 It says not going to be here. So we'll go ahead and get started with our July meeting. If we can do a roll call, Chloe. Commissioner Ruth. Here. Commissioner Newman. Here. Commissioner Christensen. Chair Welch. Here. Thank you. We'll do the Pledge of Allegiance now. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, and liberty and justice for all. OK, the meeting is cable classed live on charter communications, cable TV channel 8, and AT&T Uverse channel 99. Or supposedly, I don't think it's actually working, but it's being recorded to be replayed on the following Monday and Friday at 1 PM on charter channel 71 and Comcast channel 25. Meetings can also be viewed from the city's website at www.cityofcapitola.org. And our technician tonight is Lynn Dunn. And as just a reminder, if you put your cell phones on silent or vibrate, and if you do, when you come up to speak tonight, if you would just give us your name and sign in, then we would have that for our minutes. So with that, we'll go into oral communications. Any additions or deletions? Am I missing something? No. No additions or deletions this evening. OK. This time is for public comments, for items that are not on tonight's agenda. So is there someone that would like to talk to us? OK. Very well. Can I go right here? Yes. OK. Thank you. I'm Sherrie McCoy. I've been a Capitola residence, homeowner for 21 years. And on the board of directors of Little League for many years and been to meetings where there's only one person and the president, maybe the secretary to take notes. So I thank you all for being here, because I know sometimes it's hard to do that. My concerns are Capitola's safety of the residents and the visitors, as well as provide a little input on the Capitola Mall project. I'm going to read to keep myself focused, so I hope that's OK. OK. In 2005, the red light runner cameras were installed at 41st Avenue. And the Capitola Mall entrance. I inquired as to why these cameras were placed at that intersection, instead of the one that's really the traffic problem, which is 41st Avenue in Clare Street. The official told me that the lights were being tested. And once they have it all dialed in, they would move them down to 41st in Clare's. I thought that a little odd. Then in 2007, the red light runner cameras were installed at 41st in Clare's. They were positioned this way and that way. And every few months or years, yet they never really seemed to be focused on the major traffic contributors at that intersection. The traffic cameras appear to be focused on those on 41st towards the beach, turning right onto Clare's, like towards Starbucks, Burger King. So they didn't seem to be capturing the true problem. So I communicated my concerns with the city again. And there you go. Well, over a decade later, I got a phone call from a man saying he was with the Capitola Police Department, and they were following up on my inquiry, guarding the traffic problems at 41st in Clare's. And he explained to me that the reason there's such a problem here is because when Highway 1 Southbound gets backed up, people are leaving at 41st Avenue, and that traffic is causing the problem because they want to go left on Clare's towards Shadowbrook Town, and then it has a problem in town. They're taking the back way. And I explained that he's misinformed. That's not the problem. And there's several reasons there at that intersection that are the problem. And I described the various scenarios. But he kind of reassured me the only problem is these people taking the back way. I said I would be happy to make a presentation, be on a panel, Skype call, I'll stand on the corner with somebody. And we can count cars and see, obviously, in just a few minutes what the problems really are. The most common issue are the drivers on Clare's leaving that Starbucks Burger King and going to 41st, turning left. There's two lanes that turn left there. And you can regularly watch the people run the red light, one car, two car, three car, four cars sometimes. It's a long light, so they don't want to wait. And then they end up in the intersection causing other problems. And I've looked at it, and I think the yellow light is actually not long enough, because you usually have people stopped for the light to go. And then from a stop position, getting through that hump and turn, it's just these people can barely go when the yellow light goes, and now they're going through red light. So another problem with this intersection is those heading on 41st, and they're going to turn left on Clare's. This is away from Highway 1. And because those other red light runners I just spoke about are in the middle of the intersection, these drivers wanting to turn left cannot proceed. Some of the drivers are allowed to make a U-turn. So they're kind of stuck in this little mishmash of cars. And then the people who are turning left at Clare's sometimes can't, because light turned red, you've got to wait for the next signal of lights to process. And hopefully we don't get the same problem, which we usually do. So another factor is drivers who are heading on 41st towards Highway 1. And they know it's a long light, and they will run the red light or proceed in the intersection when it's not clear. So you have that batch of people causing issue as well. There's yet another factor, and those are the people coming from on Clare's, let's say, from the shadow group towards 41st. And they don't want to miss the light either. And they go really fast and almost get air trying to get up there. And it makes it dangerous and adds to the problems in that corner. So a few months ago, after that strange phone call from the police department, a woman named Cynthia Kerry of Mount Herman was killed at that 41st and Clare's intersection. News reports state that her car was stationary in the middle of the intersection when she was hit by a van and slammed into a bus. OK, on a happier note, I am all for the Capitola Mall, all over Hall. I think it's great that the city has responded to the survey of folks who live here. They need a great entertainment complex, complete with park space, more restaurants, new stores, the metro center moving to a more efficient location in there. Maybe the Ross and Trader Joe's can go in the big new mall. Bring it on. However, the proposal for the developers is to include 630 living units in the trendy mixed use style, very similar to Santana Row and San Jose. I understand the city is required to provide additional living units to accommodate population growth. Remember, this is a small city of 1.68 square miles, about 10,000 residents. So we already have this issue at Claire's in 41st. What is it going to look like with 630 more living units? And I'm sure people think that they should ride the bus, ride the red bikes. There won't be an impact. But there certainly will. So I've studied the Capitola City website, just looking for information everywhere I could. And I was dismayed to learn that the Traffic and Parking Commission had dissolved in January of this year. And with these two huge things, the hotel down in the village and the problems we have there, I think that there needs to be a good focus on this. I'm not sure who does that kind of thing. The studies that they've done on those cameras is admittedly flawed. They don't really capture all the information. It mostly turns with red light runners right turn. This seems to be the study all about. They even said, why did you put those cameras at the mall entrance in 41st? That makes no sense. There were no collisions there for the five years prior that we studied. So I still can't explain why those cameras were put there first. But I'm here to say, don't be seduced by the dollar signs that developers may promise. And loading our mall up with living units. And take a careful look at the traffic problems that already exist. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. I appreciate it. Do you have any questions? No questions. Is it Ms. McCoy? Thank you for coming. Well stated. I understand exactly what you're relaying to us. One of the things about not having the Traffic and Parking Commission any more an advantage, I guess, if there is one, is that it's one step for you to go straight to the city council instead of them telling you go talk to the Traffic and Parking Commission. I think your points would be well-deserved be heard by the city council. So I would recommend that you go there. I guess our staff can pass on information as well to our other city staff. But thank you for your time. It was well stated. And you will have plenty of opportunities before the mall gets built to share your concerns again, I'm sure. Thank you. Bring on the Prada. It's OK. OK. Thank you very much. If you speak to the city council, I've witnessed all those things you've said out there. I would ask the city council to seriously consider synchronizing the lights on 41st Avenue and getting Caltrans to participate, because Caltrans controls the lights at 41st and Gross. And if they could synchronize all those lights, traffic might move a little better. Very good. Thank you. Thank you. OK, do we have anyone else that would like to speak tonight? No? Seeing none, we'll bring it back in for staff comments. Oh, I guess commission comments. Do we have anything from the pine commission? Now it's our time for staff comments. OK. I'm going to give you a couple updates tonight with staff comments. First, last Friday, I had the great experience of my first coastal commission meeting. I went down, and they were actually doing a work session for any entities that were interested in LCP updates, nightly rentals, and sea level rise. So it was a full day, and it was a very productive day. They had local officials that sat on the panel with the coastal commissioners. The nightly rentals went by pretty quickly. They want to give local jurisdictions more oversight in nightly rentals. They just don't like it when they're prohibited all together. So they made conclusive statements towards the end that if a city has worked together, has worked through the issue of nightly rental, they'll be more accepting in what a city's proposed in terms of nightly rentals. So our vacation rental overlay, yeah, transient rental. So anything less than 30 days. So I think a lot of cities were passing moratoriums if they didn't have it in place so that they could put them in place. And that was becoming problematic at the Coastal Commission. Not an issue we have. We've got a great ordinance in place, and it's been in place for years. During the sea level rise discussions, that was the bulk of the meeting. And they held public comment for an hour during the lunch break. And that was the majority of the comments that were made were about sea level rise and the new guidance policies that have been placed. And Katie, you said a new guidance policy is that how new is the guidance policy? How new? I want to say about a year and a half at this point, the guidance policy that they have out there. So they heard a lot from different municipalities and the difficulties in accepting their policy because it's really a retreat methodology and it doesn't look at much more than retreat. And people want to reinvest into their keep investing into their homes and continue to do improvements. So they heard a lot of public comment on that. They also talked about LCP updates. I didn't realize how much work has been done on LCP updates and working with staff ahead of time before the LCP submittals occur. Their average time for reviewing LCPs was previously, I think they said 480 days. And that number has been decreased significantly. So I'm hopeful that when we do bring in our LCP and submit it, we will get some attention within 90 days or so. There's beyond a meeting. The biggest takeaway for me at this meeting was that when they were prioritizing at the end which items to focus on, they decided we really need to focus our energy in the next year and a half on sea level rise and that a one size fit all approach is not going to work and that instead of always, there was a lot of discussion of how the planning has gone into the extremes of retreat and looking at what's the recipe in between of the different things that municipalities can do to deal with sea level rise. So that was exciting. And I think when we move forward knowing that they're putting some working groups together and then they plan, so working groups for the next six months and then they plan to do further, I think evaluation over the next year from the six months. So they're gonna be focused in on sea level rise for about a year and a half. So I think it's a good opportunity for us in our reasoning of not submitting the whole LCP at this point is because they understand they have more work to do. So of course it's a fair argument to say Capitola has more work to do with our residents. So that was a great opportunity to be down there and here at first hand. Was that a statewide meeting or was that just a local? It was a statewide meeting. So everyone was invited. Oh, great. Yeah. I would say there was at least 200 people in the audience. Oh, good. And then also on June 27th, I had sent out the city council packet to all of you because our city attorney had reviewed RLCP update and had some guidance in that document. The outcome of that was guidance for staff to move ahead with working with the coastal commission on the remaining items of concern that were highlighted by the city attorneys. So we're trying to schedule a meeting now and we're hoping to go back in front of the city council in September. So we continue to work on RLCP update and it will come back before this, before the planning commission, before the final submittal to the coastal commission. And as one who's very skeptical of the coastal commission, I was happy with read our city's attorney's response and the way he's looking at the issue. So I was happy about that. I don't know if anyone's got a chance to watch or see but I thought he was doing a good job for us. And then the last item is that our next planning commission on August 1st, a couple of weeks away, we do have the hotel conceptual review and for that item I do, I think there'll be significant public comment. The planning commission had asked that we get the word out and we actually, we put it out in the newsletter. You may have seen that when it came to your house and then we've also done noticing to everyone within the central village district. So the noticing went out to 800 plus residents of Capitola. In terms of the agenda that night, we also have four other applications too, which are really simple and I'd like to put them on consent. They're discretionary permits. We typically wouldn't put a discretionary permit on consent but with your, you are, you can't take anything from any variance. Yeah, any consent items. There is one variance, but it's to the 80% calculation and it's a, so we can keep that one. That one will keep off the variance, but there's, it's just in scheduling these things, usually we do the, whatever we have the most public comment on, we place first on the agenda. So it'll most likely be a longer night for all of you, but anything that we do put on the consent agenda, of course you can take off, but we thought we'd be more permissive than we have in the past with that tool. So I just want to let you know that up ahead and just feel free when you see the agenda to call it off the consent item, okay? Very good. Any questions for Katie or staff? Okay, we're next we'll move into the presentation. So I guess Chloe's going to talk to us about the social media use that the city council adopted. Yes, thank you. I'm using our wonderful gentleman here to move forward through the slides. So just bear with me. Thank you. Thank you chair Welch and planning commissioners. This is just a brief presentation about a recently adopted administrative policy that council approved on June 27th. So it's regarding social media and elected and appointed officials such as yourselves. You can go ahead. Thanks. So staff identified a need for this policy to establish best practices for how elected and appointed officials use and engage with social media. And it was set up just to really provide guidelines for best practices and to keep everybody out of trouble. We want, you know, your behavior on social media to still allow you to participate in your decision-making and your voting on commission such as the planning commission. So as we know, our constitutional First Amendment it defines every citizen's freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly and petition. So your free speech to express yourself on social media is protected by the First Amendment and this policy is not intended to revoke that or take anything away from commissioners. It's designed to acknowledge complications that can arise by certain types of behavior so that we can avoid them so that everybody's happy basically. Go ahead. So just to go over the Brown Act really briefly, it's a law that regards how public meetings are conducted and it's promoting open and transparent government. So that's important because any type of board or commission that falls under that Brown Act, the people on those commissions are who is being kind of regulated by this policy. So anybody on a board or commission that is subject to the Brown Act is who the policy is written for. Okay, and sorry, for the purposes of this policy the city has defined social media as any online forum or tool that allows for online communities to share information, messages, pictures, et cetera. So anything, it might be Facebook now, it might be something totally different in a couple years. So all of it is covered and most importantly, any type of social media account is also kind of regulated by this policy in the sense that even if your username doesn't directly link you to your role as a city official, these guidelines should still be followed. So if your username is Mayor Joe or Joseph, either one should follow the same guidelines. So that should say anonymous, I presume, instead of unanimous. You are totally correct and the first person in a month to have noticed that, so thank you. I really appreciate that, I wish I had caught it myself. So moving on, thank you. Another important factor that determines how your behavior should change is the type of city hearing you might be creating content about. So there are two different kinds, there's quasi-judicial and legislative. So quasi-judicial applies rules or standards to an individual, a single project, or a circumstance, whereas legislative is establishing public policy or regulating a group of people or properties. So the Planning Commission, for example, does have both of those types of hearings fairly frequently. You might have more quasi-judicial decisions such as the vote later on 511 Escalona, whereas legislative is more approving zoning code updates, things like that. And if there's a confusion, an easy way to think about it is to ask yourself, does my decision right now affect one or many? Thank you. This is the bulk of the policy. It's just kind of designed to be a visual representation of appropriate and even encouraged behavior to the left moving on towards the right to what's strictly prohibited, definitely against the policy. And then the second row is the actions that should then be taken if behavior has already occurred. So if we have questions about specific items of the policy, we can discuss those at the end of the presentation. Thank you. So these are some examples of encouraged engagement. These are actual posts from jurisdictions out of state. The first is a mayor posting a monsoon warning. So information that's just to the public's best interest, of course, that's not a problem to share things of that nature. The second example is a council member posting a sharing an article written about a recently approved budget. Again, that's a legislative decision that had already been passed. That's not a problem either to kind of just share what's been going on in the city in which you are a part of. Thank you. These are more problematic and they are fictional. I've invented these, so no one here is in trouble for posting anything like this. The first seems okay at first glance. It's a council member asking the public their opinion on a proposed city park, a city project. The issue with that is the solicitation of public opinion online. That creates a lot of expertise communication that would then need to be disclosed at the public meeting in which the voting and the decision making is gonna happen about that item. And it's really becomes a tracking issue for the city more than anything else. It can kind of spiral. There's not an easy way to just shut those comments off. So that's really why that should be avoided. And then the second example is a lot more obvious and problematic. It's a very biased post about a project that is a quasi-judicial decision, a vote that hasn't happened yet. It's clearly the mayor stating their opinion, what they're gonna vote ahead of time. And again, soliciting that expert take communication. So just kind of on all counts it's something not to do. And in that case, the mayor, the fix, you know, the made up mayor would have to recuse themselves. So ultimately you're here to be able to participate and to be able to vote. We wouldn't want, you know, even accidentally some online behavior to make that not be allowed anymore. Thank you. So just again, going over the types of problematic engagement I already talked about and also pointing out that part of the Brown Act also does discuss that conversation about quasi-judicial matters in particular should happen in public meetings. So if multiple council or board members are posting online, it could become a serial meeting really easily, which is a direct violation of the Brown Act and we wouldn't want that. That often can happen on accident online. So just to avoid that is the best thing to do. And then really, excuse me, that's just kind of an overview of the policy that again it was adopted on June 27th by city council. So it's in place now and the city is relying more on everyone's personal accountability to, you know, agree with and follow the policy. We're not, you know, checking your accounts every day to make sure you're following it. We think everyone wants to do the right thing. And so we really appreciate that. Does anyone have any questions? Can you send a copy of this to the president of the United States? I take your point. I do have a question. Yes, please. I assume it's perfectly fine for the city to post a copy of the agenda online for the public to see. But is it problematic for a member of the planning commissioner of the council to take just one item off that agenda and post it verbatim online? So I think it could become problematic because in the way that at least on Facebook and Instagram is set up, it's set up so that people can do a thumbs up or put a smiley face or make a public comment. So really, once you've started that it's, we try our best to put the public notice out there if there's a project that we think is really important to get the word out to the public, the way in which to go about it. I think that's the best way would be to contact us and say, Katie, I think that should be, the noticing should increase on the specific project, but really reposting exact, and picking one item out of the agenda and not posting the whole agenda is only giving is focused in on one item. So if the city posted the entire agenda online and then people started making comments, voicing opinions for or against a specific agenda item, would the city have to pull that off and stop it? The city would have to report, we'd have to bring forth all the comments that were made on specific quasi-judicial items as we did in the, you know, so if, I think best practice is not to bring up individual items online that are going to be voted on. You know, it's one thing if the city is looking at traffic calming in the jewel box because that's not an item that they're voting on, they'll be voting on improvements, but it's not going to impact one applicant. It's a city program, so that's absolutely fine, but in this, for the planning commission, when it comes down to individual items, it's just, it's a methodology in which you're gonna most likely get public comment and it just makes it, public comment should really be entered during, you know, this meeting or they can follow the correct areas of submitting public comment. My personal belief is the city could do a lot more to be more transparent about the various applications that are pending before the city are going to be making decisions on and unless you post your agenda online, there's very little avenues for people to see that. I mean, they can go to the city website and look at it, but that's about it. It's not published in the paper anymore that I know of. It is. So, in the Sentinel? In the Sentinel. Yeah, well, you know, what are their 12,000 subscribers in the entire county? So, you know, I just think we have to do more to make it transparent and if people start commenting on it, I think that's the part of transparency. So I do see this evolving over time in terms of like getting the agenda out and where people are moving more onto online and different formats, you know. So I don't think, I think this is very new. We're actually one of the first cities to put out a policy. We were looking, we were kind of shopping around other policies out there and there really isn't much to go by. So I think this is very much in the works, but you're exact, you're correct. We do need to figure out with all these new tools that are out there, how to get the word out and how to keep the public engaged. But for this purpose of protecting you within the Brown Act and being able to vote on items at this point, we're recommending not posting individual items that will be decided upon. So it's interesting to me that this, the technology is now taking us to a place that's different from where we have been historically as far as the way we operate our plan, both Planning Commission and City Council. And I think it's a good thing, but I think we have to work our way backward from technology back to the old school methods of communicating and try and follow the same rules. And what I'm thinking of is that it's been historically in Capitola, not only permissible, but almost necessary if you have a project to contact individual planning commissioners or city councilmen and talk to them and have them come over and look at your property when nobody else is around. And I've always rejected all communications outside of the public hearing and said, if you have anything to tell me, I want you to come and tell me in front of the public so everyone can hear it and respond to it. And so I think this is moving us in that direction, which I think is the right direction that it shouldn't be individual communications as it has been historically, just outside of the hearing. Yeah, I think Katie said it well. This is like, I think when I heard this first presentation when I went to the city council meeting to hear about the coastal commission update, this Chloe presented this and it's like a, they were concerned about putting the wording to Stringen in there because I think it's gonna change throughout time because I agree, I think we need more transparency. It's interesting when we talk about, we put out to maybe a hundred residents in Capitola about the hotel in the village, but really it's going to affect much more than 800 people. So how do we make sure people are aware so they have an opportunity to comment? At the same time, there's a due process for people who are putting the application in that they have an opportunity to respond and not let it get away from input from others who maybe won't attend or will attend, but that whole comment process I see is a concern about letting everyone have an opportunity to respond, comment and respond to those comments. So it's a start, I guess, and we'll see where it goes. I can see this changing though as we look at some of the other social media formats out there and next door is a great tool. I mean, there's more people in Capitola who use that that read the Sentinel, for example, I have no social media other than next door just to stay aware of what's in my community. So I can see this morphine as time goes on, but good, any other questions for Chloe or Steph? Thanks Chloe. Thank you. Okay, that moves us into item 4A of our approval, of our minutes from our June 6th meeting. So approval, second. So we have a motion and a second, all those in favor? Aye. Aye, and it passes unanimously. That moves us to item 5, which is our consent calendar. We have one item on our consent calendar. The consent calendar is really designed to pass these items with one motion, not necessarily with discussion unless someone would like to pull that item from the audience or one of our commissioners. So no one wants to pull that. Do we have a motion? Motion. Okay, I'll second it. Okay, so we have a motion and a second to approve the consent item. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. And that passes. So that moves us to the public hearing. We have one item. I need to recuse myself due to proximity because I live close to the residence at 511 Escalona. So I will say good night and move on. And Commissioner Newman will take over from here. So thank you. See you on August 1st. Yes. Okay, so we have one public hearing which is 511 Escalona. And this is a design permit for a second story addition to an existing single family residence, an internal secondary dwelling unit and a major revocable encroachment permit for offense in the public right of way located within the R1 single family zoning district. We have a staff report. Thank you, Commissioner Newman. Yes, we do. So the existing residence at 511 Escalona Drive is a non-conforming two-story single family residence which is surrounded by one and two-story single family homes up on Depot Hill. This is probably the best picture you're gonna get of the wall slash fence that's going for the revocable, major revocable encroachment permit. And if you notice, it's a very large garage in the back that was actually designed with an extra large wall plate height to accommodate pulling a full RV into the garage. Just a little background on it. That actually had a space on top that wasn't exactly habitable by code that was according to code enforcement things used for many years as habitable space. There was an office downstairs as part of that garage that I think ended up being used as a habitable space. And then it at some point became an attached rather than a detached garage by a way of a deck being added on the back of the second story of the main house, which then was connected to the garage and then eventually turned into a second story kind of walkway to the top of the garage. So this thing has changed a lot of her time. There was a lot of acting first, asking for forgiveness later. But now it is sold, it's got a new owner and that's how we got to the project we have before you tonight. One other thing about this that was a little alarming to the applicant when they first came in, there's a very large driveway on the back of this project along Sacramento Avenue. We came in and did, you know, took a look at the Florida parking requirements and said, oh, you need four spaces. And they said, well, great, you know, we have this huge driveway. But a lot of that driveway is actually out in the public right away. And as you know, the space is actually they have to be on the lot. So the area that you would assume would count for parking actually couldn't be used as shown in the X's here. But luckily when a survey was done, it turned out they actually have enough space between the garage and that lot line to put two spaces there. So most likely that will never be used for parking, but it allowed them to meet the code requirements. So with that, here's the proposed north elevation facing Escalina Drive, the north elevation at the second story corridor. And the west elevation facing Sacramento Avenue. I put the second story addition here in blue above the garage, as you can see there. And then here's the south elevation, south elevation at the corridor and the east elevation with the addition also in blue. In addition to that second story addition on the garage, the first story where the old office used to be plus a little part that you see poking out there to the right is going to be converted to an official secondary dwelling unit now. It's 499 square feet. This is an allowable thing in the R1 zone. And on a lot the size, you can go up to 500 square feet. So it complies with the maximum size limit and all the other regulations and applicable state law. In addition, we have a major revocable encroachment permit for the fence slash wall out front along both Escalina Drive and Sacramento Avenue shown here in blue. I think that's, I'm gonna get into that a little bit more. Let's go in the specifics. The portion of the wall along the corner of Escalina Drive and Sacramento Avenue is two feet, five inches high with pillars that are three feet, 11 inches high. And the rest of the wall is four feet, one inch high with pillars that are five feet, five inches high. The wall which was built without permits was red tagged in 1997 for being constructed without a building permit or an encroachment permit and constituting a site distance hazard for traffic at the intersection. That's pretty much all I could find. But then when this came in, I took a look at it and it was evidently reduced in the area of the corner there to comply with line of sight requirements. So it was brought into compliance at some point, there just was no record of it. But it did not get the encroachment permit at that time. So when it comes to these major encroachment permits, the Planning Commission is supposed to evaluate several considerations when deciding whether or not to issue it. One is the expense and difficulty that will be entailed in removing the improvement in the event of street widening to whether the proposed improvements are in conformity with the size, scale and aesthetics of the surrounding neighborhood. Three, preservation of views and four, whether granting the permit would tend to result in the granting of a special privilege. These were all analyzed in the staff report that you've all received. But this is on Depot Hill. It's all sidewalk exempt area. Many, many people have these encroachments including some of the neighbors in the very immediate vicinity. So it really didn't seem to have problems with any of those. Those are findings you could make. This property is located within the coastal zone. So therefore it's subject to the, what we call the old zoning code, the 1975 zoning code rather than the current one, which is in effect outside of the coastal zone. The addition to the attached garage includes a 372 square foot flat roof with a parapet wall, which is pretty clearly designed as a deck shown here in red. But the problem is the proposed structure is only seven square feet under the maximum floor ratio for the property. So that flat roof cannot be used currently as a deck because it counts towards floor area under the current code or a large portion of it would. Some of it would be exempt, but under the new code, however, second story decks like this won't count towards the floor area. So we'll be able to be utilized for that. So the original submittal included tall windows with a bottom edge close to the floor that could provide easy access to the flat roofs that could be used as a deck. You might remember similar situations like over on Saxon where this was an issue that we dealt with somewhat recently. In those cases, the planning commission has restricted access to these unpermitted deck areas by only allowing windows that are at least four feet off of the floor on walls adjacent to those flat roofs. In this case, however, the proposed windows are egress windows, so they cannot be four feet or 48 inches off the floor. However, following the architecture and site review committee meeting, they were able to amend the plans and get them 42 inches above the floor, so it's within six inches of what we've asked for previously, which seemed to meet staff concerns about it if you're okay with that. If they do want to use that in the future, by the way, they can do it, but they will have to come in and get a permit from the city to use that as a deck, so they will have to come back and get permission. Meant after the new code is... Yes, another concern we had when this first came in was the potential for the upstairs addition on the garage to be used as a potential third unit. If you take a look just at the way it's designed with a couple bedrooms, a full bath, a kitchen area that's designed as more of a kitchen than say a mini bar, and a living room with an external, a stairway that at the time provided external access, it just looked like something that had the potential for maybe some abuse under the short-term rental, let's say. That's shocking. But it did come by with the code, so it put us in a little difficult situation. Brought that up to the Ark and Sight meeting, discussed it, and it provided some things that would make us feel a little more comfortable. One was including conditions about limiting the kitchen to a mini bar slash convenience area, so we've included conditions related to that. And then the other one was to actually turn that stairway that's going down there on the bottom right so that it ends in the garage rather than going outside, just because that gives it a little layer of, you could still do it, but you'd have to enter through the garage to get to the stairwell, so they were able to make those modifications between the Ark and Sight meeting and now, so as you can see here in the bottom right, the stairway now terminates inside the garage, so you'd have to go out actually through the garage doors to get outside from there. And I think that was it. So staff recommends the Planning Commission review the application and approve Project 19-0165 based on the conditions of approval and findings. Any questions? Yeah, what's the legality of requiring future inspections to make sure that is not converted at some point down the road? So we would go out and do inspections upon a code enforcement complaint. At the time of certificate of occupancy, we will definitely, when the building plans come in, the sinks are limited to a certain size, no 220 plugs in that area of the kitchen, so we also beefed up the findings on this to make it very clear that it's one single family home with one ADU. I will say that at the state level this year, they had drafted language for all properties that are zoned single families to be allowed up to a fourplex, so just a warning of what could come, and we've been talking about ADUs for years, but in that conversation's been tabled to the next. Oregon, didn't Oregon do that? There are a couple places that have done more. Minneapolis, just got rid of single families, I think. So it's trending, but in terms of here in Capitola, at this point, we tried to beef up the conditions of approval, but really it would take somebody reporting it to the city and we'd go out and do an inspection. That was, I did inspect this home with the building official probably four years back and found very, you know, it wasn't following code, so things had to be removed. It's so easy just to do internal changes and no one ever knows. I'm sure it's one door. Well, and some people don't really need full facilities to have a living space in there. And the applicant is here by the way, so if you'd like to. If not, well, I'm a procedure guy. So now we're gonna open the public hearing. Anyone who would like to speak, well, first the applicant. And you come up and that way everyone can see you at home. Come up to the microphone. Yes, please. If you wanna talk, yeah, you have to go. I think you came here and you sat through all the rest of this and you have your opportunity. So Christine was there of the owner at 511 Escalona. We understand all the concerns with that back area unit and really the only way that this property even remotely made sense, especially given the cost to cure what the previous owner, all the mayhem that was going on in that property was crazy, was to make it more than a two bedroom. And it's not just a two bedroom, it's a master bedroom, any very, very, very small second bedroom. So the only way to make it even feasible for a family is to take that other area over the garage and connect it to the front house and be able to obtain a reasonable amount of space for a family. Does anyone have any questions? Yeah, but if not, go ahead. Any other question? Are you, is your intention to make the portion of the flat roof into a deck in the future? If it gets passed such that we can have a deck, that is one of the few places on the property you actually have ocean views or peekaboo views. And so it would be wonderful if we can do that. Obviously it's subject to whether or not the plans get passed. If we can put our dollars to work right now and achieve some of it while we're already tearing it up and ripping it open and all that other stuff, fantastic. But we recognize we're putting in windows, we recognize it can't be used. And hopefully someday, maybe it can. Anyone else? Thank you. Do you have another question? I can. I was wondering if it was a major concession on your part as a homeowner to put the higher windows, to have the 42 inches instead of the lower. I don't think so. I mean, obviously you want as much light as you can get into a property, right? I think what were they originally? I forget. A little bit lower. A little bit lower? Yeah, I mean, it wasn't a huge concession. I was probably more looking to make sure the size of what we do have is something that should we be given the permit to change it out that we could easily change it out later and, again, just diminish future costs. That is what I can afford to keep it after I do it. We did confirm with the building official, too, that it's relatively easy to switch over. As long as you have the windows at the right height when they're installed the first time, then it's easier to go from that to a door. So moving the bottom wasn't as big of a deal as if we had asked that top. I will say every neighbor and every person that's come by the property, they all say the same thing, which is thank God you're doing something with it because it's been like that for 20-something years. Oh, yeah. And I've spent more money on this property than I have on any property I've done on planning and trying to get it to work and trying to get it to be something that's really, really great when it's done. And obviously the current footprint didn't make that easy, right? So we really spent a lot of time and energy coming up with a good solution for the property. When did you get the property? Almost exactly a year ago. And how big is your family? So me and my daughter, and then my mom will live in the ADU. So I looked for almost three years for a property that could have a workable ADU for the purpose of moving her in. But then we also have extended family that I'm kind of the host in the family. Well, every application we get now has an ADU, so it's gonna be easier to find, yeah. Yeah, I guess, I guess. I looked for a really long time. Yeah, so, and if you knew my family, you'd understand why you want them over. Right, that's on television, you know what I'm saying. Okay, thank you. And seeing no one, that's all I guess. Thank you. Thank you. And I'll close the public hearing and comments from commissioners. Yeah, no comments. No comments. I'd move approval of the application. I second. So my, I just have a little speech to give here, which is about the extra dwelling units in the least historically in this house. I mean, it's obvious that that was used. But I mean, the way things are going now in California and the need for additional housing and the loosening up of all the rules, I'm kind of having to rethink the strictness of my position on these things. I mean, we've all known in capital everyone on everyone street has somebody living in a garage someplace. I mean, it's always been that way, but it's intensifying now, but it has to because there just isn't enough housing. And so, I guess, I guess I'll call for the vote. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay, so that passes with the conditions as proposed by the staff. And I think that's the last of our public hearing. We already did the director's report. Do we have any commissioner communications that haven't already been given? Okay, we'll see everyone on August 1st in the meeting adjourned. Thank you. Thank you.