On March 19, 2002, City Council authorized an award of contract for construction of the City’s new Senior Center to Thompson Pacific Construction, Inc.

In doing so, however, Council requested that staff return to Council with a brief overview of the relationship between the City’s new parking lot tree canopy guidelines to the Senior Center Project. The most important points are as follows:

• The City has not as yet developed operational guidelines and practices with which to implement the November 13, 2001, Council-adopted ordinance requiring 50 % shading of parking lots within a 15-year time period. These operational guidelines will come before Council this evening.

• In fact, the site plan and building permit for the Senior Center project was approved (10/30/01) prior to the approval by Council of the new shading requirements (11/13/01). This means that the design work necessary to bring the project to the point of permit approval was prepared many months in advance of the new shading requirement. As a result, this project is technically (and reasonably) exempt from these requirements.

• That does not, of course, preclude the City from reviewing whether this project could or should meet the operational guidelines as drafted to date.

• Staff has performed that review. Current plans do include the planting of a large number of trees in the Community Center’s parking lots. In fifteen years (the time period cited by the ordinance), the tree canopy associated with the parking lot is expected to cover at least 48% of that surface. Using less conservative estimates, staff could easily suggest that the existing plan will achieve greater than 50% shading.

• The current guidelines also allow for a variance to be granted by the Director of Community Development on projects such as these on the recommendation of the Superintendent of Parks. Given the numbers presented above, even were staff to use the more conservative estimate, a variance would be recommended.