 Good evening everyone and welcome to the planning commission meeting of the City of Capitola. We want to welcome everyone. The meeting is open to the public, both in-person attendance and at the City of Capitola chambers at 420 Capitola Avenue and remote attendance as possible. Planning commissioners and staff are attending in-person and remotely via Zoom. I think we're all here tonight so it looks like we're all in person. There are several ways for the public to watch and participate. Information on how to join the meeting via Zoom and make a public comment during the meeting is available on our website and the website is CityofCapitola.org and you want to go to the meeting agendas. The public can also live-stream the meeting on the city's website or on YouTube. As always this meeting is live on Spectrum. It's being cablecast live on Spectrum Communications cable TV channel 8 and AT&T can't talk tonight. Youverse on channel 99 and it's being recorded to be rebroadcast on the following Mondays and Fridays at 1 p.m. on Spectrum channel 71 and Spectrum channel 25. A recording of the meeting is also available on the city's website after the meeting and I didn't find out who our technician is tonight. Whoever you are we greatly appreciate you're here and doing this. It will acknowledge you a little later. As a reminder please turn off your cell phones and I'm also going to ask the staff to remind me about our Zoom participants since we can't actually see on our screens whether or not we have any. It's important for you to let us know so we can make certain they can get their comments heard before the city. Okay so after all of that we will have a roll call. Here. Here. Here. Here. Okay we're going to stand for the pledge of allegiance. 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 with liberty and justice for all. The next item on our agenda is going to be oral communications and this is to give the public an opportunity to speak for three minutes on any item that is not on our agenda tonight. Seeing no one in the public and I assume we don't have any Zoom people. Thank you. So are there I guess I did this. Are there any additions or deletions to our agenda tonight? Can you hear me? Okay. Yes. This evening item there's one modification to the agenda so item 5C for 520 Riverview Drive is asking for a continuance. I just want to give you a slight update on this. The city public works director is they'll be doing more analysis on that intersection and looking at the site distance and also a couple other things with possibly modifications to a fence there so that item is being continued to see if there can be a safe driveway installation on the property. So we'll be bringing that back in April so tonight we'll be asking for continuance and that is and we've also received many public comments regarding item 4D for 4401 Capitola Road I believe we're at 58 public comments for that. That item is beginning at 7 p.m. sharp that's how we noticed it on the agenda and then the noticing so that item will be we'll begin at 7 p.m. sharp. Thank you. Are there any commission comments at this time? Any other staff comments? I did want to inform the Planning Commission and the public that on March 16th we'll have a joint meeting of the Planning Commission and City Council for our housing element update and looking at the future sites inventory and there's also a survey online for the housing element update that the public is welcome to participate in. So will the meeting on the 16th be an in-person meeting? In-person meeting yes here in council chambers. There there's a chance it might be in our community room but we'll notice it correctly for one or the other but here at City Hall and it will begin at 6 p.m. March 16th. Thank you. So now we move on to the approval of the minutes. We have minutes for December 1 January 19th and February 2nd and I'll ask if anybody has any corrections or deletions to the minutes. I had one for the December 1 meeting and that was only that I think the headings it's listed incorrectly because it lists me as the chairperson and I think Commissioner Wilkes was still the chair at that time. So with that correction can we have a motion to a we weren't at the December 1 so you would need to recuse yourself so we'll vote on December 1 first. I move the approval of the December 1st meeting minutes with your correction. Okay all those in favor. Aye. Okay then we will do the January 19th and the February 2nd meeting minutes. Is there a motion to approve those? Yeah I'll move that we approve the January 19th and February 2nd meetings. And we have a second so do we need a roll call though? Are we all in favor? Aye. Okay next we're going to move on to our consent calendar. All matters listed under the consent calendar are considered by the planning commission to be routine and will be enacted in one motion in the form listed below. There will be no separate discussion on these items prior to the time the planning commission votes on the action unless members of the public or the planning commission request specific items to be discussed for separate review. We only have looks like the one item. Does anyone wish to pull that item in the audience? It's for 203 the Espinade. It is coastal development permit historical alterations permit for window replacements at Zelda's restaurant. Anyone on the commission? I move approval of the consent calendar. Okay do we have a second? I'll second. All right we'll probably do can all right minus what's faster is everybody in favor? Aye. Okay now we're going to move on to our public hearing section and public and hearings are intended to provide an opportunity for the public to discuss each item. We will go through a process where there's a staff presentation planning commission questions public comment and then planning commission deliberation and decisions. The first item on the agenda is 2000 Wharf Road. It is the Rispin Mansion project and the city is the applicant on this. Thank you and good evening. The application before you includes a conditional use permit a historical alteration permit and a coastal development permit for the continued restoration and improvement of the grounds at Rispin Park. The project was initially approved by the planning commission in 2015 with funding for the initial phase of construction. Work completed under phase one included new ADA accessible pathways at the Claire Street Wharf Road intersection seen here as well as the entry to Piri Park from Nob Hill Shopping Center. It also included a partial removal of the perimeter wall you see here in order to construct the new ADA pathway at that intersection curb cut. These are photos from 2014 right here pre-construction. This is 2016 mid-construction and then 2018. With additional funding allocated last year in July by City Council the public works department is now pursuing re-approval of the permit by the planning commission. The application would not require subsequent approval by City Council. The project will utilize the area between Rispin Mansion and the perimeter wall. This is the majority of that space with a bit to the left down that cyclone fence. It will create a larger space with new and restored amenities. The park will have typical amenities such as benches, drinking fountains, waste receptacles, security lighting, and bike racks. But it will also feature a new 430 square foot amphitheater next to the mansion itself, a bocci core, children's play area, chess tables, and demonstration gardens for oak trees and monarch butterflies which are both endemic to the site. With that staff recommends the planning commission adopt the 2015 EIR Dendham which was previously adopted in 2015 and approve the application based on the attached findings, conditions of approval, and EIR mitigations. We also have a public works representative, our Kailash Mozumdar. He's the projects manager available for questions. Does anyone on the planning commission have any questions of the staff before we open the public hearing? I do. I just noticed you mentioned water fountains and I was watching the city council meeting as they were talking about budget and specifically council person Peterson talked about refill like water refill stations for you know so are these are those going to be in the in in this project or are they just old fashioned water fountains and if they're old fashioned I would I would suggest we take a take a look at water refill. I think we have our public works public works representative to answer that question for us. Good evening commissioners that's a good question and yes that is a regular week the not the old style but the style that does have the ability to refill a water bottle. Okay I think they'll make the city council happy. Anyone have any other questions? I had one another question just on there it says it's noted as a reflection pool is that that's just gonna be a feature right that's it was a reflection pool at one time it's but it's gonna be not a pool anymore it's gonna be an art project or something like that. Yes that's correct the the water fountain it's a little the language is a little hard to follow so there's a there's a recirculating fountain right next to what was the reflecting pool historically that did recycle the water from the pool to the fountain in back but all the design and like previously we went through the analysis of doing that and the decision was to just have that be a reflecting pool and it's not gonna have water that's that's just a historic name for that that feature and it will become an art project. Thank you. Alright at this point we will open up this to the public if anyone would like to make any comments on the proposed Rispin Park project. Okay seeing no one we'll bring it back to the council I mean the Commission and have our deliberations sir someone who would like to start. I think this is just a resurrection of what we've already approved so I I don't think there should be any debate unless there's some new questions because there's some new commissioners. No I think I agree with you I think it's a wonderful project it's had lots of input from the community as well as various boards and commissions in the city and I look forward to seeing it be built so with somebody like to make a motion to approve the conditional use permit historical alteration permit and coastal development permit. So moved. I'll second. We probably should do a roll call vote on this one. Hi hi hi hi okay the next item on our agenda is 207 209 and 209a and 211 Esplanade and this is a little different format than we sometimes use because this isn't an actual application what they're asking for is guidance on an application that will be coming back to us at our next meeting but since this is a property that was damaged during the recent storms we had at the beginning of the year we're doing it this way to try and expedite the process as much as we can for the businesses down in the village so they can get up and running again so I'm assuming we'll have a staff presentation on the information that was actually just given to us last Tuesday. Yes and I believe we have a recusal. Commissioner Christian has a conflict because she works for the architectural firm that's doing this design so she needs to recuse herself. Thank you. I'm just as a reminder as I've seen more people come into the room we're going to start the 4401 right at 7 p.m. and I just want to make sure the audience is aware of that. So tonight before you thank you chair Westman and good evening commissioners we have a guidance request for a coastal future coastal development permit minor design permit and historic alteration permit for the facade modifications at 207 through 211 Esplanade this is actually one structure there's four different tenants within the structure and to begin this process I'm going to go through some historic photos with you so in our in one of our documents in which we write up descriptions of the architecture throughout the city of Capitola this description is provided for the properties along Esplanade in 231 Esplanade or it should I'm sorry this is for all of Esplanade it's an eclectic Capitola Esplanade the Esplanade has evolved since the 1920s to its present configuration this restaurant row is a continuous in a continual state of remodeling from changing ownership's and periodic storm damage the bandstand is the oldest continuing operation and that's the only real write-up on those restaurant buildings along the Esplanade this structure is listed in the 2005 historic structures list which means it's potentially historic and I think it's noted that it needs to be restudied within that 2005 list here we have a picture that predates 1980 I'm not exactly what date it is I'm guessing in the 50s and it's after a storm but I wanted to point out what some of the features that we still see today here is the canopy with supports their angled supports under the canopy and then also the parapet wall the windows that you're seeing along this facade have changed pretty dramatically since this picture was taken here is a this is a 1980s picture that was taken it was 1986 and here you can see again a larger change actually I'm gonna go back in this picture you notice that it's oh it's one owner it's one building the buildings connected in terms of utilizing the same materials throughout and by the 80s that has changed it's still one building same with one owner but the facades have changed in which they've created kind of a false differentiation between the buildings by utilizing exterior material improvements some features though that have carried throughout that continued is that there's still a canopy with supports and the support seemed to be the original supports and there's still that parapet wall it looks like the river's end they really they brought the signage out at the end of the canopy but you can still see the parapet wall behind it and here we are today so the canopy with supports is no longer over Mai Tai Beach the but that feature does continue over Bay Bar pizza my heart and the sandbar and then the parapet wall you're also seeing through today so that's kind of the last 70 years prior in the 1920s there was a completely different structure here it was mostly a glass building and that was taken out in the 20s so the applicant as as chair Westman provided the update during the storm there's been extensive damage to these buildings much of the stucco has been impacted the tiles at pizza my heart have been impacted so they as they've been working through the interior they're now at the point of making decisions on the exterior and wanted to bring a new concept in front of the Planning Commission to see if if this could be considered modifications to the front of a structure typically require because the Coastal Zone a coastal development permit modifications to commercial require if it isn't an addition just facade changes require a minor design permit which usually could be approved by staff this we would tie in with the coastal development permit and have it approved by the Planning Commission especially due to the location and also because it's required to be reviewed by Planning Commission because it's on that 2005 list so far historic alteration permit so you're seeing the before and after and I'm gonna I've got some close-up images of this so this is just a from a distance so here you're seeing what what exists today on the Esplanade and what the applicant is proposing I'm gonna try to break this down into the four units so you can see the relationship between what is there now and what they're proposing so in this first area this is my tie beach the changes they're proposing here the new the awning would be changed to a trestle you can see up in the far right corner this e it would be a wooden trestle my understanding and the architect will is here for a question and answers is that the intent was not for the trellis the trellis sorry the trellis to be open it would be a closed feature with solid wood and but they can clarify that it so it would be updated the awning and then also they were proposing the supports from the trellis to be modified to have more of a square or a rectangular look of the posts coming through the building and then new materials but the the windows are the same for the my tie beach same location just updated and the other significant change is the entryway and the entryway feature would go up into the parapet roof and the materials in that area would be western cedar western red cedar the next unit which is the bay bar the modifications here the door is in the same location the windows that are currently at bay bar are two double hung windows that are side by side the proposal here is a larger window which is is preferred in commercial locations so that as pedestrians walking by they can be engaged and can look into the building so and then again the same modifications to the trellis and supports next is pizza my heart this would have them the next two would have the most significant changes so pizza my heart there's now a more wider opening on the left hand side the window so this would shift to the left a bit in order to allow a trash storage area actually to the right which would be combined I think shared with the sandbar but and it would also allow patrons of pizza my heart to go in the left door and come out a new door to the right so this is the in terms of structural changes this would be the the largest structural change that's proposed is an entryway on the left and then they would come out on the right hand side you can see the door the new exit door on the right and that's inset there and next is the sandbar so for the sandbar currently where you see a sea it's a steel core 10 a sealed core 10 steel to the left I think it's an architectural feature art feature replacing the door that is currently there right now there's two sets of doors they'd like to enclose that in order to have it I believe that would be some we'll actually have to ask the archetype there was there was a reason for that I think it might be for trash enclosure as well as it's an area that they utilize is the where when a band comes into play they stand there so they'd rather close off that door and just have the one entry the windows are the same windows that are there today just they'd be replaced but in the same location and size and then the doorway it doesn't extend in the parapet wall but it has the new western cedar finish and again they're they're continuing to have the features of a parapet wall throughout they would like to make the parapet wall I think it's 18 inches higher than what exists today in order to screen some of the mechanical work on top of this building over the you can definitely see all the the the mechanical features and they thought this would help shield it more and so those are those are the four changes and here's the backside of the building currently the back is not as differentiated into four structures it looks like almost two and here they're proposing just to clean it up with stucco and wood finishes and then again increase the height of the parapet wall so that some of these the mechanical features are shielded and also adding to the pierce the pilings along the back a horizontal wood so I have some close-ups of that one one item I did want to bring within our new code we have in the mixed use village we have design standards the one standard that in going through them that I think is applicable to this project and I just want to make the planning commission aware of this because if moving forward you'd have to make the finding that it substantially complies with this it is a it's a design guidance that store front widths the maximum building storefront width shall be 25 feet and it's saying to look at this figure that shown on the slide larger buildings shall be broken down into pedestrian scale rhythm with differentiated store front design every 25 feet it's really guidance I don't think I think if it looks like the Sam bar if that's 35 feet wide we wouldn't want to change that and say oh you've got to make your the Sam bar smaller down to 25 feet but really guidance about the rhythm of the street and the pedestrian experience so in terms of process if the planning commission after reviewing this feels that this is a minor change to the building this would come back to you as a planning commission review of a coastal development permit and a minor design permit and also just the the findings for a historic alteration permit that it's minor changes if this is a major change we should probably go through the historic determination process for this structure and see whether or not it should be taken off the list and then based on the outcome of that historic determination whether or not it would need a review for the sec secretary of interior standards so today we're looking for guidance on the concept and then also some guidance on whether or not this should go out for third-party review regardless with the with the design permit we will need to engage a third-party review because it's a modification to commercial and our new code requires any commercial facade changes be reviewed by a third-party so in the past we've had RRM come in and review these projects so I have close ups on each of the existing so if there's any discussion you want to have and looking at pictures I've got plenty of pictures here again is the proposed before and after and our recommendation is to provide guidance on this conceptual review tonight and I don't know Dan Gomez is in the room and the with Fuse architecture and Chuck Hammers the owner of the property thank you very much does anyone have any questions of staff at this time I do have some questions just on the presentation the picture shows the on the on the water side the the new railing if you will is that covering the pilings or replacing the pilings covering that's good and then also the the sidewalk they're not encroaching into the existing sidewalk my understanding and this is a conceptual so I haven't seen site plan but that there's no new encroachments into the sidewalk thank you I had one minor question so I think at the end I think it's the sandbar they have an outdoor seating area there is that going to continue on the back of the building I believe so yes thank you okay anyone have anything on the peer re-enforced the peers are we reinforcing them for future storms or what are we doing there I'm gonna ask the applicant to come up yeah why don't we ask the applicant and the architect perhaps to come up and give them a chance to good evening commissioners thank you I'm Dan Gomez with Fuse Architects fortunate to be a business owner and resident here for 22 years and love the village and glad to be a part of it so I was really excited when Chuck actually reached out to us and asked us to be involved in helping him on such short notice to try to the opportunity to improve the building of the facade so and thanks to Katie for the staff because she kind of really sent us some of this historical photos to kind of look at what are the things that we could tie to that are important what kind of carries that kind of how did it change throughout the years and so just in looking at like when you see that photo from was it 1958 I think it was 1958 having that awning continue across with the corbels that you see the curved corbels come in and how that relates to and it was removed unfortunately on my tie beach and how that relates to kind of Zelda's men's eldest has theirs kind of go continue to the ground as a colonnade so seeing that that really kind of was kind of a sticking point for us and and even though the drawings it happened very quickly but I think that that element in and of itself is kind of something we really want to tie to so just Katie clarified we do want to have that as be a solid awning so really we're gonna kind of straighten out that awning and we actually want to continue the corbels I know it kind of show the squared off kind of rafter tails coming out we actually don't want to do that so when you're considering your guidance that we actually want to kind of continue that curved aspect on the corbels but potentially change them out because they're they're they're failing they kind of has if you look at the facade now and that in that trim it actually kind of dips and waves so it's in it leaks all the time so we're hoping to reconstruct that in the manner that kind of restores the historical past of what that was meant to do and one of the things that I love about just in this kind of esplanade has been improved and if you start at like Stockton Stockton Bridge and you walk down past Margaritaville and into Paradise that kind of unification and this like she was talking about the street presence the street vibe and what does that experience feel like you kind of lose that once you get past Paradise Beach Grill and so they're a little more haphazard they've and they've changed so much over the years but if you look back at like that 1958 photo it was very much more unified and I think what we were our hope in our goal is is to kind of restore some of that we wanted to kind of tie in with materials like so the stucco is that modeled and you kind of see it really well on the on Paradise and Margaritaville where they've used the integral color stucco that has the model appearance has a really smooth coat to it we don't do something very similar but in like of a warmer white colors what we're kind of hoping to give us some differentiation between the buildings but still complement them one of the things about the entrances is like we wanted to kind of define those entrances because we are kind of unifying the building and giving it more of a street presence character so by not necessarily we're not changing the entrances more than we are kind of accentuating them we do want to propose potentially on sandbar and on bay bar to kind of gradually taper that entrance back to kind of guide you into the doors but the entrances are so small on Paradise I mean I'm taking it back sorry on my tight beach and on pleasure or pizza my heart that the entrances are so narrow that we just plan to kind of accentuate them that's why we kind of rose up the entrance a little bit and one of the things that has never kind of worked well with pizza my heart is that entryway has always been kind of like a just a traffic jam of people trying to get in trying to get out and their experience there is really hampered by the fact that there's no access through that building so in talking with Chuck one of the things that would really be nice is to be able to shift that over a little bit so you can kind of have an in and out kind of entrance way which really free up a lot of congestion at that spot and as you know it's a very popular restaurant so that tends to fill up pretty quick and it kind of it really impacts the the traffic as people are walking through the Esplanade so our hope is is that by the kind of unifying the look cleaning it up hold on to some of those historic aspects which I think is really that awning with those corbels that was really the unifying element that seems to kind of really create that street presence and then clean up each of the the restaurant entrances I think we were we're excited about moving that forward and on the back if you look at the backside we're kind of keeping all the windows the windows are the same there is the existing windows we're just trying to create like some kind of unification of the and even now the whole backside is all one material all one color we want to put an awning over the sandbar outdoor seating area to kind of continue that trellis that you kind of see over at Paradise and Margaritaville kind of keep that theme kind of going for the outdoor seating so that would be a nice way to provide some kind of screen and shade and tie and unify the look so in the breezeway you'll see that there's kind of those depressions where there's a current mural we'd like to propose doing something there artistic like an artistic tile or something that kind of creates some kind of presence in there they call them as the colors that we're proposing on the on the facade side thank you very much yeah anybody have any particular questions you'd like to ask the architect before we open the public I do because it was mentioned that you're raising the parapet wall and with the idea of obstructing the you know ducting or whatever that's there so the question is that is the I'm wondering about the sight line so I mean you're obstructing it from whom there's all kinds of sight lines from all over the village right different heights second story third story and so I would hate to think that your intention to make it more pleasant looking actually is counterproductive because it blocks somebody's view line of the beach did you consider that or talk to people about that so this angle is right across the street and on the sidewalk side over by the hotel so if you look kind of across really what we were kind of determining when we did that was that how do we block the mechanical woman and it's just an assumption right now that 18 inches is the exact number because we haven't exact exactly dimension that portion of it but there is a pitched roof beyond this so they actually the pitched roofs if you're any elevation higher than that it's way taller than any part of the street facade so there's no actually it's really from a street walking pedestrian's perspective that you would block any kind of mechanical equipment thank you back to my question about the pier is there what we do reinforcing that so I know that there's some damage to some of the pier so they're going to be replaced or the piling so I would assume that those pilings are gonna occur in the same location potentially probably most likely but if you look at underneath this the other east side of Paradise they did the horizontal board members then and it relatively kind of helped I think with this storm damage because it blocked a lot of the debris from coming in and if you look at what happened to Chuck's buildings the water surged debris surged underneath there and actually pushed up the floor out near the front side of the street so our hope is is that one it helps to clean up the mismatched look of the of the pilings but also helps provide some protection from storm surge okay thank you very much oh pizza my heart the window is that dimension gonna be the same so the entry is basically the same width I mean ideally yes I mean I know there's some there's some code clearance and maneuverability issues that will have to figure out so but in general terms I would say that we're gonna that's our goal is to kind of keep it the same dimension okay well your design at least will improve the flow of people you know in this better news today that's good yeah it seems like it'll help okay thank you so is there anyone in the public who would like to comment on this design I guess I mean you don't have to just give us your name and we'll record it Matt Arthur resident business owner love what it you guys are doing expediting stuff my only two cents is it's I'm glad you guys highlighted in the yellow boxes the individual businesses because it was hard to figure out which ones were which I know if you go back to the whole historical stuff if you look at the current state of what it is you can really designate which business is which just by color I think with this it's fantastic it's bringing up to more of a modern aspect but we're losing some of that charm that we've had with some of the building so my only two cents would be if there's color that can be involved rather than it look like one kind of just one continuous building but I think it's that's it but I think it's great thank you very much anyone else seeing no one we will bring it back to the commission sorry storage on the street hopefully it won't be garbage bins which will impact the aroma as you walk down the area there and there are garbage bin storage bins that are close to the street in some of those places now so hopefully it won't be garbage that's stored in the storage bins that are creating two places all right thank you we have your name thank you all right someone want to start on this item sure yeah I could agree with the comments that have been made I think it's a nice improvement personally I like to see some a little more uniqueness to the four businesses some more definition I think if we go back and look and ask people to take pictures of capitol or look at pictures of every taking you know you look at the Espanade I mean you look at the Venetians and you see color and you look at downtown you see color so I would hope I love the improvements I think it's great I appreciate you that you brought it forward and asking for some guidance before it just came as a project and I just hope that maybe when we saw it next time there could be a little bit more of a challenge of how we could define those spaces individually a little bit better yeah my comments are pretty much the same as the first citizen there's like maybe we could change the colors on the different order different storefronts to differentiate them a little bit as opposed to one sort of monolithic color but other than that I think the design is really good yeah I I'm always reluctant to make aesthetic comments about what looks good and what doesn't look good I think this is this is a good project it's my comments would be keep in mind pedestrian friendliness which I think you have we don't want to have like projections that you know people could bump into we want to make sure that this sidewalk is is again easily accessed and there's plenty of fruit put looks like you address that in at least a little bit and pizza my heart it's it's again humans I maybe worry about takeout windows again because I know historically there's been some issues there if you ever wanted to do takeout window then you get a you know a line of people and then again it's a pedestrian walkway issue so I don't see any takeout windows there so that would be something to definitely keep in mind if you were planning on having that kind of thing there might be some objections there other than that I I have no for their comments okay so for me there's good news and bad news I like the back of the building a lot and I think it's great to see that you're actually going to reinforce the pilings and hopefully prevent some of the damage from future storms that you suffered at this time so and I'm happy to see the awning going over the seating area there at the sandbar so so that part I really like the front of the building I and you know I appreciate the thought that you've put into this and I think they're definitely some improvements as Commissioner Wilk said how you're dealing with pizza my heart but for me I don't like the signs all being the same on top of the awnings or the parapet there that's been proposed it looks a little like I can't come up with a better term and I know this is not the best term to use it looks a little like a strip mall to me right now and so I would be much happier if there was a bit more identity to each one of the businesses so it was on a more human small-scale feel which the rest of the village seems to be like we have several buildings down there including margaritaville that has several businesses in that building and if you look at it there's different colors there's different elevations at works on Capitol Avenue there's several buildings that have two or three businesses in them and they're broken up so they seem more like individual businesses I I think we need to talk a little bit about the historical designation because that's quite a long sort of cumbersome process in most cases and and for me if a design came back and it fit more into what I call the character the village it addresses the comments that people here have made then I would be thinking more that this these are minor changes to the structure and could go along making that determination so that you wouldn't have to go through the whole historical review process so those are my comments anybody have anything else they want to add since we're we're not voting I think we're just making comments so you know because they're trying to continue moving forward and would like some really clear guidance I just want to kind of repeat back what I heard I heard maybe increase the differentiation in the identity between the buildings consider the signs of I heard that from one commissioner did anyone else have concerns with signage repeating itself or would you like to see those differentiated as well I think that myself I would think that go with in the uniqueness you know on the sign being different or some way of identifying each business different okay and then just that rhythm of keeping the character so that that will provide the applicant with clear direction I believe if they have any other questions this if you don't mind if we do this a little bit differently than normal where they're working no again and we've got ten minutes until the next application so if you have any further questions that you'd like addressed by the planning commission this would be the opportunity thank you thanks for your comments and feedback helpful we considered many of the things that you've already talked about and what your concerns are and that's why we kind of looked at many historical photos to kind of truly see what was this building throughout its years from the 20s to the 60s through the 50s 80s and how it changed so dramatically over time and one of the most long-standing and the one things that kind of resonated with those is that it actually did not have a differentiation of material for that whole building for many many years for 20 30 years and I understand what you're talking about so we did talk about adding some features to kind of like like at the end of my type beach currently there's there's like red brick that just kind of wraps that one corner but you see a similar element on Paradise where they stuck out kind of like a projected kind of base around the corner so we considered I mean we this was just talks because we've been talking about this for the last week that how could we differentiate them without totally differentiating them because what you end up having is if you look at the frontage of Paradise and Margaritaville even though they do have differentiation in elevation we don't have that opportunity here because it is one building whereas those are really one building two buildings three buildings so I appreciate that and if from an architecture standpoint I'm glad they did what they did because they have the architecture opportunities to take different forms and move them back in this case since we can't go that route it's one building we we like to call it an architecture facadeism where you're just you're plastering on a look onto and it's not true to the architecture of what it should be so I can do things with material changes and give each one a distinct look but how do you still unify it and so I would like direction on the fact that if we still kept a unified something to unify it as a building but give distinct look to each building because I understand what you're talking about whether maybe like for example let's say sandbar kind of maintain this look and then we shift to pizza my heart where we're kind of proposing let's say a tile at that whole kind of entrance and exit area and then maybe my material continued up to the parapet that maybe the wood material continued up to the parapets now you have two defined looks there and then maybe the end portion being my tight beach and bay bar now can continue that we tie that base in that ties it back to paradise that wraps the corner but predominantly like the mix matching of colors I understand yeah okay so I think I'm actually going to interrupt you a little bit it is really hard for us to sit up here without seeing any kind of plans or drawings to you know make concrete decisions about what we think you know say yes to this doorway or this window that I think there are some unifying features on the building that have been there historically you know one of them is sort of the along the parapet wall is one and I personally don't have any difficulty with it going up higher the sort of item awning roofline what goes along the front you know that's sort of a unifying feature for the building they're definitely some there but I think for what I've heard us say or down this end of the table say is that we feel it's important for the size and scale of the buildings for the individual businesses to be differentiated and I think staff has a pretty good idea after working with us for quite a while about what we're trying to say so you know my suggestion is really to to work with them and hopefully when you bring a project back it's gonna be one that works for us and one that we feel isn't a significant enough change to be a major historical modification okay would you say that that would apply to the backside as well I mentioned for me I thought the backside of the building looked fine I think it pretty much it's very similar to what's there right now and it is a unified structure on the back for the most part today so I don't know if anyone else has any issues but for me the back of the building was fine what I'm concerned what I was concerned about was the part that faced onto the Esplanade and anyone can bring up the picture for the I was gonna say the same thing the backside I think is fine the way you've done it it's pretty similar to today yes probably pretty similar to that was a long time ago okay thank you you're about we're looking for feedback thanks okay it is now about five minutes to seven and we have advertised the next item on our agenda will start at seven o'clock so we'll take a few minute recess and reconvene at seven o'clock to hear the project on Capitola Road good evening everyone we're going to re-adjourn our meeting the next application on our agenda is the one at we forgot about 520 Capitola Avenue I mean Riverview Drive and so we need to have a motion to continue that application to the April Planning Commission meeting somebody like to make that motion yeah I'll move that we continue 520 Riverview Drive to April 20th or whenever the April meeting is all right and all of those in favor all right now we're at 4401 Capitola Road this is for design permit conditional use permit density bonus and coastal development permit request for 36 unit 100 of 100 percent affordable housing project and before we begin our discussions on this particular item tonight since we have for the first time a fairly large group of people here I have a couple of announcements I would like to make to hopefully make this all go smoothly for all of us as with the other public hearing items at the beginning we'll have a staff presentation and planning commissioners will have the opportunity to ask staff clarifying questions when the public comment period opens we're going to first hear from the applicant and we're going to give the applicant six minutes to make their presentation again the Planning Commission probably will be asking the applicant some clarifying questions once the applicant has finished their presentation we will hear from anyone who wants to make a comment at our statement about this project each person will be given three minutes for your comments and we will be enforcing the three minute rule so we can get through this item tonight if there's someone there who someone else has made a comment that was identical to what you wanted to say it's perfectly okay to simply say that you agree with the prior speaker or some individual and that won't in any way deter I mean diminish your comments to us you're welcome to give your name and where you live if you would like that information included in our minutes we're asking that there be no applause or booing we understand their strong opinions on both side of this application but we're hoping that we can all be respectful to each other when everyone has had their turn to speak at the end of that we'll give the applicant three minutes to provide any additional information that they want to provide to the Planning Commission after hearing the public comments one thing that is very different about this application process since it is an affordable housing application is that under state law we only get to have five public hearings in the city on this application and the Planning Commission and that includes hearings at the City Council and the Planning Commission's on its third public hearing right now so if we want to preserve the opportunity for this item to be appealed to the City Council and I think most of you know in Capitola most applications of any significant ultimately do get a bill to the City Council by someone then as a Commission we're going to need to make a decision tonight so we can keep the opportunity for appeal to still be open to the public or the applicant lastly I would like to take a moment to personally thank our staff they have been very kind and professional to me asking numerous questions and being sort of upset about how this whole process is working and I would like to thank them particularly Brian for how professionally they answered all of my questions and all of the information that they made available to me through this process so if there are no questions from the commissioners about how it's going to work tonight go ahead understand the public there the five comment rule because the 19th was just a continuation why does that count we didn't talk about it we just said we had a zoom problem and internet problems so we continued it right the item was on the agenda and we did just continue it but I think under state law because it was on the on the agenda we took action I would leave this to the attorneys to to figure out if it comes down to asking for another hearing but that's my understanding and we're going to err on the side of okay okay I think we did get a letter addressed to the planning Commission from the attorneys explaining their determination that that had been a meeting under state law yeah they said they counted it is five so okay fine okay any other questions about the process okay so with that we'll let the staff begin thank you I just wanted to let the public know that we also have the community room open and we have a TV in the community room if you feel more more comfortable in a space with more right across the hall is the community room we have this will be live streaming and then you would still have the opportunity to come in and make public comment and from there I'll hand it over to Brian thank you all right thank you for those introductions and good evening Chair Westman and commissioners I've got a slide show here this really kind of builds on from the last slide show but I do have all the slides that we showed at the January 25th meeting if discussion warrants so I can reference those but again the entitlements requested for this project are a design permit conditional use permit coastal development permit and a state density bonus the property collectively is to two parcels and 0.81 acres in the mixed-use neighborhood zone again repeating the background is that we have had two hearings but the most recent was January 25th the Commission gave some specific direction for reasons why to continue the project one was to further study traffic safety with specific focus at a new driveway that was introduced at 45th Avenue and Capitola Road and to verify that noticing was done correctly and is potentially expanded going forward so I'll address those items in the next few slides but what I wanted to do first just to kind of tee up the discussion is just talk about the overall project just so we all have a base of what's being proposed the overall project scope is to demo the existing four two-story commercial buildings get demo the all the parking and and paving and regrade the site the proposal includes two three-story multifamily buildings single-story support building is also part of that there's 36 units the proposal is a hundred percent affordable for the rental units and there's an introduction of two parking lots one accessing 44th and the other one accessing the intersection noted at 45th and Capitola Road some photos just again for context the top left we are at the intersection of 45th and Capitola Road and then the middle right we are at the other corner 45th and Capitola Road and then swinging around at the bottom on 44th Avenue and this is for zoning purposes this is the front property the narrowest frontage looking at the site plan I'll use the pointer a bit here just big picture this is the ingress egress vehicular driveway to 44th and a proposed parking lot with 16 stalls coming over to the other side this is an ingress egress driveway this is at that intersection of Capitola Road and 45th Avenue this parking lot is showing 21 stalls and then the two buildings are colored in orange the one addressing Capitola Road to the left in the plan here is building a and the one that's perpendicular and a little bit smaller off of Capitola Road is building B as noted in the plans and then the gray red and blue is the support building and so this is community spaces long-term bike storage and the management and facilities office for the property and then this is the rendering so giving you a three-dimensional look of colors mature landscaping roof lines is a combination of a 6 and 12 roof gable end and a slope back 4 and 12 to a which is effectively a parapet and then the single-story support building community room etc. has a monoplane roof and then this is from the north parking lot that accesses 44th Avenue looking at the center courtyard taut lot and the stairways and balconies on the north facade so that was that was kind of just the background so now I'm going to get into the items that's essentially the new information for you this evening so looking at the noticing the map on the left this is the code minimum requirement 300 foot map this is what we did for the January hearings we sent out a 300 foot list which included 156 male recipients we did a single site posting and we posted in the newspaper after looking at our code and following up with you know what made sense and and the desire to have an expanded noticing list we created a custom map and the red ring there is still 300 feet but we expanded it so that all the highlighted in blue properties were sent a mailer we really tried to go all the way up to grace street on the north side and span from 43rd Avenue to 47th and then south of capitol a road we included emerald street crystal street and diamond street all areas that would likely get overflow parking and this totaled out to 451 recipients we added additional site postings till we captured the full length of the frontage and we also did the newspaper posting for this hearing this is just a rundown of the rest of the slides that i'll get to so the city initially commissioned a traffic study done by dudek and dudek has prepared an addendum that focused on the traffic safety as directed by the commission the applicant on their own independently hired a transportation consultant to do a peer review of dudek's initial report and provide any additional information regarding traffic they hired hexagon transportation out of san jose and you've also got a number of public comments i believe we were up to 56 at close of business today and those are all additional materials at the dais there and at the back table for the public the applicant also submitted and was included in the packet of property management plan a parking plan and a tenant screening plan and then there was some extended discussion about rooftop equipment and the roof line and so the applicant has also provided a line of site diagram that i'll show so getting into the the two traffic studies so with dudek's addendum they really concluded with four findings the top one is essentially that there's there's just not a lot of traffic being introduced here so it's just a low level of volume that's being introduced it's seven or eight trips in the am peak and eight or nine in the pm peak hour inherently it's an all-way stop so it controls simultaneous movements and requires legally requires drivers to actually make a full stop before proceeding they reviewed site distance and have reported back that it's adequate and then they also reported from through insurance data collision reportings at this intersection which is a three-way intersection now they pulled five years of data 2016 through 2021 throwing out 2020 as the covid year and they found two incidents where a vehicle was outfalled with a pedestrian so they found two incidents which is can be characterized as relatively low hexagon they did a peer review of dudek's original report so they just concurred with the preliminary findings level of service trip generation etc the one bit of information that they did provide that was new is these travel paths and so included these in your packet this i'll call attention to the blue traffic line so that the modeling here is done on a Chevy suburban and so they're basically demonstrating that each individual movement either coming from the west or turning to the west on capitol road can be done independently at the four-way stop and the same heading east and then the same heading south i won't spend too much time on the management plans but this was just further information for the public and for the planning commission um i it did prompt a bit of discussion when it came to the parking management plan just because of the volume of uh comments that we've received and so we have talked to the applicant about potentially trying to expand the ability to have overflow parking or get into some kind of a reciprocal agreement with a nearby business the only problem with them fully committing to that as a condition of approval is that they're committing to the affordable housing in a 55 year contract so this would have to be outside of the city's approval so we can't really condition this but these are suggestions that we've made to them and we've also suggested that they consider a car share on site so i want to talk a little bit about the density bonus this is really kind of at the heart of of the discussion this evening and so i just want to kind of re recall attention uh this is not a typical project or process and state law really preempts our local standards we don't have all the same tools at our disposal and density bonus law does go all the way back to 1979 but particularly in the last five years the state has has really made some modifications that give the developer a lot more leverage in proposing these these type of projects and reduce local control i the cities basically have a pretty high bar in order to push back on proposed concessions and waivers there's a pretty narrow definition of what can be pushed back on or challenged and it would have to be something very specific and be causing an adverse unavoidable impact to public health and safety this project specifically is a hundred percent affordable so it does qualify for four concessions and unlimited waivers the in the government code the definition of concession and waiver are a bit circular they both can apply to development standards a concession is a little bit more of a powerful tool though and it can actually involve like a modification to a zoning ordinance so we would usually be looking at these with a market rate project as variances or zoning code amendments but because of the density bonus law we have to take these at face value as being unnecessary in order to facilitate the construction of affordable housing and my last bullet here really is um this is this is kind of at the core of what the state's goal is is the exchange here is to get a developer to not only can commit to building these units but facilitating them and running them to low-income tenants for 55 years in exchange to bypass local standards and facilitate their construction so just into the specific so what does it mean for this project there's four concessions that are being requested the top two the daylight plane and the side-set back are both very much related this is at the north facade of building b the proposal is to have this five feet away from a property line where 11 feet would be the typical standard and then the daylight plane also relates to the setback so the building that section of building b would be partially encroaching into the what would be required is the daylight plane the parking ratio for multifamily is 2.5 units per parking spaces per unit proposal is including one per unit and then also the mix of parking so compact spaces the code limit is 30 percent and 42 percent is being proposed waivers this ties a little bit more to measurable development standards or and it's supposed to be reducing the overall cost of the project so they're proposing 36 feet where 27 is the standard they have not specified tree replacement size but have done calculations that if the trees reach maturity that the canopy would comply with the city standard and then the entry design we have objective standards for multifamily housing market rate where the entrances are supposed to address the street for reasons of not wanting to install an elevator to save cost and for installation of storm drainage retention the applicant is asking for a waiver from that standard as well as massing breaks every eight foot uh or sorry eight foot at every 50 feet is also an objective standard and the applicant is asking for a waiver from that because these units essentially stack and the efficiencies are clustering the plumbing and the mechanical and so introducing jogs and buildings is uh is is less efficient from a cost standpoint uh this slide is really just a clarification so we as noted we've had a lot of inquiries and questions about the project so one of them has to do with ab 2097 which is another action the state has taken to reduce parking and it ties into high quality transit as defined by the state and i just want to be clear that ab 2097 is not applicable to this project um a high quality transit by the state's definition is is really a rapid service something that's turning over and doing pickups and drop-offs every 15 minutes during a peak hour and really nothing like that in capitol exists on any of the bus routes um so really we fall back to the density bonus in the concession and have cited a the government code section here for you that is applicable to the parking reduction being requested so as noted well the slides dated by two comments so we had 56 that close the business um parking certainly the number one comment that we've received um and i've covered how we analyzed that with the density bonus the intersection safety uh covered that as well with the two studies and high density has definitely been a comment and stride with mass scale and the building being out of character with the surroundings later in the process i'd say in the last three or four days i've i've received a few more support letters but just as a ratio by far that the letters in opposition are critical of the project far outweigh the support letters this is the diagram that i mentioned about line of sight so this is pedestrian view looking over rooftops so they've nestled the mechanical equipment down showing views from off-site uh private property as well as at the north side of capitol roads sidewalk um i think there was some discussion last at the last meeting about solar panels being mounted in this area as well and i believe the applicant is will be able to address that further if if that question comes up uh we do have a few conditions we wanted to propose this evening really nothing major but uh just because of the the intersection um we want to to make sure that we we clear the line of sight let's see no the first one is uh this one was actually from last time there's a landscape strip that was not it was a layer that wasn't turned on on the drafting so the applicant has agreed to add landscaping to the north side of the parking lot the next one is the site distance so this is referring back to a code section so we just don't want to plant any trees when we're introducing a new curb cut that would impede vehicle view of of oncoming pedestrians or bikes or traffic and 52 is a reporting condition so we're asking for annual reporting this kind of a project requires a lot of reporting to state agencies and lenders and those who will help fund projects like this so we're asking that the developer also include us the community development director in their annual reporting so that we can verify their compliance with their agreement to maintain these units as affordable and then the last one is has a bit to do with tenant screening and so this would give priority to employees or potential employees that are within a certain area relative to the subject property so with that we are recommending approval we have drafted a resolution so we're asking the planning commission to adopt the resolution and attachment eight and approve the design permit conditional use permit coastal development permit and density bonus request and before i conclude i just wanted to introduce those that are available to answer questions so certainly planning staff is available for questions leila from the city's legal team is on zoom the dudek transportation engineer denis is also available for questions and then the applicant's owner's rep is here and their legal counsel is in attendance and i believe their architect is on zoom so that is my conclusion and i'm happy to take any questions of the commission i've got a quick question i'm sorry i don't mean to jump the gun here but the tenant's screening that's a condition so if we approve take your recommendation make a motion to approve it with your conditions the tenant's screening per the legal verbiage that was included in the packet is part of that recommended part of that condition okay just want to make sure thank you and i might add to that that i was actually going to propose that the wording be changed a little on that item and instead of saying that it's individuals who either work or accepted jobs in capitola that we change it to be work or accepted a job offer within 1.5 miles of the project and i actually have a little diagram i can hand out to you and i think staff may have a slide which shows what that area would encompass and you know my reasoning for this is that i i think if we have to live with the limited parking that having people live there who work within a mile and a half of the project those are people who would be able to walk or ride a bike or get to work without the necessity of of having a car and so it might encourage a few less cars there and 1.5 miles takes in new brighton it takes in soquel elementary school the school up on opal cliffs and the village and almost all the area along 41st avenue so there certainly are enough people working in there that i think we could find people who would fit that criteria i'd like to see your thing and does anyone else have any questions of staff at this time or just out of curiosities is the city ever conducted a parking survey parking study of any kind in its history i'm not aware of any studies that were done in this specific neighborhood but yes we've conducted parking surveys throughout the village yeah but it's limited to basically the village yeah yeah okay thanks um so i have some questions that i like to go through but maybe if the applicant went first then maybe some of my questions might be answered or yeah or we can you can ask your questions after we have the public hearing and we do our deliberations we'll give you an opportunity to ask those questions then and i just have one more question about the staff presentation um i guess one of the areas that that i'm having difficulty with is that um you know we're being told that um senate bill 2097 doesn't apply because um and because we don't have any kind of rapid high quality rapid transit i believe is what they refer to it as and so you know when personally when i read that i thought well you know this is great because they would since we don't have that they would have to meet the minimum parking standards that that bill requires you to have which would be about 54 spaces which you know to me i sort of went well that's significantly less than what we would require that sort of you know a good compromise for for the community and to allow the project to go develop so is there's something there's something further on in that legislation that makes this not apply to this project yeah so ab 2097 does not apply um the applicant is specifically putting forward a concession request for the reduction of parking which um government codes section i did site it here 65915 subsection k number one allows them to use a concession to reduce vehicular parking okay yeah i just i just need to dear it one more time i guess for it to really sink into my brain okay thank you section p actually incorporates the ab 2097 rule so they're not using that they're using the other section okay any other questions okay at this point we'll open our public hearing and give the applicant an opportunity six minutes to make their presentation all right good evening chair vice chair and commissioners thank you for having us back i'm product from gary bascom project manager this is rosa morris on zoom like brian mentioned is our architect um in affordable housing the sites we select are very important our site is situated within walking distance of dozens of different restaurants hotels pharmacies shopping centers parks and to the public library we've discussed this before just wanted to reiterate it this is significant because these local shops provide the opportunity for our residents to work within walking and biking distance to where they have potentially homes right in addition our site has several bus stops uh directly adjacent from the site especially important because our residents actually use public transportation um the governor's office of planning and research conducted a technical advisory study published in 2018 stating that residents in affordable housing are more likely to search out and find housing closer to their work and closer to public transportation this is because they often rely on walking biking and public transportation and to be much more specific um it was in the staff report but it didn't really get covered 25 of our units have one county-based vouchers um and that includes all of the two and three bedrooms so every single two and three bedroom in this project will be restricted to a 30 percent AMI which means every single person that lives in that unit their combined income cannot exceed 30 of the average median income of the county of santa cruz um so what does that mean so for a two bedroom unit the maximum income for the entire household is 42 thousand dollars a year for a three bedroom unit the maximum income for the entire household is 48 thousand dollars a year and remember those are the maximums so generally no not generally always it will be less than that because if they hit it or exceed it then they cannot live there um often our properties are occupied by single parent families with young children and with those numbers in mind purchasing and maintaining a vehicle is a substantial expense having multiple vehicles as a luxury uh and sometimes they have no vehicle at all and in the parking management plan i won't get into details on it but when the a certain household doesn't have a vehicle what we do is we reallocate those two other families in within the the development if they if that need is there so um in conclusion our proposed design like it was mentioned complies with the california state density bonus laws through the use of concessions and waivers um the research from the governor office suggests that the project will work but with that said you know um we're we want to be good neighbors contrary to what a lot of people are going to say probably um but we really do and we're going to be here for 55 years and if it turns out that the project is operating at a park parking deficiency we want to rectify that we want to work with the city to do that but like it was mentioned because we have so many commitments to the funding sources which are very in in in depth we we can't have that as a condition because of the long-term leases because we are we're locked in on a 55-year lease so working with the car share program is a fantastic idea doing reciprocal parking agreements with with um neighbors like the like the capitol of mall or the calvary chapel next door or the dmv different places like that we could definitely look into i'm running over on time i'm gonna turn it over to rustle to thank you all good evening and um thank you for having us here um my name is rustle morse i'm an attorney at mires nove as you know by now my firm represents the applicant crp affordable housing and community development um and before i sort of get into it i do want to um as everybody has already thanked staff for for all their work it was a lot that went into this project i mean the applicant went above and beyond and did studies i have another binder yay thick of all the studies and reports that that were required that we uh were happy to uh go to to take care to make sure that everybody's questions were answered um i thank staff again for for their explanation of the density bonus law it was very thorough um and um and we agree with with exactly what they said i'm gonna take a minute um and 22 seconds to uh briefly talk about another state law the housing accountability act um as you probably received in my uh my letter earlier this week um we had a extensive discussion on state law government code section 65589.5 the housing accountability act similar to density bonus the housing accountability act was enacted to try to ensure the development of affordable housing in communities throughout california um and similar to the density bonus law it takes away a lot of the discretion of local planning commissioners and city council people to um to oppose projects it essentially if a project complies with local objective development standards and is consistent with the zoning code and the general plan then the planning commission city council don't have the discretion to deny the project except for very limited options related to as was mentioned a specific adverse impact um on public health and safety none of those findings were made here um and therefore there is no avenue to which to deny the project i know it is not easy to make that decision um but that is um what the california legislature had uh has decided and with that we are happy to answer any other questions that you uh you have of us thank you very much um i do have a question yeah go ahead so i just want to know um do you have any objections to the conditions as imposed by staff for approval i can have garret speak as to some of the um the more development oriented ones um but with respect specifically to the housing preference um we think that's an admirable condition i have some significant concerns about the legality of local preferences for housing um i would ask that you speak to your city attorney to get her preference she represents the city because what we don't want to do is run afoul of federal law federal fair housing law to uh to create a discriminatory or disparate impact by creating a local preference yeah so yeah any other objections to the consent um i'm not the consent i don't know about the conditions not at all the first one was really a drafting mistake so i'm glad that's there the second one i love i think it's a great idea to not include the landscaping um to make sure there's no issues with sight uh visibility and i'm blanking on the last one the reporting and no no issues with that there are other conditions that this is like condition number 50 something no problems with the first 49 they were pretty standard okay thank you okay thank you very much we'll see you at the end of the public hearing um so this is now the opportunity for all of you to present comments or statements to us about this particular project uh as we mentioned we're going to have a three-minute limit on each speaker uh it might be nice um to make things run smoothly uh if a couple people sort of line up to speak as we go through the evening um just to to have a smooth flow uh and again if you want to give us your name and where you live you're welcome to do that and uh we look forward to hearing from you okay we will hear our zoom comments at the end of the uh comments from the people who are here this evening good evening chair and planning commissioners and staff it's nice to see everyone in person again it's been a long time Stephanie Harlan i live on 42nd avenue next to an apartment complex that has about 30 units and so i kind of am uh experienced and what this would be like if you don't have enough parking that unit next to me has one space per unit so what does everybody do they park on the street they park down the street they park on grace avenue gray street they park on claire street and i see people walking but they're walking to their cars i see one lady that walks to work she works she used to work at mcdonald's but everybody else they walk to their car and get in their car and drive somewhere i want to thank mr ruth for his very wonderful uh synopsis of the history of capitol i came here in 1972 so i sort of witnessed some of that we had a i lived on depot hill in an apartment and we had a candidate's night and we had mr hill nelson there and uh afterwards uh one of my neighbors said did you get the message did you get the message and the message was slowdown development smaller development keeping in character with capitol so my big problem with this one is um the the parking because it's going to be a problem absolutely and everybody i've talked to in the last week has said so so i hope that that on these big projects you walk the neighborhood and talk to people and see what they want they'll tell you and then you'll have your answer about how you'll vote so um i would strongly urge the developers to put in or the city to require they put absolutely put in solar i put in solar panels at my house last year made a huge difference in my bill i'd rather pay them than pgne but absolutely everybody should be doing solar right now that only makes sense and if they are going to put in these they're going to have to it's not a law yet but they should do electric um stoves even though we don't like them but uh rather than gas because natural gas is just very very expensive so thanks for all your good work on this and um good luck and i affordable project is wonderful but this just needs more uh parking and i think it should have covered parking it makes a huge difference if you have your car out there and it's not covered it gets really really dirty so i would um uh ask them to cover those spaces too it makes it makes a big difference and it would be nice and maybe it's a plate another place where they can put solar in thank you very much thank you Stephanie good evening planning commission and staff i'm paula bradley i live at 1841 44th avenue uh close to the project and um i've submitted a couple of letters i still have questions that i pose that were not answered i hope maybe tonight the developer could answer those questions since staff didn't and my main issue um is with parking and adequate inadequate parking is is really the the biggest issue to to eject to the project i'm all for affordable housing we certainly need it um but since there's only one parking space per unit if the city doesn't feel like they can deny the request for reduced parking then the residents each unit should be limited to one car that that's doable and if they can't do that then offsite private parking another issue i have that i brought up before is the design on 44th avenue that uh it looks like the rear or a side of a building not a front of a building 44th avenue is a street frontage it's got a you know parking driveway and then the end of a building with just one plain door no front entries are breaking up the mass um some of the questions i had pretty easy ones to answer i would like somebody to explain how the bicycle storage the long-term bicycle parking works because people are not going to use the storage if they have a bicycle they can't carry heavy bicycles up the stairs there's no elevator if you want people to ride bicycles there has to be secure parking that you know can't be some system worth it can't be broken into at night nobody's going to use it if it's not secure another thing there was on the site plan there's an area that looks like a oval and i've asked what is that is that a dog exercise area and i certainly hope it is one because with 36 more units there's going to be a lot of dog walking in the neighborhood i had question about the perimeter fence that was pretty easy to answer is it going to be a wall that would be much more secure than it looks like on the plan of a wood fence and i just want to say that this is a big project for capitola the ownership and management management of the building is key to the success of the building the residents becoming part of the community so the developer and owners very new they don't have a track record only a couple buildings completed and the property manager also is new to the area so i'm kind of concerned about their commitment to the city thank you i i don't mean to to contradict you but i thought i saw an email that responded to most of those questions was that to a different person yeah no that was the same one i don't know what the explanation is but we did try to respond to that email and we forwarded that response to the commission so you might we might be able to get you a copy of the response that staff did send out answering most of your questions hi my name is malady nukem i've been to three meetings the first one i came to we got shut down so i feel like really i met two meetings right um i lived directly across on 1763 44th the first driveway and right now on my street we've had RVs buses parking overnight you know i did mention that i feel like i am the the hall monitor down at that in the street and because they they park and they trash so there's already a problem and now we're going to add more parking i looked up the city of capitola i looked up what your parking stuff is like and where there are certain periods of time that people can park and there is something called preferential parking zone and you know i thought that would be the only way i would feel like something like this would work and preferential parking zone means that somebody can park there for like three hours that but they can't park overnight and i have guests i have people you know that spend the night but they they won't be able to if all these people use these parking on my street you have a variance for the type of vehicle that you can put in for the size of the parking space but i can tell you because i've worked in home care and a lot of these people don't have small volts wagons that are electric they have trucks and they have fans and they have all kinds of different cars in order to survive so your small parking spaces some of those trucks are going to have to go somewhere they're not going to make it in that parking lot right now uber delivers in the area amazon delivers brown delivers we have a lot of ambulances and fire trucks that go down our street anyways because of the apartment complex across from you right now i don't know where they're going to park to deliver because they do they deliver amazon they deliver brown so there's a real problem with parking i look at that lot and it's less than three quarters of an acre i think about a four plaques on it or an eight plaques on it or anything but i think about a 36 unit with 36 parking spaces and i just can't see it to be honest with you capitol is a two by two square mount town and three quarters of an acre is going to have 36 units with probably close to 70 people live in there you know i wish another spot was better because i like affordable housing i was in home care so i would go into people's places and try to park where are those people going to park because believe me you're going to have home care going in there too so parking's my beef sorry please consider it thank you for your comments thank you for the timer um my name's lisa johnson and i actually live in the city of santa cruz and when i heard about this 36 unit one two and three bedrooms i'm ecstatic so grateful kudos to capitol i'm a mother i have grandchildren i have nine people living in my home because nobody can afford to live here parking is an issue everywhere and you know what we're going to figure it out the other thing i see in this room is we definitely have an intergenerational or excuse me generational divide we have elderly people who bought their homes a long time ago live in a different world and then we have people 45 and under who cannot afford to live here who will be your home care people when you need them you need to address the so i'm addressing everybody because this is so important that's why i'm here thank you thank you we will figure it out together people need places to live especially working people i'm a hundred percent for it and i wish the city of santa cruz would do more 100 affordable housing thank you and thank you good evening commissioners my name is jim weller i am a near neighbor to this project i live just around the corner and up the street at 1970 46th avenue and i am very strongly in favor of this project this is exactly the type of project that is needed at this location is an ideal location urban infill is what we need to do increasing density somewhat is what we need to do i know that i know that a lot of neighbors have complained about the parking i'm not concerned about it i live in a 50 unit apartment complex that was built about 50 years ago where we have one parking space per unit my neighbors are largely families with children they're largely low-income spanish-speaking people um it works fine for us there are many neighbors like myself at least some who don't own a car at all there are uh occupants of apartments who are children and don't drive cars you don't need a parking space for every resident or even every two residents so all in all i find nothing to object to in this project i applaud the developer um and i urge the commission to approve it it seems like that you're only choice anyway but i'm in favor and i'll just say that i am also the the lead developer for my church in santa cruz where we're building a 40 unit apartment project so i'm very familiar with uh the details and the standards we also are providing fewer than two and a half parking spaces per unit we're providing one and a half um per unit and we feel it's going to work just fine so thank you thank you i'm i'm kathy sarto and i'm a member of copa also peace united church copa is a regional organization of 28 faith based and um non-profit institutions and we are for housing for all um we find it magnificent that this will be an all affordable housing project um i personally have five children they grew up here they have all moved out of town because they can't afford to live here they did all the things we asked them to they got educations one is a social worker one is a hospice nurse um you know they were doing productive things for our society and now they no longer live here um housing is a regional problem and i think you guys are doing a great job um with this project thank you good evening commission uh mr mr ruth let me state uh i'm elderly but i live in the same world as people that are 30 and 40 years old so uh i'm just a little confused tonight because last week or last month at that hearing i heard from staff that the commission does have the authority to require additional parking and tonight i thought i heard different so when the public hearing's over if you could clarify that i'd appreciate it but for right now uh i'd like to focus on parking and last week i sent some questions to the staff and brian thank you for answering those so such detail and one of the questions was how many people can occupy a unit and the answer is the reason why you should deny the waiver for uh the parking requirement each unit can have two people per bedroom plus one in 69 bedrooms that's a possible total of 174 residents now that's probably not likely going to happen but it's not inconceivable that there could be 80 or 90 residents and many of those could be driving age uh you know it's not inconceivable that overflow parking could be as many as 30 or 40 vehicles compounding the problem there's no visitor parking that i'm aware of so that's totally inadequate and and there's little or no on-street parking available in the in the close proximity uh in our overcrowded neighborhood streets so what i want to do we have a petition i have copies for each one of you and there's a copy signed by nearly every resident within realistic walking distance of the of the project and what we're asking is we're not against affordable housing we're against shouldering the burden of the overflow parking on our already overcrowded streets and especially when the solution is so simple all you have to do is require more parking and i believe you have the authority to do that okay thank you all right good evening commissioners thank you for the time to speak my name is ryan meckel i'm here on behalf of santa cruz imbi in support of this project the project in front of you tonight is a very great project it's 36 units it's 100 affordable and it has a great mix of unit types from studios to one bedrooms to two bedrooms and even three bedrooms now that i check my notes again this is an opportunity to help people live closer to where they work closer to where they shop and closer to where they go to school if you want to cut down on traffic on highway one and people coming through capitol who can't currently afford to live here right now this is the project to do that these are people living here who maybe work in capitol right now but they can't afford to live here so they live in wassenville they live even further away commute into wassenville causing the traffic that you see and many of you are upset about if you want to support our climate crisis this is another way to do that people don't have to drive as much you're reducing your emissions and your reliance on automobile transit and instead with a project close to public transportation and again the needs of everyday life people can walk and bike instead rather than drive if you want to vote in support of a project if you want to vote in support of families tonight and in support of affordability and in support of the future of capitol as most essential workers that project is before you tonight i urge you to vote yes thank you i put it down yeah sometimes hard to pull down good evening commissioners my name is elizabeth and i'm speaking in support of the 100 affordable housing development at 4401 capitol a road this development will bring 36 sirely needed affordable homes capitol with the wide range of one two and three bedroom and studio units available for families this project is located on a popular transit route near an abundant near an abundance of amenities including capitol a public library jade street park several grocery stores pharmacies restaurants really any all of all places of residents of this development can walk to that they can walk to but their children really just a magnificent project overall and this is very personal to myself because as a young renter who grew up in affordable housing and really just seeing the opportunities that affordable housing can bring to oneself and their family members i urge you to approve this development so everyone in capitol can have the same opportunity thank you hi um i'm nadeen berck i live at 15 25 47th avenue the corner of 47th and garnet this is my first time speaking so thank you i feel honored to be up here i'd like to throw my support to what micruth said if he had given me the sir that petition i would have signed it too i'm in walking distance my main objection to this is the parking ratio i strongly believe it should be 1.5 which is more than what's on the table um i also have an issue with the height of these buildings this will be the tallest building in capitola and i think i heard something about um it got it's being approved to be 36 feet high and i would like you to consider a design that is a 27 foot high which would be more in the scale of our town um i also would like to add that i think there should be an additional hearing because if one of the five hearings was kind of knocked out over a zoom issue that doesn't seem fair to me so i would just urge you to add that back in um but overall i do like the idea that somebody who makes 42 000 a year or 48 000 a year is going to have a place where they can live in capitola i totally get that but i just agree with the people who've said that parking is going to be a problem because it will we see overflow parking all the time up and down the streets of the jewel box so it's just something that needs to be figured out thank you so much hello commissioners thank you very much for the opportunity to speak my name is janine and i have written separately in the packet in support of this project i will add that my daughter lives in capitola she's along kennedy drive she has um developmental disabilities she was very lucky to be able to find a place to live eight years ago loves it where she lives but this is exactly the type of unit that peers of hers would really benefit from um and she doesn't have a car either but really why i'm here tonight is a friend of mine organized some signatures on a letter and we agreed that i would read it to you tonight so i'm going to read something on behalf of someone else dear planning commissioners we understand that you are considering an affordable housing project in capitola road at 44th avenue at your meeting on march 2nd that location is directly across the street from where we operate a successful salon we're pleased to contribute to capitolas economy with our business like so many others who work in capitola we don't live in capitola it's too expensive to own a rent here or there aren't available places we commute from watsonville live oak san lorenzo valley or other parts of santa cruz county this project would add 36 affordable homes and some of them are sized for families two or three bedrooms we wanted you to hear from people like us who work and shop in capitola and would like to live here we'd like to get our cars off of highway one we'd like to walk or bike to work to groceries and to other services capitol needs more affordable housing so please move the project forward it's from evalyn nicole anita rachel kendra anisa chase kim tori caroline and tamra and i will be leaving the letter here if you'd like to see it with the city oh okay great thank you and thank you again good evening commissioners and staff thank you for the opportunity to speak and thank you to staff for taking on the challenge of the state mandates which don't always recognize the unique characteristics of a town like ours when i sit in your seat about a dozen years ago there are some tough projects that came before me and i knew that one thing we needed to do is always speak on behalf and think of behalf of those who reside here and those who have businesses here i'm not against this project in a general sense but i'm definitely against the fact that only one space per unit for parking as many others have said is completely inadequate um i just want to make sure that whatever you decide make sure you condition it not just for this particular moment at this point of time it conditions that'll last to keep parking alive all these issues to make sure we can keep addressing these things over time uh so please stand tall they have an attorney we have an attorney please stand tall and do it's right for citizens that are business owners of the community while also serving those who are not as privileged thank you good evening Kathy Howard um i like affordable housing i think it's great i have grandkids that need places to live here they don't make a hundred thousand dollars to be able to rent but what i do object to is the traffic and the parking that it is going to produce and those of us who have lived here know that is a real true thing we cannot deny that i have driven down those streets several times since your last meeting and there is not one time that i have not seen those streets almost totally full of cars parked not for businesses just parked and in all of the neighborhoods many of us rent our extra rooms out and have provided housing and we understand for students and other people that need a place to live we aren't selfish that way we do try to meet those needs but it is also cause parking problems in our neighborhoods and i think that to not allow or to waive the the elevator is the wrong thing we have people here who need wheelchairs who would be affordable housing for them to waive that kind of a thing at least to have it on part of the units so it's available to them so i don't think it should be so selective i don't think it should be so stripped down that there is nothing that comes with that but definitely the parking is a huge issue and i really would be very sad that you would not take that into consideration for this town good evening i wasn't playing on talking until somebody said there's a generational divide well last time i checked i'm not elderly and i do not support this project um i support to have housing for those who need it but the parking is an issue but it's not just an issue for our convenience it's an issue of safety i said at last meeting i was here and i'll say it again my 16 year old daughter comes home in the dark and if she can't find a parking spot close to our house on 45th avenue because of the overflow parking that's going to happen that is a community safety issue to have to park far away from your home and be a 16 or 17 year old girl walking in the dark back to your home so i really want you to understand that parking is not a convenience but a safety issue you also said that it is inevitable that this decision whatever you make tonight will be appealed make that appeal happen on the builders shoulders not on the shoulders of your residents that you are here to represent i'm also a teacher guess what i don't make a lot of money but i make more than i can if to live in a place like this so to say that oh it's going to be great for you know teachers and other members of the community well we are stuck as teachers in this don't make enough but you make too much so it's not going to solve that problem either so there's a lot to think about still please consider saying no tonight thank you good evening commissioners my name is nominic spencer and i live on capitol road i've been living there for quite a while in the jewel box i was just fortunate to be able to purchase my home not that long ago and when i was searching for a home i was looking for the character of neighborhood and there is not a single three-story building in that whole neighborhood so the height of the buildings all of it out of character for the neighborhood if it was a two-story building i wouldn't have such a big problem with it being that it's going to be right in my side of you too and also parking is a big issue i know they have studies on traffic i live on capitol road i hear that traffic all day long and they're going to be people living there they're going to have friends coming they're going to have friends driving around down up and down the streets looking for parkings it's just my only concern i think affordable housing is great for the community it's great for everybody but i'm just saying the three-story building so is a little bit out of character for their neighborhood thank you thank you tom bruce i live on crystal street i'm not going to get into the aesthetics of the building and so on and so forth because we that's that's not part of you know what we're here talking about but having lived there for several years and often on for about 50 years if you look at the general area now at five o'clock there's traffic packed up from the capitol to stop sign to 41st avenue parking is already a problem especially for us elderly people who have a hard time getting to our car sometimes so we have a limited access street at one end of the jewel box from three to six because of the traffic we have a one-way street on crystal street one end is one way because of the traffic patterns it's it's undeniable that this many units with this many bedrooms is not going to just compound those traffic problems and when we want to talk about bicycles and you know alternative transportation the more cars that are on capitol road the more unsafe and unrealistic it becomes to ride a bike i mean i ride a bike and i avoid that area um so i think there are you know certainly um a number of safety issues at stake here thanks thank you hi my name is jim Sherman i live on crystal street and i'm not opposed to low-income housing but i am opposed to rejiggering the rules to make a project fit that is obviously not in any other circumstance wouldn't wouldn't fly here and i don't think it's fair to push off visitor parking into our neighborhood excess parking who's going to police that is their um rental service gonna check the people who live there make sure they only have one car per unit or you know who's going to be the one i know who's going to be the one it's going to be me yelling at the creep parking out in front of my house every night it happens all the time there's a steady stream at my end of crystal street of people parking in my street putting on their black shirt their black trousers their windbreakers and walking down into the village and working for the night they come back about 10 30 11 o'clock at night and they leave well when i come home from work and i can't find a place to park because some waiter is parked there i'm i'm not a happy camper and i i would venture to say that probably everyone at that podium has more than one vehicle and so what's good for you should be good for every uh one of us so thank you thank you okay is there anyone else here in the audience who would like to have an opportunity to speak before we go to our zoom people seeing no one i think we can okay okay so uh kalisha uh what she needs to do is to unmute herself kalisha Webster will be the first speaker and she has been asked to unmute herself and she um she'd be able to speak for three minutes beginning now okay thank you thank you who shares my name is kalisha Webster and i'm a senior housing advocate at housing places a non-profit service provider supporting people with development with other disabilities to find and retain affordable housing throughout standard cruise planning and the calling and support of CFP affordable housings proposed affordable housing project at 40 401 will include 36 affordable homes that can keep the levels of affordability apatollas home to nearly 80 a build for development of disabilities more than half of those who are still living at home with age of parents or in living segregated institutional settings outside choice but because of the lack of the affordable housing available to them in the city this vulnerable population from many of whom are facing incomes from disability benefits or working part-time in low wage jobs made in the family homeless at a high risk of displacement or homelessness when parents are no longer able to provide housing and support that they require due to the high cost of housing in kappa pola CFP affordable housings proposed development at 44 401 apatollas road will not only help the city and communities with the goals to keep the levels of affordability with our most difficult to achieve but most importantly it will create homes for the most vulnerable members of the community by including 25 homes with part-time with part-time vouchers at CFP affordable housing project will affirmatively further housing by creating housing opportunities the city's lowest income residents and special needs populations such as seniors and people with disabilities housing choices strongly supports the development of this project we can look at it in transit docking and services as far as the needs community and amenities keep the fostering inclusive communities for residents with disabilities who often do not drive their own cars we urge you to approve this project from before we offer a process and help to see the housing potential in the site and maximize in order to create a more inclusive sustainable act hold on thank you thank you the next speaker will be Mike akhar you should be able to unmute yourself yes i live on apatollas road and i am strongly opposed to this project first of all i never got noticed i have a friend of mine called me that just happened today the developer is on drives he is completely disregarding all the neighbors there i mean this is the most outrageous proposal i've ever seen in my life and i have a degree in architecture and let me tell you something else the tenants that live there are going to be in service because there's no parking whatsoever and when you have no parking what happens is it goes out to the entire neighborhood and the visitors come then they have parties they get drunk they love it all over the neighborhood and it just becomes total mayhem and capitol is not a place for that the second thing i want to talk about is the height of the building it's totally outrageous i think that they should be doing underground parking if they need more parking and it just seems like this project is there just to uh make the developer rich it's really not for the community because we are the community and um i'm just really really thank you thank you the next speaker will be somebody named Wagner if you could please unmute yourself you're gonna have three minutes to speak starting now i'm a 24 year capitol resident prior to that i was a saint cruising a member of the jowling town housing commission and member and then chair for some years excuse me of the city council's housing advisory committee and um first i want to thank you for opening this meeting to those of us or remote second i want to express sympathy for having to deal with state requirements which have changed quite a bit since 2017 concerning the president itself this kind of project is the way that people the human beings all over the world stopped from just boiling the environment and ripping up plans and taking up all the space and left nature of first and intersection of rules a commercial business would open then seven and then right around it i get city housing this is the best kind of growth that one can do is intelligent is environmentally responsible and it works i just would like to say one thing about parking and that is that i've lived in my younger years also a poor musical performer in several places that accommodated people with 30 percent or so the income the last place a couple decades ago was the st george hotel the same cruise there were 100 plus residents there three of the residents at carters over 97 did not i think that when you're talking about housing this this low income you really don't have to worry about the being one our space for you thanks for your time thank you the next speaker will be they're in the zoom as equity transit they've been allowed to speak and they'll have three minutes beginning now thank you commissioners for the opportunity to speak my name is my fault no director of equity transit and we recommend support for 4401 capital road and all affordable housing development i live less than 1.5 miles from this development in my vote the very people that serve this community teachers police officers bus drivers restaurant workers nurses as we heard earlier care salon stylists have increasingly been forced to move out of the community they serve and must follow hours of traffic each day as they commute to and from cities like holister salinas bonas and beyond which means that our essential workers have a little time with their families sharing simple things like dinner together or attending their kids after school games a lack of affordable housing means much of our workforce cannot live in the community they serve which means they have little time to pursue life beyond work and sitting in a car traveling to and from work and traffic while we desperately need missing little housing this housing development helps us meet a need for low and ultra low income residents this project is fantastic in that it is near major transit corner easy biking and walking to shopping restaurants library and has all the hallmarks of a solid infill proposal developing denser housing infill is far more economically wise for our city than developing housing that results in further sprawl developing along our transit corridors minimizing parking and providing secure bike parking encouraging rideshare and giving all residents transit passes are critical if we're going to address the climate crisis and meet our climate action plan goals now i've heard a lot of people talk about the issue of parking and i do feel for that i have a lot of feelings about that however we do need to think in terms of the bigger picture which is our climate crisis issue you look at the book the high cost of parking by Donald chute one parking space costs about $50 to $80,000 creating limited parking moves us into a future where really we can get rid of cars and lower traffic but the necessary balance to that is increasing public transportation and public transportation really is the way we're going to address climate equity and many other issues um state requirements indicate we must build significant numbers of new housing but how we build and for whom we build is very important we must support the development of smart affordable and missing middle in the projects and this all affordable housing project proposed at 404 online capitol road just want to mention the balance of community gathering spaces and wide spaces and older structures all of this together creates a dense urban infill with your public transit which ensures unfortunately um she ran out of time the next speaker is going to be tim willowby tim if you could please unmute yourself you'll have three minutes beginning now thank you i'm tim willowby i'm speaking for affordable housing i'd just like to point out a couple of things the first one is uh that a lot of you wouldn't know this but uh i i know people are upset that the bonus guessing provides some limitations on what local governments can do and there's a lot of focus on on on parking in particular this evening you should know that the fund as was mentioned by the developer that the funding sources for 100 of affordable housing projects dictate even more requirements than the city does and they take into account the distance to jobs the distance to schools the distance to shopping and the frequency of bus availability so in terms of parking part of the funding requirements uh have already looked at this and said this is a good location for it and the second thing i'd like to point out is that there are thousands of people on the housing authority wait list and they don't get to speak for this tonight because they're busy working so i'd like to speak for them for all the thousands of people that are anxious you know waiting for these apartments please move it forward thank you the next speaker will be carlos romero carlos if you could please unmute yourself you'll have three minutes to speak and i'm also a co-founder and then i'd like to share a little about my story i'm a cna nursing assistant certificate i work in a local nursing facility i'm luckily i've been since i've been working as a cna i've been riding my bicycle walking to work and only time that i uh when i want to work uh is when the weather is not great so i have to drive i live by uh right now uh live in roseville and field street so which is like i use walk like 20 minutes to work and my uh from as the cba so much i've been i do much i've been locally here and and this project will be a come true for many of our workers they are community from washington mill uh gilroy uh hollister you know out of the town salinas uh and this project will help a lot of families and and uh you know i don't know is that i followed with the parking but uh i mean uh if we think about it uh we just been helping a lot of families and we've tried uh making living uh thank you for having me thank you the next speaker is going to be andrew goldencrantz andrew if you can please unmute yourself you'll have three minutes to speak thank you commissioners um i am uh uh on the board of santa cruz community health we serve um we're a primary health care clinic we have about 175 employees that serve 12 000 people one of the things that we've seen is that um when we talk to patients about their their health care needs and what gets in the way of them having better health the number one issue that comes up is housing stress for all the reasons that you've heard for the last hour and so we see i want to stress the point that that availability of affordable housing in an infill place as it was stated before is really key to building a healthy community and i think that's what we all want as as members of this community the other thing that i want to bring up is the concerns i appreciate people's concerns about parking and and i know that's an issue and one of the things that's hard but i know that commissioners are aware of this and the city council is aware of this is that the law has changed so that while historically parking was evaluated nearly on the basis of what's happening on that blocker in that neighborhood at this point housing is evaluated housing proposals are evaluated based on the idea of total vehicles mild traveled and so what that means is that if people are being able to live in a place that's closer to where closer to shopping closer to public transit that ultimately the car pressure is less and it gets us away from thinking that the rights of cars are going to supersede the rights of people to live in a healthy community so i'll leave it at that and we totally support this project and hope that you move forward with it thank you the next speaker will be roger shaheen roger if you could please unmute yourself you'll have three minutes to speak beginning now okay thank you so much uh a spirited conversation thank you for bringing this to my attention at least my neighbors did one neighbor heard about it and none of us i repeat none of us in the jewel box neighborhood that i know of received a placard or anything for that matter one neighbor who i reached out to said that he received one that said that this particular situation or this particular issue was going to happen at 6 p.m so there's been a lot of confusion in this whole situation in learning that the previous meeting was canceled or not canceled because zoom had a you know malfunction that that was considered a meeting i know that's brought up like a three or four or five times so far you must do something about that that should not be a meeting i mean let's be clear that's not a meeting my issue is this um okay i know you guys are in a tough spot the the state and federal level really needs and and recommends um more housing and i'm not opposed to trying to help you know the low-income community because that's important i know that people need a place to live and it's difficult in santa cruz county is the most expensive area to live in the country one of the most but my issue is this you're approving a really big project on a very busy street there's there's already been um a person that was hit and almost barely died this last year a neighbor and he's just walking across the street now that can happen anywhere but when you have 30 such units with many many many bedrooms and many people that can live in each bedroom um there's going to be more cars in just one spot per per unit so have you thought about the idea of you know underground parking or you know more parking than in one space per unit because that that's not going to solve anything it's not even going to be helpful for the people who live there um very very seldom for the family of four five maybe that are going to live there in some units they're going to have more than one car and there's just simply not enough parking and what's going to happen is it's going to as everyone said it's going to spill into the neighborhoods and then what happens is you get more crime you get people to say oh there's more cars let's go break into those cars and our capital police is already you know responding to every single incident that they possibly can you're just increasing massive amounts of stress on on our already tax infrastructure i just i'm really surprised that i have to hear about this so secondhand and it's just such a giant project which again i think your your hands are sorry about that roger ran out of time um the next speaker is going to be john if you could please unmute yourself you're going to be allowed to speak for three minutes beginning now ask us all a question and it what would Jesus do would he house our police officers our teachers our nurses um would he build this very reasonable project i think blowing them housing in pethicola is something like 93 thousand dollars a year qualifies you these years about parking are genuine but in a community where a significant number something like 30 percent of our residential homes or second homes anyway we already have room and i also want to just end with one statistic pethicola's population most people who ever lived in our community peak in 1990 33 years ago the congestion is from people driving in to get to work to get to their doctors to reach our services here and if we're not the sort of community that shares our services and shares builds a place for families uh we're a dying place y'all that's a real sadness for me because i really love this place thank you uh have a great night the final speaker with their hand raised in zoom is reggie reggie if you could please unmute yourself you'll have three minutes to speak beginning now i can hear me we can oh thank you um yeah i uh live in midtown of santa cruz um and so i'm about five minutes away from downtown of pethicola five minutes away from downtown of santa cruz and so i just want to say that uh this project is solely needed it's a great project um i think the fact that you have one of these per unit is totally fine um particularly because this day at age the reason why people tend to have uh a lot of parking uh or a lot of need for multiple vehicles is because you have multiple people in a household holding down multiple jobs they need to commute to because rents are so high people are spending most of their income paying the landlord somewhere uh but this housing situation removes that restriction on people because it actually is more in line with what people make now i know it's 30 percent affordable uh relative to am i i don't like am i i don't think it's very representative of what people actually make i think if you look at the viewer of labor statistics and you look at like uh the wages per industry i think that's a much more apt way of understanding what people are making uh for income in a given area because that's your local economy and not just like people who are living there but working in a different city um but this is all just to say i think this is a great project i think it would be a real shame for some selfish homeowners who have some pretty obvious victories against people who make honestly not even these aren't even low wages right like i said this is the average way most people you meet are making this kind of money and this and this is what it takes to have affordable housing for them so yeah um even if you're bigoted against the poor these are not even poor people so uh yeah let it happen thank you okay so that was the last of the so we do have a couple more speakers actually i think i spoke to you soon here um the next speaker is going to be they're labeled as k in the zoom k if you could please unmute yourself you'll be allowed to speak so the full name's not listed but again if you are labeled as k in zoom um it's your turn to speak you'll have three minutes following that we have ralph vernacchia looks like um the first person's having trouble so ralph if you could please unmute yourself you can have three minutes to speak and we'll circle back to the other person all right i think i'm unmuted now yeah great all right so yeah i live on the christmas tree and uh and there's this 2006 and i'm not against the project but i am very concerned about the parking christmas tree nobody has a lot of cars on it and uh i think that uh even though this is a big project i don't see why you can't put underground parking to accommodate digital parking for the units um i also think that uh if you know if they can't put additional parking um is the city gonna look at or the town gonna look at uh permit parking around the area so that way the people that actually live on those streets that she has parking in front of their houses that's all i had thank you but the only person with their hand raised at the moment is k k you have been allowed to speak if you would like to unmute yourself and speak i'll have three minutes hi can you hear me yes hi this my name's kim howard and i would like to speak on um this issue here bear with me one second here i'm having a little bit of a problem i'd like to propose a change to this proposal to the council i'd like to propose a change to the parking to be included um to be included in this would be visitor parking and temporary spaces for deliveries as well as services needed i'd like to propose access via an elevator to the developers if this structure is the idea of servicing people with needs beyond um the ability to um have access to a third story i'd like to propose that there would be required a real view of the bicycle access parking um and what does that look like um and if they would be more transparent about that i'd like the council to um act in our favor as a community and look at these proposals i'd also like to highlight the issue of safety for walking biking and driving recently november 2022 a resident was walking and hitched well in the crosswalk it was exactly at this location i'd like to propose a loop around the buildings versus in and out of access in both areas is that possible what would that look like i'd also like to highlight the fact that a lot of people have talked about different income brackets for teachers police um people within walking distance and most of those people if the criteria is under forty eight thousand dollars do not meet that criteria because they meet just above that so is that criteria changing or is it within that limit i'd also like to highlight the tightness of the streets and the um parking in this area a resident was hit and killed about approximately six years ago in a neighborhood near new Brighton um it was due to lighting as well as parking and those kinds of issues parking on the street the same issue but we're going round and round so i'd just like to propose all these things and um give them to the council to um check out before they approve this okay that was that was the last that was the last there are no other persons with their hands raised at this time if there's anybody on zoom um who would like to speak during the public hearing this would be the time to raise your hand in the zoom app okay i'm assuming there's no one else on the zoom app and there's no one else here in the um auditorium that would like to speak so we will um give the applicant as we said we would three minutes if you would like to speak there's no requirement for you to do that before we close our public hearing okay i think that'll be part of your closing three minutes since that's part of your design team excuse me can you hear me yes oh great okay thank you um this is um my name is Robert Lindley i'm uh responsible with the student t-square and the project architect um i did take notes on on all the speakers uh who came forward to offer opinions and i want to thank all of them for for their constructive comments and i do have responses to several of the comments that were raised so i thought if i could just go through those quickly that would be helpful um number one is um we are doing solar the project is not future solar this is going to be solar that solar panels that will be installed on day one of the project and sort of the project throughout the life of of its you know being online um next is that we we are an all electric building we are not bringing any uh gas to the building so it's a you know greenhouse free greenhouse gas free building we uh one comment about the uh the 44th street beside uh having no entrance um all of the entrances in this building actually are clustered around the stairwells uh that feed from the back of the unit so we we do have windows um to activate that 44 speed elevation the one door you can see is for a needed electrical room for basically for electrical equipment um our bike storage is provided in a fully secured lighted interior room on the project is directly adjacent to the outdoor courtyard that people will be passing through all the time it's right next door the laundry it's right next door to the community room uh and it will be it'll be locked it will be lighted inside and we will have enough space bicycles for all three units of the project and they are all all at an accessible elevation for people with disabilities to address it was another comment made a couple folks thought it was important to have an elevator in the building um to serve uh people with with special needs uh and people with disabilities we completely agree with that so actually all of the ground floor units in the project will be either fully accessible on day one or fully adaptable for people to uh who need um special accommodations going forward so only one third of the units in the building uh cancer people with this with physical disabilities and then um that goes to the the elevator kind idea is also something I wanted to talk about in terms of the thought about doing underground parking underground parking for a project of this size would be um just inordinately expensive uh and it would it would then require elevator mechanical ventilation a lot of a lot of uh ongoing maintenance uh just having a ramp to get down to an elevator to uh subterranean parking would take up a lot of surface area we would then in particular the idea of having trees the landscape okay I think I think we need to bring you to a halt we agreed that we would give you an extra three minutes which we don't normally do so um I think it's time for this to come back I just asked and I just want to say that we're available for any questions as well okay good thank you I was just gonna say as available in terms of availability for questions I'd I'd be as a I'd like to question the architect to finish his comments can I do that uh sure okay okay I don't I don't think that we're gonna give people a second opportunity to speak everybody got one opportunity and so if they've had spoken once there won't be a second time the points that I had noted in my notes here so further questions from the commissioners would be happy to feel those I don't think there are at this time but we appreciate you being available to answer them if they come up later thank you okay with that we're gonna close the public portion of this hearing and we're gonna bring it back to the commission for deliberations and um I think we might want to spend a minute talking about how we want to do this I mean we can certainly give each person the time to go through their list I'm wondering since parking is seems to be you know the major issue of the evening if we want to get a couple clarifications about where we are in relationship to parking and the state laws in terms of questions of staff questions of staff I'm all for that okay so okay yeah um because um it you know I I think uh parking seems to be the major concern for for most people uh about this particular project the number one concern and um as as planning commissioners uh we did all receive a letter from our city attorney um clearly explaining to us that projects of this type are allowed to have um four concessions and that um as a public body as the planning commission those four concessions they are entitled to and that we do not have authority to um deny them those four concessions and one of the concessions which they have asked for is to have a parking ratio of one space per unit and um so um I think a number of us have looked at various ways tried to find some loopholes where uh we could have more parking because a number of people in town uh feel quite strongly that the parking that's being provided is not adequate uh and it's my understanding from our city attorney and from our staff and several other people we have communicated with that uh requiring them to have additional parking is is not something that we can do uh in fact they could actually build this project with no parking um and so um uh I don't if staff would like to add something short no I just want to confirm that exactly um what you just stated chair is chair westman that is correct that within this within a density bonus application the applicant has the ability to ask for a concession to parking and in this circumstance they've asked for a decrease of parking under um the city's code we require 2.5 spaces per unit under state density law there is a minimum required of 1.5 spaces but they're right following that requirement within state density law is the ability it's very clear that they're allowed to ask for a waiver concession for parking on site so um they have come in with the one parking per unit request okay well I just wanted us to all understand um where we are and um uh I think people need to appreciate this is not something the city of captola has decided on or imposed um this is a new requirement in state law there have been over a hundred new laws in the last six years uh relating to what cities can require on these kinds of developments so so for it is on parking I can talk specifically about that so I'm I'm on the parking commission as it turns out and we just are about to submit our final report but as Paul pointed out most of the parking issues have revolved around the village but we are aware of the dense parking problems associated with the village and so if this jewel box is going to now become uh and and start to see some of those issues as well the just to let you know that they yeah the the way around that is with parking permits and restricted signage that seems to be the solution that has been brought forward throughout the rest of the village there is you might also note the city council is going through their budgeting process they have a surplus they're looking actually talking about putting major funds aside for special projects perhaps the public should reach out and say parking structures public transit maybe those are the kinds of things that we need to focus the city council's funds on so there are workarounds or answers that we can address regarding the parking issue in addition to trying to lay it on the applicant's uh lap so just thought i thought i'd throw that out there well so i i get the point you're here for 55 years and 55 years now you don't know how things are going to be and in fact you know people may be transporting themselves around the planet like star trek right but in the short term since parking is obviously a big issue have you reached out to the lomac group have you reached out to the mall owners to anybody to give us a give the community a short term solution to this problem while we work out the longer term parking issue has that taken any action to that i mean literally across the street from y'all is a parking lot that will be empty at night and they on the weekends at least Sundays provide parking for the church so why aren't you talking to them as you know as part of your effort to build community support for this project i think it would be appropriate for you to come up and speak in the microphone so we can have your answer recorded thank you like i said um we meet all the state laws if if it is an issue we will look into that so well it appears as though it's going to be an issue so i think you ought to at least think about what you're going to do when that happens once this project is up and running because your on-site manager is going to get inundated with complaints from the community based on this conversation yeah we'll take that into consideration okay why don't we start down at this end with questions and we'll work our way down could i could i actually just interject really quick just to spin off of um your comment is there any action that the city can take proactive measures to contact the lomat group to because it sounds like there's not only a problem with you know proposed parking that's going to be introduced to this area but there's already an existing problem is there any way that we can you know organize something to where the the general public as it stands now development or not can use the the parking areas or some arrangement that can be made to where the you know the the guys getting dressed in the black to go weight tables down in capitola can use those parking lots is there some type of we we definitely have the ability to reach out and talk to property owners within capitol and ask questions whether or not we could condition this project to have ongoing agreements with those property owners i would have to i think we need to do some research regarding the law that for that like whether or not we could condition i would assume that well i won't even make assumptions but that's something we can look into but we definitely have the ability to reach out to property resolutions and assisting the neighborhood thank you okay thank you um so um i kind of looked at it from a different perspective and i understand the parking is one parking space per unit um to get around the elevator requirement the six of the units is going to be um are going to be accessible so that is requiring six handicap spots so if is there a restriction on those six units only being rented to somebody with disabilities or anything and if not your management plan that you guys your parking management plan says that you'll be enforcing california vehicle code so that no one will be able to park in those handicapped spots unless they're handicapped so that would be net if no one qualified for that the parking spots in the in the your project as designed would be 30 spots at the time is that correct so just to be clear there is no elevator requirement for a three-story building for any type of development affordable or not it's not a requirement so we're not skirting any elevator requirement we on all of our projects these type of projects they have people with disabilities those always get filled but yes those stalls are for people with disabilities they get assigned those but we always have those they're always filled sorry for the screening i meant in the way you guys in your description your project you say you're gonna have six accessible units and so the six accessible units would would have a requirement would have a requirement for a handicapped pilot i think that's how you came up to the six because six is over then once i think required is that correct i would have to defer to our architect on that but i was just trying to get to the point that if there aren't handicapped people that require handicapped parking then there's really actually only 30 parking spots that are going to be available for the residents to use i guess you could say that but we definitely have disabled people living these at all times and so they're they're absolutely needed my next question was on your main sheet you guys have listed out in the verbiage on the general sheet talked about ev parking spaces and there's two ev parking spaces and i think it falls under the california green code and you guys listed out you know four one zero six what you know whatever and then you also talked about it also has to confirm with california building code as i went back and looked at that code and reviewed it it it states to me as i read it and i was wondering if you guys could clarify that um that says where spaces are provided for parking and shall be provided in accordance with this section for those purchased for the purpose of those sections vehicle charging stations are not parking spaces so that per the california building code to two of those parking spaces that are clearly defined as electrical charging stations that i think are mandated by the calph by the green code i'm just wondering um was it how you guys are going to handle that situation and was that going to be net less two parking spaces additionally i would defer to the architect but the way i understand it is that's that's that's a for the calculation for the tabulation of parking stalls that's not necessarily how we would handle it as a management company right i was just trying to get to i just want to make sure that we understand the amount of parking spaces that were being required per unit where everybody in the unit is going to be allowed to use them because how i read the code and maybe i'm wrong in the architect to clarify for me if the california vehicle if the building code says e v are not supposed to be can't be used for parking spaces i think in the parking tabulation for a typical building that would require 2.5 spaces per unit but for this it's not really it's it's a weird area right where it doesn't really add up the same thing but as a management company we have no cars with we have no residents with e v cars we're not going to not assign those stalls to another car but then if somebody comes in with an e v car then you'd have a shuffle yeah i was just trying to follow through the management plan so i just flipped my couple questions about the parking going back to the parking i think it's been mentioned a couple of times and maybe kid you collaborate um you know uh obviously it wouldn't be a condition for the applicant but um maybe it's something that we want to look at is permit parking or preferential parking or whatever the zoning code or whatever the codes are that may that should be discussed and i think that'd be something that probably should be discussed early on before the project because then i think there's going to be it's going to automatically kick in if the project's built well then the people in that project they're living there they've been able to get permit parking to park in their neighborhood too so i think if that is something that's going to gain momentum and that's something it should probably be discussed way earlier ahead of time so those are my couple questions had regarding the parking i's had about what the real number represented um and actually how many people will be able to park there so thank you for responding to those thank you so do you have any other comments or questions you want to make about the project uh oh i thought we were talking just about parking uh no this is we we've covered parking now you could go with anything you would like yeah my next one was um regarding safety and we brought the safety issue up before and we appreciate that you guys went out and got a independent traffic report done i looked at the traffic study from hexagon i think was um and they said that they looked like it conformed and there wasn't a safety issue my issue that i had and maybe we could bring it up um they referred to that there was a driveway with the 27 feet i mean a 24 feet and the plants show that is 20 feet so that's like a deduction of like 16 and so i was wondering um was that a typo in the report um was there an error in that because if it's safe at 24 feet and the drawing show it at 20 feet which is 16 less i was just wondering um if that was can to be reviewed and i mean i don't know if we can want to look at that or just take that for um if anybody else saw that or is your architect because i'm bored was there a mistake on the drawings or was the traffic report incorrect why don't we give the architect and the staff a chance it's just i thought she okay it's not she a one is the drawings would show the dimension and then it was their attachment from hexagon that refers to that the parking width is 24 feet at the driveway and as i read the plan that's a good question which we should get answered um just give them a chance to sure um and let's see um just um and maybe you could uh just i'm trying to i try to go back and try to respond to some of these questions that were asked in from the community um we've talked a lot about the building being 36 feet tall is there um a design code that states um i think we had some interaction last time about ceiling heights and stuff like that could you elaborate that so the community would know what that looks like and why the building is at 36 feet yeah so typically for each level you're going to have around 10 feet or so of space so you have a foot of of ceiling space so you have nine foot ceilings in the majority of the unit and in the bedroom in the bathrooms and hallways you have your mechanical equipment which brings the ceiling down to around seven foot eight seven foot six any lower than that and it's not functionable or livable right nobody wants to live in a seven foot uh high ceiling space in the bathroom and i think it's actually against the the building code so when you add all that up plus a pitched roof you're you're we're as low as we can get and still have a functioning three-story building um okay so um and i think it's just i'm just trying to get clarification because i i've read many of the comments so to get to the 36 feet you have a nine foot ceiling in the in the from just roughly you have a nine foot ceiling in the place you have a foot framing um and so you add that up that gets you to your 30 feet and then you have designed the building to have a four and 12 pitch in some areas and six and 12 in other in other areas which brings up to the 36 so it's purely um outside of the 30 feet like if we usually mentioned that you have to have the rest of it to get to the 36 is from a a designer aesthetic parapet trying to screen the equipment and stuff right right we could stop it at the 30 feet and add your roof dressing and then it would be terrible though you know there's that's an aesthetic yeah i i was just trying to trying to help every get to like when we talked about building me 36 feet tall why i was just trying to get to why that um the next question i had um thank you respond to that um parking we talked about that you guys were looking at the driveway which i appreciate um i think that's all i have right now there's one more if i could come back at the end if i find one more question so can we answer the driveway question at this point yeah excuse me so the flare at the at the curb cut is 24 feet and then the aisle itself is to mention out at 20 feet on the plans um which is the zoning ordinance standard for a parking a two-sided 90-degree parking lot design so i i'm not probably a typo in the report but in any case it does meet the city standard the zoning standard for parking lot design okay so i'm just to clarify and so the the way it's designed it meets the city and just the traffic report that said that it was a safe approach that was just probably a typo you're saying looks like he repeated the dimension 24 feet twice yeah that only applies to the the flare at the driveway apron okay um and just uh when we talk about that on the east side of the parking lot um if i remember correctly from the last meeting we put you put in a no parking zone so that if a car came in they would be able to drive in um it's the same both of them now appears to be the same width um so at the on the east side you could drive in and there'd be a no parking so somebody could i think your words will maybe safely be able to try to turn around come back out and then we don't have that on the west side parking lot and that parking lot appears to be i think longer maybe um was there a thought process around why there wasn't a no parking on that side and was just on the other side yeah the original um traffic study done by dudek suggested to add that no parking so that people wouldn't have to potentially back into that intersection as a safety hazard they didn't feel that was necessary off the 44th um avenue entrance and and louis not trying to lose more parking we didn't add one there okay thank you i don't think you have any more questions than what i asked last time one i think we've exhausted the parking thing um i do appreciate the safety study that hexagon at least reviewed what dudek did i think that answered some of my questions from last time that you know if the Chevy S suburban could make it probably everything else can make it so that's i think that's a good um that's a good report um the only other thing is and i like the proposal this one-and-a-half mile thing or whatever radius we decide is the right radius uh to give preferential treatment to locals so to speak i know you know we don't want to violate the fair housing act but i'm sure some smart lawyers like yourself could figure out language it allows us to give some preference to people in the in the local community the language we're actually at the dime actually proposing came from our city attorney okay so i think that would would help a lot we heard from you know some of the local workers tonight that they would appreciate this you know the ability of the uh at least to to apply for this type of um housing and i think we should we should if to the extent we can give them preference um other than that i think we should move on commissioner wilk any more comments from you yeah um you know we are asked to stand tall on this issue and uh i'm going to stand tall and ask to uh approve this proposal and i don't think an appeal is going to go anywhere because we've been educated on the housing element city council now has been educated on the housing element and the density bonus and we're all aware of the renia numbers which are 1336 which means that parking and density and traffic this is just the beginning we've got once we get a housing element approved and it may be difficult to get a housing element approved if we start disapproving these kinds of projects but if we get a housing element approved it means that we're going to zone for not 36 units but 1336 units i think that's the right number it might be wrong so um this is the changing capitola that we need to prepare for and we're going to have parking issues we need to address those as a city and not place them on the burden of the applicants because if we do they're just going to fall back on the builder's remedy and if you don't know what that is you should look it up so um i would move that we approve the project with the conditions that staff has imposed with the exception of changing the tenant screening statement to include the 1.5 mile radius uh as the chair suggested okay uh before we we mean we can get a second on that the motion maybe we ought to give commissioner christianson well we need a second and then move to discussion someone want to second that motion at this point i think the motion dies for the lack of a second we'll hear uh commissioner christianson's comments um i like commissioner wilk was explaining we do have to prepare for this 1336 housing units the major issue i have is there's no provisions for the neighborhood concerns when it comes to these state mandates which limits our ability to maneuver and it's not necessarily you know you go i think your application was really complete was the architect made a great presentation um i appreciate your attention and time on all points um i just think it's it's worth being said that the lack of provisions for infrastructure and neighborhood concerns is is is disturbing a little bit on a state level um i feel that our position is to come into these types of projects and try to work with the developers because there's going to be more and um make these projects better and in moving in that direction you know working with other types of landowners landowners within the vicinity to use their parking because this is that the um the major concern um or you know the permit parking um trying to figure out how we could focus on those neighborhoods and make them better would be i mean an avenue for um improvement but i mean i i agreed with your with your sentiments just now i just i um i think that's i i don't have a more to to ask for the application i think you've covered everything but those are my thoughts uh for me i think what the state has done to local communities is a really bitter pill to swallow and that is not that um you know capitol is adverse to having affordable housing i think capitol is a pretty unique community i don't think most people realize that less than 50 percent of the housing we have in capitol are single family houses and many of those are quite modest on 40 by 80 foot lots i mean i don't think capitol is a city that you would look at and you know call an elite city or snobs um the city has worked hard over the years to try and have affordable housing um they worked with all the mobile home parks in town to help them to convert to ownership or co-op so they were able you know to maintain that housing in here because we always have been a very diverse community um i think it's unfortunate that the state did not give us any leeway to work with people on projects because we sort of see our goal as a planning commission is to try and make projects better for our community and actually better for the applicants and ones that that are going to work but unfortunately the california state government has decided that that's not an appropriate avenue for us to take that we don't get to make those decisions anymore so we get faced with the choice of you know if we deny a project like this we put the city in great jeopardy of of being sued and going to court and the reality is from from the court cases that have happened so far the project would get approved anyway um and has been mentioned at this end of the table you know the city's been given an enormous number of new housing units um i think 1300 you said 1300 and 36 and there's no um uh consideration the fact that we live in a county that doesn't really have a viable transit system there's no consideration given to the fact that we live in uh an area where water is a problem already for the amount of people that are living here the state has completely in my mind overstepped what they should be doing and um i personally think their goal of building 3.5 new housing units before 2030 is unrealistic you know having said all of that i i'm a planning commissioner and uh we had two new planning commissioners join us recently and as planning commissioners we take an oath that says that we will abide by the laws of the state of california as far as planning matters are concerned and i think we're we're really required to to do that uh or else we do put our city in in jeopardy and i don't think that's a decision that that the planning commission should be making and doing uh you know if this ultimately goes to the council as the city's elected officials you know they can make those those kinds of of decisions and um as we talked about having the five meeting rule limit even though uh some of us may object through the first meeting be called being called a meeting it technically was uh seems to me you know we have two choices we can approve this application tonight even though we have heard the concerns of our community and we understand that this is not what you want unfortunately we're not the people who can change this you need to look at your state elected officials and your governor if if those are changes that you want to have made made um so we could approve it tonight or we could deny it tonight if we're so inclined to do that because um the city can't be sued if we deny it tonight because it still has to go to the city council under appeal because they have to go through their administrative remedy process um before for any kind of legal action can be taken so it's it's it's sort of a dilemma we've heard from two at this end that they are in favor of approving the project and and i do and i do agree we all need to get prepared because if this these laws stay the same way they are the capitol that we've all come to love and live with is is not going to be the same it's going it's going to be different um i don't know if it's going to be completely bad but it is going to be different so um maybe we should hear from this end of the table which direction you want to go my end of the table i studied this lot and i looked at the code especially the density density bonus code that the state legislature passed a few years ago and it's pretty pretty airtight that we can't we can't override that without with the threat of getting sued and and i the city getting sued and and i worked on the finance advisory committee for five years for the city and and you know with jim maupur we built up a pretty good coffer including through covid um you know we have a pretty good reserve that peter talked about as a city but i don't want that reserve to be used on lawsuits what that's that reserve to be used to make the city better and you know if we disapprove it it it will go to the city council and city council can do whatever they want but you know i i'm sort of viewing this in a defensive posture more than anything else unfortunately i don't like that and i really wish you would do something about the parking at least in the short term long term i don't i agree with somebody who said that that will not be an issue i think short term five years ish it is an issue so it encouraged you to do that but i i think we're gonna have to move this thing forward and stop you know just move it down the road um thank you so um i guess i'm at this end of the table um i have um i'm a hundred percent for affordable housing um my comments and questions they come from a different background from building a being a developer and understanding what codes are and trying to research them in so my questions today were around parking was you know if it's one to 36 you know one unit to each unit i wanted to understand was that actual for 36 people to park there and i think you went through and just and defined that i have questions still about the ev my only reason we not for supporting the project tonight would be to push the question to city council to have a question at a bigger level about how we're going to address the community's concerns about parking um maybe that opens a door to having conversation about permit parking or restricted parking or maybe that forces the conversation that we say you can't put on the applicant to have with you know other sources for parking as Courtney was noting um and it makes that conversation happen other than um you know so it just it makes it um a viable conversation that has to be discussed at our elected officials level and then a point of level that we are here tonight but i can't tell you from the project standpoint um you know i have four daughters none of them live in santa cruz county because they can't afford it so i understand what affordable housing is okay and if we go far with this i actually have a couple other conditions i'd like to put on the project um and one of them is that um the applicant is proposing a number of preys on site and they're probably going to be smaller than the size that we are normally accustomed to having being planted and the city of capitol actually has a tree fund with a significant amount of money in it so i wanted to include a condition that the applicant work with staff to see if there can be an arrangement for the city to make some contribution from that tree fund money which has to go for trees to make certain that a larger size tree can be planted in the landscaping plan and on that note we typically require a landscape bond on these kinds of projects and i don't think there's anything in the state law that precludes us from asking for that and i think typically we ask for ten thousand dollars for ten years but since this is an affordable type housing project i think it might be more appropriate to ask for five thousand dollars for five years to ensure that the landscaping is maintained on the project and as i said we have routinely done that on other projects similar to this and finally i agree with everyone i think we need to send a strong strong message to the city council that we're going to have to start looking at our neighborhoods and maybe this ought to be the first neighborhood since they're the ones that are going to be impacted first by a major new development going in to see what we can do as far as providing more parking on the streets is it possible to do some diagonal parking is it possible to have some more traffic calming is go in some more landscaping is it does it make sense to have parking that has limited hours to it at certain times to make the parking work for the neighborhood um you know i i don't know what all of those would be but i think we should send a real clear message to the council that when they look at their next budget this is something that we would very much like to see them do because we've heard the concerns from the neighbors and we understand that you know they're going to have problems and we need to do what we can as a commission to try and make this project fit in and work for for everyone um so with that does someone now want to make a motion on the project my motion died well i can't make a motion so maybe i guess i'll move that we approve this project with the concessions that we've already talked about plus these two if you've got those recorded i guess one of them is city donating trees to the project or funds to help it happen ones yeah and the second one would be a landscaping excuse me because these are new conditions and we haven't even heard of them yet can we respond to them briefly uh you know i think at this point this were if you can make it very brief i will make it very brief and my only point is that the only objective standards that are in the code that were at the time at the project was deemed complete can be applied generally to a housing accountability act project that said the applicant would be amenable to working with staff to as you mentioned use some of the tree funds as well i don't know if the landscaping bond is a a requirement in your code but we can definitely work with staff to talk about that as well right and we can put in wording in there which says that we want that condition if it's um so let me get a clarification on that are you objecting to the landscaping bond or uh agreeing that that's an acceptable condition i don't know if it is a code requirement if it is a code requirement um then we are not objecting to it so we'll say on the condition that if it is a code requirement we will include it if it's not if we're not allowed to do that then it won't be included is that work we have a new section for landscaping within our code there used to be a requirement within the 41st avenue corridor design guidelines to um have to collect landscape bonds i will have to re-review our landscape section but we can um work that into it as long as it's allowed by code okay okay so i think that we have a motion do we have a second a second pardon me if i could just briefly interject i just want to go uh you know uh i believe you had mentioned that the reason for the local employee preference condition was to reduce the anti-vehicle miles travel that's that's correct i i didn't i didn't forgot to make that statement but that that is the reason i think that um having the prefer preferential um clause for people who work within 1.5 miles really should reduce the vehicle miles traveled and that has is one of the stated goals that the state has made then one of the reasons why we have all these new rules related to affordable housing projects thank you jim yes so we have a motion we have a second from commissioner christensen we'll have a roll call vote hi no i want to thank everybody for tonight for everyone's patience your comments uh for being interested in what's going on in the city of capital um can i have a point of parliamentary procedure on item c okay so you chaired the item that we are continuing but don't you have to recuse yourself from that item so shouldn't shouldn't uh court any have asked for that continuance um just uh yeah i think that is technically correct i think the staff will be able to work that out for us okay with that i mean we just i just went through all this training it just sticking in my head i forgot about that yeah so um i seem to have lost the last page of my agenda i don't think we have anything else other than uh directors report for the directors report tonight i have one update for you um our sp9 ordinance was certified by the coastal commission last week so you'll recall that we um had a new ordinance for sp9 in which four units could be on a single family lot and that was certified by the coastal commission last week so sp9 is now applicable throughout the whole city of lima okay and are there any commission communications no thank you all very much the meeting is adjourned