: • Said they are talking about getting more insulation, which is a good thing because it cuts down on the energy costs; but at some point an air filtration system will be needed. Com. Kaneda: • Traditional homes are so leaky that you don't need to ventilate them because the leaking is the ventilation; the problem being that when it is really hot outside or cold outside, you are ventilating with 100 degree air or you are ventilating with 30 degree air and it is energy inefficient to do so. HRVs (heat recovery ventilators) are being put in homes. As it is pulling in outside air and dumping inside air, in the winter if the house is really tight, it will start getting humid and there may be odors building up. You do want to ventilate the house; as it is pulling out in that cold air from outside and dumping out the warm air from inside, it recovers the heat and takes the heat from the air going out and recycles it back into the air coming in, so you save energy that way; you only lose 30% or 20% of the heat that you are dumping out instead of dumping all the heat out. Without an efficient fan, the fan energy will use more energy than the heat being saved. • Said that the climate still requires the use of insulation in some areas. He referred to an architect who is working on a passive house in Portola Valley, who believed it was important to make the house airtight to meet the passive house standards with the use of an adhesive backed building paper. He said they may still be faced with the internal moisture buildup in the walls. Com. Miller: • Com. Kaneda discussed some things that could be done at a lower cost than standard building materials. It would be important to disseminate because that provides an incentive for builders to do that. • Shiloh Ballard talked about the reduction in operating costs, but that is where the disconnect occurs because the builder doesn't see the operating costs benefit; only the reduction in Cupertino Planning Commission 9 July 13, 2010 construction costs. Part of the equation is missing, and if we could come up with a way to transfer some of that operating cost benefit to the builder of the house, the whole system would work better. • Said if the city had a well publicized rating system, and it wasn't just the home owner advertising the energy efficiency of the house, it might be a higher benefit associated with the rating; and therefore a higher value to someone who is interested in buying the house. Aarti Shrivastava: • Said she heard about something similar to an Energy Star rating being put on buildings. Com. Giefer: • Recalled that LEED also has plaques that are placed on the LEED certified buildings as well as Build It Green. Articles have been written stating that green buildings tend to sell at higher prices. The short term of the reward may not be there if you are the builder; but in the long term when you sell it, you should have a higher return on your investment. If you are an owner /occupier, you reap all the rewards. Shiloh Ballard: • Said they were in the awkward phase where it is hard to connect upfront costs with the operating costs; there is many different answers. There is definitely a role for the folks who sell and rent these buildings and they are proactively pursuing the roles of becoming more educated on those particular aspects of the building and using that as a potential selling point for the building. Com. Miller: • If you are a landlord and particularly it is easier to see with commercial buildings; you can see the connection easily because if you lower the operating costs you can then argue to the tenant that it is justified in charging a higher rent because you lowered the operating costs and the value of the commercial building is a multiple of the rents that you receive; so every dollar increase in rent you get, you get a multiplier on the total value of the building, so it is easy to see the connection there; it is not so easy to see it in a residential single family house where you are not renting; you are not getting any gain from renting; you are just selling. With commercial, it is easier to see, but with residential it means more thought. It is good to have a rating system, but I think the rating system to make it work as an incentive has to come down to dollars and cents, so t hat if it is rated LEEDs silver, you save this much over a non - certified and if it is rated LEED gold, you save this much more and if people see that, they can translate that in their mind until they have to pay so much per month for mortgage, so much per month for utilities, and now there is a reduction here and that might lead them to consider a higher value to the house. Com. Kaneda: • Said it was difficult to keep up with the technology and material, but he recalled an assembly or senate bill related to publishing the energy use data of a residential building when it was sold; it was highly controversial and its outcome is not known. Com. Giefer: • Said there was mention about it requiring that all commercial buildings have their energy rating and policy displayed at the time of sale. Com. Kaneda: • That was one issue; and the other issue pertained to trying to figure out how to squeeze Cupertino Planning Commission 10 July 13, 2010 kilowatts hours out of buildings and make them more energy efficient. The one obvious thing as we are going through this process and trying to dig into exactly where the energy goes and how it is used, is that at some level I can do all types of innovative crazy things to make a building more energy efficient and we are working on figuring out what is the next thing and gradually making buildings more efficient, but at the end of the day the uses have a huge impact positively or negatively on how that building uses energy, so I can design the most efficient building in the world and you can still make it into an energy hog or the user can still make it into an energy hog somehow. It is not just an issue of putting the right stuff into the building and if you don't maintain it, it will become an energy hog because it will be malfunctioning. Com. Miller: • Yes, but that is where the free market approach; PG &Es approach of the more energy you use, the more per kilowatt you pay, puts a damper on people doing that, because when they see their bills go up astronomically, they are going to step back and say they cannot afford it and need to do something different. He said he preferred that solution over a regulatory approach. Com. Giefer: • Said when she did a green remodel there were not any rating systems, and she looked into many different new building construction techniques and developed her own remodel strategy. • The photo voltaics were put on the house later, but insulating and planting trees in key locations around the house to provide shade, featly reduced energy consumption and heat use. • There are many things one can do to the 50s :ranch style home in Cupertino; just by improving the daylighting, adding skylighting, and puttiing more insulation in the attics. She added that when it is 105 degrees outside, she keeps the windows shut and the shades open, and the house stays cool with no air conditioning. The temperature in the house is controlled by being smart about making the site plan work and some of the things that have been added to the California Green Building Policy is the site planning so that you are producing shade when you need it in the summer; how the building is situated on the lot as well and you can do a lot in terms of harvesting daylight and a number of other simple techniques. When replacing windows in the house, place them across from one another for cross ventilation to cool off the house. Com. Miller: • Said in terms of moving forward with implementation, it would likely be more successful if there is a point where it is actually the same or less cost to do some of the things that are easy to implement; but be cautious about requiring things that cost significantly over what it would otherwise; and over time increase those re9 uirements as the cost of those materials comes down. It would be an approach that would work better than some very strict standards up front that force everybody to put extra money into it. Shiloh Ballard: • Said it is part of the beauty of how the standards are set up; you get to pick and choose which options you may be familiar with, or you have done it before and you know it is cost effective. In putting together the Phase II recommendations, they also addressed the concern being raised, and had reached out to some of the residential developers who had been building green to get cost data from them, which can be provided. Chair Brophy: • Said it was important to have continuing outreach to the home builders, remodelers, and commercial developers, so that as they have more knowledge about the options they can get feedback from realtors. It would make a huge difference in terms of getting the most effective Cupertino Planning Commission 11 July 13, 2010 combination of regulation and incentives to achieve our goals. Mike Weasy, resident: • He said relative to recent discussions it would be a good idea to have energy guide stickers on the house, similar to those for refrigerators. It is difficult for people to do the analysis, and to have the information needed to make the decision, it needs to be put out there and would definitely be a market based incentive for people to lower that number; similar to those for the appliances. • He questioned if 15% and 30% over Title 24 is achievable; what happens if Title 24 changes; does that percentage get changed? • Relative to opening windows and saving energy, he said he understood that commercial buildings were required to have a fresh air ventilation system; and if so, why would the windows have to be opened, since the system should operate automatically. Is there any thought to adding that as a requirement for residential construction instead of having it only for commercial; it would work in Northern California. Com. Kaneda: • Said he had not seen economizers on houses, likely because most houses have operable windows and people tend to open the windows, unless they have severe allergies, and the HRV as a hepa filter is used. Said he had done buildings beyond 50 %, it is doable but takes a lot of work; 30% is not easy. Com. Giefer: • There is precedent for this; the BIG list, the GPR list, those are all set at 15% over Title 24 already; every year the Title 24 has grown and gotten more stringent in requirements. It is their objective to continue to be 15% more efficient or stringent over Title 24; and being familiar with that program, it is not onerous to meet that. Com. Kaneda: • Said technology is always improving; the CPUC and CEC committees are clearly focused at this point on trying to get down to zero energy buildings. They have goals of net zero energy homes by 2020 and net zero energy for commercial buildings by 2030. In theory at some point it could become a problem. Mark Burns, Real Estate Agent, Member of Green Ordinance Focus Group: • Said there were not enough statistics to show that more energy efficient homes sell for higher prices. He said from a personal experience green houses took longer to sell and it may have taken longer to sell because of the design arid aesthetics. It is going to be hard to be able to determine good statistics when each home is different; and it is going to be hard to say they have these lovely homes that take up too much electricity and energy but people like the way they look and they feel good living in those homes; or they are down the street from the schools they want to attend. There may be issues where the costs of the homes are a lot higher and the time it takes to recoup those costs not counting tax incentives for installing solar or other energy systems. If those are taken out of the picture, they take a lot longer to recoup the time and money. He urged caution about what is set up as new ordinances that the next generation of people are penalized to build and sell homes but not the people who have made the homes previously. It is also a market issue as mentioned that when a home has single pane windows, it is leaking and costs $300 month to keep it at a normal temperature. There may be other issues besides the leaky single pane windows and the lack of insulation and more than likely that home will sell for less than a house with double pane windows and other energy efficiencies. Cupertino Planning Commission 112 July 13, 2010 • When talking about sealing up homes, you also have to look into it, besides the heat ventilation system, also consider the fact that we are not in a radon free area; neither are we free of other indoor air quality problems that might be brought forth to us once we have sealed up these homes and made them perhaps not as healthy to live inside because you are working with the same air in that house all the time. We have to take into account all these other issues that go along with this; we have to look farther forward than what we are going to save next year or the year after and what we are going to be able to accomplish with tax incentives that we all pay for anyway. • Said he supported energy efficiency and for making houses better, but does not want to create extremes in any part of the new ordinances that will make it hard for builders to build, people to buy, or make it hard for people who are existing residents here to have an exit tax of having to make their house energy efficient. There are people who live in this area that have paid $30,000 or $40,000 for their home, do we make them spend $30,000 or $40,000 to retrofit their home upon the sale of that house to get out? • Said there should be a balanced and careful approach on doing these things because as we reach out to go much farther than what the existing Green Building Ordinance are, then we push people away from Cupertino and also push up the cost of what it is to be here, so we have to be very careful and take time about these things; don't be extreme in any way. Com. Kaneda: • Said that deconstruction is part of the Green Building Code, taking the building apart and reusing the usable parts. He said he utilized deconstruction with his home; paid someone to take the building apart, and got money back as a tax deduction as a charitable contribution, which was practically a wash. Chair Brophy: • He asked if there was any consideration of the comment about risk of requiring existing homeowners to upgrade their building prior to sale of it. Aarti Shrivastava: • Said the Phase II requirements don't ask for anything if somebody is not planning to remodel or build a new house. Com. Kaneda: • Said that the older building will not have a good energy label on it; and there will be the dilemma of either selling the building as an energy hog, and take the risk; or do energy upgrades on the building. • He said it is the discussion he heard related to energy labels and one of the discussions against. Com. Giefer: • There was legislation specifically requiring buildings to have posted energy consumption at the time of sale and to include that as a disclosure; but it may have been defeated. Com. Miller: • He said it was not the same as requiring people to upgrade their homes before they can sell them, which fortunately is not being discussed for Cupertino. Joe Katz, builder of a net zero energy home: • Said that a number of issues brought up most of the worries about what gets required and what doesn't get required is creating paranoia; the market will decide. He said the house he is building will have lower operating costs and will sell for more than any other house being built Cupertino Planning Commission 13 July 13, 2010 around it. Although his house is costing much more per square foot than the houses in his neighborhood, he will have saved much more in the next ten years; with the last six solar panels installed, he will be selling power back to PG &E. He noted that he made money on the deconstruction tax credit. Shiloh Ballard: • Said one of the fundamental reasons they reached the conclusions they did on Phase II was they were looking for the appropriate on -ramp and where to set the bar so as not to kill any particular industry and are giving that appropriate nudge to the private sector, that will get them to achieve their climate change goals without doing irreparable damage to the economy; in fact benefiting the economy and the environment. That was a core principle of the group that came up with the Phase II recommendations. Com. Kaneda: • Said there was concern about coming up with policies that would be uniform across city boundary lines. Shiloh Ballard: • Said that as much as cities collaborate together, they are competing for business; and if the city of San Jose has really stringent Green Building standards that potentially frighten the development community and direct them to a city like Cupertino that may have less stringent green building standards, that was a concern. The other concern already mentioned was the ability of the development and contractor community to go from jurisdiction to jurisdiction without having to relearn a radically new set of rules just because they crossed the Cupertino /Saratoga border. Those were the core principles behind encouraging cities to adopt somewhat similar policies across jurisdiction. • The BACC (Bay Area Climate Collaborative) is an attempt to scale up the green building efforts seen on a countywide basis, in particular in Santa Clara County; to take what was done in Santa Clara County with the Cities Association, getting all the cities on the same page and trying to get the communities in the Bay Area to do something similar. That has been going on for about a year, and is making slow progress. • It is more difficult to herd communities across the Bay Area than it is to herd the 15 cities and towns in Santa Clara County. Aki Honda Snelling, Senior Planner: • Reported that the green building consultant Global Green is putting together a draft ordinance for the July 22 focus group meeting. The comments from the second focus group meeting and the draft ordinance will be brought back to the Planning Commission in about a month or six weeks. The meeting is scheduled for Thursday, July 29 in Community Hall; the first focus group meeting will begin at 5 p.m. and the se�.ond focus group meeting at 7 p.m. REPORT OF THE PLANNING COMMISSION Environmental Review Committee: No meeting. Housing Commission: Com. Kaneda reported: • Housing Element was approved by the City Council; in the process of waiting for the State to sign off on it. The CDBU is dissolved and the responsibilities were taken over by the Housing Commission. The group handles the block grants and services the city provides grants for. Cupertino Planning Commission 14 July 13, 2010 The Consolidated Plan was approved by City Council for federal funding to be submitted to the Housing and Urban Development. Mayor's Monthly Meeting With Commissioners: Chair Brophy reported: • TIC committee: talked about Clearwire WiMax system which is the combination of cellular and broadband system currently being rolled in and scheduled for late Fall/early Winter system in which at least cell phone coverage through Sprint will occur in that timetable. WiMax coverage is an alternative to DSL and cable modems, but wireless not sure what timetable is. TIC has its own green initiative; they reviewed the Siemens proposal regarding the use of lighting for the city; talked about the difference between induction vs. LED lighting. Also looking at phone system for possible changes. • Library Commission: Teen room up and running; Library is in process of changing checkout system and inserting RFID chips in each book. New librarian on site; Circulation is up; Cupertino Library is the largest circulation library in the country of cities of 50,000 to 100,000. With San Jose cutting back its branch libraries to 39 hours per week, 3 days per week, compared to Cupertino's 60 hours, there is an expectation for higher demand on the library. • Parks and Rec: Blackberry Farm open for the summer; trail and pools open for summer; working on issue of gate to Scenic Drive; Mary Avenue looking into the possibility of using parking spaces that run along Mary Avenue beyond the Oaks as a conversion into a dog park. Discussion about geese problem in Memorial Park. • Bike and Pedestrian Committee: Had a Bike To Work Day, working on a bike transportation plan. • Misc: Mayor Wang said budget was being presented tonight; July 31st Town Hall meeting at Quinlan Center; September 24 Commissioners' Dinner. Economic Development Committee: No meeting REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT: No additional report. • Staff will be working on the Green Building Ordinance. • July 28 — Development permit process first public meeting; • July 29 second Green Building Ordinance focus group meeting • August 24 — tentative agenda will be Green :Building Ordinance Adjournment: • The meeting was adjourned to the next regular Planning Commission meeting scheduled for July 27, 2010 at 6:45 p.m, • Respectfully Submitted: Elizab llis, Recording Secretary Approved as presented: July 27, 2010