 I'm going to call the meeting. We're broadcasting. Ready? Okay. The regular meeting of the Capitola Planning Commission is called to order and roll call please. Commissioner Rudd here. Commissioner Wilk here. Chairman Newman here. And Commissioner Welch is not here. I'll say a word about that later. And Commissioner Christensen is expected and will join us when she gets here. So first we have the Pledge of Allegiance and we actually have the flag here in the background. Okay. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. And the foundation of God but indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Okay. We got to work on the tempo a little but otherwise good. Additions and deletions to the agenda please. Yes. I do have additions and deletions to the agenda this evening. Commissioner Wilk is unable to attend the meeting this evening therefore. I'm sorry Welch. Sorry. Commissioner Welch is unable to attend the meeting this evening. And therefore we will need to continue item 5A for 212 Cherry Avenue. We've received many public comments on this item so I'd like to just let attendees know and anyone who's sent in their public comments that they will be attached to the September 3rd agenda packet. And so this evening we would like to continue the 212 Cherry Avenue to the September 3rd Planning Commission hearing in two weeks. And the additions were the public comment that was received on that item. Okay. Well let me go back then to my introductory comments in accordance with the current shelter in place order orders. This Planning Commission is not physically open to the public. Limited staff are present in the commission chambers and Planning Commission is participating remotely by a video call. Members of the Planning Commission can use the reaction choices in Zoom to indicate they would like to speak similar to raising a hand. This meeting is cable cast live on Charter Communications cable TV channel 8 and is being recorded to be rebroadcast on the following Wednesday at 8am and on Saturday following the first rebroadcast at 1pm on Charter Channel 71 and Tomcast Channel 25. Meetings can also be viewed live from the city's website and with the Zoom meeting link also available on our website. Our technician tonight is Kingston. Public comment can be emailed or called into the Planning Commission. Members of the public may submit public comment once for each item by email or phone call. You may not submit more than one email or call per item. I think the procedure is on your screen but I'm going to review it anyway for the public to call in comments. Before the item you wish to comment on call the phone number and enter the meeting ID displayed. Press the hash key when prompted for a participant ID. To raise your hand to make a comment press star 9 on your phone wait to hear that you are unmuted and then make your comment. You will have up to three minutes to speak. If you are watching the meeting via Zoom you can use the participant option to raise your hand and make a comment when unmuted by our moderator. To email comments identify the item you wish to comment on in your email subject line. Email comments will be accepted starting now up until I announce that public comment for an item is closed. Each email comment will be read aloud for up to three minutes or displayed on a screen. Emails and calls received by outside received outside of the comment period outline will not be included in the record. As mentioned Commissioner Welch is unable to attend because he's assisting with the CZU Lightning complex fire response. Our county has been devastated by the fires that began this week. On behalf of the planning commission I want to express our sympathy to those in our community who have been evacuated from their homes and some who have even lost their homes as well as our appreciation and support for all the first responders and everyone else who has assisted with efforts to mitigate the impact of this disaster. So that takes us to oral communications and we already had additions and deletions to the agenda. So the next item is public comments. We'll take a minute or two to see if anyone wants to send in additional comments. And then Sean you can tell us if we've received any. There are any participants on the zoom meeting that would like to comment on something not on the agenda. This would be the time to raise your hand for items not on the agenda. Okay we'll move on then to commission comments. Do any of the commissioners have anything to offer at this point? I'd like to make a comment I guess. This is Commissioner Welch. Last time we had a director's report where it was mentioned that the palm trees on Clare Street were saved and a neighbor chose to recover them and move them on to their property in order to save those beautiful palm trees representing their queen palms. The reason I bring that up again is that we talked about the heritage tree program and redoing our tree ordinances and it would have been nice to be able to offer them the option of saying hey the city can help financially with you moving those trees if their heritage trees and if the city planning commission or whoever determined that those were valuable to the city that we could actually offer to help them financially in some way and to do that we needed a policy and so I know Katie's working on it it's not obviously the highest priority thing but I just wanted to continue to mention that that's something that's still hasn't been dropped we're thinking about it. Okay noted obviously the planning commission doesn't have any budgetary authority so we would best be able to make recommendations for the city council. Do we have any other staff comments or have we covered that already? No additional staff comments at this time. Okay so next item is the approval of the minutes of the regular meeting of Y-16-2020. Approve approval. Second. Okay all in favor they will have to do a roll call vote. Commissioner Will. Aye. Commissioner Ruth. Aye. And Chairman Newman. Aye. So that passes unanimously and then we go to the consent calendar. There is one item on the consent calendar which is a design permit for a first and second story addition to an existing non-conforming single family residence located within the R1 single family residential zoning district at 514 Escalona. Is there anyone of the commissioners or any member of the public that would like to have this pulled for a public hearing and we'll have to take a minute to see if anyone who was watching us would like to do that. Can you pull up the slide that gives instructions or contacting us if they'd like this item pulled from the agenda? Thank you. Not seeing any raised hands at this time. I know at least two of the attendees are here for the other project that was continued or will be. Okay. Let's give it just a few more seconds. Your clock is moving very fast today, Sean. Sean, the slide changed. I'm checking to see if we have any e-mail comments that are related to 514. Okay. No one seems to be interested in a public hearing on the only item on the consent calendar. Do we have a motion? Move approval. Second. Okay. Second. Okay. Okay. I'll call vote. Commissioner Wilk. Commissioner Ruth. Aye. And myself. Aye. So that passes unanimously. We only had one public hearing today, which do we want to formally continue this? Madam Planning Director. Yes, please. A formal continuance would be. And are we continuing to take a certain or two to be determined? Do I have a motion? We'll continue. Second. Okay. Commissioner Wilk. Aye. Commissioner Ruth. Aye. Myself. Aye. So that will be continued to September 3rd for those that are listening and are interested in that item. Presumably that meeting will again be by Zoom. The next item is a, the director's report. And we have discussion on planning application requirements for a color and materials board. So staff, please. Thank you, chair Newman and commissioners. Can you see my presentation? Okay. No. Now can you see my presentation? Okay. No. Yes. Okay. I'm sorry, but the, for some reason it's showing the sidebar, but we'll go from there. Okay. This evening's director's report, I have, I think five items to report to you on. And the last item will be the discussion on the materials and color board. I wanted to first give you a COVID-19, the temporary use permit update. These permits are permits for local businesses in which they would like to utilize outdoor space in order to meet social distancing requirements. They're available for free from the city and we're expediting them within 48 hours. We actually send our planner and building official out and help you identify a safe area in which you can relocate your business in order to have a safe setting due to COVID-19. At this time on a report that Sean and Matt have issued 23 permits. So it's been a successful program and a safe program. So you'll, you continue to see them pop up around town and they are free and expedited review. There is a link on our website under what's new. So we encourage any businesses out there to come on in and apply or not come in. Just know to just get in contact with us and we'll walk you through the process to line up an appointment and get that permit to you. Next we, two weeks ago, I put out the local coastal plan, the LCP, the updated zoning code draft for the LCP certification. There's a six week review period that's currently open. The draft is available also on the front page of the website under what's new. We're encouraging anyone with comments on that to look at it and send an email comments and there's links on our website to that as well. And that item will be coming back to the planning commission in October. City Council gave us all their direction on the zoning code update and we'll have, we've got track changes for you. And looking forward to bringing that back to you in October and then followed by City Council's adoption and then we'll submit to the coastal commission. So I think all items are to the point that the city feels comfortable with them and we'll get responses from the coastal commission. Not just the staff will be doing an official submittal. Next, right now we're working on our inclusionary housing ordinance that's chapter 18.2. The inclusionary housing ordinance is the ordinance that applies whenever we have larger developments with more than seven, with seven or more units that are required to build one inclusionary unit. It also applies to the in-loofies that are tied to any development that has, that builds an addition greater than 50% or a new single family home. The council will be reviewing at their meeting next week some policy items that have come up over the years and we're bringing that forward. We're expecting a grant from the HCD that will be applying to this update. I'll provide you with updates regularly on the policy direction that we get from City Council and keep you updated as this moves along. So our meeting next week, the City Council will be reviewing the policy discussions. I think the Planning Commission would find that staff report very interesting. It'll be published tomorrow. Question on that. You have a question? I have a question on that. Is there a reason that that didn't come to the Planning Commission? You know, it's the purview of the City Council, that chapter for any ordinance updates. So that is why, but I will keep you in the loop as they move through that. Question? Yes. So my feed broke up so I didn't even hear the question or the answer. Chair Newman asked, is there a reason why this did not come to the Planning Commission? And the reason for that is that it's the purview of the City Council chapter 18.2 to update. But I will be bringing you updates along the way of what direction they're giving staff and what modifications are going to be in place. Thank you. I will publish tomorrow and I think the Planning Commission, it's an informative document with quite a few policy questions that are being asked. And hopefully we'll get direction next week. Next, I was going to update you on the September 3rd Planning Commission meeting. There were no items, but we've just continued one item. Two-two cherry will be heard on September 3rd. Let you know there's two palm trees on cherry that were, there was an application and we've asked for an arborist report. We've not received that back from PG&E. We were thinking we'd have that in time for September 3rd, but at this time it's not looking like that's going to be the right date for it. So that will probably happen in October as well. I have a question on that. We hired PG&E to do the arborist report. We hired them to do, we didn't hire them. They, they have under the code, they can bring to us the, an arborist report making the findings for removal and then we'll review those findings. And next is a discussion on the colors and material board. Are there any questions for the previous five slides before we move on? I have a comment. Okay. Yeah, I'd like to express kudos to the planning department for being so nimble and proactive in response to the crises that we have been facing and rolling out the outdoor permits and those kinds of things so efficiently. So thank you. Yeah, I'll echo that Sean and Matt have done an unbelievable job of proactively calling out to businesses as things have come up and making sure people are aware of these permits and they've been well received. So the effort's gone a long way and it shows and much appreciated. I'll second it. Okay. So now we'll move on to our discussion of color and materials board. I, I have this picture on the screen because I'm not sure if you all know the butterfly house in Pacific Grove or the butterfly house in Carmel. I didn't actually know there was a butterfly house in Carmel until I tried to find a picture of the one in Pacific Grove and I thought the contrast of these two was interesting for our discussion tonight of colors and materials. That's what you're seeing the two butterfly houses. The top one is in Pacific Grove. The bottom one is in Carmel. They're different styles due to their colors and materials. The one item in our code is that talks about architecture and materials is consideration within our design permit standards. The planning commission has to consider relating to the architectural character, any development. And under there there's two criteria, the suitability of the building for its purpose and second consideration for the planning commission is the appropriate use of materials to ensure compatibility with the intent of the title. I just wanted to show you where the color materials board is listed. This is our requirements for planning applications. There's a second page that talks about stormwater requirements, but as you can see at the bottom it says colors and materials. There's no specificity explaining exactly what is required for a color materials board, but it's simply listed there. Next I'm going to give a few examples of color material boards that we've received for different projects. And then I'll let Commissioner Wilk had requested this discussion, so I'll let him lead the discussion if that's okay with Chair Newman. So here's one example of a materials board. This was for a sign application in the village and they were also repainting at the time so they brought in the details of the paint. They showed white acoustic paint, a trim and a zinc dust for the awnings, and then the sign material copper with natural patina. Next, a discussion. This is a single family home and they call out the fiber cement paneling on the second story, the one by horizontal wood siding on the first story and second story. This is a 10 feet tall open trellis and a stucco waistband at the base. So we typically see these as single family homes. And Sean and Matt pointed out that more and more, just a material and colors board, we're seeing more renderings come in that are to color and show the materials. And lastly, here's, well not last, this is another development of a home and as you can see the architect put the roof type up, roof type and showed the color. He shows the wood siding similar to existing and shows the new color or the color and then also labels that the new windows will be vinyl white. And then a different type of application for a conditional use permit for outdoor dining and display. This was at New Leaf a few years back. And here they showed us the boxes, the display cases that they were going to utilize, the types of chairs and tables, the pavers. We asked for the one area to be delineated from the typical pavement that was on the sidewalk and the wood lattice that they planned to use. So those are four different examples of color and material boards. And with that, I'll let you enter your discussion. So, Commissioner Wilk, I think you're the one that initiated this discussion. So maybe you want to take over here. Thank you, Chairman. I would like to make a few comments on this. And as was pointed out, the code doesn't call out color. It calls out a materials requirement. So I guess all I'm requesting is that on the plan verification at the bottom of the page, as was pointed, just strike the word color and have a materials board. So why do I care? Well, I think it's, I think it's an unnecessary requirement that can in fact be intimidating to an applicant. An applicant might be, you know, not sure what the heck they're up against when they go to the Planning Commission. They see that they have to submit the color of a house or a structure. And it's likely they're going to say, oh gosh, you care about color? I better pick something safe. So you end up with a beige house or a white house. And then they end up later saying, well, that's, you know, no one can object to that. So I don't know why we should put them through that hand wringing experience if it's not required. Now, this has been kind of an issue, something I'm following for a while. I'll go back to actually ask Rich Bruno back if you remember our previous director. And he said that there really wasn't a reason for requiring a color. As was pointed out, it was, it's not in the code, but it was, he just said it was customary. And so he was, he was just going to leave it in. And I was not a commissioner at the time, so I just obviously rolled with it. Clearly, well, and correct me if I'm wrong, Katie, but a person can repaint their house any color they wish without applying for a permit. So if the person has paints their house beige, then they really want purple like the one in. Well, like, all right, I guess they got through a two step process. The first one has to be approved. And then the second one, they get to do what they want. So as far as I know, there aren't elected officials who are hard over on this. I remember this coming up with former mayor and planning commissioner Ron Gray's as well as Stephanie Harlan and my recollection. They, they both didn't care about color either. I certainly don't care about color. There's no community standard on color. All right, you know, like I say, we've got a purple house here. We've got dragonflies painted on or at least used to be painted on a place in the jewel box. So there's, there's not a unit that would insist that, well, we want the appropriate capital of feel. And this is the color palette that belongs in capital. We don't, we don't have that. In fact, we have just the opposite. Brilliant rainbow of colored houses and colored building. So I just don't think that since no one cares since there's no community standard, why should we needlessly put a requirement and implied requirement on the applicant? Let's just delete that word color off the materials board. So that's what I think. Commissioner Ruth, any. Yeah, I absolutely don't think that's the direction we should be going, especially in dealing with commercial projects like the mall expansion or the hotel. We should be strengthening our design oversight, not weakening it. I think if we want to maintain the character of capital and protect our uniqueness, those are one of the tools we need to oversee design. We're going to lose the uniqueness if we continue going in the direction of weakening what few design controls we have. So I'm absolutely opposed to the change. And I think Mr. Wilkes arguments completely unfounded because he even admitted that there's multiple colors of buildings and houses and stuff in Capitola. So people aren't subjected to paint their house beige or brown or whatever he suggested, but it does give the planning commission and the council a perception of what the final product is going to look like. And for that reason, I don't think we should change it. Thank you. So this is an interesting item because we have a really nice difference of opinions here. I wasn't sure where Commissioner Wilkes was going to go with this, but listening to him. I was a little bit surprised because I agree only I even agree more as a 15 year planning commissioner. I've made it my policy basically to ignore the color boards and the material boards pretty much because for a number of reasons. One is I don't think I'm really that qualified to determine the aesthetics for other people. And I don't think those were the qualifications that had me appointed to the planning commission. Number two is I don't think that the planning commissioners as a whole are really the right persons to determine the aesthetics of in. I think that we should leave it to individual creativity and if if Capitola has a theme it's eclectic. It's just a mishmash of all kinds of things that's make makes it great. And if we have strict standards for planning commissioners to decide if they like the looks of the exterior looks of a color of a building. Probably the Venetian at least half the time if it came in for approval the Venetian courts wouldn't have been approved. So as an example and from my personal opinion, I think we should eliminate color as requested. And I think we should be very minimalistic in terms of even evaluating materials. There may be some other considerations for materials, but in general the aesthetics of a property are not in my view the main function of the planning commission. So I don't know where we're going to go with this. We've got three different opinions. Well, I think it's the job of the planning commission in one characterization to protect the uniqueness of our town. And if we let that ability go by not looking at any aspects of design, then I think we're not doing our job. I understand. I appreciate your position. I don't excuse me may speak please. Thank you. So I don't want to go as far as eliminating all design aspects. But the ordinance does say that you can review materials and you can review aesthetics, but it does not specify color and it seems like staff has just shoved the word color into their verification plan. And all I'm asking is that, I mean you can still review, well I guess you couldn't if the color palette isn't there. So all I'm asking is just to remove that one word and not to completely eliminate our design overview. But my question I guess is for Katie, is this something that we need to vote on? Is this we need a quorum to do that, I guess, which we don't have or yes, I guess we do have. So this is not an item you would need to vote on. I did want to just address one thing under our new code. We've really, under our design permit criteria, there was a lot of thought put into this for when larger projects do come in. There are enhanced visualization standards. So to Commissioner Ruth's point, if say a new hotel came in, you know, the mall project or any project in which we would like to see exactly what the color is. I do think it's important right now. The code does ask us to look at materials. So taking that out would be it. I wouldn't suggest that because it would mean that you wouldn't be able to evaluate the criteria you're supposed to evaluate. But in terms of color, if a project comes in and they're not showing color and it's something that would help in the decision making due to the mass and scale, sometimes color helps break up the overall look of a building. We can ask for that under the new design standards under the enhanced visualization requirement. So, and that can be asked for by myself or the planning commission and staff. So as far as procedure, since I agree with Commissioner Wilk's request here, we can, we could continue this to have a get the opinions the other two commissioners that might be valuable. And then is it basically a recommendation to the city council or? No, it would just be a modification to our application standards. Another idea that I've thought about is, is that we could add color is optional. It's not a requirement, but if you'd like to include color with your material board, we could put that on the application and kind of satisfy. Maybe what we should do is I think since this isn't a specific application that needs to be acted on tonight. And I think we've got a diversity of views here. It would be good to bring in the other two at the next meeting and maybe have some, some options to recommend that work for everyone. Well, I still don't get a understanding of what the procedure is. It sounds like Katie doesn't want to take direction from the planning commission. What I'm hearing is that you'd like to take out the word color, not materials, correct? That was that was all I suggest. So I'm saying that you, you can provide direction on that and we can change that on the application level. It's not a requirement under code. So there's no change to be taken to city council. And what I was also stating is that under our new code, once it's finally applicable citywide, there's the ability to ask for color renderings for any project in which you think it would be necessary and useful. So would it no longer be mandatory for commercial projects? Right now it's, it's on our list of application requirements, but taking off taking color off of the requirements that would no longer be mandatory. That's crazy for commercial projects. How do you, how do you visualize something like the mall expansion to the hotel without knowing the colors? Hello. Who are you directing that question to? Anyone that would attempt to answer it. I visualize the hotel or the mall expansion project without having a color palette. So my view of that is that when you're talking about the big items like the mall or the hotel, they're developers with tremendous economic investment in those projects with experts to advise them as to what is workable from a marketing standpoint. And I think that that's enough control over the aesthetics and that planning commissioners are not in a better position to make that call. But we live there. We live here and we have to live with the building the developer does it. Well, we can live here and we can also have old fashioned ideas, which could maybe be counterproductive. Point of clarification. So what I heard Katie say is that in the new ordinance, you could, you could leave the word color out. But as part of the discretionary review process, the planning commission could request color on a particular application be included. Is that correct? Within the application, there's a material. There's the requirements for the application. You could remove it from the application. There's no need to remove it from the code because color is not required by the code. Excuse me. What is the purpose of this? What do we gain by doing this? We lose some control over design aspect. We lose the visualization of certain projects. What do we gain? We gain the lack of the fact that we're no longer this big, older, intimidating applicants with a bunch of needless requirements. Well, Mr Wilkes, you know, I've been around the city now for 48 years and I've never seen any applicant be intimidated by the color palette. I was. Well, that's because you didn't follow your plan. I think what we gain is a little bit different. I think we, we don't restrict people's personal tastes and creativity. So I, again, I still don't understand a clear point of clarification. So again, I thought what I heard from Katie was that in the new code, let's assume that there's a color. There's no, there's no reference to color anywhere in the code or in the planning verification document or anything like that. But there is a some new discretionary portion where the planning commission could request a color, a color palette. Is that, is that what I heard you say or is that I'm making that up? That's what you heard me say. Can you see my screen right now with a C says enhanced visualization. So this is the application submittal and review for a design permit. And under C will be, you can ask for a streetscape illustration and see enhanced visualization. The city may require enhanced project visualization materials. For example, 3D renderings, photo simulations, physical models, expanded streetscape diagrams, viewpoint analysis, when any of the following apply and. So who would request that you or the planning commission? Either myself, staff or the planning commission. So the, this says if the project is proposed within a prominent or highly visible development site, as determined by the community development director. So that one, the mall for sure, as well as the future hotel site in the village. The second criteria is the project would be located within our adjacent to Vista points or visually sensitive areas as identified in the general plan. The applicant is requesting a variance in height. So when they request a variance in height, they should provide these substantial changes to the exterior of an existing structure, which is most applications that we see. And the community development director determines that enhanced visualization is necessary to determine if the findings for approval can be made for the project, proposed project. I don't think that addresses Commissioner Ruth's concern, which is if there's a mall or a commercial project or something that comes in without a color palette. We can say we need enhanced visualization. Please provide the color palette, which they may have in their hip pocket or maybe not. They may need to come back. But if the default is come in with your black and white drawings. I think that's appropriate. And then, again, if we don't think it's detailed enough, we can go back and ask for color. And I would think that addresses Commissioner Ruth's concerns. It doesn't because if it's left up to the planning commission right now, there's two of you that don't want to see that. Well, that's the case in any vote, right? I mean, we may not. Perhaps the other commissioners will. Well, let me ask this. Can one individual planning commissioner request a color palette? So I don't read that section to require color specifically. No, not require. You get to request it. Well, it doesn't even, you may require enhanced project visualization materials rendering auto simulations. Can an individual planning commissioner request that? I would think they could. You can vote against the application. If they don't provide. Just for, just for example, if an application comes forward without any color included, no, no, no design extra materials whatsoever in that respect. Can I personally, as a planning commissioner request a color palette? Or does it take the whole planning commission? I would think in order to help me make my decision, I should be able to request that as an individual. Typically, if there were an application in front of you and you were to make the suggestion that you'd like additional materials, you'd have to have the support of the commissioners in a decision to continue an application. I'll go back to commission chair Newman suggestion that this be continued to the September hearing when all five commissioners are present for so every all commissioners can weigh in. Was that the direction you're. Yeah, I mean, I think it would be good because of the diversity of opinions here to have everyone participate in this. So do you ever hear Courtney's Courtney's opinion on this since she works for an architectural firm. Exactly. Okay, so can we just I don't think we need a motion since it's not a public hearing matter, but let's just, if everyone agrees by consensus, we'll put this back on the agenda on September 3. I agree. Yeah, that's good. Great. Okay. And any other commission or communications during time. Did we finish the director's report? We did. Thank you. Okay. Yeah, you had five items. That's right. We will adjourn to September 3. And thank you all. Good night. Thanks, David. Thank you.