 All right, seeing that it is 4.30, I get all the board members to turn on their audio and video. John, if we could get you to turn your camera on. While we wait for board member McHugh to turn his camera on and before we call the meeting to order, I believe, Michelle, that I read the virtual notice before the call to order, correct? Yes, please. Great, so John, while I'm reading through this, go ahead and see if you can get your camera issue resolved so we can call the meeting to order. The reason we're here in this virtual setting, pursuant to the government code section 54953E and the recommendation of the Health Officer of the County of Sonoma, design review board members will be participating in this meeting via Zoom webinar. Members of the public can participate virtually at www.zoom.us backslash join or by toll-free telephone at 877-855-8505. 553-5257, in either case, either by Zoom or telephone, use meeting ID 816-1176-1047. Public accessing the meeting through Zoom can provide comments during the public comment periods. Additional information related to meeting participation is available at HTTPS, we'll go with SRCity.org or backslash design review board. The meeting will also be live streamed at sanarosa.legistar.com backslash calendar. Click on the in progress link to view. The meeting can also be viewed on Comcast channel 28 and on the city's YouTube channel at youtube.com backslash city of San Rosa. So with that out of the way, and John up and running, I'm gonna call the meeting to order. It is 432 on Thursday, May 19th, and I am calling this meeting of the design review board to order. Ask Michelle for a roll call. Let the record reflect that all board members are present with the exception of Chair Whitehall. Let's see, give me one sec here. I've got to bring up today's agenda. I'm working from a script and the agenda. So give me just a minute. It's been a while and I didn't used to have a script. So this is new. You can't just wing it anymore, Michael. Oh God, you know, listen, I'm much better in that arena promise. Yes, sir. Here we go. Approval of minutes. We have the minutes of the May 5th meeting. Any additions or corrections or illuminations to the minutes of the May 5th meeting. Hearing none, direct staff to enter those minutes into the record. Vice Chair, your video turned off on you. Oh, okay, all right, let's see. Great, I think I can go back. Hold on, if you've got two Apple devices and a phone, got about $12,000 worth of equipment here and we're gonna make it work, so. You're doing great. You're back, thank you so much. Great. Item three, public comment. So any member of the public who wishes to speak at this time on an item that is not on tonight's agenda may do so. This public comment, hopefully within the confines of the jurisdiction of the designer review board. Anyone wishing to make a public comment now can raise their hand. If you're on phone, call in. There are instructions for that as well. If you wish to make a public comment, please press star nine if you're calling in. Otherwise, if you're joining us via Zoom, please press the raise your hand icon at the bottom of your screen. Vice Chair Birch, I do not see any hands raised at this time. Great, we'll close the public comment, move on to board business. Starting off board business, I will read the statement of purpose for the designer review board. From zoning code chapter 20-52.030F project review. The review authority shall consider the location, design, site plan configuration and the overall effect of proposed project on surrounding properties in the city in general. Review shall be conducted by comparing the proposed project to the general plan, any applicable specific plan, applicable zoning code standards and requirements, consistency of the project within the city's standards, design guidelines, architectural criteria for special areas and other applicable city requirements such as city policy statements and development plans. That is the purpose of this board, the purview of this board. Are there any board member reports at this time? Seeing none, we will move on to item five, the department report. Jessica, any department items? Thank you Vice Chair Birch. Good afternoon everybody. Other than to just let you know that we're continuing with our search for new city planners. We're getting close to having some folks on board. So hopefully by the end of this summer you will start to see some new faces bringing exciting and fun projects before the board. That's all that I have for today. Great, thank you. Moving on to statements of abstention. Don't have any public hearings tonight, have an information item so I don't imagine that there are any abstentions. Right, we will move on to item seven. I don't believe there are any consent items. Straighten me out on that one, Michelle. And then I will move on to tonight's scheduled item. And I will let you introduce that Amy since I am working from split screens here. No problem, good evening, good afternoon. Vice Chair and members of the board. Nice to be here this evening with you and we'll be here talking about our general plan update and I'll be presenting along with Amy Nicholson so you get the two Amys this evening. And I know we have a couple new board members relatively new since the last time I know our team is presented. And so I just for a little bit of overview. So we work in our advanced planning team and really what that means is we work on the long range policy work for the city. And so we do all the specific plans, the general plan, housing element, for instance, short-term rental, cannabis ordinance. So any of those interesting ordinances or the flavors of the moment. So that's generally what our team works on, although we do have some overlap with the current development team as well. So we will be coming to you over the next few months with a couple other interesting items including Amy and her missing middle work. But tonight we are gonna be focused on our Santa Rosa Forward general plan update process. And so Amy is gonna share the presentation and we're going to tag team back and forth. And I will say this presentation is relatively long. So I will stop at a couple points and see if there's questions before moving forward. So with that, I will say that our general plan update is arguably the most important projects that we work on as a policy team and that we accomplish here at the city. It is the backbone or the constitution for development and it is not updated very often. So if you're lucky, most cities update this every 10 years. We are very lucky because we do have funding to do this and are excited to bring forward where we're at. Next slide please. So the general plan is really, when we think about it, we think about the built environment and where we have retail and business and where the opportunities are for new housing. And so those things change over time. And there's been a lot of changes since we last updated our general plan. Specifically, we've been through some major natural disasters, a recession, a pandemic. So multiple things that have really created an opportunity for us to go back and rethink. Next slide please. And so we are not just looking at the structures and the businesses and the open space and how those things interrelate. Next slide. We are also thinking about the, oh, one more fact. We're also thinking about how things interrelate as far as the health of our community, job opportunities, education. So just more than just the built environment. So there's a lot of things that go into this update. And we actually do have a lot of new state laws that have come online that are asking us to look at things like environmental justice and climate action. Next slide please, sorry. Sorry, Amy, I'm gonna be saying that a million times for you. So just to give you a little bit of flavor about where we are in the process, we started this general plan update in the summer of 2020. And the first step was really taking a deep dive on our demographic data and a lot of the existing conditions reports. So we do have a consultant team. We have a team of sub consultants as well. So we are working with experts in circulation, economic and then wildfire safety. So we have a really deep bench. So that first step was really creating our existing conditions report. And so all of that is available on our website and is really the framework for our launching of this whole project. And then we moved into a visioning session. So the first thing we asked the community was what is your vision for Santa Rosa? Looking to 2050, what would you like to see? What's working, what's not working? And so we did an entire set of events related to that question. And unfortunately it was all online, certainly unexpected, but we were successful in hearing from a good cross-section of our community. And so with that, we formed a vision statement and we'll talk about that in a little bit. So now we're moving into creating some circulation and land use scenarios for you and the public to react to to say which one of these really kind of matches your vision and based on what we heard. And so over these last few months, we have been asking the community that really broad question. And so we'll have that conversation with you as well. So after we get through our alternative space and we will be going to a joint meeting with the city council and planning commission next week, next Tuesday. And we'll also be confirming what we heard from the community and getting feedback from the council and the commission and then creating a preferred alternative. So our preferred alternative will be much more specific. It'll really create that final kind of backdrop for what we want to write our policies on and what we want to have reviewed as far as environmental analysis. So our project does include a programmatic environmental impact report. And so all of that will be based on this preferred alternative. Along with our general plan, we are also updating our housing element, which is on a little bit of a faster track that is required by state law to be adopted very early next year. So that is going to be released publicly in the next few weeks, as far as that draft element as a standalone element. And then the rest of the general plan process will continue, but that housing element will be a little bit done separately. This project also includes an update to our climate action plan. It does include a lot of work on safety element and as I mentioned environmental justice. Next slide, please, Amy. Oh, we'll pass that one. So another piece of this project are the different teams that we're working with. The first is our technical advisory committee. So we have kind of two parts to this team. One, we have about 75 members of our existing city team that are part of a technical advisory committee that really helped to inform our drafts and our documents to make sure that they are truth tested, accurate, and we have the right data and we're using it in a way that makes sense to all of our various different departments because this general plan update is not simply land use. It really does touch all the different components of our city. And then we have kind of an outer circle of our technical advisory committee, which will include our other resource agencies, regional agencies such as Caltrans Smart, and then of course other jurisdictions that we work with closely, for instance, the county. Next slide, please. And then we also have a community advisory committee. This group is made up of 25 individuals and seven of them are appointed by our city council and the rest were selected through an application and interview process. And these folks are really our liaisons to the community. They are helping us do outreach and engagement and really connect us. And one of our primary focuses for this update is to try to reach people who are not normally at the table. So it's really important to us that this committee really represents a cross section of our community and are really those community connectors that we know have connections to a lot of the organizations and groups that we haven't normally participated with. So we also end up gaining additional connections and trust. So it will live on past our general plan update. Next slide, Amy. And so I noted that we have produced quite a few different documents. All of these are on our website for anyone to consume. We do have that initial community involvement strategy which really laid out how we plan to engage the community. And a lot of those ideas and concepts really do require us to be in-person during a non-pandemic time. So we do hope that we will be able to fulfill some of those things that we had in our vision originally. And then of course our existing conditions report. And then we also prepared a briefing book. And so the briefing book is almost like an executive summary of all the existing conditions reports which is very dense document. So the briefing book is kind of a quick glance. It's designed in a way where you can pick it up and read it in probably 20 minutes. And then we have the vision statement which is really that compilation of the different things that we've heard from the community that will be our foundation vision as we move through the entire project. And then today we'll be talking about our alternatives workbook which is really providing the in-depth analysis between the three different land use and circulation scenarios. Next slide. Next slide please. So we're gonna get into the alternatives here. So I know I've seen some of you out at some of our workshops but I'm gonna go over this and then we'll stop to see if you have questions or comments about these specifically. So the first one is called central corridors. And so this alternative really builds on our downtown specific plan and the concepts laid out within that specific plan in focusing our new growth in kind of a central corridor framework. So not just downtown but also around our other major transit hubs. And some of these transit hubs are actually conceptual. So this is a very high level conceptual idea to consider. But through all three alternatives we are anticipating 36,000 housing units. So it's the same amount of growth in all three alternatives. You can just see they're laid out in a very different way. So this really does focus the growth in areas where there's high opportunity for walking, biking, transit in a very concentrated way. So this would mean additional density in these focused areas. Next slide please. So our second alternative is called neighborhood main streets. And so this is building off of alternative one. This is looking at more of a neighborhood nodes throughout the city but still a focus on where we actually have transit or we'll have transit available. So this does look at areas where we have potential concentration of retail and services to support these neighborhood nodes but the housing would be concentrated within this kind of light yellow color. So a little bit more distributed than what you saw in alternative one. Next slide Amy. So our last alternative is called distributed housing. So this really represents what we have now. This represents what our current general plan allows which is a much more distributed model. So this is allowing housing pretty much everywhere and not necessarily focused in those high transit walkable areas. And so within the alternatives workbook we do look at the differences as it relates to how much infrastructure would be required. So for instance, this would actually require a higher investment in infrastructure because the growth would be more distributed which would need, we would need more buying and pedestrian facilities to be built. On the flip side, this is how we operate now and the housing is already there in this way. So that infrastructure investment is actually still already required. So it's been an interesting time to have conversations with the community about this because we obviously don't have a blank slate. We have to start with where we are at even though we are hoping to create a different vision in the future. So this one would really not be looking to up zone or increase densities in those core areas or in those nodes, but more in those opportunity sites or underutilized sites, vacant sites around the city in a very distributed fashion. Next slide please. And so this is just a slide that quickly compares all three and I thought this might be a good place to stop and see if you all have any questions or comments at this point. And then from this point forward we'll talk about what we've heard from the community. I've got a quick question. The projected, the number of housing units required 36,000 regardless of the model, how was that arrived at and what makes that the target? That's a good question. And we've been asked that quite a bit actually from the community. So we have projections from Association of Barrier Governments and Department of Finance. Most of the time those don't agree. We also can expect a certain amount of housing allocation to be required of us, which is in smaller chunks, so eight year cycles. But looking at all three, this is really a, the high end of what we may have to plan for. So we will have flexibility moving into a preferred scenario, preferred alternative to downgrade that slightly to be a little bit more realistic or more feasible. But for this type of exercise, we really wanted to look at kind of a worst case as far as impacts, infrastructure investment, how much should we ask to absorb within our existing city boundaries at this time? So it really is a somewhat of an educated guess. And as we know from the last general plan, we have not come close to realizing the amount of development that we had projected. And not to be too down in the weeds on this. Does that start from a point that's beyond what's currently in the pipeline? I know over the past three, four years, we've really paid attention to what the pipeline, what was in for approval, what was in for building permits, what was under construction. I imagine this is from some point beyond the current pipeline. Yeah, we didn't actually get into the weeds too much with that. So this is really looking at what's in our existing general plan. What are those high level projections really expecting us to be able to develop by 2050? Knowing that we probably won't realize a full 36,000 units. Got it. Thank you. Any other questions at this time? Not, we'll continue on. All right. Thanks, Amy. All right, so we'll move on to the next slide here. So now we're gonna talk about how we engaged our community on these alternatives and what we heard. So we really tried to, now that we could go out and about, really try to go to people where they were. So we designed a lot of different engagement events. We did quite a few pop-up events. So we didn't advertise these, but we really tried to identify who on our city team was going out and about, what other things like the farmer's markets or things were happening that we could pop up and talk to the community. So I think these photos are from a, no, not Earth Day, Arbor Day event in Reakin Valley, which was lots of fun. Next slide, please. And then we also did really formal workshops. So these are, I'm sure everyone's attended one of these in your history of working in government and being part of our community, but we did wanna create an opportunity for the traditional type of workshop where we did a presentation, we walked through everything, and then we really just walk through individually with people or they have questions and get feedback. So we did five workshops and we strategically placed them around the city in a way that also included our equity priority communities. So for those geographic areas that don't normally come to city hall, so we wanted to go to them. And we did do one entirely facilitated in Spanish and a couple bilingual. They were a great time. We did provide dinner for everyone. We had a taco truck at each of these events. We handed out transit passes. We had kid activities and our parks department actually had childcare for the kids that showed up. So we really wanted to make sure that we provided the best opportunity for people to participate in a way where they didn't have to worry about anything else. And by providing their input, they also got something out of it. Next slide. And then we also are part of our community involvement strategy is making sure that we hear from the youth. So we actually have two youth contests that are currently happening. One is called youth voice contest and it's really targeting those older kids. So basically middle school, high school and asking them to take a photo or video of what really makes Santa Rosa special place to them today. And then we also have another one for the younger kids which is asking them to draw their favorite place in Santa Rosa. So we are posting what we receive of those up at our front window here at the planning economic development department. So if your child has submitted something they can come and check it out here at City Hall. Next slide, please. And then we also relied heavily on our CAC. So we really asked our liaisons to help us get deeper into the community. And we made lots of connections and also did presentations to a variety of different organizations and really had a great time doing that. Next slide, please. And then because there are areas of our community that will not come to any of those things we really wanted to make an effort to go to our vulnerable communities. And we have identified our equity priority populations and so that's the list on the right side of the screen. And this is the work of Beatrice who's on our team and if you've not met her you'll have to hit listen in on Tuesday for her presentation or follow her as we move forward in the general plan update. She is our equity and public health planner and her position is funded by Kaiser Permanente to really work with our vulnerable populations. And so through her work we've identified these 10 different groups which are a real focus of ours to be able to hear from and connect with. So she has been working to form focus groups where we actually convene meetings, provide stipends, transit passes food to be able to participate. So we can hear directly from farm workers or recently incarcerated folks or any of these folks from this list. Next slide please. And then if you weren't able to catch any of those opportunities we also created a virtual open house because we weren't doing any of these meetings on Zoom or in a virtual environment we created a virtual open house. So this was online and you can walk around to the different placards and either Amy or Amy or trees would pop up and tell you about alternative one or two or three or the different pieces of the alternatives. So we tried to emulate what would it be like if you actually walked into an in-person event. So we hope that you checked this out. This was a great way to just learn a little bit more on your own time in your own living area. Next slide. And then the other thing we did is we did have an online survey and that is just our, just classic survey monkey attempt to get feedback in a very descriptive way to be able to quantify what we heard and how. So in all of our events we did drive people to this online survey to be able to hear more and can't remember what's in your packet today but we should have the summary of this within this and if not it is in the packet that's going to the city council and planning commission and be happy to forward that to your board so you have that information. Next slide please. Amy, could I interrupt for a moment? Yes, please. Yeah, I just wanted to commend you guys for your excellent work with your outreach, really especially in such incredibly challenging times and it is really apparent just from seeing all of the events and particularly the organizations you reached out to community organizations. Really great to see you prioritizing the voices that are heard less often and so I think you guys have done a really great job throughout this whole process. So just wanted to send a little kudos there. So thanks very much for that. Thank you, that's very much appreciated. It's certainly been challenging so we're excited to get out even more after this next phase of the pandemic ends. So with that I will turn it over to Amy Nicholson and she's gonna talk through what we heard and what we'll be presenting to the city council and planning commission and what will eventually be coalesced into our preferred alternative moving forward. Thank you Amy and good evening Vice Chair Birch and members of the board. It's nice to see you again. I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen. Okay, so Amy talked about all the different ways that we solicited feedback from members of the community and so the next few slides are really just going to provide an overview of what we heard so these are our themes and it does look like we have an attachment which includes I think it's a pretty lengthy report of the various comments that we heard so if you haven't had a chance to look at that please do. So we had basically our questions grouped by category and so one category was economic and housing development. We found that respondents generally favored focusing new housing and job growth toward the downtown and along our major corridors and in neighborhood retail centers which is pretty in line with both alternative one and alternative two. Most people responded that they disagreed with focusing new housing and commercial uses kind of proportionate to where they are today which would be alternative three. We heard many comments about locating new housing in our wild land urban interface and we also heard a desire to increase walkability and transit services throughout the city. We also heard not only that people wanted more housing in the downtown but also that there needed to be a mix of housing all across income levels throughout the city. We also heard that residents favored new housing within close proximity so walking distance or wheeling distance to existing and planned shopping centers and that residents favored creating housing and circulation patterns which would really allow people to age in place. Looking at efficient and sustainable development many respondents favored repurposing the city's major streets as multimodal corridors that include safe and accessible pedestrian and bicycle facilities. We also heard that people strongly favored preserving our natural ecosystems and resources and generally favored allocating more resources to communities that are the most vulnerable to climate related hazards. And then we also heard a desire to ensure that new growth is planned and managed to ensure there is adequate water supply and availability. We also heard a desire to help low income households from feeling the effects of climate change. We heard a general favoring of improved bus transit services and amenities to allow connectivity for most neighborhoods within the city. Many respondents disagreed with building new streets or adding lanes to our existing streets and there was a strong desire to ensure that all neighborhoods had complete and accessible sidewalks and access to bicycle facilities. Moving into resilience and safety this was certainly a topic that garnered a lot of interest. There was many people responded that they're concerned with the ongoing threat of wildfires, earthquakes and also drought within our city. And there was concern about evacuation plans and strategies in the event of another major natural disaster. We also heard a desire to address effects of the current pandemic or the potential effects of future pandemics within the general plan. Many respondents agreed with limiting the amount of housing in the wildfire prone areas of the city and ensuring that all neighborhoods have safe and efficient emergency evacuation routes. And I believe this is the last slide on resilience and safety but respondents also thought it would be good to consider limiting the amount of housing in also the city's flood prone areas as well as near earthquake faults. There was a desire to balance the need for more housing and more dense housing with safety considerations and also a desire to consider the needs of people with disabilities in safety and evacuation approaches. Amy, can I interrupt you for one second? I think we have a board member with a question. Yes. Oh, thank you, Amy. I'll end also Amy Nicholson. On the subject of resilience, well, actually let me piggyback on what Adam mentioned. All of this information was great. The thoroughness with which you put this package together is wonderful. And his testament to that, I noticed in the resilience appendix that you included concerns from multiple residents about the zombie apocalypse. And I noticed that the zombies weren't highlighted in the final slide. Do we in fact have a plan in place? Or are we taking that into consideration? That's a very good question. We will have to get back to you on that. We have had quite a few situations here in Santa Rosa, but that one we have not planned for. As long as on your radar. Yeah, preparedness starts at home, Mark. So, you know, personal responsibility is also important here. I mean, after what we've been through the past five years, you know, if you told me the zombie apocalypse was real, I would just try to figure out what to go buy out at the hardware stores, you know. Anyway. Thank you. Just a little moment of levity. Thank you. Feel free to carry on, Amy. Okay, I was just making sure. I knew where I left off. Can you see my screen? Okay. Okay. So the last set of questions was focused around equity within the city. And we found many residents or most respondents felt that pollution exposure and poor air quality are issues within our city. And also many respondents felt that opportunities to be involved in decision making, access to public facilities and services, access to public spaces supporting physical activity and to healthy and affordable foods and safe and sanitary housing are not major issues in our city. Again, these are the people that responded and that was based on their experience. Participants strongly felt the following activity should be funded and prioritized each, to ensure, excuse me, that each neighborhood receives equitable public investment in the coming years or during the life of the general plan. So this includes developing a prioritized list of improvements or services for each neighborhood, ensuring environmental justice, safety and equity related projects are funded and prioritized for equity priority communities. And Amy spoke about those earlier. Ensure that every neighborhood has access to parks and community spaces, prioritized development that addresses social and economic needs of economically vulnerable populations. And then also activities that either address or reverse the underlying socioeconomic factors and residential social segregation in our community. We also heard a desire to streamline city review and approval processes for new projects to help reduce cost and expedite good projects. And we heard that participants really felt the largest sources of air quality issues for them and their families include both vehicle emissions and wildfire smoke. I believe I'm gonna turn it back to Amy but I think I'll pause here just to see if there are any additional questions or comments about what we heard. So this slide really is just kind of a synopsis to remind you of what the all three alternatives were. And based on the input we heard just individually through the workshops and then also through the survey, the community really liked alternatives one and two. And alternative two was slightly more favored. So we won't be taking one of these alternatives as a wholesale option and creating a preferred scenario. It really will be a blend. So of the things that Amy just went through we're really taking components of what people liked of all three to create one. But it will be a little bit of a blend and based on what we heard, it will be very similar to alternative two with more elements of alternative one than three. And so that is why when we prepare this next step with the preferred alternative, we will be going back out to the community to really check in and say is this what we heard and is this the right way we wanna start writing the policy to make sure that this is the plan moving forward. Next slide please. So I think I kind of just went through a little bit of what this says, but the refinements are really gonna focus on how we look at housing and the wooing, which was a very common thing that we heard, where we focused a lot of the density and as far as mixed use neighborhoods within downtown. We don't plan to really make major changes to that downtown specific plan because it is so new. The community has just weighed in on that specific plan, but we may have some things to change, nuanced changes to be able to make this general plan vision match. And so, and then there will be options to really look at the range of different housing and affordability levels and how that relates to equity, environmental justice, and how that gets translated in our preferred scenario, preferred alternative. Next slide please. So with that, because we want to assure people that we are asking for input and we are actually using it, this slide is really just showing how the information gets distilled during the process. So we do have the refinements that will happen to the alternatives, but then that preferred alternative is really going to be the basis for policy. So that's where we're going to be pulling out the ideas and things we heard to use in how we consider which elements will be named in what form they will be and what programs will be developed. And all of this will be done with an equity lens as well as health. We are very lucky to have Beatrice and funding to be able to do a deep dive on public health and make sure that we're not just looking at that built environment component and that we're actually trying to correct some of the things that have happened in our history here in Santa Rosa. And then we will also be looking at things that we haven't experienced yet. Our last general plan had anticipated wildfire risk, but probably not to the extent that we have experienced it. So what are our other things that we are not thinking of at this time, especially with climate change and being able to create policies around that, those additional challenges and opportunities are very important. And yeah, so then I'm going to move on to the next slide. And so the next steps, we're going to continue to go to different boards and commissions related to these alternatives. So the next presentation will actually be Tuesday with the City Council Planning Commission be happening around noon. If you'd like to tune in or if you have folks in your community that would like to join that conversation. And then we will be creating that preferred alternative. It will be very detailed. That will be a lot more parcel specific, which a lot of our community want. It's been hard to be kind of high level through this whole process thus far. So from this summer forward, it'll be a lot more specific. And I'm anticipating a lot more really intricate input as well. And next slide. So with that, we're really happy to be here this evening with you. And we look forward to any input that you'd like to provide or comments or questions that you have. Great, well, I would love to start around the horn with the board to see if there are comments or questions. I think we can probably pile both in together. So I'm gonna start just on the screen with board member Wolski. Do you wanna jump in and share your thoughts or questions with the team? Sure, as the other board members have mentioned, I really appreciate all the outreach that took place for this event, particularly during the pandemic. Sounds like it was a very happy lift, but you did well and I think we all appreciate it. I have a couple of questions I noticed, and this is probably going to be in the existing conditions report. In the commercial space, it kept mentioning office space, office space. And I keep hearing that there is limited demand for office space these days. And I don't wanna look at this long-term general plan as through solely the lens of the pandemic when a lot of people are working from home. But I'd also be curious to know what professionals in economic development are thinking in terms of office space moving forward. Will we still need the level of office space that has traditionally been built or are we pulling back on that? So I guess that's kind of a question. I really like the vision statement. I thought it was very noble and aspirational, made me proud to read it and have that be our vision statement. Question about alternative one. I like the idea of that. I wonder how much it mentioned robust public transit. I'm wondering if in order for that to happen, what does that look like in terms of transit for that to work, for people living there or visiting that core area? And also we've had conversations about this, and this is in regards to alternative two, with the neighborhood nodes. We've more talked about these small scale neighborhoods serving commercial areas that I think are very important to any neighborhood. Does alternative two eliminate those small scale neighborhood serving uses from going into the future? Like let's say there is development somewhere outside of that focused area. Could they still incorporate that type of use? And that's all I have. Thank you so much for all your hard work so far. Really appreciate it. Great, thank you. Those are great questions. So I'll take the first one as far as the office projections. You can probably guess we've been challenged with that question, and we are working with our sub-consultant on that. And we are looking out to 2050, so our projection is somewhat modest when thinking about the potential job growth and the necessity for office space looking out that far, not knowing really how things will pivot post-pandemic. We know that in our existing general plan, there, I forgot the metric and Amy, you might know, but no worries if you don't. We projected an asinine amount of office space and it was never realized. So there's really an opportunity to kind of level set and make sure that our projections are somewhat appropriate in the potential growth that we may expect to see that kind of matches that job growth. I will say we know we have low vacancy rates with industrial, so the industrial square footages are looking at, we're looking at a real high necessity to be able to produce additional square footage of industrial. So that is something that we will be monitoring and we've actually been checking in with when we spoke to the Metro Chamber, couple of those folks had good comments related to that. So we've been really trying to work with just local real estate professionals and developers to make sure that we're within the ballpark, but honestly, I don't think anyone knows at this point how that's gonna pan out. So we certainly want and want to jeopardize our housing or industrial space at the risk of overcompensating with office, but we do need to plan for some amount. So hopefully as we move through the next year, we'll get a little more refinement on what that is. The other question about alternative one and how that might change with transit, when we start looking at intensifying density in that way, it really allows our partners in the city to intensify funding and infrastructure decisions. So for instance, we've been working closely with the transit operations and they are already looking at rapid bus transit and where that could occur in the city. So a focused approach with density would really create more leverage for them to create opportunities for grant funding and to really identify like Mendocino corridor as being a primary place where we want that kind of rapid transit. And of course, World Smart is going to be part of our larger TAC team. So really thinking about that first mile, last mile, those connections that we can really focus on with the train as that moves forward and then also just the bike and ped piece and being able to have that multimodal opportunity within those transit rich areas and where that density could be identified. And then for your last question, that's a kind of a difficult question and the neighborhood knows that we've identified as part of that alternative. Some are very high level conceptual of knowing if we have this community here, will we need this level of retail and business to be able to support that kind of density? And we also are working with our economic sub-consultant as they identify existing nodes that may not be performing well or projected not to perform well or areas that don't have anything that really need it. So that will be a discussion and with the community as we move forward to make sure that are we putting these in the right place? Are there property owners that are actually interested in kind of creating those uses? And, but I don't anticipate a huge amount of flexibility if we put it somewhere and it ends up wanting to go another place. We also will ongoing have opportunity for amendments to the general plan, but we really want to do our best to get it as right as possible based on the input we get at this time. As you know, it's very limited on how many times you can go back and change your general plan. So we really want to make sure that we get the input and the engagement now to make sure that we've got the property owners on board and the community on board on where these things need to happen if the growth is projected in a certain way. Great, thank you. Thank you, John. Questions, comments. Yes, I do have some questions. And one of the things that you spoke about with respect to the wildlife or urban interface. And there's very little comment in the general plan with respect to wildfire prevention. And so I'm wondering if there's anything that would go into that that would speak to that in a sense that the glass fire was an interesting experience for me because I'm not in the wildlife urban interface but I was in a situation where I had a warning that I had maybe need to evacuate. So I don't know what you guys will do with that. Second thing is that one of the things that's interesting to me is when you think about the city and you think about where the jobs are, I mean, where Keyside is and where Matronik is and where manufacturers are, how does that all come together in terms of looking at alternative one and alternative two? And so I'm interested in that. And then also just as a, I'm curious about our design guidelines. Once this is adopted does then that follow that maybe we do some different things with our design guidelines. And then finally, and I don't know how you project this and I don't know that it would go into the plan at all but I'm just curious about what the workload for the design and view board would be given when we adopt the plan. And so those are my questions and I'm sticking to them. Those are great questions. So first with wildfire prevention, that's really on top of our minds that you're probably my neighbor considering what you said about the glass fire but we realize that we may not actually be able to prevent wildfires. And so part of our planning effort is looking at not putting more population within the Louis and that's gonna be a policy question because we do have a lot of opportunity sites that are located within those severity zones and then how, what policies and programs have we not employed that we really need to create as part of this update for added security, added safety resiliency. But I will say a lot of the actions that would help as far as prevention or adaptation have already been put in place outside of our general plan. So we have a community wildfire protection plan. There's a lot of vegetation management grants that we've received. There's obviously emergency operations efforts that have happened. So we are taking a deep dive to make sure that we are knowledgeable about all the things we have done and if there's any big things that we have not but the general plan is really high level. So what it will do is create obviously the land use framework. So if we don't want more population in these areas that will be a concerted effort as far as what those zoning districts are and what they allow in those areas. But also what policies of programs can be put in place so those can be worked on over the time of the general plan. So this document is not going to be the scalpel or the quick fix that will have the swift response that I think a lot of people are looking at when it comes to risk of wildfire. That's going to be the real-time things that are happening separately from this planning effort. We also do have a hazard mitigation plan which we are required to adopt on a cyclical basis and that was actually adopted this January. So, and that was done in conjunction with the county and other jurisdictions and that is actually certified by FEMA. And so there's a variety of different layers when it comes to that issue as well as earthquake, flood and all the other things that we are fortunately prone to here. As far as job centers, so because we do have to really work with our existing framework, the general plan is really looking at how we want to add new development and where those job centers should either be embellished and added to or if there's a different set of office space or retail or neighborhood things that need to change. So we don't anticipate those going away. We do want to make sure that there's connections. So the folks that work in those major job centers have the ability to circulate and to live close to a station or be able to bike home, that kind of thing. But that is a connection that we will make during the preferred alternative phase. This one was really just looking at future growth and how that relates to our existing framework. And then we'll kind of marry them up to make sure that we're creating the right infrastructure to really make sure that those two kind of marry up. But it's a really good, it's a good question. And then as far as the next steps after the general plan, as I said, general plans really high level. And so it's going to be policies, programs. You all have a front seat because as you know, you have to make findings that your projects you're reviewing are consistent with the general plan. So we want you to be able to understand and provide input on the policies and what our general plan says. So it's a very unique time for you all to be board members. And after the general plan is adopted, then we will be doing a zoning code update. And so that will provide consistency for both map changes. So on the ground, the zoning districts match the general plan land use, but also there could be standards or other pieces of our code that will need to be changed. It will most likely touch on design, but not, we don't have that directly in the scope. So most of the design guidelines that you work with are results of our specific plans or some of the historic areas or things like that. So there will be some effort to make sure that those are consistent. And we will be looking at that to see if there are changes that are necessary, but it won't be a focus of this because this is more just kind of high level. And then we're going to make sure everything is consistent with the high level policies that ends up getting adopted. I will say though that Amy will be coming back with a missing middle ordinance, which is very heavy on design guidelines and creating standards for a different type of housing that will be focused in a smaller area right now, but hopefully wider as we move forward through the years. And then workload for you, what we hope is that this general plan will create a great framework, policy framework to really incentivize development in the way that the community wants it. So as you review projects coming forward, it's our hope that you'll review those for consistency with the general plan. So it may not, of course, we're market driven, things will happen incrementally over time, that you may not see a huge reaction in your workload or the projects coming forward based on this general plan project. You'll just find greater consistency and our hope projects that are in line with this vision that we're creating. Thank you. Great, Board Member Staff. Thanks again, Amy. Just a couple of questions and one of which actually grows out of Michael's question earlier about where that housing number arrived from. Can you remind me how many units is the state requiring Sonoma County to build over the same time period, over the next 10 years or so? You know that at the top of your head? Yeah, and Amy might be able to help me too. But we currently are required to produce around 5,000 units and an eight year cycle. And we're at the end of that. We have not fulfilled all those units in this last cycle. It has been very challenging. And so we have received our allocation or regional housing needs assessment from the state. And so we are expected to create about 4,600 units in the next eight years. And so that's broken down in different levels of affordability as well, as far as the goal. And so the effort with our housing element is to show that we have adequate sites in the city to be able to match what our allocation is and policies and programs to support that as well. So the 30,000 goal would be significantly in excess of what the state will require? Yes, although I will say the amount of housing allocation that was given to our nine County Bay Area was roughly 140% beyond what it was last cycle. We got very lucky in that our allocation went down. And I can count on one hand, how many jurisdictions of the nine County Bay Area had an allocation that went down. Oh, that's interesting. We do anticipate in the next few cycles that we will be asked to produce more. It is very interesting method on how they arrive at this allocation and it was a strange process. And we are content because we actually feel like we can actually accomplish the number that we have and we're planning to do that through our housing element work. But beyond that, we will likely see a drastic increase in what we're going to be asked to produce. That's really helpful context. Thank you. A couple of observations before another question. I was really taken with the, I guess uniformity is not the right word, but the strong response towards creating a more genuinely urban environment in Santa Rosa, rather, to protect the wild and urban interface or to protect the city growth boundaries, rather. A lot of, clearly everyone was very cautious around the wild and urban interface. And is worthy the acronym for that? Did I hear you say? The woo-wee? Yes. Woo-wee, all right. I'm going to use that. Woo-wee. That's good to know. Woo-wee. But the preservation of the ag space and I was also struck by the strong support for higher density housing, including outside of the downtown area. I noticed that some of the responses seem to be very encouraging of three-story, at least three-story housing throughout Santa Rosa and then higher housing or higher stories in the downtown area. And the voting percentages that supported those were really notable. When you were out at the meetings, was that palpable among the respondents? People are saying, hey, make us more urban, make us more dense? I will say, I think it's a mixed, we got a mixed result. And we did have a lot of people that had concerns about, it's hard to separate future from what's happening now. So we had a lot of people that were concerned that more housing was being developed in the Southwest area or in the Rosalind area versus the East side of town. There were a lot of concerns about the increase in housing and how that relates to our drought and not having enough long-term water supply. So we've been working on providing education around our long-term water supplies and what that process is and why we are comfortable projecting this amount of housing. But there's, so it's a little bit mixed. And I think there are folks that really wants to retain their neighborhood feel and that they have now. They want more amenities we heard. As you saw, everyone wants bike and pedestrian facilities and more open space parks. But we did hear from a large group that felt like we really need to become more urban. We need more housing, there is a housing crisis and that production is part of that solution and that it can't be more single family homes. So it needs to be more in that densification type of way. So we heard it from all different angles, really. That's good, more good feedback, thank you for that. I think that's most of my, I just have one final question and it's in line with what John was asking in terms of future planning. But in particular with respect to fire and police stations in particular. I mean, we have to build at least one new fire station in the near future. I'm gonna guess, I think the police have needs as well. Is there, I'm gonna guess they've been a part of this conversation from the beginning. But how do the public or those public service needs interact with this, with this planning? Yeah, that's a great question. They have been involved and we're only now getting to a point where they are able to really look at what we're putting on paper to see if that works for them. Cause they're really thinking about calls and the time it takes to respond, the density of population and where that is. So there's definitely a conversation about infrastructure and funding that will have to be had with both teams, specifically for the fire stations to make sure that they're strategically placed in the right places. In our specific plans, we also have a pretty intense look at the locations and how those could be funded. So, but they are both interwoven to all of these conversations, especially when it comes to environmental justice and the equity piece. And, you know, if we increase densities in the central areas or in these nodes, how does that impact their calls for service within those areas? And what will that mean to their future budgets and needs? So they will be involved throughout. I will say that the general plan isn't as, it's not as specific as a specific plan. We don't actually have to identify how things are funded for a general plan or implemented. Specific plan level, we have to. So those conversations get really intricate on how something's gonna be funded and where exactly it's gonna go. The general plan, we can still create a framework or a policy that something should be done in this general area. It doesn't have to be as parcel specific. So it gives some flexibility. So as that population grows, there's, and then need arises, then we can start to have those conversations. But that framework needs to generally match and they need to generally be of the understanding of how the population will change in the future. Understood. Thanks again and thanks for including us in this conversation. This was great to be a part of. Absolutely, thank you. Thank you. For member sharing. Just thank you. And thank you, Amy's for presenting this course. And again, great job in the outreach but also just a great job in the materials, the comprehensiveness of the materials, one that you're presenting to us. Providing, as you're mentioning with the policy of general plan versus specific plan, you're providing a nice broad overview with some really good specifics. And I think that shows what you presented to us and also with your community outreach as well. And that's actually one comment for future, really sort of the next steps is that it's been brought up a couple of times of wanting to know about specific interventions or applications of these principles, both from my fellow board members and from the public. They really, as you mentioned, it's hard to move apart the present and the future. Some people really want to see, know what's going on and how this is, is this actually what's happening with that development down the block? And so being able to communicate what the kind of the next steps are. And as you mentioned that this isn't a scalpel, that this is an overarching umbrella. And so, yeah, I think it's gonna be a really important thing in the next phases. And I look forward to seeing, as you mentioned, some of the more specifics coming down as you're blending the alternatives. And yeah, excellent comments from my fellow board members as well. I want, instead of duplicate a lot of what was brought up, I had my list numbered here and I'm like marking off my bullet points because people brought them up. So, nice job everyone. And a big one is the alternative to, which a large number of the large majority of the public preferred and I definitely prefer that one as well. And one of the reasons why is because it actually is showing more connections. It's got the nodes, but it also has the connections. And I want to see that both in terms of, this is sort of a comment and a question, of wanting to, I like the aspect of providing nodes and then having the connectors between there. But I'm curious to hear about how, this overall vision, the overall general plan will trickle down and express itself through the specific kind of scalpels, the bike and pedestrian master plan, the downtown station specific plan, other specific plans. We have our nodes and connections and you can look at this general plan as like a big node and what are the connections between as it pulling together all of these aspects to take these policies and then have those interventions actually be out in that people can see rather than just ideas. That's the question part of that. Yeah, that's a great question. Thank you for your comments. Really miss you on the waterways committee by the way. I miss it too. I know. So the general plan as you noted is really big picture and it will impact all of our specific plans and our bike and pedestrian master plan and all of those other pieces. And so there will be updates necessary. Most plans really need to be brushed up and updated every at least 10 years. So this is really the start to that. So this is the overarching policy document for the city. And then we hope to do new specific plans for South Santa Rosa or Mendocino or those areas which will fall in line with this overarching general plan but there will absolutely be amendments necessary to the other pieces. And so when we get to that point we'll be identifying those in a work plan and that will be part of our general plan implementation. So that will be after general plan after zoning code then it'll be kind of looking at all of our other documents to make sure that we have consistency across the board. So we've got our work cut out for us. As you say, speaking of workload, it's a job security. Yes. Yeah, and again that communication aspect as you're moving forward with this macro idea to communicate, really communicate to people because it's our direct rep from sort of the lay person who just is living in a city wanting to know what's happening in a very literal sense. Like will I get a grocery store in my neighborhood? You want to have a policy for that but does that mean actually the city's gonna provide one? It's those types of things where you're creating a stage for development to happen but you're not actually prescribing things in a way. And so, yeah, really communicating that. And yeah, I do look forward to your next steps and next presentations for that. And I know that this is also, as you mentioned, many different policy initiatives that are happening as well and this is a kind of overall purchasing one. So yeah, and as far as a specific comment about an alternative or the blend of the alternatives, one of the, what's called out in your graphics in pretty much all of them are the major circulation patterns and I'm also curious to know one, how much you're gonna drill down on secondary circulation patterns or providing those linkages between nodes because the major circulation patterns are definitely valuable. And those are that bus rapid transit and roads and potentially road diets, hopefully and how that's all going to be related. But I'm also curious to say with alternative two, if it's a blend of alternative one, alternative two primarily, those neighborhood centers, what are the interconnections, not just the major routes of getting between them but how people can get, say, from that West End to the Coddingtown area or the JC over to Montgomery Village, those types of connectors, I think it's gonna be really valuable and interesting to see. A key component of that is looking at linkages between schools and neighborhoods, safe routes to schools, things like that, where families don't necessarily need to drive to school, they can have safe routes to actually get kids to and from. And so that's gonna be a curious thing to see how much you explore with that, that probably is getting too much to the scalpel level of things. But I think that in that spirit of finding connections between nodes is gonna be a really helpful and valuable tool. And I think that almost gets to those specific interventions where people can say, oh, when I walk to the grocery store, I won't have to, there's that two block stretch where there's no sidewalk, if there's like a vision of what that there's going to be services and connections. So it's a kind of a specific comment for this. But I do know that you guys are well underway with thinking about all those as well. Thank you, that's good timing because we are just starting to have those conversations with our transportation public works team about our road classifications the way we want them. Do we want to create something new? And all those multimodal connections and what's appropriate for this level and what needs to go into specific plans and on all of that. So that will all be forthcoming. Great, yeah, I mean, like I know this just this week, there's that Mendocino road design workshops that are happening as part of this, not part of this separate thing, but it's all gonna be kind of, you know, it's... That's actually implementation for our downtown plan. Yeah, so it's really great to see that happening. It is, it's awesome to see. And it's awesome to see, you know, the community people are, you know, have heard rumblings about it in various places too. So, you know, I know that, you know, people in the community organizations are hearing about these things and wanting to get involved. You know, yeah, it's really great to see the level of engagement that you had with all of your outreach. And I do think moving forward that, you know, having this broad brush approach to community engagement is really great. You know, not just neighborhood meetings, but, you know, neighborhood meetings, virtual meetings, you know, the virtual tour was awesome to see you guys popping up like a very funny 3D virtual way. But, you know, just hearing that you're providing different times a day, all the various communities that you were outreach to in terms of different languages, providing childcare, like the broad brush, this is a great example. And I think, I hope, you know, speaking again about connections, I hope that, you know, the city as a whole is watching this process and seeing some of the successes that you guys are having with engagement and can be translated to more types of initiatives across city government. Thank you. Yes, they've been with us along the way. So it's been great. Cool, glad to hear. And thank you guys. Great, thanks, Adam. So a couple of comments from me before we wrap up, a couple of questions. I want to, you know, of course, as has been said, the hard work, the community outreach. I love what you guys have done. I wish that it was a way to engage the public. I wish that there was an understanding about this because I answer a lot of questions just as a cocktail party attendee about when did this happen? Why does the city do this? And I always have to say, well, it's there, it's in your inbox, it's in the paper, there's a lot of... So the better, the more the merrier, the more opinions, the more different opinions, the better. I can't compliment you guys enough for what you have done, putting it out there and putting it forward. And we'll hope that the city residents as a whole understand the changes that come forward from your hard work and what you've done. So fantastic outreach and I encourage people all the time to get involved because I answer a lot of questions being someone who's involved. And I would say, you know, there's great work being done downtown, you should take part. So to be real specific, in terms of the two, in terms of the two realistic options based on the vision, the all-in downtown number one option is of course, I think that's really a goldmine. If that could be achieved, that's great. At the same time, I, as the rest of the board knows, I tend to be the one who says all levels and all types of housing need to be available across all parts of the community. So I see the East side as being short right now in terms of having these neighborhood nodes with density. I'm not suggesting sort of townhome or option three-style pieces. It's interesting to me, I just look at this as a focus on number one and whatever could occur in number two would be great. I know that's tough when you're trying to plan for resources and infrastructure to say, oh, you know, suddenly we're gonna have a node. The Highway 12 site that came back from the state over on the East side of town, what an opportunity. And we all know kind of what happened in those workshops in terms of what the vision was from the community. At the same time, that's the kind of project that would be great to throw in over there. So that blend of one and two is realistic to me. If we could get to anything around one that brought businesses and restaurants and more transit to that core, that would be fantastic. So I'm probably what, one and a quarter maybe? One with bonus opportunities in other areas of town. The expedite topic is really interesting. It's interesting that expediting good developments was something that was noted in your community outreach because again, not to go back to my cynical view of the first day I talked about, mostly what I hear what I'm out and about is how did that ever happen? And why is there an eight story building going in downtown? And so the expedite topic is really interesting, especially considering the history of the design review board having had review authority pulled back. I understand that from an expediting time to market at the same time, I do think the community wants some better evaluation of projects that are built. So we don't look at them as being built in a specific period of time when expedited development was necessary. So finding a balance in that expedited approval process I think would be great. I know that there's been a really, really strong effort on staff's part to make sure that comments from design review that are in the area of projects where we have a limited review that those are being taken forward to the ZA and I think that that's super. So I wanna make sure, I didn't hear anything and this is probably more to the level of implementation than the policy level, but I don't know if there's been any discussion around form-based codes, which I think are sort of an interesting topic in terms of expediting. And if that's something that would grow out of this or does that land between the general plan process and a specific plan and just wanna, as much as I'm kind of curious and interested in form-based stuff, I'm also a little bit leery of it. So I don't know if that topic has come up or where that would land between the general plan and specific plans. So that's really my only question to ask about that. Amy, do you wanna respond to that one? Sure. So as a part of our missing middle housing work, we are looking at, or we are developing form-based codes. It would be applied to specific areas of the city and we haven't yet decided what those areas are. And then we haven't gotten into the detail of all of the various standards that would apply. But that will be coming to you, I think we're targeting the second June meeting. So that will be kind of a high level conversation, but there is a lot of content to respond to at this point. We did have a community workshop in late April. So yeah, definitely look forward to hearing more from the board on that subject. Great. Super. Well, I don't know if there's any other comments from the board or any wrap up from the city's team here. Oh, I think that's great. Thank you all so much for your time. I realize we were the only item tonight. We really appreciate the attention and the time, especially from our staff team because we know it takes a lot to post the meeting. So I appreciate it. Great. And I think in terms of item nine, the adjournment, I, no actions were taken tonight. So just- Oh, I think we do need to do public comment though. Just to make sure. Oh, I'm sorry about that. Yes, of course. I'd like to open the meeting to public comment related to tonight's topic. If there are any members of the public who would like to comment at this point, please raise your hand or if you're a caller, is it, what are the instructions for callers? If you're calling in, please dial star nine. Vice Chair Birch doesn't look like any answer raised at this time. Okay, at this point, we'll close the public comment period and move to item nine, adjournment. This meeting of the designer view board is now adjourned. Thank you all. Thanks so much everyone. Welcome, thank you. Thank you.