 And then we will move on to our meeting tonight's meeting is being broadcast live on community television channel 25 and streaming on the city's website city of Santa Cruz dot com. If you wish to comment on tonight's item, call in using the instructions on your screen, mute your television or streaming device and listen through the phone. Please note there is a delay in streaming. So, if you continue to listen on your television or streaming device, you may miss your opportunity to speak when it is time for public comment, press star nine on your phone to raise your hand when it is your time to speak during public comment. You will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted. The timer will then be set to two minutes. You may hang up once you have commented. And I would like to ask the clerk to please call the roll. Thank you, Mayor, Council Member Watkins. Here. Calentary Johnson. Here. Brown. Here. Cummings. Here. Golder. Here. Vice Mayor Brunner. President and Mayor Meyers. The agenda item today is affordable housing, streamlined ministerial approval, SB 35 and density bonus study, putting procedural direction for such requests for members of the public who are streaming this meeting. If this is an item you want to come on on now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. The order will be a presentation of the item by staff followed by questions from the council. We will then take public comment and then return to the council for deliberation and action. I just want to make clear for folks who are attending this. Again, this is noticed as a as a meeting and our agenda item tonight is the affordable housing, streamlined ministerial approval, otherwise known as SB 35. And we also will be hearing about the density bonus as well. And we will not be taking comments on the 831 water street project this evening. So I just want to make sure that people are clear. If you are going to comment about 831 water street, I will have to unfortunately stop your comments because we are not taking any public comment on that because it's not the noticed item on our agenda. So I just want to make sure folks are clear on that. So next I want to sort of outline the process. We're going to go ahead and get a presentation by our staff and then council will ask questions. I'll ask council to please just keep it to questions during that period of time. Then I'm going to go out to public comment and then we'll come back for further council and deliberation and action. So I'll go ahead and turn this over. And on my sheet, it says that Eric Marlett, our assistant director of planning community development is here to introduce the item. Is that correct? I want to make sure that hasn't changed. Good evening, Mayor Lee Butler here, director deputy city manager and director of planning and community development. I will be kicking off the presentation. Great. Thanks, Mayor and council members, I'm going to share my screen here. Have the presentation in front of them. Yes, we can see it. Excellent. All right, I'm going to kick off with some framing of this issue. And then I'm going to turn it over to Barbara Caltz. She is an attorney with gold barb Littman and recognized throughout the state for her expertise in a variety of land use issues. And she'll be covering the SB 35 and density bonus items. We also have Sarah noisy with us, our senior planner, who will be telling us about the objective standards process a little bit on that and where we're at and where we're heading. And we also have a number of folks on the line with us, Samantha hasher, our principal planner, as well as Tony, can Dottie, our city attorney and Darcy Pruitt, also in the attorney's office, as well as a number of other staff. Should you have specific questions as we go through the presentation? All right, so I'm going to start this off by giving you a little bit of context of how we got here. And some of the housing production stats from throughout the state that have led to some implications like housing price increases and really frame the legislature's analysis and give sort of a snapshot of the legislature was looking at when they started approving a whole series of new housing bills back in 2017. And many of those are a number of those, I should say, have important changes with respect to cities, abilities to affect land use within their jurisdiction and the helping accountability act and SB 35 changes to those have substantially altered the landscape in which city councils and planning commissions and zoning administrators can review and consider projects. So I'll jump right in with some of the stats that we have related to housing production over the last 20 years. You can see here that the projected housing need as identified by the legislative analyst office, as well as the State Department of Housing and Community Development, the need is about 100,000, 180,000 homes annually. And you can see here, we dropped way down back in 2009 and for the past seven or so years, we've been hovering at or below about 50% of what's needed. And the big drop in 2009 was the great recession that was fueled by poor home lending practices and just a quick aside, the jurisdiction that I was working for at the time went from approving thousands of dwelling units to approving 120 units in 2009 in terms of building permits that were approved. So huge drop off and you can see that was the case across the state here and many people left the construction industry and many haven't returned. They said, hey, this is too volatile. I've got to go find something. And so labor has been an issue since that time. And then a few years later, we lost the. And they were a key tool in the production of affordable housing. So I'll share some stats on our affordable housing deficit in a moment as well. You can see here that the trend has continued in the last few years. I started with the 2016 numbers because that's when the legislature really started looking, that's the snapshot in time that they were looking at. And you can see here when they're, when you take that past table back out to 1980, there's still only a few years in the early 80s when we were even close to the overall housing production between single family and multifamily that we've seen over the last 12 or so years. And you can see here going all the way back to 1954, 60 years plus that we are at really historic low levels. They're only a few years where this where the housing production has been as low as it has been since the great recession. And that has some significant implications on our housing supply as well as implications in the market. And so I'm going to talk to you a little bit about a few of those that the legislature was looking at. We have the second lowest home ownership rate among the 50 states. We have a huge percentage households that are rent burdened, especially when you're looking at lower income households. So those making 80% of the area median income or less 80% of those households are rent burdened. And even when you look at the moderate income, which goes up to 120% of area median income, even when you look at that. For 41% of those individuals who are renters are rent burdened. Here we've got a 1.5 million unit shortfall in rentals just in affordable and just in very extremely low income units. That's just in those very low and extremely low income categories. Huge lack of supply in affordable housing that the legislature was looking at. And again, you can see the source was 2016. This is this is the snapshot in time that they're looking at. And then the legislature also looked at the transportation associated with housing and they tied that they recognize that the transportation costs are also a factor in reducing the affordability of renters and of living in California. And so that that factored into some of the policy decisions that they made as well. And I'll touch on that in a few minutes as well. The legislature looked at. Strengths at every stage of the development process. And they found that they compound to create a large gap between the projected housing need. And the amount of housing that's actually built. And you can see a wide range of those on the slide here. Everything from restrictive local regulations to community resistance to development costs, all contributing to that gap between the housing and the housing that was being created. And so given this this framework, it's no wonder that the legislator legislature responded by creating a wide range of policy changes. And the first one that I'll talk about really briefly is updates to the housing accountability act. So a lot of people are aware of SB 330, but even before that there were substantial changes in 2017 that took effect as part of AB 31 94. And the housing accountability act has been reframed to reduce cities ability to deny a project or reduce its density. If the project meets objective standards. So the objective standards issue is not just one from SB 35. It's part of every housing project now that is applicable under the housing accountability act. So it's a really wide ranging approach that the state legislature took. They also made changes to the density bonus. Just a few years ago, the maximum density bonus increase was 35%. And now with AB 1763 and AB 2345, you can go up to a 50% density bonus, or if you're 100% affordable project, you can get an 80% bonus. Or if you're close to transit, again, where the legislature was looking at those transit costs associated with overall living costs. If you're close to transit and you've got 100% affordable housing project, the density limit is removed entirely and three extra stories can be added to what's otherwise allowed by the regulations. So again, the legislature is doing a lot of changes to help housing development forward. Equal changes were done. Grant funding was provided. The first grant funding that came through was SB 2. And I'll note that that grant funding, the city said that we want to do our objective standards. This is the direction that the legislature is moving. And so there are three cycles of grant funding. The first one that we did was for the objective standards process. And that's the one that is furthest along because we started that as the first grant opportunity that we got from the state related to this overall package of housing bills that has been coming through each year since 2017. And of course, you know, we're here to talk about some of the streamlining efforts that they have talked that they have put in place related to SB 35. And SB 35 applicability is tied to the regional housing needs assessment. So I am going to speak to that for just a few minutes before I hand it over to Barbara Couch to talk about the SB 35 specifics and density bonus. So the regional housing needs assessment is a state requirement that's handed down through the council of government, which here is and bag the association of moderate Bay Area governments. So essentially the state requires that each jurisdiction adequately plan to meet the housing needs and each city has to adopt a housing element that will show how the city will meet those needs. The housing element is a part of the general plan and the state doles out what's called the regional housing needs determination. And that is the total number of units that needs to be planned for throughout the region in our case that Santa Cruz and moderate counties. And the council of governments and bag association and moderate Bay Area governments for us then divides that up in what's called the arena, the regional housing needs allocation. So each city, each county gets here's how much housing you need to plan for based on the different income levels. We're currently in the cycle of the arena numbers and that stretches from 2014 to 2023. We report each year to the state we have to provide a report by April 1 and they've expanded the data that we have to provide substantially but the key indicator is still building permits issued. So let's take a look, a quick look at what we have as far as our regional housing needs allocation status updates. So the the table this table has actually been updated from the one that you saw earlier this year and it's been updated because we had a developer that provided some additional units in their project. That we were able to count towards the very low income level, even with that, we have only achieved 32% of the building permits that we need to issue in order to meet our 180 unit total in the very low income. We're doing two thirds of the way through the reporting cycle and we're not even one third of the way to achieving the very low income totals. You can see that we're doing pretty well in the low moderate and above moderate categories. And that is, you know, that's laudable and I'll get to get to in a second why that has implications for what category we applied, what category of applicability we have from SB5. But just want to point out that even though we've done fairly well, the next round of regional housing needs determination is going to at least triple. So we just got just on Friday, we received the statistics from the state went down to and bag and and bag distributed to the cities. You can see here that from 2014 to 2023 during that nine year period, we had to plan for 10,430 units. We're having to plan over the next eight years for 33,274 units. So we can expect that the numbers in this table are going to be up significantly. We don't know what those are yet they they haven't as part of the green allocation but we'll know in the coming months. And the last two slides that I have before I turn it over to Barbara are just that we are not alone in having SB35 applied to us. This is the region. If cities have not achieved adequate market rate housing production, then they're in this 10% category. You can see the blue is the 10% category. Actually, there's a carve out in the Senate in the San Francisco Bay area that triggers 20%. But nevertheless, cities in our in Santa Cruz County, the county, for example, they're eligible any project that has at least 10% affordable housing is eligible for SB35 streamlining. We're in the category where a project has had 50% affordable housing in order for it to be eligible for SB35 streamlining. And you can see across the state here, going back to those numbers that we were talking about that across the state up and down the state we have not been producing enough housing. And this shows that there are only a few counties in gray here. They're very few and far between where they do not have the SB35 streamlining applicable to them, either the 10% or the 50%. And you can see the majority of the state actually has the 10% applicable. So with that, I will turn it over to Barbara Caltz, and she will give you an overview of SB35, as well as a primer on the density bonus. And then Sarah Noisy will talk to you about objective standards and then I will round out the presentation before opening up to any questions. Members of the council, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you very much for asking me. So I am going to initially give an overview of SB35 and then talk about density bonus law, which I know the city has more experience with. SB35 is government code section 65913.4. It was adopted in 2017 along with a whole slew of other housing bills in 2017 was really when the legislature began to make major changes in housing law. It's amended every year since then some minor changes, some major changes. In addition, the Department of Housing and Community Development, HCD has published a whole series of interpretive guidelines, which we also use in trying to parse out SB35. I will say that although the bill has been in effect for about three and a half years, it didn't seem to be used very much. So here we've seen many, many of our clients having their first SB35 project. So I'm going to talk about SB35 in two parts. I want to first of all, explain the basic requirements that a project must meet in order to be approved under SB35. Secondly, I want to describe what the process is as written into the legislation and some of the options that Santa Cruz has in terms of processing these projects. Next slide. I just pointed out the legislature has been very concerned about the housing crisis and for better or for worse, they view local government as one of the primary reason that more housing hasn't been built in the state. I think the answer is a little more complicated than that, but that is the belief of the legislature. And although this language was not attached to SB35, it was attached to the Housing Act when it was amended in 2017. And you see here that the legislature intends to curb the capability of local governments to deny, reduce the density of a render infeasible housing development projects. And if you look at that, that's really the bills each year have been stricter and stricter in trying to require that cities actually approve housing developments. SB35 goes farther than the Housing Accountability Act was mentioned because it severely limits the scope of review and to some extent the extent of public participation, which I'll discuss later. So next slide. First thing I want to talk about is what kinds of projects can qualify for SB35 approval. So it has to be a multifamily unit in an urban area with 75% of the perimeter develop. Either the general plan or the zoning has to allow for residential use of mixed use. So if the general plan has a mixed use designation, but the zoning doesn't potential a project can still qualify for SB35. And two thirds of the floor area must be residential. So it allows fairly extensive mixed use projects as part, which can all mixed use projects, which also are eligible for SB35. One of the big limitations is that the site can't have contained any housing occupied by tenants in the last 10 years. If the if the housing was demolished in the house last 10 years, the site isn't eligible. If the housing is subject to price control, it's not eligible. So effectively SB35 is confined to vacant sites or redeveloped commercial sites. Another big limitation in Santa Cruz is that the site can't be in the coastal zone. And in addition, can't be in egg land, can't be a former mobile home park, can't require the destruction of a historic resource. A site in a floodplain, a fault zone, a fire hazard area, or a hazardous waste site can qualify to meet certain standards. Next slide. For I bet in Santa Cruz, the housing has to be 50% affordable. And if I could congratulate the city, I think your housing production, including your affordable housing production is really commendable and much more than I've seen in most cities. So what does it mean for the housing to be affordable? Under SB35, half of the units Santa Cruz for a site to be eligible have to serve people whose income can't exceed 80% of the median income. The rent test is based on 30% of 60% of median income. And it also has to meet any city inclusionary requirements. For instance, the city allows somewhat higher rent than SB35, but all the housing has to meet the SB rent standards. And conversely, the city requires that 20% of the units be affordable in perpetuity, but SB35 only requires that they be affordable for 55 years. So in this particular case, 20% of the units in a 50% affordable project, 20% would be affordable in perpetuity and 30% for 55 years. Next slide, please. Just as an example of who the affordable units will serve, the maximum household income here are around $70,000 for a two-person household, around $90,000 for a four-person household, and the maximum rent for one bedroom is about $1,300. Three bedrooms, $1,700 a month is lower income households. Next slide. Another major requirement is that projects that have more than 10 units must pay prevailing wages. So what are prevailing wages? They're wages that are set by the Department of Industrial Relations that are typically varies to union wages. There are also apprentice requirements, fairly extensive administrative requirements, and they're to be enforced by the Labor Commissioner. It appears there's fairly heavy penalties if the developer does not pay the required rate wages. In addition, if the project involves a subdivision, i.e., if it's a for sale project, the project has to use a skilled and trained labor, which translates mostly to union labor or has to have a project labor agreement. Developers feel that prevailing wage requirements increase costs by, I've heard, 15 to 20%. I've heard, I believe that unions think that's too high, but in any case, there are extensive administrative requirements to go along with this. Anyway, any project that qualifies for that uses SD35 has to pay prevailing wages. Next slide. And then, finally, a qualifying project has to be consistent with objective zoning subdivision and design review standards. A project is considered consistent with the zoning if it's consistent with the maximum density in the general plan. So if a general plan allows, let's say, 10 to 30 units an acre in a zone, but the zoning only allows 20 units an acre, the project is entitled to use the maximum density in the general plan, which is 30 units an acre. In general, the zoning, the general plan trumps inconsistent standards that are in the zoning, a specific plan, or another document. The city is directed to find a project consistent if there's substantial evidence that would allow a reasonable person to conclude that the project's consistent. So the burden of proof, if you like, is directed to try to find projects consistent with the objective standards if there's substantial evidence that the project's consistent. And lastly, if a project receives a density bonus, a parking reduction, a waiver or concession, and I'll explain all of that when I talk about density bonuses, it's considered to be consistent with the objective zoning standards. Next slide. So what is an objective standard? Well, the legislation defines it in this somewhat mind-numbing definition that involves no personal judgment and is uniformly verifiable by reference to an external benchmark can be known by both the development applicant and the public official prior to submittal. So the most obvious types of objective standards are for height, setbacks, different distance from property line, how much open space must be required, the density, floor area ratio, all those kind of set standards. I will say that someone said to me, well, if you can argue about a standard, doesn't that mean it's not objective? Well, one of our lines is that a smart attorney can try to make anything seem unobjective. So the mere fact you're arguing about what a standard means does not mean it's not objective. I was dealing with a city with a city that had parking standards shown to be the parking space had to be eight and a half feet wide, 19 feet long, and someone was trying to argue that a parking space that was narrower and shorter still met the standard. So the mere argument does not mean that it's not objective. But I think this is a very strict standard. And one needs to look at whether if you look at the standard, you could figure out what's required. So I have a number of examples here. Next slide has put out a book on objective standards, trying to distinguish between design guidelines, which they consider not objective and design standards, which they considered to be objective. One of the differences are they need to be requirements. They can't be just recommendations. They have to be measurable. And they should use terms like shall and must, or is required to rather than should or may. So while this provides more reliability for a developer or more, more ability to know what's required. Design standards are inherently going to going to allow much less flexibility. Next, they provided some examples of what they thought was a guideline and what what was considered a standard. So a guide for writing articulation to reduce the mass of the building. And as opposed to a design standard, which is that at every interval of it, at least 100 feet has to be a break that's offset by at least five feet by 25 feet in length. So that means that if the offset is four feet and 20 feet in length that no longer qualifies and no longer meets the objective standard. There'll be much less flexibility, be more predictability. Next one Lee. Okay, so this there have been a few court decisions where the courts have talked about what is an objective standard and what is not. This particular project was a 320 unit project in one of the wealthy Silicon Valley cities suburbs. So the city had spent a great deal of time developing a specific plan for the site had approved the specific plan. And then, but when the project came in, they put up story polls and there was community kind of community outrage and the development plan. Denied on a three to two vote. The developers presented rather voluminous evidence of conformance with objective standards. And there were no the staff presented no objective standards that the project didn't conform with. So the superior court decided that the housing accountability act had not been because the denial was not based in objective standards. In order the city to make appropriate findings under the housing accountability act. Next slide. So this was one of the objective standards in the specific plan, which I'm certainly not going to bore you reading, but you can see it. Detailed standard about, for instance, in this case, how high does to be measured. Next standard. Sorry, next slide. So the court said that the reason that the city had denied the project, the standards on which the denial was based objective. It talked about addressing the unmet need for senior housing. The project actually had a 50 unit senior housing development. And the court said, you know, there's no standard here about how many more senior units it would have had the city would the developer would have had to provide. There was a standard about reflecting the look and feel of the community. And at the hearings various slides are presented about what the community was. But again, because the court said this is not objective. And then in the one published case that looked at objective standards. The Court of Appeals said that the subdivision map back standard finding that the site is not physically suitable for the project is similarly not an objective standard. Slide. So that project is it was eventually approved by the city and it's now under construction. Next slide. What other types of objective standards can the city use a city can request studies. If they're required by an objective standards, for an example, a noise study is if a noise study is required when exterior noise levels exceed 60 decibels to demonstrate that interior noise does not exceed 45 decibels. That kind of a study can be done. But here's a case where where there's not an objective standard. So if the city has no standard for the adequacy of fire of action route evacuation routes, or no standard requiring as part of every application that the adequacy of fire of action routes be looked at, the city does not have the ability to ask an SB 35 application to look at this, even though it's a health could be considered a health and safety action from how a project qualifies to be eligible for SB 35 review. I want to talk about SB 35 processing. One of the advantages to the applicant are there's no review under the California Environmental Quality Act. The city is allowed to do what's called ministerial review only based only on objective standards and that's like building permits. And they're very strict timelines that the city has to meet when reviewing the project. Next slide. So the first step with SB 35 processing is that the applicant has to submit a notice of intent in the form of a preliminary application. So preliminary application was a type of application was instituted by SB 330, which went into effect on January 1, 2020. And there's a list of information that can be required that that someone needs to provide to have it be considered a preliminary application, which is specified in state law. The city can't require any more information as part of the preliminary application that is listed in state law. And I would call a preliminary application kind of a mini schematic planning application. But before to be considered a notice of intent, it has to include all the information that's listed in state law. And the significance here is that the city standards are those that apply when the notice of intent is submitted. Assuming that the preliminary application includes all the required information. So at that point, the city standards are frozen. Next slide, which was instituted last year in September of last year of 2020. This is a consultation. So the city has to notify Native American tribes that are associated with the area where the project is located within 30 days after they get this notice of intent. The tribes have 30 days to respond. If no tribe responds, then the applicant can submit the SB 35 application with any tribe responds and says they would like to have a consultation. The consultation has to start within 30 days. And a developer cannot submit, cannot use SB 35. They can obviously apply under another process, but they can't use SB 35 if there's no agreement after the consultation with the tribe. Next slide. So assuming that the tribal consultation is over and the project's ready to be submitted. Then at that point, the actual SB 35 application is submitted. And so the city is required to post its application requirements and relevant objective standards for review. But if the city hasn't done that, the city still must accept an application that meets the requirements for a standard multifamily entitlement. Essentially the application cannot require something nearly because it's an SB 35 application, aside from showing, for instance, that the project conforms with the prevailing wage and other requirements. But in general, the actual planning application can't be more detailed than what the city would typically require for a design for its last entitlement. In Santa Cruz's case, what would be required for design review application, but that's a fairly pretty detailed set of plans. And as I mentioned, the city can require studies if they're required by an objective standard. The next next slide. So then within 60 to 90 days of the submittal, 60 days for a project with 150 units or less, 90 days for a larger project. Project, I mean, the city must provide a list of any inconsistencies with objective zoning and design review standards, or the project is quote, deemed consistent with the objective standards. And as I mentioned before, modifications under density bonus law don't make a project inconsistent with objective standards. The city can't simply reject an application is incomplete. Rather, it has to explain if some information is missing that it needs to explain that it can't determine if the application conforms to the standards because information is. So if the project is either inconsistent with a standard, or if there's insufficient information to determine consistency, the city can deny the project under SB 35 is not eligible because the project is only eligible if it meets objective standards. The applicant is free to resubmit under SB 35. 60 to 90 90 day clock would start all over. The applicant could also decide that they can't meet the standards and just an apply under the city's ordinary procedures. If there's only minor problems, the city could allow the applicant to correct them within the first 60 to 90 day period. But essentially, if the project doesn't conform with all objective standards, then the city. And also if it doesn't comply with the other 35 requirements, the city can't deny the app the application. The applicant is free to free to reapply and the clock starts ticking over. And then the last step is design review, which must be completed and a decision on the project must be completed within 90 to 180 days of submittal. 90 days again for a project with 150 units or less. 180 days if the project has more than 150 units. The city can complete any design review. There also can be any, there also can be public oversight of the housing of a public hearing can be held. Public oversight is prohibited from this is language directly from the statute inhibiting chilling or precluding the ministerial review of the project. And the design review in the public oversight has to be strictly focused on assessing the compliance with the objective area. There's a very limited form of public design review or public oversight, and it has to be has to be confined to the city's objective standards. When the project is approved, the city can apply standard conditions of approval or other conditions that are based on objective standards. The applicant still must apply for a building permit. A design review application is not the equivalent of construction there are needs needed for a building permit. And any other ministerial permits before they start construction, they're allowed to change the project by up to 15% of units or 15% of square feet, either an increase or a decrease. The advantage of the original standards that were in place when they made their original application. The city can, however, apply current building code standards as they change and can require the usual building permit studies, such as a soils report and stormwater. The project is 50% affordable and receives public funds beyond tax credits. The SB 35 approval never expires. Otherwise, it expires generally three years after approval, or if there's litigation three years after the conclusion of the litigation. The approval remains valid so long as rating or some kind of construction on the slide has begun. Next slide. Understanding is that the chief item on the agenda tonight is how Santa Cruz wants to wants to do its SB 35 process. The staff will do an initial review under this during the 60 to 90 days for conformance with the statute with the objective standards. The city has the option of holding a public oversight hearing within the 60 to 90 day period. And at the conclusion of that period, a letter will be sent to the applicant regarding conformance with all objective standards. Next slide. And so with that, that's the conclusion of the presentation on SB 35. And so with that, I want to give a density bonus overview. So essentially density bonuses give a developer who provides affordable housing, senior housing, even if it's not even if it's even if none of the housing is affordable land for affordable housing or student housing gets is entitled to four different. What I call incentives, one, they can get more more units bonus units. The parking standards are reduced or limited. And then they can get what are called incentives and incentives are the same thing. I don't know why they use two words for it. And they can get waivers. The bill density bonuses were originally adopted in 1979. And the bill's been amended 27 times. Like SB 35, it seems to be amended every single year. This year alone, 19 bills were introduced that would amend the density bonus statute, although only a few of them are passing, I believe. And it's generally been supported by the legislation to encourage affordable housing and provide a means for developers to modify local zoning standards. Also, unlike SB 35, it applies in the coastal zone. Although all the applicable requirements of your local coastal plan has to be met such as those around habitat views and public public access and open space. Next slide. Table shows the density bonus that's available to mixed income projects. As pointed out already, the maximum bonus has been increased to 50%. And a very low income project with as little as, I'm sorry, a mixed income project with as little as 15%, very low income housing is entitled to a 50% density bonus. A low income project with 24%, low income is entitled to the 50% bonus and one with 45% moderate income. Generally, in our experience, developers find the 15% very low income option to be the most beneficial. There's not, if the project meets our affordable housing and it meets all the income and other limits in the, in the statute, there's really no grounds to deny the developers request for the additional density. Next slide. For 100% affordable project, we already went over this, all 100% affordable projects are entitled to 80% bonus. And within half a mile of a major transit stop, there's unlimited density, plus either three stories or 33 feet. Next slide. So here's an example of an S5 project in Santa Cruz. So let's say the project without the density bonus could get 100 units. It's required to have 50 affordable units. It can get a 50% density bonus. And so with the density bonus, essentially a third of the units end up being affordable. There'll be 100 market rate units and 50 affordable units. Next slide. One other, I didn't provide a slide about this, but developments are also entitled to parking reductions. There's large parking reductions available for projects within half a mile of a major transit stop. But in any case, the city can't require more than one parking space for studio or one bedroom units, one and a half spaces for two to three bedroom units and two and a half or four or more. The developer is entitled to incentives or concessions. And I'll explain in just a minute what an incentive or concession is. But basically, a project that's 100% affordable is entitled to four concessions. And the other project is entitled to anywhere from one to three concessions depending on the percentage of affordability with a 15% very low income project entitled to three concessions. Next slide. So what are incentives? The definition in the statute is that their modifications of development standards result in identifiable and actual cost reductions that provide for affordable housing. And the city can obtain reasonable documentation, that's what the state, but not a study to demonstrate that the incentive meets the definition. So cities formally required proformas to demonstrate that the incentive was necessary to provide for the affordable housing. But if you look at the history of the statute, that the intent of not allowing a study seemed to be to not allow proformas. Now the city is limited to reasonable documentation. So typically the type of evidence that's provided is evidence, first of all, of the cost savings, often from a contractor showing how the modification of developments to reduce costs. And some evidence that those cost savings help to provide for the affordable housing. There is no requirement specifically that the city waive any fees, provide any money, or waive any of its dedication requirements as an incentive or an incentive. Santa Cruz allows some incentives with no further study to encourage developers to use those incentives. For instance, a developer can get a 20% increase in lot coverage without providing any more evidence. Next slide. An incentive, though, can only be denied if the city can make one of three findings. One is that there's a specific health or safety impact or impact on the physical environment or on historic structure that can't be mitigated. That what the person is asking for violates state or federal law, or that it can make a finding that it doesn't result in cost reductions to provide for affordable housing. Typically in order for the city to make that a last finding it would need to hire its own consultant to review the developer's report because the city is required to have substantial evidence to make these findings. And the burden of proof is on the city if it denies the application. Now what's a specific adverse impact? A specific adverse impact has to be significant, has to be a significant, quantifiable, direct, and unavoidable impact based on objective, identified, written standards, policies, and conditions. So an example might be a requirement to underground power lines in a very high fire hazard area. That would be an objective identified standard which probably cannot be mitigated, which maybe cannot be adequately mitigated if the power lines weren't undergrounded. So that might question that concession. The city might be able to make that finding or possibly a landslide that's too large to be adequately mitigated. But a city, even if there's a, but even if there might be a standard, for instance, inadequate fire evacuation routes, if the city has no standard that was in a, and the project was submitted, it can't deny based on that, based on that finding. Next slide. Additional modifications of development standards that developers can request are waivers. The city can't apply a development standard that would physically preclude the construction of the project with the density bonus or the incentives that the project's entitled to. And as you noticed here, the developer can request an unlimited number of waivers. It's removed from any kind of economic justification. Santa Cruz has what I think is a very good process where it looks at the base density of the project without the bonus. And basically looks at what kind of waiver is necessary to accommodate the additional density or other changes that the project might be requesting. Like the findings to deny a waiver are very similar to those that must be made to deny an incentive. If the development standards don't physically preclude the project with the density bonus or the waivers violates state or federal law, or they have a specific adverse effect on health safety or the physical environment, or an adverse impact on a project on the California Register. And the grounds for making a finding of denial are very limited. And just to talk a little bit about the differences between incentives and waivers, I kind of look at them this way to try to distinguish them. So the developers can save the developer money to help make up for the cost of providing affordable housing. And so some examples I've seen recently was where a city waived required utility underground and not in a high-fire hazard area outside of fire hazard area, or waived a requirement on masonry wall. And waivers are needed to allow the project with the bonus to fit onto the site. And you can think of examples, increased height, increased floor area, reduced setbacks, something that's necessary so that you can still fit the project onto the site. And so if you have a bonus being requested as part of SB 35, the density bonus essentially has to be processed within the SB 35 timelines as part of the application. And if there's a public oversight hearing, because this is one application, the density bonus requests would be heard at the same time. They need to be processed with timelines and as part of the rest of the application. There is only one published SB 35 case, which just published a couple of months ago. There's several density bonus cases. The legislature wants both of these statutes to be interpreted very liberally by the group courts. And so the language for SB 35 is that it should be interpreted and implemented to afford the fullest possible way to the interest of an approval and provision of increased housing. And density bonus similarly has to be interpreted in favor of producing the maximum number of housing units. And next slide. We've litigated both, we haven't litigated any SB 35 but we've litigated a number of Housing Accountability Act and density bonus cases. And we've observed that there's a great deal of pressure on the courts to favor housing. In the most recent cases, the courts had the housing approvals and overturned denials. The Ruegg B. Ellsworth and Ellsworth B. Berkeley case, that's the one published SB 35 case is an example. In that case, the court, in a ministerial approval, the court is supposed to give great deference to the city. And in that case, the court really overturned years of established precedent and said it needed to give no deference to the city. Particularly with density bonus cases, there's significant attorney's fee exposure as the city denies the project. And it's later, its denial is overturned by the courts. And there's, and we've discovered these cases is very cost, even if the city is ultimately successful. And so with that, I will conclude my presentation and be happy to answer any questions. Good evening, Council members and members of the public that are joining us here tonight. My name is Sarah Noisy. I am a senior planner with the advanced planning division in the housing and the planning and community development department. And I just have three slides here really quick to talk about one of the projects that I'm working on, which is the project to develop objective standards for multi-family housing. And I understand a lot of members of the community have been a little confused. They're hearing about objective standards that apply that we have to use under doing an SB 35 review. And they say, well, we're just writing objective standards now, so that must be funny at all. And so I just want to talk a little bit about what my project is, what this is going to do for the city and what it's not going to do. And then just tell people how they can participate if they're interested in participating. So this project to develop objective standards for multi-family housing began based on some council direction we received in August of 2019 to reconcile a discrepancy between our adopted general plan and our building ordinance to fully implement the general plan and bring those two documents into alignment with one another. So that assignment dovetailed really nicely with the grant opportunity that we mentioned at the beginning of our presentation for SB 2 to actually also go ahead and use grant funding to develop objective standards because we needed zoning standards for these places where we had general plan land use designations that weren't fully implemented by the city's zoning code. And so this project is doing a couple of things. We're developing zoning standards for those places where we don't have zoning standards that fully implement the general plan. And then also we are writing a set of design standards objectives, design and development standards that will apply to all multi-family housing built everywhere throughout the city. And that essentially takes the process that we have relied on heavily that our code is built around for project review, which is making findings for design permits. So these laws that Barbara has been discussing SB 35, SB 330, they really take the effectiveness out of that process of review and that process of making findings. Those findings are with one exception. There are 10 findings, eight of them applied to residential development. One of them is an objective standard. The rest of them are very subjective. I paraphrase a couple of here and sort of shorten them, but, you know, building design is compatible with the design of existing buildings in the neighborhood. So, you know, what does that mean? How do we incorporate that into our code and really interpret that, you know, reasonably protect against factors which make the environment less desirable? I mean, we're trying to write things into our code so that we can actually measure and define these things and working with the community to figure out what are those things that really are, you know, need to be defined and determined and have us write standards that govern the site and building design for new multi-family development throughout the city. Next slide. So what our, what the project won't do is we cannot, through a nine standards, reduce building size, density or number of units that's allowed on a site. You know, a process to do that would have to simultaneously relocate any of that density or unit or building size to another site. So that would kind of be in the process of a general plan amendment that would be sort of a citywide effort. And as Barbara has discussed, the density bonus proposals can still get waivers and incentives on the density bonus law. The idea with these writing these objective design standards is that site design and building design will have to meet some objective standards, some basic minimal set of objective standards so that we don't just have, you know, her box buildings that meet the building envelope that's described in our current objective zoning standards. And our thinking and some of our hope here is that as we have more standards to apply, more of those standards will also apply to density bonus projects. So for example, you know, we had the example earlier about providing some relief in the facade of a building and putting a break in there that's a minimum of five feet deep and a minimum of 25 feet long for every 100 feet of building facade. So that's obviously disrupting a very large building and that wouldn't be the appropriate standard to have in every location in our city but you know that might be something along those lines might make sense on some of our larger sites. And I think it would be really hard for a density bonus proposal to say that that physically precluded development so I think that would be the kind of standard it would be hard to get a waiver for. So, you know, could there be some incentives and concessions perhaps but then there's a limited number of those so as we have design standards that apply, more of those will end up applying to these density bonus projects. Next slide please. Where we are right now we've completed our community survey and our focus groups to really hone in on what are those important features that define the character of Santa Cruz that are things we want to preserve and make sure we see moving forward in family development as it happens over the coming decades. Our next step is going to be a community review of the standards so we're we have our administrative draft we're working that through with the consultants and sort of trying to iron out a bunch of the details. And then we're going to have as many of the details as we can before we send that out for community review of these standards and we're shooting for that to happen sometime in mid October. And those that standard the standards and the the for collecting feedback that's going to be open for a minimum of four weeks we want to make sure that people really have time to spend some time with this content it's that there's a lot of information here and a lot of detail in these projects that we have plenty of time to really sit and think about them and give us thoughtful careful feedback because I know our community is really able to do that and really willing and committed to doing that. So we're shooting then for public hearings with these proposed objective standards for multi family housing in the winter of 2021 maybe a little bit after the first of the year. Thank you Sarah and Barbara. So I'm going to wrap it up here and I first want to do a quick review of the the density bonus here and I'm going to I'm going to try to stay out of the weeds related to this but I also want to explain the thought process and hopefully that will come through here so so the density bonus hearing. Our municipal code actually requires a public hearing this is not state law but our municipal code does and it says that if there's no public hearing then the zoning administrator will hear it. The zoning administrator can refer to the planning commission and the planning commission's decision is appealable to the city council. The important factor here is that state law trumps local law and we would not be able to go through that public hearing and the appeal process within the timeline set the SB 35 mandates. So in the agenda report of say of having the council say yes we're going to consider the density bonus as part of the consideration of consistency with objective standards was just to try to meet the intent of both both our zoning code which should be a public hearing and the state law which says you need to do it quickly but frankly the the the SB 35 language it trumps the the local requirements for a public hearing the the local requirements for a tentative map or for a design permit they would other to a public hearing are not required as part of an SB 35 application. So really the the thought was that or the point is that whatever body whatever entity is reviewing for consistency with objective standards will at the same time be reviewing for the density bonus criteria and as Barbara talked about in depth you know our discretion in both SB 35 project and density bonus is really limited but I apologize for the confusion there were a lot of questions from the public and others related to that recommendation with respect to density bonus projects by the council and really it's just there needs to be a determination on it and whoever is making the determination for consistency with SB 35 should also be making the consistent the determination of consistency with the density bonus hopefully that clarifies that the next thing that I wanted to clarify is that the review for consistency with objective standards can be done by a in a variety of ways and you all have that option tonight that's really the consideration that is before you this evening that can do that administratively the second bullet here is shows a quote from the SB 35 language which says that there's also an opportunity for a public oversight meeting that can be done by the planning commission or the city council or an equivalent board or commission so so the zoning administrator could do it at a public hearing the planning commission could do it or the city council could do it and the staff could do it administratively you saw in the agenda report the recommendation that we had which was to bring the that the council serve in that capacity for the public oversight meeting and I wanted to just briefly elaborate on what went into that we're all aware there is a application in for an SB 35 project that's generated substantial amount of community interest in the interest of transparency we thought maybe the council will want to do this as a way to maximize transparency that said I have to point out that we are putting everything that we get related to SB 35 the SB 35 application that we have in we're putting that on our website so we're aiming to be as transparent as possible and we're putting that up immediately it's up on the website typically within a day we've heard some some concerns about the the council's role in this oversight meeting as well and those related to there being a limited role for the public and there absolutely is and Barbara talked about that that you know the role is or whoever is determining the consistency with objective standards it's really focused on that consistency with objective standards and not on any subjective information and then there's also some concerns about the politicization politicization of the decision and just wanted to put all of that out there for the council's consideration say that you know if the council wants to go in an alternative direction we're happy to do that and we're happy to feel any questions that you may have about whether it's you want to give it to staff administratively staff at a zoning administrator hearing or planning commission at a planning commission hearing one of their meetings or the council can take it up and as you saw in our agenda report we were recommending that the the council considered but we're happy to take whatever approach is the desire of the council and with that I am sure that you all have many questions and staffers to address those as best as we can. Okay. Thank you. We and Barbara and Sarah for the presentation. So we'll go into council questions at this time. So again just focused on questions at this point and go ahead and look to see if we have any hands up from city council members council member Brown and then council member Contar Johnson. Thank you. I will say thank you for all of the information. It's a lot and even for somebody who has spent some time with this material heard presentations from you. Thank you Barbara for being here. And our staff it still is like just astounding how complex it is. So my I have some kind of clarifying questions I guess and some of these were referenced but I still don't know that I would be able to answer them. So I'm just going to put them out there and I'm taking this opportunity I think also because Barbara because you are here. So and I know this is your this is really your wheelhouse. So if I could just ask a few if that's the mayor if that's all right if I just ask those questions and we're okay. So is it sounds like from what I heard in the presentations that this may not be an issue because of what properties can be developed using SP 35 but it would federal relocation law be applicable if there was any like federal project if relocation was needed or is that just not an issue because of the vacant property and property zone property zone in particular ways kind of qualification. Yeah, I think all the replacement housing and the relocation requirements probably don't apply to an SP 35 project because there can't be any rental housing on the site in the last 10 years I guess if somebody were buying a you know if you were buying it from an owner then anyway and the relocation wouldn't apply anyway. Thank you I just wanted to confirm that okay. And then in terms of the question about how they're just ways I hate you know the I mean it sounds like it is disturbing when we should think about it that way but are there in the case where site may contain how they're just ways or have been designated in that way. What's needed to document that as there are some kind of list somewhere I don't need to know what all the details are but is that clear and you know to the applicants or general public and people who are interested how one would go about. There's something called the court list that that lists has a very comprehensive list of hazardous waste sites in the state. I've seen in some new legislation they seem to be changing how they're doing it, but basically if it's on that list they would have to have evidence that either the State Department of Public Health Water Resources Board or the Department of Toxic Substances Control DTSC had cleared the site for residential use. Thank you got it. So following up on that. Just wondering if our SB 35 projects subject to all of the requirements like you mentioned water quality, the regional water quality. You know the it's not embarked anymore the Monterey Bay Air Pollution and Control District. Caltrans and those kinds of standards all would be applicable. Right the stormwater requirements are you know this I'm sure the city has leverage stormwater requirements for instance it has to the project. And thank you and it sounds like just the reference I think on how the prevailing wage requirements kick in made me feel pretty assured that that's monitored. But if the city doesn't have to play a role in that or how does that I've seen let's say for the projects that have been approved the cities have typically applied conditions, but as the statute is written the city is not required to be the monitor of the prevailing wage requirements. Okay, thanks. Thank you. Thank you. I have council member counter Johnson is next. Thank you. Thank you for all of that information. And there's a lot a lot to digest. So one of my questions is, can our city or have any other cities developed like a community development guide or best practices in the process of reviewing SB 35 like how I understand. Public hearings aren't required. But have there been community development guides that have that have led the process for these SB 35 applications. I mean, I think the city of San Francisco at some of the earliest applications so they have a fairly well developed guide on their website. But I haven't. My clients, to be honest, are kind of, you know, rushing to get application forms together. I'm not aware of any, you know, of any kind of standard SB 35 application that someone has put together. Okay. And can can a jurisdiction expresses intent for for neighbor aesthetics and character within SB 35 projects or is that go against what SB 35 is trying to accomplish. Well, the city had objective design standards that, you know, related to neighborhood character the city could have could could enforce those. But other than that, you know, of course, the city can talk to an applicant and ask an applicant, could you just, you know, make some changes. There's always discussion. But there's no legal part of the developer to make changes unless they're reflected in an objective standard. Okay, I understand. There were there were a couple of examples provided. The building design is compatible with design of existing buildings and neighborhoods, reasonably protect against factors which may make the environment less desirable. Those are some specific that objective stand objective standards would replace those type of permit finding a way that would measure and define those particular components. And how, how does that look like how does building designs compatible with design of existing buildings and neighborhoods. How can that be. Could you provide like, I don't know if I've done that here might be better able to do that. You know, I was asked if anyone has actually adopted objective standards. Most of my clients are really in the position that the city is in. They're working on objective standards. Someone put out a something on the list of I believe Morgan Hill has actually adopted some standards and mother some standards. But mostly what I've seen is have been drafts. And so I don't have an example that I can steer you to. We've been we've been looking around at lots of jurisdictions through our process and and you know lots of jurisdictions have pieces that are objective. And so, you know, a lot of what we're doing is sort of like trying to take the best pieces that we've found and then compare that with what we've heard from our community in terms of like what's the most important thing. But so for example, you know, compatible with the neighborhood that might turn into like 10 requirements. Right. That's going to be a height standard. That's going to be an FAR standard to some degree. That's going to be a requirement for, you know, what happens on the ground floor and how the entries look. That's going to be requirements for high quality materials. It may be requirements for specific roof pitches or architectural features, you know, if neighborhoods have like a really strong character. And largely what we found in Santa Cruz is that the character and what people prefer about Santa Cruz is this eclectic mix that we have. So I'm trying to translate that into standards that like, you know, hold something to to some kind of bar has been a bit of a challenge, because, you know, people want to see a mix of roof forms. But, you know, do we require, you know, a minimum, you know, like changes in the roof form every, you know, X number of feet for the building and then that has to be coincided with like setting the facade making a change in the depth of the facade to some degree. So it's really defining that what is this character that we see and then let's write standards that can make that work given the amount of housing we have to supply a big one for Santa Cruz is about trees and landscaping. And so we're thinking a lot about like, how can we make sure there's space for that? How can we incentivize keeping those existing trees on properties so that they, you know, stay as part of the skyline. So, you know, things like that, so that, you know, fits in with community character is going to become kind of a laundry list of things. I see. Okay. And then just maybe, well, maybe this is a comment. So I'll just, I'll just hold on to that. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Golder. Thank you guys for the presentation. My question is one that a lot of constituents have been asking me and what would happen if the city did not or does not meet green allocation? Really nothing. I mean, right now the, right now the penalty is being subject to SB 35. But there was some talk, there was a bill proposed, SB 215, that was going to, I think, a mid-cycle discussion with HTD if the city hadn't met its arena allocations, but that was substantially amended to take that out. Right now there aren't, there aren't penalties for not meeting arena allocation. There's stiff penalties for not having an adequate housing element, not, you know, violating the Housing Accountability Act and so forth. But hopefully the legislature recognizes that cities don't build housing and there's not sufficient funds to build all the affordable housing that cities have been assigned to build. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Next I have Council Member Cummings. Mayor, my question kind of follows up on that. So, I know our planning director, we about to mention that 1.5 million is 1.5 million unit shortfall in the very low and extremely low households in California. And I know that, for example, you know, probably close to 2010, 2013, we saw an uptick in the number of units that got transferred over to vacation rentals, whether it's BRBO or Airbnb. And, you know, that has created, you know, incentives for more investment and different jurisdictions have done things to kind of regulate the number of BRBOs and Airbnb's that can be in communities. But I'm wondering what's being done to take into account the units that have shifted from very low and extremely low into some of these in a higher moderate or very high. Or even taking off the market and gone into like Airbnb and BRBO. I know in Santa Cruz we see that happening a lot where, you know, older landlords who have owned property for very long periods of time, you know, provide those units at what is now considered, you know, low and very low are retiring and now those homes are being sold for market rate and transitioning to becoming market rate homes. Is there anything being done at the state level to track this? There's been initiatives at the city to kind of track this, but, you know, that has a very big impact on, you know, like we can meet our renails one year, but then if we look and see how many units are still within those categories in another year, they can dramatically shift and we can be losing, you know, more affordable housing that we're creating. So I'm just wondering at the state level, has there been any initiatives or efforts done to kind of track where housing is kind of shifting over time to meet these goals? You know, I'm not aware of any, you know, someone, you know, maybe aware of bills that I'm not aware of, but I'm not aware of any efforts at the state level to deal with that. There was an effort some years ago to remove the state property tax exemption for second homes, but that didn't go anywhere, you know, which is a similar issue. We're, you know, properties used for second homes and it's not available, but I'm not aware of any initiatives at the state level regarding Airbnb's. Lee, did you have something to add on that? Thanks. I'll just add, and I'll actually lean on Sarah for a moment here, but I believe that while the state, I'm not aware of things that the state is tracking related to that either. But the recent updates to ADU law to specify that cities have the ability to prohibit short term rentals. Is that accurate? That's true. Unproperties that have ADUs, cities retain the right to require, but it's just a right to require. It's not a, you know, the state doesn't mandate that ADU properties be used for long term rentals. Thank you. Yeah, that was that was my recollection. And then just to add on briefly to the prior comments related to the implications of not meeting Rena. There are some conversations about certain grant opportunities not being available based on with the rent targets. And then there were also some conversations related to carryover. So if you didn't meet your Rena goals in one cycle, they would carry over to the next. I don't know the exact status of those, but I think it's safe to say between the bill that Barbara was referencing as well as some of these. The state is looking at ways in which they can add more teeth to the Rena targets and reaching those. And I think it is a balancing act because the cities in general don't build the housing. You know, a developer has to come in and build the housing, but to the extent that that isn't happening, they're looking at ways to incentivize it to happen like SB 35. I had a follow up question regarding the Rena numbers and kind of the Rena goals. I know that it was mentioned earlier in the presentation that these are numbers that are at the county level. And so I'm just kind of curious, for example, when the city of Santa. County are meeting their Rena goals versus other cities that are not attempting to meet those Rena goals, especially for those very low and low designations. I guess like what control do cities have over ensuring that they're not overburdened with kind of having to meet these goals that other cities aren't, you know, meeting or attempting to meet. So the way that that is, the way that cities can influence that is through conversations with Ambag. And so what Ambag is doing right now is going through a process whereby they establish here are the priorities that we want to look at. So we want to focus housing growth near existing jobs or future job projections. Do we want to focus it near existing public transit or future planned public transit or both in either of those cases. And then they're looking at a variety of other things like farmland preservation, avoiding wildfire prone areas or the wildland urban interface. So they're trying to get a policy level and agreement of how this distribution will occur. Once that and then that's in process right now. Once that agreement is made, that's what they'll use to divvy up those numbers. And then what they do is they go out and they'll have those conversations. And they will, they'll talk to the cities and say, hey, you know, what did you think about this? And the cities will look at all the other cities and point out the, they see with respect to penalization. I have not, I have not been through a cycle with Ambag where the reallocations were provided, but I have with ABAC, the Association of Monterey Bay Area Government over the hill. And when those came out, there, there were potentially considerations of, well, you have housing in the past. And so, you know, we're going to reward you for that with more capacity. I think that, that in general, the approach that I'm seeing here in with Ambag is one where they're trying to establish those policies first. So, you know, I do expect that, that, you know, we, we meet a lot of those triggers. We're not in the, the wildfire areas. We've got relatively larger amount of public transportation. And so, you know, when, when that comes down, when that arena allocation comes down, they're going to be looking at all. And we may also want to still advocate that, hey, you know, it doesn't look like this person or sorry, this city is getting their share of housing and while there isn't transit there now, there could be, for example. So, you know, that'll be, that'll be a back and forth conversation that we have with Ambag in the coming months. And then I guess one final question. There's discussion around significant attorney fees exposure. I think those around the upholder upholding and rejecting denials for housing. And I defend costs. Even if some of these court cases were successful. I'm just wondering if there's an opportunity for cities to countersue in situations where, you know, they feel that they're on the right and you're trying to fight some of these cases around. You know, whether they can connect with whether they can reject the approvals certain types of housing and they're found to be the founder when those cases. These can really only collect attorney fees if they're if the if they can show that the lawsuit was frivolous and that's a very high standard to meet. Anyway, anyway, it's it's really a asymmetrical situation, I would say where it's relatively if a city loses, it's relatively easy, except in some cases. For the other side to get attorney fees and it's a very difficult almost impossible for cities to get attorney fees. There is a provision that if a project is if someone sues to challenge the approval of affordable housing project under very limited circumstances, the city could require that the plaintiff post a bond. But then you have to have evidence that the intent was because the person didn't like affordable housing. As you know, most of that litigation is is in terms of the California Environmental Quality Act or something else. So I think, you know, it's just a very asymmetric situation right now. Thank you. Those are my questions. Thank you, Council Member on my bond to Vice Mayor Brunner. Myers. Thank you, Barbara. And Sarah, I recognize one of those slides from Berkeley. Forth Avenue, Perth Street there. So my question is Barbara, I was on slide 43. I don't know if there's an easy way to go back to that slide. Maybe my numbering is different. I only have my own slide. There were numbers on the bottom of the slide. Which one is that? I'm sharing it. Is this the one you're referring to? That says 44. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. I wrote slide 43. Okay, I just wanted to confirm those numbers that were shown as it moved through pretty quick. Okay, thanks for confirming that. And then my next question was how many cities have city council have their city council make the determination of consistency to objective standards versus the other options of zoning administrator, planning staff, planning commission. So far with our clients and I certainly can't say, you know, we represent every city in the city. So far we've had SB 35 project, but all the, all of our clients so far that have had SB 35 projects have had them just reviewed at the staff level without a public hearing. Do you know of any cities that have city council make the determination of consistency to objective standards? Somebody mentioned teamie valley to me, but I don't know if that's correct. I can speak to, I know that the city of Watsonville recently had their council act on an SB 35, 100% affordable SB 35 application. Thank you, Lee. And then for city attorney Tony condati, what is the legal risk if any for city council to see the determination of consistency with objective standards. It's awkward for me to discuss legal text of a public meeting because normally I would advise the council and close session and invoke attorney but you have received communications from a couple of different groups asserting that the city council does not have the legal authority to to review projects under SB 35 and I happen to disagree with those assertions but should the council review the project or a project that comes before it and and decide that the project does not conform with the city's objective standards and I would expect that to be raised as an issue in the litigation and I and I also suspect that it wouldn't be the controlling factor in a court's analysis of whether or not the city acted appropriately but it would be a a factor that would have to be litigated. Okay, thank you. And maybe my question is around the process of determining consistency with objective standards. What does that process look like? How long does it take? Are you going and doing a checklist and determining I understand that objective standards are going through and finding the language that is must and shall versus maybe but what is that can you describe and walk us through what that process looks like? So essentially what happens is a matrix is put together and on one side it's got the objective standards from all of the relevant documents so the general plan has objective standards and we look at the general plan land use designation if those standards are being met. We look at the zoning ordinance to see what standards are being met there. There are provisions in the subdivision ordinance that we look at and in area plans that are applicable so we would go through all of those and identify here are the objective items and then we would evaluate the remainder of the matrix we would evaluate does it conform or does it not conform and if it does not conform then we have to actually specify the reasons why it does not conform. And so that's essentially the process of mining all of those standards evaluating the project for consistency with those standards and then if it is not consistent identifying the reason for the inconsistency. How many people does that take and how long is that process? Samantha would you like to comment on how many people you are working with on that? Sure. Introduce yourself for the council. Samantha with the current planning department. So yeah we have been working with all of the relevant department so fire department, water department, the public works department, the city attorney's office. And we actually went through the code and all the policies and plans like Lee was describing and we pulled out. We went through every single standard and said whether or not it was objective or not objective and then whether or not it could apply to a project. And I believe that with our new objective standards process we're looking at potentially having checklists put together that could assist us in that and make it a little bit more user friendly with this new objective standards process. But it's been a very time consuming process. Like six months, six weeks, every day, eight hours a day. That's a good question. Can you define what a very, what that process? Many staff, so not just as Samantha was mentioning, not just staff in our department, but across the department. There's, there've been a lot of people dedicating a lot of establishment or the pulling the objective standards out to understand which ones would apply in SB 35 instances, which ones don't as well as a lot of time with the attorneys working back and forth on. That applicability. So, first of all, Lee, as Samantha stated in the future going forward future SB 35. So, the process could be a little easier. Once those checklists are in place and once Sarah's project is through that process of established and objective standards. Is that accurate to. To assume. Yeah, I think that's accurate. I think that's what we're hoping for. And then, um, sorry, I just have so many questions. I thank you. Thanks everyone for your patience. I'm trying to wrap my brain around all of this. A lot of information. So thank you. If city council were the public oversight. To determine the body to determine consistency with objective standards. Would we be the ones going through and doing all that or staff brings it to city council having already done that and we have to. Double check staffs work to make sure they didn't miss anything. What does that look like? We would be doing the work and presenting it to the council. So that matrix. That I was talking about. What would be presented to the council. For the council's. Consideration. I'll just add that. For SB 35, we're only required to. Provide the applicant with the areas where they're inconsistent with objective standards. We would provide the council with, you know, the full gamut of. Where the. And not consistent for your review. But we could also whittle it down to the areas where they're inconsistent if there are any. And then we would have to go through and determine if that's. Accurate by going through all the policies and codes and. Determining that. We would be providing that analysis for the council based on our professional recommendations and the consistency or inconsistency with objective standards. Would be laid out in terms of what we believe is accurate. And the council could confirm or ask us questions really. I have a couple of questions that constituents also wrote in. I'd like to ask them. I don't know. That they were answered in the presentation. So. This is regarding prevailing wages. And for construction workers. However, it is. What is construction? It happens offsite and onsite. Is it. Only for onsite construction or. Any, any work done with. A project, a development project. You know, I can't answer that. There was just a new supreme court case. That changed what the prevailing wages apply to and said that certain work. That we had assumed was subject to prevailing wages not. So I'm not sure I can give a clear answer on that. I don't know. If Tony or somebody can, but we could. We could provide that information later. Okay. And then someone asked about the oversight of prevailing wage. And there's an oversight person. My understanding is that there's an oversight. Person. That would. Enforce that. Wage. With the state. She says that the labor commissioner. Will enforce the is authorized to enforce the prevailing wage requirement. Okay. And. So this Rosemary, I just wanted to note that. The city of course deals with prevailing wages on its construction contracts on routine basis. And I just wanted to say that there's a recording mechanism that happens. I think monthly. And then there's typically a sort of a check. So it's done very root nice from. I think it's the department of industrial relations is the reporting agency that. That happens. And I would presume that it's not just. If you are required to pay prevailing wage and then that's who you report to, whether you're a public agency or a private. Entity. Right. Thank you. Question was. One moment. Can we come back to me really? Is that possible? Sure. Can we, can I switch? Can I go to Martina? Yes. Thank you. Council member Watkins. Thank you, mayor. A number of my questions have already been asked and answered. But was one question that was brought up by a constituent around sort of the staff clarification of. Cities that are. The areas of the city that are within one half mile of a major transit. Stop and leave. This question was forwarded to you. If you have any further clarification on what was. I'm asking regards to kind of where that falls into. Our city. In terms of awareness, but also in terms of what that means for classification for a density bonus. Sure. So. We do have that information posted on our GIS. It's actually under a. A layer. And I can. I can actually. Pull it up right now. So everyone can see. So under the, this is our standard GIS. And under. The layers. You go down to planning. And then down towards the bottom, the revised density bonus. It gives the. One half mile of transit. And. With respect to. The. The. Density bonus and SB. 35. The leave. And I'll. Lean on some of my colleagues here if I'm, I'm misspeaking, but I believe that. That. There is. Minimal. Influence. Especially when it comes to parking, you know, so parking SB. 35 applications. They actually have a different definition. It is proximity to public transit. And it's not. The. The density bonus and SB. 35. Believe. And I'll lean on some of my colleagues here. The. The. The. Parking is in transit and it's not defined as, as high quality transit. Versus. In the dense. Is defined as high quality transit as a half mile. And. The. The parking allowance is in SB. 35, if you're. In proximity to just any transit, then there's no parking. Requirement at all. Is my recollection. And then. parking requirements if you're in proximity to high-quality public transit. I think when there's two applications that the SB35 provisions are going to, in many instances, allow for greater flexibility in terms of no parking standard. I'd ask if any of my other colleagues would like to join in by either misspoke or. No, I've been nodding, as you said. Thank you. Yeah, the SB35 standard is if you're within basically a half mile of a bus stop, there's no parking required regardless of how frequently or infrequently the bus comes. Sorry, just to make sure I'm clear. Then the overlay of the density bonus has been the high-quality transit location. Is that correct? Or how do those two interact with SB35 and then the density bonus? I mean, yeah, go ahead, please. Well, SB35 is going to be lower parking ratios. SB35 is lower parking and it's less restrictive. As Barbara was saying, it's any bus stop, any public transit, whereas I think that the, and I'd have to go back and look and maybe folks know, but I think it's 15-minute headways for two lines. Two inter-sixing lines, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, so that's the definition of the high-quality public transit. But under SB35, it's much more broadly applicable and the lower parking ratio. And then, sorry, so in terms of the 15-minute headway during the monitor on a regular basis, I mean, obviously, just for our bus stops, right? So is that monitor on a regular basis? Because it seems that we've also heard this inconsistency with how often the bus stop kind of is frequented. So how is that sort of monitored, I guess, to be a clarifying question? So I believe it's set forth by the regional transportation group and back. Yeah, usually in terms of determining whether there's intersecting lines at 15-minute intervals, people look at the bus schedules rather than actual monitoring the, rather than actual setting, sending someone to sit at the bus stop. It's usually what the scheduled bus service is. And I believe there's something about existing plans. I think that the layer on our website is related to both existing and planned. Right. Okay. If it's in the regional transportation plan, then it's a planned major stop, yeah. I see. So it doesn't need to necessarily be true as much as come frequently, but it could be a planned expectation or hope, and that's how it will qualify under that. Well, it has to be in the regional transportation plan, which a little bit more reality. It means it's a project that's scheduled to be funded, but anyway. Okay. I see also that our transportation engineer is on the line here. So, Nathan, if you'd like to jump in and provide any, if we're misspeaking on anything, then just go for you to jump in. You're muted, Nathan. Nathan Wendt, city of Santa Cruz, transmission manager. I think you guys are correct. The metro does have planned, you know, the increase of headways on Water Street. I don't know about the intersecting line on on France at 40, but I believe it does have a high quality transit board because it is planned and I believe it is an RTP. Okay. Thank you. And then my other question, which I think has already been answered is essentially there's no real role for a planning commission in this process to weigh in as our advisor's body. SB35 is really working around allowing those steps to take place. Is that accurately sort of summarized what I've taken away from this? I would say that they could. Okay. So, but, but really in the way that it says the law is issued in, you know, Barbara, I'm stepping in for you here, but it says that the city may have a oversight meeting and that oversight meeting can be done at any of the regular approval bodies. So for us, that could be the zoning administrator. That could be the planning commission. That could be the city council. What isn't really expressly clear and correct me if I'm wrong, Barbara or Tony, but is there isn't anything about multiple hearings? There isn't anything about like an advisory body recommending and frankly like the timelines particularly for projects that are less than that are 150 units or less are such that it would be really challenging to have to, to have an advisory body and a another body weigh in on that decision. Yeah, I agree. It's challenging, but not necessarily impossible is what I'm hearing. Yeah, if there were, you know, for example with the greater than 150 units when we've got 90 days to do that initial determination, you know, that would be more feasible, you know, to actually do two hearings within a 60-day period. You know, that's, that's really tough. It's tough to do one with getting all of that analysis done and pulling all those materials together. And this will be my last one. Have there ever been any circumstances which you have like a joint planning commission council hearing? I've had joint planning commission questions. I'm not a hearing, I don't know, Barbara, if you've seen any of that. I guess it would depend on what the role is, you know, they don't know if Tony wants to weigh in. I mean, it seems to me that both bodies could meet, both of them could, but if the decision, the decision has to be with one body or the other or with the staff, if they're meeting together just to give comments to the staff, I wouldn't see a problem with that. But I think if, you know, at some point, one or the other has to be assigned, if it's not, the staff isn't given the authority to make the determination and has to be one body. Yeah, I guess I would just agree with that. And that I think of having a joint meeting like that sort of with sort of muddles the goals of the different decision-making bodies. OK, yeah, thank you. Vice Mayor Bruner, did you have some additional questions? Yes, I found the other question. It was regarding questioning whether staff could be objective in their assessment of determining consistency with objective standards. And is it true that planning department staff received significant income through a pre-application phase of these developments, therefore making it a conflict of interest for them to be considered in the role? I can address the conflict of interest question. It seems to me that planning department staff are all salary. And so, you know, fees that are paid by a developer defray the cost of processing an application, which is a function of the general fund. It really has no bearing on planning department staff income. And with regard to whether my staff can be objective, I think that's an interesting comment given all of the correspondence that the city's received in the past week, suggesting that council members cannot be objective because they're more influenced by political pressure. So, you know, I think you can make that either way. I think the correspondence from the pro, you know, the applicants, legal counsel and the advocacy groups in favor of approval of the development have suggested that staff are uniquely qualified to evaluate the project objectively. That's their argument. So that really cuts both ways. And I would add that our fees and my recollection and Sam, this is your area, but I think our fees for preliminary reviews are really inexpensive. So they're not adding really much at all to our revenue, which does go to the general funds, but which does also, you know, we aim for cost recovery. But I think they're on the order of like a few thousand dollars. Samantha, very insubstantial in that overall scheme of the revenues that we bring in. We actually encourage preliminary reviews so that issues can be worked out early in the process and that we can communicate with the community early in the process before substantial investments have been made into full sets of plans. And so one of the ways that we do that is with a low cost for that preliminary review application process. OK, thank you. Is that it? Yes, thank you. OK, I think most of I think all of my questions have been answered or asked and answered. I had a question about the one question I I do have a question about is the. Maybe a little bit about. Our existing conditions of approval. And how those sort of relate to objectives, how those relate to. I guess kind of the approvals. The analysis of consistency and or basically being something consistent, because there's really no approval, right? I mean, I guess it's the it's the thing that's. A little bit out of whack in that we're so used to this idea that we get to approve something and what SB 35 does is it just takes all our approval, right? It just it removes that it's not we haven't it's a ministerial action. So if you and Barbara I was looking at some of the some of the language in a in a document. I think you're one of the authors of that was done for the League of Cities. And there's a there's just a there's a sort of a recommendation that. Conditions of approval may play a role to some extent. To address inconsistency inconsistencies with objective standards. So I'm just trying to understand what that relationship would be like and what that what that I'm just trying to understand that concept. Barbara, I don't know if you can speak to. Yeah, I think I was talking about the Housing Accountability Act in that paper. But but yeah, there is actually an approval and the approval problem may have conditions. So it may look, you know, at some point, let's say that the project conforms of all objective standards, the city will issue an approval and say your your project is approved. The guidelines that HDD has published actually say that the city can apply standard conditions of approval that would apply generally to projects. So I don't I don't know if if you have standard conditions, most cities do. So you can generally apply those if they're applicable, you know, and there may be there may be other conditions that are necessary to make the project comply, you know, with objective standards that the city may elect to to to apply. But generally, the project is supposed to be modified in the case of an SB 35 project. The project, you know, be modified or at least the developer has to agree to the condition, I think, for it to be eligible for an SB 35 approval. If the project doesn't comply with an objective standard, then it's not eligible for SB 35 approval. But there is actually an approval at the end of the line, you know, OK, yeah, I think you're saying all of the city will issue an approval. OK, so if a if a condition of approval was was so conditions of approval are applicable then as you go through the process and those conditions can existing conditions of approval be. The challenge, for example, by a developer. Sure. I mean, a developer can use to challenge anything, you know, and the HCD guidelines are just guidelines, right? That's the only place where conditions of approval are are are discussed. But I but they seem to recognize that these these guidelines seem to recognize that cities typically have their conditions of approval that they apply to projects. And how and and maybe this is for Lee. conditions of approval are those those are not in the zoning code. I mean, those are sort of standard standard. Where do those exist in our world and do those get changed very often? They do get changed from time to time and we have that standard list of conditions. Sam's team works from that. Both of those into projects. They are updated on a regular basis when, you know, do say new region water water quality control board requirements come into play. Or if we consult with the city attorney's office and we say, you know, all right, this this wording would be better off this way or that one. Or new new policies take effect. So is that where any kind of public health and safety types of things would be considered in those conditions of approval? Is that the kind of thing that shows up in conditions of approval? So a new law, whatever that may be. With respect to public health and safety, you know, there are some things in our standard conditions of approval that relate to public health and safety. But with respect to this, you know, the public health and safety, the conditions of approval oftentimes are related to non public items. Yeah, I can jump in on that as well. We put a lot of our conditions of approval are tied to code requirements. And but we have gone away from listing out building permit requirements and fire department requirements really specifically in our conditions of approval, because we want for the plans that are more developed at that state to be reviewed by the fire and building departments and water departments and for them to be able to apply whatever standards they have. So we usually include a really general condition of approval. That's, you know, the project shall comply with all requirements of the building, fire, water departments. In this project, we're trying to be a little bit more specific. What would these SB 35 projects? And list out some of the things that are local standards and not state requirements like building code or state fire code or state stormwater requirements. Those will apply no matter what. So if someone's concerned about a project, you know, as not reviewing a soils report, for example, at the at this review stage, which might not be required as an objective standard, that would most likely be required as part of the building permit review. OK, thank you. OK, I think that's it for council questions. So I'm going to go ahead and take this out for public comment. I do just want to real quickly. Before we go to public comment, I wanted to be sure to acknowledge that we are meeting tonight on the second day of the Jewish High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah. And as a city, we observe the holiday when it began yesterday. And so today, on behalf of this council, I would like to wish all of those who are celebrating a very happy new year today. And we typically try to avoid holidays in our council deliberations. In some cases, and tonight was one of those there was a request and actually a motion to set this meeting before the public hearing, which many people for the A-31 project. And so this was really the night that that, unfortunately, we had to be able to pull people together. But I do want to, again, just recognize the holiday tonight and again celebrate and wish everyone a happy new year. I'll go ahead and bring this out to the public now for comments. So tonight, public comment really is a time for just that, which is commenting on the affordable housing streamlined ministerial approval, which also we all know is SB-35 and the density bonus as presented tonight. If you do want to speak, please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. When it is your time to speak, you will hear an announcement that we've been unmuted and then we'll set the timer to two minutes. And again, I just just for those of who may have joined late, this will on the materials presented tonight. It will not be. We will not be discussing the A-31 water project or I can, unfortunately, not take any comment on that either tonight, because that is not a noticed item on our agenda. So I'll go ahead and ask the first person with their hand up, which is Sue Terrence, to go ahead and press star six on you. And you can begin speaking. Thank you. I believe Sarah said that planning is hoping to have a list of applicants applicable objective standards for SB-35 by mid-October. Is that right? And Barbara shared a slide that stated that the objective standards must be knowable prior to the submittal of the application. And my question, the first part is knowable by whom? Knowable by the developer, the developer, knowable by the developer, the planning department, the public city council, who must know about the objective standards that are applicable prior to submittal? Right. Thank you. And for those who may ask questions, I will defer to council to see if the body would like to have some of these questions answered. So I'll go ahead and take all the public comment. We'll track on some of these and then we'll see if council wants to follow up questions answered. Tony, is that OK to do tonight? Yes, that's perfectly fine, Mayor. Thank you. Next I have. Thank you, Sue. Is that it? Or did you have additional questions or comments? I just was hoping to get some understanding from Barbara about the timing for anything that was not submitted by the developer. What is the timing for getting those things submitted? OK, I'll make a note of your questions, so thank you. Thank you. Are there any others? I'll stop there. OK, thank you very much. Next, I have Lyra Filipini, a star six. Unmute yourself, please. Hi, thank you. My questions are also so the first one, and we did submit these a little over a week ago, actually, some of them. So the first one has to do with timing specifically. So there are two different time timing deadlines for both categories of sizes of SB 35 projects. And one of them is the response time where the city must to the applicant with how the application either does conform or does not conform both to SB 35 and the knowable objective standards. The second time is the approval or denial time. So, for instance, for a one hundred and fifty unit development, the sixty day notice is for the response to this is what the planning department has identified in either issues or being fulfilling of the various requirements. And then there's another thirty day window. And so my question is, what are other cities doing with those those thirty days? And is if there is a design review or public oversight meeting, does it usually happen after that response, but before the approval or denial time, or does it usually happen? Looks like from what Lee was saying, he's currently expecting for Santa Cruz that the public oversight meeting will happen before the public actually sees what the city is saying as far as whether objective standards are adhered to or not. And so I just want some more clarity around that because it's a little confusing, I think, to the public and I think also to counsel if I'm correct. Another thing is the complete application. Is it complete to point at what San Francisco is doing? If the department provides written comments to the project sponsors of the applicant saying, hey, it's not eligible as proposed, maybe the units, there aren't enough units that are affordable or we've noticed objective standards, non-compliance, that that timeline start fresh as soon as the applicant fixes those issues and resubmits the application. That is what we're doing. So just wondering if that's something that Santa Cruz will also be doing. Thank you, Leera. OK, next I have phone number ending in 8466, please. This is Rafa Salman Felt. SB 35 is a law that was created by the state legislature to help ensure that when cities are unable to meet their obligations under the housing needs allocation for whatever reason. And most often those reasons are because of local politics, that there's a predictable objective review process for especially good projects to be evaluated under. The renown numbers for the next cycle are going to be three times larger. I encourage the city to designate the zoning administrator to serve as a review body for this process, precisely because they will not be biased by local pressures while reviewing these applications. We elect the city council to ensure that we have good objective standards for development and to set land use policy by adopting general plan and zoning standards, but not the past judgment as to whether projects meet these objective standards, which is a better job, a job better left to a professional administrator, cities like Los Altos, who unwisely allowed council politics to intervene in their process, learn the hard way that they can't bluff their way around state law by making up reasons for denying housing with no basis in their own laws. Los Altos was actually ordered by a judge to issue a seven million dollar surety bond after they appealed a lawsuit they lost for denying an SB35 project and realized that the smart move was to settle the case and approve the project with higher production goals. You know, the three times the renown numbers of the current cycle on the horizon, the city is likely to see more and more SB35 projects as we fall further behind our goals. I think the council's time is better spent addressing that problem instead of injecting politics into a ministerial approval, which undoubtedly makes it even harder to meet those goals. Thank you. Next we have Elizabeth Conlon. Hello, everyone. Thank you for your time this evening. I'm a renter here in the city, and I would like to voice my support for city staff handling the approval process as they do for other ministerial approvals. Staff, like Sarah, have spent months doing extensive outreach to different demographics and Santa Cruz regarding objective standards, including outreach in Spanish to renters and across neighborhoods. I really applaud their efforts, grounding the process and equity, including review of the history of the government's role in segregating our communities. In order to following objective standards, if the choice is between staff doing the review or staff presenting a recommendation to council, it seems to me that if the staff is already doing the review and making a recommendation, we should keep this process with our city's staff. I ask that you let these staff with the expertise and standards conduct all ministerial reviews and to do so quickly. Thank you. Thank you. Next, we have phone number ending in four, nine, six, five. Am I on the line? Yes, you are. Sorry, my name is Candice Brown, long term resident here. You know, SB 35, basically, main intent is to deregulate housing development entirely, which is why in the groups throughout the state are pushing for you know, any alleged body to aggregate the responsibility on land use policies. But I would invite the council to be involved in this process. You realize it's very complex, but there is a learning process. If you divorce yourself from this process, you'll never regain expertise to be a part of a growing complex of a lot of impacts in our community. This project impacts a particular project we can't speak of tonight, but I will also say that if the quarter plan had had the compromises that were revealed that should have been made on the far value, for instance, which a lot of people don't understand what that is, which it has to do with massing, if that had been resolved in the compromise, then some of these have been resolved and some of the issues with this project or particular projects would not be before you as they will be in the near future. There's a need for an understanding. It's very complex. You need to be in the game. And as an elected body, I invite you and beg you to be a part of this process. It is very important. This is the life of our city to be a part of it. Thank you. Thank you. If anyone else in the attending the meeting tonight wants to speak on this item, please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. Right. I see another hand. Amara Morrison, please press R6 and you can speak. Mayor Meyers and council members, my name is Amara Morrison and I'm an attorney with Wendell Rosen and we represent Novin Development Corporation. I trust you received our letter from yesterday regarding the council's proposed action and I'd like to focus on the proposed motion in the staff report, which we addressed in this verbal staff report and underscores a couple of critical issues for your consideration. Council's motion proposes to confirm a course of action, which is not currently a part of the city's density bonus ordinance when it in fact is creating a new procedure for SB 35 projects, which include a density bonus request. The council's proposed action amounts to an amendment of the city's density bonus ordinance, which under these circumstances requires city staff, and in this case, the zoning administrator, to make determinations related to requested concessions and waivers. In order to amend the city's ordinance, the amendment has to be introduced at the council meeting, formally a subsequent meeting and take effect 30 days thereafter, which both state law and the charter and your charter require. Finally, SB 35 specifically prohibits this kind of mid application shift in procedure and specifically states that a local government shall not adopt or impose any requirement that applies to a project solely or partially on the basis that the project is eligible to receive ministerial or streamlined approval. And as Ms. Council pointed out during her presentation, SB 330 also locks in the standards, which were in effect at the time the preliminary application was submitted. So we would respectfully request that the council refrain from taking the proposed action, which is mentioned most definitely for tonight in order to adhere to the mandates, which are clearly set forth in the street. Thank you so much for your attention. Thank you. Next, we have Sabina. Hey there. I just like to call out two points. One is that per the presentation tonight, the city will leave behind on very low income housing units that are available. It's only at 32 percent, way under what it needs to be. And everything else is far exceeding what it needs to be. And so that really just tells me that the city is just not doing a very good job at this at this moment. I'd like to point out is that the moderate majority on the city council is all funded by developers and real estate agents and lay and landlords, there's landlords that are on the city council. And it's really hard for me to see how you're going to be objected when that funding is directly coming from those exact sources. And those are all backed up in records. And I'd really love to comment on that, especially if they are being backed by all of these real estate moguls, basically. Thanks for your time. Thank you. Is there anyone else in the attendees tonight that wants to speak to this? OK, if you are in the audience, it'd be great if you could raise your hand, press star nine and then we'll get folks. Next, I have phone number ending in 0836. Just press start. There you go. You should be able to speak. Evening, council members, I want to appreciate all of you spending your evening time on this very complex subject and graduate you for working hard on it. I just want to point out and I sent correspondence to each of you that you were elected to consider these subjects and to make decisions for our city. And I hope you will vote to do that and not defer it to a staff member who was not hired for that purpose. You all were hired for that purpose and that we honor you for being our city's board of directors. You have to make our decisions. Thanks very much. Thank you. Next, I have the Madison. I'm just a regular person living in a neighborhood. I love this city. I love this area. I want more housing. We need more housing. So I think some of the things that you hear that might be touched as people being against big housing. I'm not most of my neighborhood is not. I think we're looking for you and we're trusting and believe and have full faith that our government can help us create new housing that is respectful, you know, respective of neighbors and not just such a huge, crazy building. So speaking for myself and I hope some of my neighbors, I am, of course, in favor of more housing, but fully trust that you guys have the ability to work within the constraints of these new state laws to protect our neighborhoods and deliver great new housing opportunities that are respectful of our neighbors. Thanks. Next, I have Kyle Kelly. Hey, thank you so much. I just want to bring up that right now, single family homes are treated with ministerial approval, while multifamily homes are not and have not had ministerial approval for a very, very long time. And I think it's something worth reflecting on that we can a new two million dollar house go up that is reviewed by staff that would have a mortgage near to 8000, 9000, maybe 10,000 a month, while an apartment and immediately for these ones going for a thousand a month and with how's a lot more has to go through much more process. And so I encourage each of you to think about for the future what impact that has on renters versus what impacts that has on people that are that are going to be buying effectively luxury monoplexes. And it's just something to think about. Does it mean that maybe all ministerial approvals should go through council, including single family homes, every renovation? Or maybe there should be a fair and predictable process for housing for renters, housing for people with less mean than there should be for all projects? Thank you. Thank you. Is there any more folks in the audience or the attendees this evening that would like to speak to this item? I'm not seeing any. OK. If folks are going to speak to this item, I'd like you to raise your hands so that we can get a sense of how many folks are out there. So after phone number ending in six, three, nine, six, I'm going to cut off public comment because I'm not seeing any other hands pass then. OK, we'll go to phone number five, six, nine, zero, please. Star six to unmute yourself, please. Yes, I'm here to speak tonight in favor of the City Council actually being involved because the amount of detail that is in this huge SB 35 is very complex. And what we're doing right now is we're trying to get a grasp on the future of our city and this will come up again. And without building the knowledge bit by bit by bit, it doesn't help our city and you have been elected to represent our city and be very involved in these important issues. And I really appreciate you doing the best you can to be the ones to do the review. Thank you. Next, I have phone number ending in seven, nine, eight. My name is Jeanine. And first of all, I want to say thank you to all the staff and Barbara for their presentations, and I'm particularly glad that they went beyond SB 35. I also talk about the Housing Accountability Act and the housing element. And I also want to thank everyone on the council, because I think you had some very excellent questions. You know, I saw the chart how critical the housing crisis is and how far behind we are, and I really appreciate that the state legislature is working on multiple approaches to get there. I can also understand that you guys, all the council has a real strong interest in housing development, but I also learned a few other things tonight. I learned that having multiple layers of oversight or approval of the objective standards is a challenge with the timeline. The risks from litigation that's asymmetric. I heard from Barbara that there are no other cities that she's aware of, or maybe it was CME Valley, is the exception that had the city council on this role. And then the mayor said something that was really telling, which is that there really is no approval, the public oversight meeting is really just to determine and review a checklist relating to zoning statements. So I respectfully ask you to take yourself out of this equation. Let's let the zoning administrator or the professional staff do their job, because there really is no way to have a public oversight meeting without bringing politically charged nature of projects into the discussion. I really want to support doing the objective standards. I've been a part of that project and I'm really looking forward to it being completed. I think it will help a lot and I think it should include all the traffic, other site and environmental concerns, and they should all be objectives. And let's keep moving with affordable housing and let's stay in compliance with the law. Thank you. Thank you. Next, I have Simon. Go ahead, please. Simon, you'll have to press star six to unmute yourself. Sorry, I was a little bit away from the computer. I was just in response to what seemed to come up with the idea of who should be responsible and involved in seeing the applications for a city site. And I think because it's coming rather quickly on the end of covid. So those applications that are already in the argument that the city staff would be unswayed by political pressure and only adhere to objective standards is rather moot because there are no objective standards yet. They're still in development and yet the applications are in. So I'm asking the question, making the opinion, but I think perhaps the council should be involved at least in the early stages because with the lack of objective standards to kind of assess the applications are already in and next best alternative are representatives of the people. And members of the council. In this situation, as a kind of next best alternative, they shouldn't be swayed by political forces when doing their job. It's just a human trait that they may be. But if we're talking about any absence of actual objective standards, I think it's maybe the best we've got as an alternative since we're faced with applications now. Thank you. Next, I have phone number ending in eight seven one nine. Hello. Thank you very much for taking the time just that you're spending on this tonight. My comment is in strong opposition to the one made earlier, discouraging you, the city council, our elected officials from serving in an over set all with respect to SB 35 projects. Beginning with the one proposed for eight three one Water Street. I'm sorry, these can be very, very large projects as we're seeing. That can create numerous health and safety issues for the city residents. You represent unlike the eight three one Water Street developer and the attorneys he is hired to tonight. I actually believe that you, the city council, serving in an oversight role will be able to do the right thing. I can give incomplete applications the response they deserve. Thank you very much. Thank you. And our last column will be phone number ending in six three nine six. Please press star and mute. Good evening, council. This is Robert of Rizzi checking in. Thank you for taking our questions ahead of time and answering some of them. However, I feel like staff has not addressed some of them. One of my main concerns here is what standards has the city currently reviewed and accepted as objectives? And what standards has the city rejected is non-objective and why? I think this is going to be a very critical point for examine and decide upon, obviously, because this is where we can make the determination if a project really does meet the requirements for an SB 35 application. Also, what happens when there is an incomplete SB 35 application? I think we need to talk about this more. Will the public have input on setting the final adopted guidelines that the application need to include the development specific elements, parameters and design shows how the development complies with objective standards and SB 35 requirements. There are many things to take into account here. Also, I haven't heard anything about any type of archaeological digs outside of the tribal oversight at the beginning. I think there has been more discussion on that to protect native lands. And I want to thank council for taking this on. Thank you very much, Mayor Meyers, for allowing this special meeting tonight. I admire all your hard work, all of you, and please, please understand that the public really depends on council to take this and to decide for the city how we are going to proceed with all SB 35 applications. This is really, really an important decision for you to take on for all of us. Thank you so much. Thank you. OK, I'm going to take a five minute break and let the council just use the restroom real quick, and then we will reconvene. We'll come back at 10 20. And then we'll have deliberation by the council. And thank you, everyone, for attending tonight. We'll be right back into, I think, a few topic areas, Barbara. And I hope you were I did not I did not let you know that we were going to have you respond, but I'm hoping you sort of were able to kind of tease them out. The things that I picked up on were some around the timing specifically in terms of response time and things like that. So maybe tackle that first. And then there's quite a few questions around sort of, you know, the objective standards. We had questions about how many we have, in a sense, already identified that we might be using in terms of the number and then sort of, you know, this concept of knowable and who is, you know, who is knowable about objective standards. And I think this fits in with really around the process. You know, so, you know, I think what's happened is that the application came in, you know, and so how do these pieces fit together? And where is where is the public in, you know, where does the public get to look into some of this before what feels like, you know, I think a decision is made or, you know, there's all of a sudden you're at you're sort of you're sort of at you're at the end of the at the at the end of the process and so many people are used to, you know, a very predictable way to talk about changes and development in their communities. And so this is a very foreign way to think about how to enter the community member, whether you're pro to pro the project or answer the project, we've all been trained over the years to really have an interactive, you know, kind of process that we can trust and we can see into. And so I think some of these questions is I'm sensing that that's where some of the struggles coming is that people really don't understand where, where to as a public member, where do I get transparency into this? And how does that work, you know, and what does that look like? So I don't know, Barbara, if you could maybe. And then I'll go to counsel at some point, but, you know, right now, I'm going to have Barbara and folks answer. Thank you. Maybe I'll just explain first about the whole timing and then kind of try to get into the transparency. SB 35 sets everything up from the time of submittal, whether or not the application is complete or not. You know, I think I think we've all gotten used to thinking about somebody submits an application. The city staff determines if it's complete to get sent back, you know, until it's complete and ready to be approved. But that's not how SB 35 was set up. So with SB 35, everything has to happen from the date somebody actually submits the application. We're assuming the whole tribal process is over, but it's someone could theoretically submit, you know, almost a page saying, you know, this is my SB 35 application and the city would still need to respond. And so the response that the city must do in 60 to 90 days is tell about is tell the applicant whether or not the application conforms with objectives, with these objective standards. So, you know, I gather from what Lee said that the city has compiled a rather long list of all the objective standards that it has, you know, in the general plan, in the plans, in the subdivision ordinance and other ordinances that has a list of objective standards. So what the city must do within 60 days is say, either to the applicant, what you submitted complies with the objective standards. I can see what you submitted does not comply with the standards or you haven't given me enough information so I can tell if it complies with the standards. And that's the and that's the way the legislature has set up SB 35. So it's a very tight timeline, but doesn't put the same obligations, if you like, on the applicant to submit a complete application, regardless of whether the application is missing items, the city still must respond within 60 to 90 days, explain, you know, where where where the project complies, where it doesn't comply and where and saying I can't figure it out because, you know, you haven't given me enough. So I think that's a big change. It was mentioned that San Francisco, you know, if they send a letter back saying, you know, either you haven't given me enough information or the application doesn't come that this timeline starts over again. And that's exactly the way it is set up. Actually, it's the way that HCD and the guidelines say it happens. So if after the first 60 to 90 days, the application is either missing stuff or doesn't comply, the city sends the applicant the letter. It's basically a denial of the project of the saying your project does not comply to the SB 35 with SB 35. You're not eligible because you don't comply with objective standards and you or you haven't given me enough information to make that determination. The applicant can then come back and start again. But the 60 to 90 days starts all over again. I'll just stop there and see if that's reasonably clear to people. Are there questions? And so that that determination is different, Barbara, than a public oversight meeting or is that that is that what we will be looking at? If we if we assume that role, we will be looking at that part of the process. Is that correct? Yes, the the statute allows you to have a public oversight meeting either for design review or to look at the objective standards. So if you have a public oversight meeting in this first 60 to 90 day period, you would be looking all you would be looking at would be the compliance of the objective standards. That would be that. I mean, you would also look at, you know, does it? I mean, the staff will also analyze is it eligible for SB 35? But usually the and then also you will be looking at time review application to see if they provided the information necessary to make it. Did I say design review and then density bonus? We'll also be looking at the information submitted to justify the density bonus. So those are the that's that's what the council would do or whatever. Your body or the staff would do in the first 60 to 90 days. OK, I think the then it was asked, you know, then the time to actually make it to conduct design review is listed as either 90 days after submittal or 180 days after submittal. I think that second phase comes after the project has been determined to comply with all objective standards. And that's you could think of that developing the conditions of approval for the project. I've only seen most of the projects that SB 35 projects we've worked in are still in the phase of lack of compliance with objective standards. But I've seen a couple that have been approved. And essentially the applicant has resubmitted. Finally, the application appears to come with standards in the city. And let's see, in both cases, I look at the city was ready to grant the concessions and waivers and bonuses that the project had applied for. Then the city did a final approval that showed that showed the compliance of all the standards. And plus that conditions of approval. OK, thanks. Barbara, can you or Lee, can you? I think the other questions. Really revolve around the objective standards are basically such an important part of this, right? I mean, they're kind of the link to kind of the values of what we kind of want our community to look like, you know, in a sense. I mean, short of having design standards, which we have, those are the things that sort of really determine what this what the project, any project may look like. So that seems to be. And so, yeah, questions around sort of kind of uncovering a little bit about what those are, how many there are. I mean, I know you're still working on it, but, you know, I I've heard some examples tonight, but maybe there's maybe there's a little more specificity. And I don't know if that's Barbara or Sam or Lee or you, I'm not sure. Thanks, Mary Myers. I know Samantha had a number of conversations with members of the community about this. So I'll invite her to respond to the question about the objective standards that we have and where they can be found and what you've been communicating to the community center. There are objective standards in our code now. Many of our codes are objective. And because this is the first time we've gone through this process and because our code wasn't written with this intent, there have been some questions that have come up on, you know, how is this word? It is it's objective and we're working closely with the city attorney's office on on those. But, like I said, many of our objective, I think some of the big ones, the big questions that we've been asked are about archaeological reports. We do have an objective standard that requires an archaeological report to be submitted with a project. And then we had talked about conditions of approval earlier, something, you know, recommendation that comes out as part of an archaeological report is something that could be required as a condition of approval. We've also gotten a or I heard a question about application materials. We do have an objective standard that requires an applicant to submit all of the application materials in our application form. And, you know, some of those things are probably not even relevant to an SB 35 project, because there are things like elevations and shading studies and things that don't connect with an objective standard. But we do have an objective that says that they need to submit those items. SB 35 has a list of requirements that an applicant needs to submit as well. So we're looking through all those things. They do need to submit all of those materials with their application. And we're calling those out if they're not submitted. So my feedback on that question would be that we I think are finding more objective standards than subjective standards in our code right now. The subjective standards are related to design. OK, thank you, Sam. Or I don't know if you have anything kind of in terms of where those, you know, that sort of, you know, how that I don't know if you have any comments on that. No, I mean, I think that's actually pretty typical right now. I mean, it sounds like this is a fair number of objective standards that people, you know, that applicants need to meet. I think that when I've looked at the that when I've looked at the initial letters, you know, that city's right regarding conformance to the objective standards, they are long. Cities have many more objective standards than, you know, than people typically typically are aware of. I mean, normally, normally in a staff report, you know, under the old process, if you like, the staff would not necessarily look at every single objective standard, right? But in an SB 35 application, you must. And so the the length of these are pretty long. So I think what what Samantha is describing sounds fairly typical. And I think the fact that the design standards aren't done yet is is also, you know, I think everyone's rushing as fast as they can to get them done. They're difficult. Yeah, sounds like it. Let me just make sure, Lee, did you try to write down most of the questions? Some some obviously were just comments that we received. Right. Is there anything? Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Barbara. Yeah, if you caught one more. There was one more about what when did these standards need to be knowable? I was reading the I was reading the definition in state law. So I think they need to be knowable. They need to be written down if they're written down some place, if they're in the city, owning ordinance, you know, general plan, all the ordinance, subdivision ordinance, they're knowable. Someone can look at them and read them and they're knowable. I know the city's attempting to get, you know, to develop a comprehensive list and that will make them easier to find. But but having them written down in an ordinance makes them knowable. OK. Lee, did you see any other that I might have missed? I think those were the main buckets or Sam. Did you hear any others that were brought up that you would want to answer? Thanks, Mayor. I would just want to add to what Barbara said that we do intend to put together more information on what SB 35 is and what an application might look like and, you know, a packet of materials similar to what other cities have, we just haven't haven't had time to do it yet. And we're still sort of wrapping our head around this process. So that that is something that we intend to do. Right. OK. Lee, do you have any other things that you caught that we didn't get answered so far? No, I think there may be just one thing, you know, the. The concern about knowable and the timing of when the council acts and what the council will have. There were some questions around that. And the council will have an analysis of all of those objective standards. And we intentionally, let me say, if the council chooses to to be the body that does the oversight meeting, then you would have that information. And the timing is such that the oversight meeting would occur within that first 60 days. There were some questions about that that Barbara spoke to in terms of the next the 60 to 90 day period for projects less than 150 or 150 or less units. And that gives that that first period is the really, really critical point, because that's when we're going to make the determination of consistency with the objective standards and that next 30 days we do have the ability to pursuant to the code, allow the applicant if they if they don't have something that is, let's say, it's a minor thing that isn't going to affect the project. The city does have the capability of saying you can submit that within the next 30 days between that 60 and 90 day period. And the city has the ability to say, no, you don't meet all the objective standards and you have to resubmit. So both of those would be options there. So just a little bit more nuance on that 60 to 90 day period and why we structured any oversight meeting to happen in the first 60 day period. OK. Thank you. OK, I will go ahead and turn it over to the back to the council now. Council, we're coming to your hand went up. It was actually before public comment started. Did you have another question? I think we were going to queue quite that early, but I was just curious if you know, I was I was no, I was waiting. I saw that initially there were only four members of the public. And after two of them had had their comments and it didn't seem like others were joining it when I hadn't raised my hand. But then after you continued asking people, members of the public started raising their hands so it wasn't clear whether or not at the time that rose my hand, whether or not more members of the public were going to be chiming in. But I do have just comments and a question for the city attorney and then wanted to make a motion for this evening to kind of get us moving since it's pretty late. OK, yeah, I'll I'll go ahead a bit. Yeah, in general, I would, you know, try to honor. Yeah, I was a little confusing timing wise. But OK, why don't we? Yeah, why don't we go ahead and and make your comments and then we'll go with that motion. OK, so I just want to thank first, Mayor Myers for putting this study session together. I know it's really important for many members of the public to hear more about SB 35, especially with this project that's coming forward. And then I wanted to thank staff and Barbara for taking the time out of the evening to help put together this information and be available to answer questions from the community and really wanted to thank all the community members that came out. I know that it's pretty late. So a lot of people have probably dropped off by now. But this is something that I think is really important for the community to better understand and I think the community, given that this is a new law that we're now starting to see projects come forward under that a lot of folks are really concerned with, you know, are in local control to the greatest extent possible. The city councils need to be able to weigh in and be the deciding body around making decisions on objective standards on these kinds of projects and otherwise. And as city council members, our role, as we've heard tonight from members of the public, is to represent the electorate and to weigh in special developments which may impact residents in the community. This project, this process of project approval needs to be public, transparent and allow for the community to weigh in on major developments, especially large developments in our community. And I believe the city council needs to maintain a role in SB 35 projects. I had a question for the city attorney. I'm prepared to make it to ask. I know that I think if I recall correctly, a total of three motions can be on the floor at a single point in time. I have a number of separate motions that I'd like to make. And I'm wondering if I should make them all at this point in time or if there'd be an opportunity to maintain the floor to make my first motion and then other motions in series. I don't have my. Yeah, Tony, I don't think it's fair to. I know there's other council members who have a motion as well. So I'm not sure that serial motions is really what I was thinking about as we went into this. That's just my I think in terms, yes, I think in terms of how many motions can be placed on the floor. I think that's probably initially up to the discretion of the chair. Unfortunately, had I been asked that question before the before it was raised, I could have reviewed our council member handbook for that type of information, which I don't necessarily keep at my fingertips on a moment's notice. But I can happily I'm happily able to take a look at the rules. But in general, it seems to me like the chair has some discretion to allow multiple motion at a time. Yeah, I think it I think that we have a lot of early hand raising that goes up. And, you know, I'm I want to give every council member the opportunity to try to provide direction on this topic. And I just don't think it's appropriate to put multiple motions up. And so I'm not going to allow that. And I will call on other on other council members if it's, you know, if they so desire to put up a motion at this time. And I the intent is not to prevent anyone from putting another motion. I mean, my understanding is that we can vote on motions and that it can be, you know, as many motions as necessary to address the evening. So that wasn't the intent. But I'll go ahead. I just wanted to make sure, you know, in terms of being efficient, if it was better for me to make all my motions at once or whether to make them at different points and down, but I'm happy to make the first motion. And when time permits, I'll have two other ones if they don't get addressed that I'd like to go back to. So, OK, I'll go ahead and we'll see your motion and see if there's a second. And then I'm going to call on council member commentary Johnson and council member Watkins to understand their their interests this evening. So the first and I'm going to just based on some of the staff's comments we've heard, I'll probably amend some of the language in here. But the motion would be to confirm that applications involving request for both affordable housing, stream on ministerial approval and density bonus requires city council to make the determination of consistency with objective standards and to consider for approval any associated density bonus requests as part of a public oversight meeting to occur within 60 days of the receipt. And I'd like to change the of application to strike a complete and confirming conforming through the conversation we have to change that to 60 days of receipt of an application for a project with 150 or fewer units or 90 days of application of street receipt for a project with no more than 50 units. In both instances, the conforming given the comments that we've heard from city staff and from from Barbara on this item. And the main change there is to change that from rather than approved to consider for approval. OK. And to this motion, council member commentary Johnson, you were next in line. Thank you. Yeah. Second, and I have a couple of friendly amendment additions. If council member Cummings is amenable to that. And I did have some comments. So should I put up my. Friend suggest my friendly amendments now or make my. Would you like to do Tony comments first and then amend a friendly amendment? Either way, I think it's fine. OK, I'll I'll just I'll state my friendly amendments. And that is so so the the motion is is pretty much as it is recommended by staff except for the consider for approval. I see that as the change that looks that correct. I can just get a nod maybe from Tony. Yeah, OK, so the second part, the friendly amendment is to direct staff to apply standard conditions of approval for thirty five applications. My understanding from that conversation, Mayor Myers and Barbara was that that is still relevant here. And then to direct staff to complete the objective standards project as expediously as possible and convert those standards to be zoning code. I know we're in the process of that, but to explicitly name that and add that to the to the motion. Can you can I restate your family and you set that really fast? Sure. And I believe I emailed it to you, Bonnie, but I'll state it direct staff to complete the objective standards project as expediously as possible and convert those standards to zoning code. And before that, it was direct staff to apply standard conditions of approval for SP thirty five applications. Are you putting that up, Bonnie? I am. Yeah, I'm looking for that motion. I can put it up, Bonnie. Councilmember Cummings, I have it. Thank you. OK. You want to see the language, Councilmember Cummings? Is that that are those the two that you read? That's correct. Councilmember Cummings, do those work for you? I'm just reading over them and trying to understand. I wonder if you could just explain them a little bit more in detail. Sure. So my understanding from listening to Mayor Meyers and Barbara is that we we we can still apply standard conditions in the SP thirty five application. And maybe Barbara, you could speak to that a little bit more. And the second part is that made clear that we really need to have our objective objective standards final and complete before we can really do a thorough process of these applications. So I know that it's that we're in the process, but this is just to confirm that that we are committing and we are asking that we expedite this as much as possible. Let's have one question to know that in 20. Well, I can't remember if it's twenty nine. I think it's twenty nineteen. The City Council rescinded the boarders plan and the staff was going back to work on the objective standards and to kind of revisit that whole process. And my back then the council gave direction to try to get the staff to move as expeditiously as possible to work on developing those objective standards with the neighborhoods and to bring that back to council. And so I guess I'd just like to get an update on kind of where that's at, because it seems like that direction has been given to staff. And I just want to understand how this would change the previous direction since we've kind of already done that. And staff came up with a timeline of how quickly they could bring that back and we're operating under that current timeline. We are working on the objective standards process now, as Sarah mentioned, we and as I noted, you know, we we took the first opportunity to get the grant and actually council. We brought that to council, council authorizes us to go forward and. That grant and so we recognize the importance of that, particularly in terms of the design aspects of buildings and making sure that we can not just get boxes, but have high quality materials, very roof lines, interesting pedestrian level of materials and so forth as quickly as we can. The one one component of that I just want a council and community to be aware of is that after our process, we will have coastal commission process to go through. And, you know, that varies in terms of the amount of time that it takes. So that's something that is beyond the timeline that Sarah mentioned in her presentation with the winter of twenty one twenty two hearings. I'm just wondering with that information, if it might make sense for us to, you know, rather and also, I guess, the other questions with the zoning. Does that require general plan amendment or what's the process behind that? Because I know that that had come up in the discussions around the. I keep escaping me. But when we were talking about the corridors plan, you know, bringing back zoning changes was something that had come up and that one of the arguments was that if we wanted to make changes to the zoning code, that we'd have to go back to making general plan amendments. And that's a very large, you know, long process. And so I'm wondering, you know, if you could comment on that and how it relates to the motion that's before us, because that seemed like it was a concern when this came before the council previously about the standard changing zoning in the city. Sure, I'd be I'd be happy to comment on that. The the process that we have and that we're pursuing right now does not include general plan amendments related to the densities allowed along the corridors. And I think that's what you're referring to. There were discussions related to should the densities be modified and when SB 330 took effect, it also said that if you're reducing densities in one location, that you have to simultaneously increase them elsewhere, which is a bigger project if we were to pursue that. So the objective standard that we're focusing on is based on our general plan now, and so those standards will be incorporated into the zoning code based on our current general plan allowances. I like to ask if we could add to the amendment is a number to the zoning code based on general plan allowances in that language. And then I said one question about direct steps apply standard conditions. Is that objective standard conditions or kind of what what we in terms of like, what are the standard conditions? Yeah, and I wonder if if Barbara, if you might, you know, I picked this up from the conversation between Mayor Myers and Barbara, that standard conditions do apply when we are moving forward with objective standards. I wonder if Barbara can help comment on that. And just just really quickly with the objective standards and that number two friendly amendment, I just want it to be explicit to the community that this is a priority and that we are committing to this because we'll we'll find ourselves in this situation with the next SB 35 application. So I want this to be as part of the friendly amendment to the motion so that it's made explicit to the community that that we want these. So I wonder if if Barbara or and or Mayor Myers, if you can talk about the relevance of standard conditions with with an SB 35. And then I did still have some comments I wanted to make. The HD guidelines saying that it says that SB 35 doesn't preclude impose standard conditions of approval, as long as those conditions are objective and broadly applicable to development within the locality, regardless of streamlined approval, and they implement objective standards that had been adopted. Some cities I know have long list of standard conditions that they typically apply say to projects and maybe standards that they for payment of fees that would normally apply. Might be standards like enclosing trash bins. So I so I think the way it would be relevant to an SB 35 project has to do with what with whether the city has such standards, standard conditions of approval. So we don't know. So so Lee or Samantha may want to comment on that. Yeah, I can comment on that. We do. I was just looking through some of our kind of standard templates for conditions of approval and many of them are objective, but we do have some objective in there regarding design review, of course. And so I think if you were to and maybe Barbara, Tony, to confirm that if you were to put in number one to apply standard objective conditions of approval, but somehow get objective in there so we can make sure that we're really limiting it to just the objective requirements. Maybe that's fine. Yeah, I agree. I think that's a fine addition. I think it's implicit, but I don't want to making it explicit. And I, you know, I'll chime in, Council Member Contari, jump scene. You know, just, you know, the standard conditions of approval on a lot of projects are the things that really also make a project work within sort of just the building period also. So things like when you can start your project up during the morning and when it needs to be shut down at night. You know, how you manage your, you know, it goes across a variety of different things. And so I think because SB 35 is so new and we don't, again, we're trying to track with a lot of what we understand development to be in one world and now we're sort of in a different world. And I think, you know, my interest in kind of asking the questions around this to make sure that the community understands that we do, you know, again, there's also conditions of approval that can be used to, again, try to shape and and influence the project within the community. So that's kind of that's my interest in kind of making sure that I was understanding the law around standard conditions and how they held those also come into SB 35. So I think Sam's addition makes a lot of. Thank you, Mayor Myers and Sam and Barbara for clarifying that. Councilmember Cummings, is that that sounds good. OK. OK, if it's if it's OK, Mayor Meyer, I'll have your comments. And then yeah, I'll make some brief just I also want to thank the community members who are on tonight and who spoke to me. This is clearly a very complex and challenging issue we're faced with and not to belabor all the points that we saw earlier in the evening, but we're clearly not meeting the needs of our community in terms of building housing. I personally went back and forth in terms of who should be the oversight body responsible for the SB 35 proposals. Because because both sets of arguments really do make sense. It makes sense that we would look to our expert staff who we trust in making this decision. It would make sense that we go to our oversight body that makes land use decisions. It would make sense that we would ask them to to be the oversight body. And this is the first time our community and so many other communities are are are looking at SB 35 and looking at approving proposals. And it seems really, really important for us to be involved and engage at this juncture of 35 and and how it's unfolding in communities and allow for that for that engagement with the public. So so my process tonight was a little bit of a ping-pong ball. I went back and forth. And ultimately, I'm in agreement with Councilmember Cummings motion because this is so new and I think that we will do the experts that we have surrounded ourselves with to help guide our decision making. But I do think we need to be a little bit more intimately involved at this at this point. I think I'll just leave it at that. I know there's other folks, other colleagues who want to make comments and it is getting late, so thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Councilmember Watkins. Thank you, Mayor. And yeah, thanks to my to my colleagues who put forth this this motion, this direction. I think it's definitely in line with where I was headed for the reasons that I think we already have said essentially that, you know, we want to do our due diligence with this new legislation. And as the council elected body, that's our responsibility and role. And I really appreciate the language that was brought forward by one of our community members. I wanted to make sure that was reflected in the motion, which was to have the complete and conforming application language added. I heard that it was something that was brought up by a community member, but I didn't necessarily see it in the motion. If I can just maybe take a look at that, just to see if I could. Yeah, go ahead, Barbara. Yeah, the difficulty is that the city can't. Is that the timelines run from submittal, whether or not the application is complete and conforming? So it has to you have to the city must get back to the applicant within 60 days after they receive the app after the application is submitted or the application is being consistent with all your standards. So you don't want that to happen. And as I said, it's it's there's not a requirement that the applicants submit a complete application just that they submit an application. I see. OK, no, I appreciate that. I'm sorry. And it has been often on and since there's been moments where I'm freezing and things are not coming through. I apologize if that is already going to dress. OK, I appreciate that, Barbara. Thanks. OK, great. No, I mean, I'm happy to. I don't know how many more motions we have coming, but I'm happy to see if we want to move forward with this one before I considering it seems like we're all in the same case in regards to this direction. OK, Councilmember Brown, did you have any questions on the motion or comments at this time? No, I would like to make comments after we we vote on this motion. And I know we're going to continue talking after that, but I'm I can wait. I think you have comments or questions on this motion. Yes, I did. Go ahead. Questioning number two. If Bonnie, if you could pull that up, please. So I understand where Councilmember Calentari Johnson, where that direction is is the intent behind that direction. I'm just after Sarah gave the timeline of what's sort out for the. The objective standards process. So mid-October would open up a four week process of input and public hearings to start in winter of 2021. So end of the year into the beginning of 2022. Is there I'm just about clarifying. Timing is expedited expeditiously mean faster than that. Twenty twenty one twenty twenty two timeline is possible. Is that the intent behind that? The intent is to make explicit or our desire to do this as fast as possible. Now, I know that staff is working very, very hard on this. So if possible, then yes. But if not, then the timeline that's put forth before us. Again, it's to confirm our commitment as quickly as possible. That's more a statement. OK, I suppose I have a friendly amendment to this motion. If I can add to that. And that. The since this is such new legislation, well, it's not new legislation, but to the city of Santa Cruz, to this process, it is that again, like many, many other council members, this information, I know that I've been reading, reading, talking and gathering information. The study session added some more clarity and understanding. So thank you to staff. However, I'm I'm seeing both sides of the council oversight. I understand and I think that it's our responsibility to move forward in a way that meets the SB 35 objective. But being that this is such a new process, my friendly amendment would be to have council be the oversight. Until the objective standards project is complete and the general planning zoning ordinance has aligned, if that makes sense. I wonder what part of that general plan and zoning ordinance are aligned, which was the direction given by council. Sorry. Sorry. The general plan. Can you say that again? The general plan and zoning ordinance have aligned. Is the maker of the motion accepting of that? Yeah, I'm wondering because I have another motion that I was going to make that I think fits with this and I'm wondering the language could be combined to help provide clarification. So I'm wondering if have the council be designated as the approving body for design review and density bonus requests for all SB 35 applications and revisit until the objective standards is complete and general plan zoning ordinance have aligned and revisit this item after that occurred. And I think that is with the intent that I'm headed is that, you know, this to have this get to a ministerial review by staff is I see this going. But in the meantime, as the objective standards, developing zoning standards, writing the design standards, the public hearings, all of that, while that's being formulated and like Samantha said, this checklist being created and formulated. At that point, I think we can yes, to revisit maybe is the language that you'd like to incorporate. And I'd be happy to have that at which point it would be revisited. I'm wondering if we can separate these because I think that there's I think. I think we I think we can. I think it's I mean, it's eleven. I think having multiple motions on this feels a little overwhelming. I think we're going in a good direction if we can try to figure out some amendments rather than starting another motion. I don't have any motions. Are you proposing Council Member Cummings? I had three that had different components and I would have made them all earlier, but I'm trying to figure out the way to be, you know, most flexible with understanding that there are other Council members who want them. I think that maybe what we could do is go through this first motion and then if other Council members have other motions, we can kind of work through the different motions because this is something that's really important to the community and I've been getting a lot of input and want to try to address all the concerns that are coming up as do as is everybody else here. And I know it's late, but like this is this has to be 35 items and something. We've been getting a lot of correspondence on. Oh, yeah, no, I'm not I'm not trying to cut it off. I'm just trying to understand there's limited kind of discretion that we have. So I'm just trying to understand. So I'm sorry, Vice Mayor, additional language. I'm just trying to sort through. Is this the language that you said Council Member Cummings would be similar to what your other motion had in it? I'm just trying to understand. I think the issue is that I think there's one difference between where we're both at. And I think the SB 35 applications should always go to the City Council as approved body for design review and density bonus requests. And I think Council Vice Mayor Brunner wants these to go to the Council until we've kind of aligned our objective standards at which point it would then go back to the Council for review and potentially it could go to staff. And I think that for many members of the community, they really want to see the Council weigh in because we're elected officials and we're the, you know, put in this position to make decisions on major projects. So if I could weigh in here, I think really the appropriate time to make that call is when you consider the ordinance implementing the objective standards. I mean, we're having a study session here tonight to review SB 35 and policy decisions that would appropriately come before the Council when you consider an ordinance to implement those objective standards. So I don't really think it's necessary to pin down all of these policy components as part of this study session. In fact, I question whether it's really appropriate to do so. Given that, you know, we have a we have a very orderly process to develop these objective standards, have them vetted by the Planning Commission, have them brought before the City Council for consideration and adoption and an ordinance. I don't think it's necessary for us to pin down as part of this study session how this process is going to unfold in the coming weeks and months. Can I ask the follow up question? Absolutely. I know initially this was laid out as a study session. But then when we got the agenda report, it was designated as a special meeting. And I know that any session you can't make motions with special meetings, you can. And so I think the public, that confusion has now come up because had this been a study session and we hadn't the opportunity to make motions by city staff, I think we wouldn't be in a position. But given that it's a special meeting, members of the public have given us input and have asked us to make motions on their behalf. And so we're kind of in this difficult scenario where, you know, it initially was supposed to be a study session now. It's a special meeting and now we're in a position where we're supposed to take action on behalf of the community and especially our next meeting, we're going to have this 831 water project in front of us, which is the process 35 project people are really concerned. So no, no, I appreciate that comment, council member Cummings. And and I think, however, that the the initial motion ensures that the project that will come before the council on the 14th will be mentioned at pass will be considered by the city council in the first instance. Oh, we are really talking about a process for evaluating future SB 35 projects and the procedures that will follow in evaluating those and really the the the difference between a study session and a special meeting is that the study session is really an opportunity for the council to see information and give feedback, but not action, a special meeting. The council, you know, contemplates that the council can take action, but not to adopt a zoning ordinance amendment and how you evaluate an SB 35 project. As these seems to me to be something that you would want to incorporate into your zoning code as opposed to by motion establishing a policy that then gets implemented as the council moves forward with considering objective standards for a value for conditions of approval for SB 35 compliant projects makes more sense to me to also codify procedures for processing those as part of the zoning code amendment as opposed to as you know, a motion that here to four will govern how the council evaluates SB 35 projects in accordance with objective criteria that haven't yet been established. This seems a little premature to me. And Tony, the the intent of the motion, as I read it in the packet, was really around declaring that role of public oversight and especially convening or being the responsible, I guess, entity that would oversee or be present for the public oversight meeting, knowing it could it could go to Planning Commission, could go to the zoning administrator, the intent of the original motion, which pretty much was what was put up with some minor amendments. That's kind of, you know, that's kind of where we're at right now. I think it's what you're saying in terms of a procedural sort of clarification on role on that public oversight hearing. Is that what I'm hearing you say versus going further down in terms of SB 35, how we manage SB 35 moving ahead once objective standards are done? Right, I think I think, first of all, we're operating in sort of a legislative vacuum where we have SB 35 requirements and we have our own zoning code requirements and they don't necessarily align in a way that enables us to state with absolute certainty what the appropriate process is moving forward. As I read the motion language, it is something that the staff will take into account as we both develop objective criteria or actually not just develop objective criteria, but, you know, flesh out our objective criteria and how we decide how to process these projects when they come before us in the future. So to me, this is guidance for the staff to use in developing both the objective criteria and probably clarifying our zoning code to make it more clear as to how we will deal with these projects as they come forward. I would certainly be happy to have Barbara or Lee Wei, and if they if they see it differently. But that's kind of how I read the language of the motion and the spirit of it. I'm going to I see Bonnie Bush has her hand up. I just want to make sure there's nothing that I'm missing. Bonnie, did you have a comment? I do. And we've got kind of far away from it. But I just want to make sure to come back to this friendly amendment because I know Councilmember Cummings had amendment to the friendly amendment, but you were also possibly going to your second motion, so I don't want to get too far away from this and not come back to it if I need to add to it. OK, so I think the first question I'd like to maybe ask Vice Mayor Brunner is anything that the city attorney mentioned, is that making sense? How this possibly would go towards that process with involved with the objective standards and the adoption of that rather than in this rather? Yes, so yes, I understood that. So with this, would you be willing to take this amendment away? Yes. OK. OK. Tony, thank you for those clarifying comments. OK, so we have a motion on the floor. Council, I'd like to kind of see if we can take a vote on this. If that feels right to folks. I guess Councilmember Brown and then Councilmember Cummings like to understand if we can just vote on this on this one. Yeah, as I mentioned before, I'm happy to wait on my comments until after the vote on this one. OK. OK, Councilmember Cummings, did you have any more comments? OK. So, Bonnie, why don't we go ahead and do a roll call vote on this motion? And so that motion gone. So that motion was made by Councilmember Cummings, seconded by Councilmember Contrary John and Anne, we can have a roll call vote, please. You want me to read it, Bonnie, or we got it right? I think you're muted, Bonnie. I am. I was trying to find the other screen. Councilmember Watkins, Calentary Johnson. OK. Brown. Aye. Cummings. Aye. Boulder, Vice Mayor Brunner and Mayor Meyers. Aye. That passes unanimously. I'll turn it back to so, I tell me, I just want to double check to your point. We have basically taken the motion that was part of the staff report. Do we are we OK to continue with not conclude? I mean, I'm wondering, should we are we concluding the meeting? I'm happy to have our members make additional comments as we close the night. But I guess I'm trying to understand procedurally what where we go next. Yeah, so the the recommended action was to to 35 density bonus projects to the council for action. I think we're constrained in in the types of actions that we could take. But I don't think that necessarily precludes the council from either accepting or rejecting the proposed recommended action. I just think we have some constraints as to how far a field we can go. And quite sure exactly what the motion, you know, what what other motions council members may have in mind, but we can we can evaluate that as they're put on the on the floor, if if they're put on the floor. OK, thank you. Councilmember Brown. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to make a few comments. Right now and they'll be general. I have many, many comments and many questions and many other areas that I'd like to explore as we move forward in this process related to that longer conversation about how we manage FB 35. I think of the way you said it, Mayor, very well, how we manage that. And so say right now that I want to say a few words about this question of, you know, politics in decision making over development and the need for objectivity. You know, I just find I'm just going to say this and I say this with, you know, in response to some folks in the community who have spoken tonight and who have spoken with me outside of meetings and others who I have tremendous respect for. Though we are interested in the work you do, we have a lot of shared goals. But the idea that we're going to be doing something that takes politics out of land use decision making, I just fundamentally disagree with the premise that that's possible. It's just there's always politics involved in this. And with state law is driven by politics, you know, just as much as local rules and local decision making was driven by politics. And I'm just going to say right now that in the case of the state, it's being driven by big money developer politics. These laws have not been made. I mean, they say they're about low income housing, but they are not about low income housing. These are driven by developers who are interested in making money building and that is that is their job. That is what they do. But there's always politics. So, you know, we are all swayed by political forces, whether we internalize them or, you know, we're right in the middle of it. We're, you know, reflecting others' points of view or trying to represent constituents or whatever it is we're doing, politics is always there. So, you know, and yes, a very complicated and very challenging environment to be operating in. I really, I don't envy our planning staff. You know, I mean, you're really, you know, doing some amazing work. And and I really want to appreciate that. And, you know, in again, with like a lot of complexity and challenge. And, you know, and it's it's our responsibility as elected officials, I believe, to take that on and to do what it is our responsibility to deal with those with those complexities. And it's our responsibility to educate ourselves, to listen to the public, to weigh decisions based upon the constraints that we have through state law and other factors and provide that level of oversight. And in addition to that level of oversight as consistent as it may be, there are places where we can maintain control. And we ought to be doing that where the law is silent. The city council can act. We hear this, right? I mean, it's a very elegant sentence that somebody has reminded me of earlier. And that, I believe, is our responsibility. And we need to continue to explore those avenues, even if they don't all happen tonight with respect to the question of transparency and information and public information. I mean, we have heard tonight from folks. We have heard and I know you all took the same tour. I did and went out and looked at the property for the first SB 35 application that's coming before us that shall not be named tonight. But there are, you know, people want to go like, well, OK, so what are these objective standards? You know, well, we don't have that set of objective standards completely finalized. This process that we're going through that Sarah Noisy is working on very hard. And I super I just want to say I super appreciate how you explain things to us and how you know, really demonstrate how you're thinking about it. It really is a comfort to me to to have that that kind of level of of expertise and from all of you as well. But Sarah, really, I just want to appreciate you. I've been meaning to say it all night. So we we want another responsibility. I think we have is to try to help people access that information to direct the public where it can be made public. So with respect to those objective standards, we've heard tonight that there the staff has gone through. And we have and Barbara has said we have many, many more objective standards. Well, what are those? Right. And, you know, we have all the different things that we here. We bring together all the, you know, all of it. Right. I mean, I don't have to list them all again. And then you pull out, you figure out what's objective, what's not. What are we going to do about this? What are we going to do about that? And a matrix emerges, right? So can we see that matrix? I mean, we should be. I think we should be able to see that and that the public should be able to see that until we have those objective standards, general objective standards set up. That we we get to see that information on the public, see that information when applications come through and one is coming to us on the 14th. So can we get that information? I think I mean, do we have to direct that tonight? That we get to give us the list. Show us what you did that people want to know that it helps us understand. It helps the public. So I just think that's really important. And there's there's no reason just because we don't have to do it to not show what those objective standards are that are being met and which ones may not be met based upon applications. That is that is critical. And I can go on. I could go on. I'm going to leave it there, but there's there's a whole bunch of stuff that I think that we need to continue this conversation. So if we're not going to do it and we need to be prepared as a council to make more time on our council agenda to navigate our way through this and to do that in the light of day in a public session. So I'll stop there for now. And maybe I'll just make a quick comment and I can also ask Lee. My understanding is that if now that with this motion, we are assuming this public, this crazy word public oversight, whatever the heck it's called, we got to come up that that those objective standards will be. That is exactly that list is exactly what we will go through that night. So however long it is, if it's 50 pages, if it's five pages, I don't know. But I believe based on what I heard Sam and we and we say that that is that will be our job that night. And obviously that will be published. And then Lee, I would assume when what we call the objective standards, which are really more of the design standards, which is another thing we're doing with our community, when those get done, those get rolled into, you know, our cross our zoning code. And then that those become even more of standards that can be then used in as objective standards for SB 35. So I just want to make sure I'm just wanting to make sure our staff either says that or if that's just so people can maybe get some clarity. The public can have a little clarity. Thank you for the question. That's all accurate, Mayor. OK, OK. So first one is always the hardest, as they say. Thank you for your comments. Councilmember Cummings. Thank you, Mayor. And, you know, I was just kind of looking over the agenda report. And I'm going to go ahead and move my second motion and we can discuss again the merits or whether or not it's appropriate. But I just based on the agenda report that we have before us today, the subject of our affordable housing streamlined ministry approval, SB 35, and density voting study session, including procedural direction for such requests. And based on the title of that meeting and that this is a special meeting, we're supposed to provide procedural direction for such requests, meaning requests under SB 35. I believe that the following motion is appropriate, which it would be to designate the city council as the approving body for design review and density bonus requests for all stations, direct staff to clarify the SB 35 application, requesting density bonuses as incomplete if all the required documentation has not been provided. Direct staff to provide updates to the city council regarding staff time and activities involved in assisting SB 35 project applicants, seeking subsidies and other assistance for affordable housing units and provide an opportunity for the way in prior to project application approval. And based on provisions and HCD SB 35 guidelines require any SB 35 project made a 20 percent inclusionary requirement for the entire project. And again, you know, number three is was a recommendation in our staff recommendation by staff to make changes that relate to procedural direction. Use the motion that's before you fits within those procedural directions for SB 35. I'll second that round. Second. Yeah, I'll second that. I do have a can I ask a quick question? So with respect to that number two, because we've sort of talked around this, the the terminology is maybe a little unclear. And so I just want to make sure that when you say that they're incomplete, if the required documentation has not been provided, that that is that you mean after they get a response, this is incomplete, but you can still keep sending your stuff. You can give us the one pager and we'll give you the 60 days to get stuff back to us. And at that point, when you're talking about is that OK, I just wanted to make sure and I don't know if that needs to be clarified. But yeah, I will second that motion. OK, we have a motion on the floor in a second. Are there comments? For questions from council members, council member Contari Johnson. Thank you. The number one of this motion. But when when this was brought up by council member, I'm sorry, Vice Mayor Brunner. Tony Kandadi says that this this would be more appropriate when we look at a new zoning ordinance. I'm just trying to clarify if if part one of the four part motion was what we talked about a little earlier. And if that is the case, then then just the thinking behind putting it back in. Maybe Tony and council member Cummings can address that. Sure, I was I was looking back to the subject of our meeting on our agenda, which included that we include procedural direction for such a under the Affordable Housing Streamline Ministry approval, which is SB 35. And similar to what the staff has recommended in recommendation number three, the staff recommends that by motion confirm that applications involving requests for both Affordable Housing Streamline Minister approval and density bonus require city council to make the determination of consistency with objective standards and to approve any associated bus, et cetera. Similar to what the staff has recommended, this does not, you know, this doesn't seem outside of the realm of what we're able to provide in terms of direction at this point in time. So that's why I'm moving forward with making this motion because it doesn't seem like these are these are inconsistent motions. The staff is saying that they want the city council to make approval on density bonus requests as part of a public oversight. Then I don't understand why it wouldn't make sense for the city council to be able to design itself as the improving body for design review and density bonus requests for all SB 35 applications. So this is just, you know, direction that seems like it's consistent with the approval that we're able to provide at this point in time. And that's why I'm moving forward with making these recommendations. But question and then Council Member Watkins, I see you have your hand up. My understanding, Lee, is that at least in number one, design review without objective standards under, without the objective standards that are coming, we really don't have design rigidity. So I'm just curious if this could actually be acted upon by us. I just want to make sure because my understanding was that in a sense, our objective standards that are on display are really our design review objective standards. I'm just trying to understand if I guess if we could operationalize as a council number one, and then I would just be curious about. I'm also just curious about how number four works in the law around SB 35. What that looks like, because I believe that I'm just curious about that. And as well as the density bonus, I'm just trying to understand that one. I don't know, Lee, if you have a. Question, I guess there's a broader question, Tony, of whether or not we can go here on. I have a question about whether or not item four is consistent with our inclusionary. I apologize, I'm having some technical difficulties and can't start my video. So hopefully you can hear me. We can hear you, Tony. Yeah, thank you. OK, please, maybe if you can answer mine and then I'll have Tony, if you have any comments on four and then Martin, excuse me, Councilman Watkins, I'll have you go. Sure. And I think to answer your question, Mayor Meyers, I'm not 100% clear how number one would differentiate from the prior motion that directed the density bonus to come for an oversight meeting. Oversight meeting is essentially the same review for objective standards. So I see those as the same. But there may be a different intent there that we can try to get at if there is a different intent. So that's that's my comment on number one. I would also just ask the question, Councilmember Cummings, you mentioned that number three was based on a staff recommendation. So maybe that was a prior. No, yeah, it's number three of the staff recommended reference. It was number three of the staff recommendations. Thank you for that clarification. I was looking at this and I was like, wait a second, not this recommendation. No, thank you. Yeah, I in terms of number four, this certainly apply its regular inclusionary requirement to the to an SB 35 project, but the city's inclusionary ordinance. And Lee, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it only applies inclusionary requirement to the base density and not to the bonus units. And that's correct. And I believe that is a requirement state law. Yes. And so the city can't apply a standard to the SB 35 project that's not applied generally. So you could say require any SB 35 project to meet the city's 20 percent inclusionary period. And I think that would, you know, that would that would be consistent with both your ordinance and state law. Thank you, Barbara, just for a little bit more clarification. The difference is the density bonus units. So when you're saying that that is I'm sorry, absent the density bonus units. Correct. Yeah, I was following you. I just want to make sure council or our where and then we get into jargon a little bit too much of that and amenable amendment councilmember Cummings and councilmember Brown. Are you OK with that? I am for now. This is going to be an ongoing debate that when I'm when I'm around for these conversations, but for now for the purposes of getting through tonight, yes, absolutely. Councilmember Watkins, did you have a question or comment? I had a question. I think you got at it, which was I don't I'm understanding how number one is different from the other motion substantively in regards to the council's role, which I'm in agreement of as sort of the oversight entity at this time. And so I think, Mayor, you brought that up or I don't know if it was you leave, but is this how is that different than what we already just sort of really approved? Essentially, I would look to be or leave interpretation or Tony's I don't I'm not sure. Yeah, I I don't know that there's a difference. I agree. See a difference for like simplicity purposes, and I think we should probably just scratch that if that's OK with the maker of the motion. Just reading and just reading to compare the language between the two. Um, I'm wondering if there's any and this would be great for me or Tony the way I am. If there's any difference between us reviewing the applications versus the, you know, making approvals of design, review and density, bonus requests, like if those are considered to be a part of the application, then I guess that can make sense. But if these are in addition to the application, then it seems like it would make sense to review. Well, at what point is it sort of like a brief governing body to like, you know, staff rule? I mean, I guess I'm just sort of curious as to where I mean, where are those checkpoints blown away? Because I think how we worded it last time was that we are the body that ultimately this will come to and we want to remain that at this time. But I don't know if I'm really clear about where you're in sort of suggesting that be different than what we're suggesting or are you wanting other checkpoints, more staff related? I guess I'm sort of confused how this is different. No, and I think they might be consistent, but I'm just wondering if maybe staff would weigh in because it seems like it looks like Sandy had her hands. Yeah, just if I could. So and because I have been thinking about this quite a bit, it's so I thought that just wanting to have this in the motion was a good idea. But now because of the design review piece and feeling like that is a separate component, but if well, if it's kind of implicit and it seems to have been acknowledged that design review is a part of that for SB 35 applications with the where the council's authority lies, then it doesn't. I think it probably is redundant. But I just wanted to, you know, I think that understanding that part of that is going to be the design review objective standard that are developed for design review that we will consider those in addition to the other standards. I think that. We might be. Getting caught up in terminology here, but from my perspective, the first motion dealt with. The determination of consistency with objective standards and the second motion deals with design review and density bonus requests. And I do not think that under the statute, there's any meaningful distinction between the two. And so I believe that this is probably redundant. But Barbara or Lee would be happy if you could weigh in and confirm or review what I just said. Most of the essentially this must approve a project must approve a project that meets all the SB 35 requirements and conforms with all the objective standards. So I think as Tony and Lee have said as a city attorney and Lee have said effectively, once the council makes a determination about compliance with objective standards, at least for that part of it, it's effectively making a decision on the approval or denial of the project. So the density bonus requests are a little bit. You know, are a little bit different. But you'll be looking at the density as at the same time as you look at the objective as you look at the standards. So in that sense, effectively, it's the same. The only thing that would need to be done if you found that the project was in conformance with all objective standards, let's say the staff comes to you recommends that the project is in conformance with all objective standards. Then there would probably be some suggested conditions of approval. And so I think during that review of the objective standard, you effectively would be doing the same thing. Am I making sense? I think we're all, you know, this is a very. The way the state has set this up is a very odd process that we're all trying to sort our way through. But I think that your decision on the objective standards is effectively an undensity bonus request is essentially a decision on the project itself. OK, I mean, it sounds like it's neither here nor there. If it's more like the same thing, you know, but I have heard that in in the first main motion, so I don't know. I mean, if we want to keep that or not. But nonetheless, I also wanted to kind of get a little bit more clarity around number three, sort of what's the intention? How is that supposed to be tracked? Kind of what's the obligation of the city to help sort of a project go through? Like, I don't know if I really follow where that fits or how you actually offer it like that. Yeah, I think here really, you know, if. If a project is coming to the city, I think what I've been hearing from some people are concerns around, you know, is there the potential for the project to meet some of the affordable housing? And are they able to kind of conform with the programs that are existing? And just being able to provide the community with some updates on what type of subsidies is the project seeking? What type of assistance is the project seeking to determine whether or not they can actually be able to provide the full that they say they're going to. They're going to provide the community. I think, for example, there's been some concern around the A3 one water project, whether or not they're actually going to be able to provide and get the subsidies for the affordable housing they're claiming that they can get to the community. I think part of that is that if they are able to get that those subsidies, you know, that's great. But if they're not and they're misleading members of the public saying, like, we're going to provide all this affordable housing, well, what's the proof that you're going to be able to do so? And so I think that just some members of the public are concerned that that certain projects like these might be misleading the public. And so they would like to understand, you know, to what extent staff is working with the developers? Are they actually going to be able to meet those affordable housing needs? Or, you know, are they just kind of saying this is a way to build community support around a project that may or may not be feasible in terms of providing the affordable housing? I guess my question would be then to staff. Is that feel like something you can answer? No, we typically for for private developments, we do not get into the financing. And it's the applicants proposing something that meets SB 35 meant that it has to to adhere to the applicable affordability requirements. And that's what they would have to do. And we do see projects that, you know, get approved and then are not built. That's that's not super uncommon. It happens and I can think of some projects here where that's happened. But we don't get into the the proformas unless they're providing something, unless they're deciding to provide that with respect to justification for a Density Bonus Incentive or Consent. Also provide other documentation. Or if we are providing city funding, then we may dive into that. And I think Bonnie is still on the line. If she wanted to comment on that, she could. But other than that, you know, city projects, yes, we're we're looking at that. Or city funding, yes, we're looking at that. Not for a private development. And could you require a proforma for private development under SB 35? No, no, so. I don't know how you operationalize this either. I mean, I don't know how you actually do anything with it. Go ahead and sorry for that. That's OK. I was just going to say that as Lee indicated, typically. This is a condition of approval. Typically, the city requires that the affordable units be built concurrently with the market rate units. And then it's the developer's job, really, to get the funding for the affordable units. The approval is only good if you or the approval only enables the developer to build if he or she can actually get the funding for the affordable units. So essentially, if you don't have the funding for the affordable units and you're approved for a project under the premise that you're going to provide these affordable units, then they can't really have them sort of like the smoke and mirrors around that. Is that what I'm hearing? You say I have the approval for that. OK, yeah. So I don't really know how number three is can be worded in a way that makes sense in terms of how you operationalize that other than that. We want to make sure that if you're going to say you're going to provide affordable units, you're going to be approved for those affordable units. And if you're not going to provide them, then your project is not going to be qualifying is sort of what I'm hearing. Right. And I think that's where the conditions of approval that were in the other and kind of come to play because those sort of are part of the rulebook, I don't know, for lack of a better way of saying it, I'm not sure, but that's kind of that extra layer of conditions of approval. Is that correct? The conditions of approval? Well, for example, you know, how you would condition an affordable project was mentioned, you know, in terms of that's under the kind of conditions of approval, you know, realm that we've discussed in the other motion. So I guess. Does this so seems like I'm just going to try to get us to a vote here because it's almost midnight. Is number three operational as written covered by other items or do we want to keep it in the motion? And then I'll count number Brown before I have one last comment. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I know it's like I just wanted to say I don't understand. I think to your logic, Mayor, I think number two falls into that as well. The same kind of standard that we're looking at, you know what I mean? So I think it kind of follows into that. I'm not sure how you operationalize that either. It's already been directed. And I'm done. That's number Brown. Thanks. So with respect to number three, the question of operationalizing it is, I mean, I guess for me, what I'm interested in is through the extent that staff is spending time with these applicants talking, you know, it's not, we're not just in a situation where, you know, an applicant comes in, the piece of the pay, you open up the envelope, read it and, you know, there's conversations that happen, right? So the staff is working with developers on a regular basis about all kinds of things. And so with with respect to projects that are going to be receiving or intend to receive, hope to receive, tell us they're going to receive subsidies that there's that in at the staff level that we may not get at the council, right? I mean, I just think that it's it's worth putting it out there that we'd like to know now if that seems to be, you know, if it's going to throw us off for this evening, I'm I can let it go. But but that was at least from my perspective, the intention here with respect to number two, I think it is worth clarifying because, again, the criteria, the requirements and the responsibilities of the city in terms of the timeline is very clearly laid out in the law and the responsibilities of the developer not so clearly and at least in my read and I've only once and looked at notes. But should then to be able to say, well, you know, at a certain point, you know, we told you what is deficient. And so, you know, is then we just leave it and do we leave it hanging? Or do we say we're going to tell you this is incomplete and therefore, you know, case closed? So I mean, I don't know. Maybe it's redundant if from the perspective of staff, so I'm fine with taking that out, too. Again, I just want to put some, like, you know, where we can provide some additional clarity, I'd like to do that. And if it's already been covered, that's fine, too. But I'd like to hear from staff a little bit more on the related to number three. Like, perhaps Lee, you aren't but I mean, there are other staff who work with developers to get projects going. Which is, you know, understandable. But we just like, if you guys know stuff about the affordable housing piece of it and, you know, how that's going to get financed, not pro forma style, but just kind of in generalities, it would be helpful to know. So I'll invite Jessica because she's anxious. But before doing that, I would just say with respect to item number two here, that also relates back to the earlier motion. The council will be the one based on the earlier motion that's determining whether or not it's consistent, a project that's consistent with the objective standards, provided all the documentation, then we wouldn't, they would not be consistent with the objective standards. And so I that's my opinion on that with with respect to the relationship to the first motion. And I'll invite Jessica and or Sam. Jessica deals with it regularly with the grant applications for applicants. Good evening, everyone. Good evening. I just wanted to add that for number three, you know, staff can provide an opinion on, you know, the potential success of an application getting through for funding. But, you know, with every NOFA round that comes through from the state, just just as we're dealing with right now with these with SB 35, there's coming through with almost every funding NOFA round. So we're kind of it's like the tail trying to catch, you know, trying to catch up with the dog that we can make as many opinions as we want. But it's there's a timing issue that when this project comes before council, we can obviously try to make an opinion and a guess as to whether it could be successful at getting funding. But depending on how many other projects are getting thrown into that NOFA round at that time, you know, what would be the success of it? Getting funding at that time is, you know, you're kind of throwing up a bunch of cards in the air and trying to make it a guess. And so it's exactly what Watkins was saying or Watkins was saying as far as operationalizing this, it would be really hard for us to tell you one way or another whether this project could be successful. They may very well have to come back to council and say, hey, we couldn't make it work with the funding that we were anticipating, the financing plan that we are anticipating. We're now coming back to you with a totally different or a slightly different project and instead of it being a family, if this is going to be a senior housing project or maybe it's going to be a permanent supportive housing project, because there's now more funding at the state level, because the governor is now pushing this. I mean, there's so so many ways that it could go. So it would be really hard for we could provide an opinion, but it would be really hard to, you know, say clearly, this is the way it's going to go. And this is what will happen. I don't know if that's helpful or not. I would just add that there are sometimes many multiple rounds. I mean, we saw the project at 350 Ocean, you know, five plus years that applied for grants and didn't get it and finally got it. And I think we, and Jessica, this is more of your realm. But I think that we we typically know when and maybe Bonnie who has something that is always a applicant is applying for certain grants because there's usually a one pager that we sign saying that, you know, checking various boxes that they have submitted an application and so forth. But there may be grants where we wouldn't necessarily know that as well. Yeah, this is Bonnie, if I could weigh in. I would just add that I think the number three is just problematic from the perspective of the information providing is just fairly anecdotal. You know, at that stage in the process, as Jessica mentioned, you know, depending on when the funding rounds are, you know, and when they're submitting their application for consideration of SB 35, we just don't know where that will be in the process. And so the information we'll be relaying will only be information that we may or may not be able to get on the developer. I mean, we often just in these circles here about what they're applying or we may actually have a project that's also in the same round and we may have some information about that, but it's not something that is part of a process we normally would do. So I just think in the context of this, as far as it relating to the last part of that number, I'm reading that correctly, that it somehow relates to council determination on project application approval, I think is a little problematic member coming. I'll just say ultimately the intent behind this is really to keep the public up to speed with whether or not a project, both of them is going to fulfill what they're claiming they're going to provide in terms of affordable housing and how they're going to come up with that affordable housing. So I know that that's you know, you know, people can apply for different sorts of funding and sometimes it gets approved and sometimes it gets denied. But I think the idea is that really trying to keep the community and about what types of affordable housing might be coming forward within projects, especially those that are coming in under SB 35 is something that people just express concern with. And so really it's just trying to make sure that we keep the community informed so that, you know, we don't have rumors that are floating or whether or not a project is actually going to meet the requirements or whether or not it's, you know, the developers are just lying. What have you really just trying to make sure that we have from the city, you know, an outside opinion and someone who can bring forward information to confirm, you know, especially if there's disbelief in the community around whether or not a project is going to meet the affordable housing requirements. So, you know, if it's excluded, that's fine. I think that, you know, ultimately, though, if there's a way that when these projects are coming forward that we can try to keep the community informed about whether or not, you know, it's realistic that developers going to meet those goals and whether they're actually following through with what they say they're going to provide with affordable housing, I think it's just that the community stays engaged and is confident that what they're being told is actually going to happen or not. Council Member Boulder. I'm wondering if at this point we could just call the question. I think we have a lot of us on the same page in regards to what we'd like to see moving forward and this is new. And I just think at this point, that's probably the best thing to do. So you'd like to call the question and Tony, just make sure I'm doing this procedureally, right? That needs the second, correct? Yeah, it's a motion to call the question and needs a second. And if it's seconded, then it's not debatable. Is there a second? I'm wondering if that given just the conversation that we've had in regards to one, two, three, and I'm not quite sure about four, is we can just if the maker of the motion would just sort of withdraw the motion given that primarily all of this direction is covered in the first motion and and and we can move on. I mean, I think that's what we've kind of landed on that. Number three, they already said they can't provide meaningful input or it would be very anecdotal and it's really difficult to really quantify and so how that really plays in as we want intention around, you know, integrity with our developers at this time, it seems really challenging. But within the first motion, we really cover a lot of the components that we want to cover as oversight. So I'm wondering if in the interest of time and kind of given our discussion, if it just makes more sense to kind of maybe just withdraw the motion or at least one through three and then we can vote for is the maker of the motion amenable to that? I'd also see if the second motion is amenable to that. Again, of what I I I'm OK with that. However, I think that some issues are raised in the content of this motion that are still not entirely clear. And so I think that we are going to have to, you know, at some point make, you know, have some more conversation about this with respect to the question. I mean, you know, I'm back to this point, I'm rather than even trying to think it through right here on the spot. I'm just going to say as a maker of the motion can have discretion about this one. And I'll go with the will of the maker if we want to remove one through three. And then I did have I did have an informational request that was I didn't want to put these all out there once earlier, but I did have a motion for information requests for the upcoming meeting that I haven't been able to make. And I can make that quick. And I don't think it should be controversial. So should we just vote on number four? Because I'm sure whatever your information is. OK, OK, so we have a motion on the floor by Council Member Cummings, seconded by Council Member Brown that based on provisions in the HCD SB 35 guidelines require any SB 35 project to meet the city's 20% inclusionary requirement. Do a roll call vote. Council Member Watkins. Aye. Voluntary Johnson. Aye. Brown. Aye. Cummings. Aye. Boulder. Vice Mayor Brunner and Mayor Myers. I'm going to be a no only because I don't support the 20% inclusionary just because of the size of projects that come usually come from that. So just consistent with past votes. OK, that motion passes with six, four and one against. And Council Member Cummings, do you have another motion? Yeah, and I said it's a body and this is more information to know. But given that we brought up SB 35 on water, and this is probably the last time I can provide any input before it comes forward. Some members of the public had asked if the following information could be included that we direct staff to provide the following information for the September 14th hearing, the A-3-1 Watershoot Project 1, all the existing general plan, zoning, design review and subdivision review standards apply to the proposed project and further to identify which of these standards are considered to be objective to provide the city council in public at least three days prior to the public oversight hearing on the A-3-1 Watershoot Project financial documentation supporting the extensive bonus request. Three, recommend conditions of approval for the A-3-1 Watershoot Project at public oversight hearing to include conditions of approval that all project residents be allowed to utilize roof top amenities at no cost. Council determines whether the A-3-1 Watershoot Project meets the city's requirements for design review permit. Council considers the location of a bus stop to serve the project. Council considers relocation of the entrance to the project in order to protect public health and safety. And again, this is all, you know, I'd say the majority of the which is the majority of this is information to come to us and then recommendations to be taken into consideration when the project comes before the council. So I'm just going to ask our city attorney just to I'm not sure that number three can be acted upon. A condition of approval is actually a discretionary action. Yeah, I mean, I think this is a valuable information. I think staff should be making note of these recommended conditions of approval. But I do not think it would be appropriate for the council to take action on three because that's not the subject matter of your hearing tonight. And that being said, perfectly appropriate comments made by council member Cummings and and I do think staff having been surprised that these conditions are likely to be raised at the hearing when it to the council should be prepared to address these conditions. So I would recommend that the council not take action on item three and would ask the staff to address whether or not it anticipates that items one and two will the information requested here will be included as part of the agenda. I presented. Yeah. Thank you. Ask it, clarify that. And then comes when we're coming, I'll go back to you. We is number one. And number two, is that what will be discussed at the hearing? Yes, absolutely. Number one, we've talked about that how we'll provide that matrix with all of the objective standards and an analysis of consistency. And number two, we'll provide whatever financial documentation the applicant has provided us and that information will be available with a packet. OK. Excuse me, Lee, can you answer whether you said earlier that the material that the applicant has provided has been put on the website? Yes, that's correct. Is this material to the whatever degree, especially for number two? Is it already there? We just received additional information regarding the affordability. And I don't believe that we have the financial documentation at this point in time. I'll call on Samantha to see if she's received any of that yet. Received that yet? I'm not sure that we can actually, I mean, we can provide what we have, but if we don't have it, we can't provide it. That's correct. Thank you for that clarification. If it's not provided, we'll just include in the objective standards matrix that as of the date of the report, we did not have that information. Right. Is the maker of the motion and don't believe we have a second on this yet, but is the maker amenable to something number three really doesn't fit? I had a question for the city attorney, because I think the intent by number three was to have this information for consideration by the council on that date, rather than it being conditions for approval to approve at this meeting. And I think, yeah, that's that's exactly right. I mean, this puts the city staff on notice that these conditions are going to be likely placed on the, you know, on the floor to consider. And so staff will hopefully be prepared to address how these proposed conditions fit into the objective standards that we're required to apply in evaluating this project. So I don't think there needs to be any further action by the council in order to put the staff on notice to be prepared to address these conditions. I really don't. But I do think that, you know, that having had this place before the staff, we really need to be ready to address these conditions and to discuss whether or not we have the ability under the objective criteria upon which we're required to evaluate this project, we can we can include these conditions. So I so I think it's appropriate to I just don't think the council can take action on it tonight. So number three shouldn't be part of the motion. I yes, that's right. Is the maker of the motion amenable to that? OK, OK. Councilmember Golder and then Councilmember Watkins. So I was going to second if councilmember coming through move three. I'm sorry. There's a second. Councilmember Watkins. But I just am confused that we can even have any action on a three one water street when we were sort of advised that that we can't. And now we have a motion that specifically targeted that. So I don't know. I'm just I guess I'm confused legally. Not that I just sounds like it's self feasible. So I don't want to like belabor it. But I just I don't understand kind of how that fits into this agenda item. Given kind of the legal considerations that are already brought forth, I don't know if you want to say anything, Tony, but either way. I mean, I can. I mean, I think that's a valid comment. The way that the way I look at it is that we're trying to articulate we're dealing with a situation where the where we're adjusting to a new statutory scheme where we have not had the opportunity before to sort of discuss how we evaluate these projects. And so, in a sense, the council is making comments that the staff will evaluate in in determining how it's going to bring these projects forward in the absence of objective zoning criteria. And so these kind of these kind of requests sort of frame how the staff should, in order to provide the council with a complete picture, prepare a staff report that includes enough information that the council can comfortably say it can evaluate the project based on objective criteria. So, you know, it's not it's not a perfect process. And and. And I think this can be interpreted within the framework of, you know, the council serving as the decision maker. At this point in time for SB 35, a density bonus project. And any other hands up, I'll go ahead and we will, unless there's any other comments on the motion, we'll go ahead and take a vote. I think, Mayor, sorry, the labor, I just like to get Sam's confirmation on the one thing that I just recognized in the motion. Why would you mind pulling that back up? And, Samantha, you've got to hear all of the existing standards. And I just wanted to confirm, Sam, that you're bringing all the are you bringing all of the standards forward, not just the objective ones? We I think this language might work because this is that apply to the proposed project. So we're we're bringing all of the applicable standards and we're saying whether or not they're objective or subjective. Great, but we're not bringing like every standard. So I think that this language will work. Great. Thank you. OK, Bonnie, can we so we have a motion by council member coming seconded by council member Golder? And we will go ahead and do a roll call vote. Council member is Washington. Calentary Johnson. Right. Brown. Aye. Coming. Aye. Golder. I swear, Brunner and Mayor Meyers. Aye. That motion passes unanimously. And our meeting is now adjourned. Thank you, everyone. Much longer meeting than we all thought. Thank you, Barbara, for your.