By Los Altos Hills

By Elizabeth Cloutman

When the Los Altos Hills City Council and the Pathways Committee met jointly Thursday, the ongoing division of opinions about the town’s pathway system was in evidence.

Members of the two groups could not agree whether a special committee or the Pathways Committee would make recommendations to the planning commission and the city council before the council adopts an updated version of the 1981 Pathways Master Plan Map.

However, they did reach a consensus on two important steps in gaining residents’ input on the map’s adoption: informing residents and the parameters of the public hearing.

Staff, Pathway Committee members, residents and an experienced trail-walker hired by the town spent a combined six months to determine the existing on- and off-road pathways and pathway easements in the nearly 113-mile system for the updated map. According to City Manager Maureen Cassingham the update is near completion.

Now the hard part begins. The town’s planning staff and Pathways Committee uses the Master Plan Map to maintain existing pathways and assign off-road easements on properties determined to provide essential links in the pathways system. Either a special committee or the Pathways Committee will need to examine and make the final revision of the map.

Council and Pathways Committee members were unable to come up with recommendations as to which committee would be preferable by the time the hourlong joint meeting ended, though discussion appeared to be in favor of appointing the Pathways Committee to the task.

They did agree on the importance of determining what residents wanted and suggested two steps to gather public input before the city council adopts an updated Master Pathways Plan map.

The first step is educating residents. Finn suggested making copies of the updated map available to all town residents, so that they can see where existing on- and off-road pathways and pathways easements are located. “If it takes $10,000 to print and send out copies of the updated map to residents tomorrow, that’s fine,” Finn said.

The next and more important step, the group agreed, is to limit the scope of discussion at any public hearing or hearings to the pathway system as a whole, not individual paths.