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I . I . - pattern." Chairman McCoy added that "the impact fees, the upfront contributions, other financial considerations were not a major factor in reaching my decision, although I did consider the overall attractiveness of the well-planned...development - property would probably add to the tax base of the City in years to come...I also considered the number of high paying jobs would contribute to the overall health of the community, local shopping, etc." Chairman McCoy said "traffic was a major factor in our decision. We had the benefit of not one but two well written studies prepared by the same consultant in the last two months....the Oracle expansion which dealt specifically with the traffic impacts at the northern intersection and this study for this project. The two worked very well together. The data was consistent." Chairman McCoy said the Commission decided, after listening to testimony regarding expected commute patterns at Electronic Arts, "the best possible use for office space is a bunch of software developers. They arrive at work randomly and rather late and go home late and randomly. It was our consensus that 890,000 square feet of general office commuters would have a bigger impact than one million square feet of software developers." Chairman McCoy acknowledged impacts to Highway 101, and said "we took it on faith that CalTrans will deliver the proposed auxiliary lanes from Whipple to Hillsdale and ....San Carlos, Belmont and Redwood City will get the traffic assessment district up and running." - Chairman McCoy ~aid the majority of the Commission's time was spent on the issues of aircraft safety, "and we heard a great deal of conflicting testimony." He said the City's consultant Mr. McClintock concluded that "the project does not adversely affect aircraft safety. On the other hand we received a very large amount of conflicting testimony from the pilot community.....We heard a large amount of technical data." Chairman McCoy advised the Commission consistently asked the pilots "could they quantify for us the risk of a 150 foot building versus a 100 foot building. Because many of them said the 100 foot building was ok (but) the 150 was unacceptable. And we really tried to get some concrete evidence as to why that might be the case. We never did receive what I consider to be a concrete answer to that question....What we were being asked to do was to make a judgment call as to the incremental risk of that added 50 feet....What it really comes down to is we were asked to quantify....the incremental risk of something that is very unlikely to happen versus something that is, perhaps, a little less likely to happen. Both are so far out of the realm of probability that it is very hard to weigh one versus the other. In the end we voted five to nothing...There were no dissenting votes......We did fall back on the regulations that are in place. The FAA's opinions as to the guidelines for building heights was considered....those standards are used by military and international airports. This project conforms to that standard....The County's Land Use Commission has a ~ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- REGULAR MEETING JULY 1, 1996 MINUTES PAGE 16 MINUTE BOOK NO. 54 Page No. 358